THE AGE OF RESPONSIBILITY: Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State, by Yascha Mounk. (Harvard, $14.95.) A political theorist traces the shift from “responsibility-as-duty” to “responsibility-as-accountability” — in other words, when responsibility was no longer about looking after those in need and instead about rewarding the good and punishing the bad. Mounk argues that holding individuals responsible for their circumstances is a flawed view.
THE FAMILY TABOR, by Cherise Wolas. (Flatiron, $18.99.) When readers meet Harry Tabor, the central character of this novel, he seems to be at the pinnacle of his life: He is about to receive the Man of the Decade award for his philanthropic work. But as the story progresses, secrets about him are revealed, and the novel shifts to tell the tale of a flawed and conflicted man reckoning with his past misdeeds.
INTO THE HANDS OF THE SOLDIERS: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East, by David D. Kirkpatrick. (Penguin, $18.) Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times from the beginning of 2011 through the end of 2015, re-examines pivotal moments in Egypt’s uprisings during the Arab Spring that overthrew Hosni Mubarak, the efforts to foster a more democratic government and the coup that gave power to Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
A DOUBLE LIFE, by Flynn Berry. (Penguin, $16.) The heroine of this thriller, a London doctor living under an assumed name, confronts her family’s troubled, bloody past: the lingering question of whether her father murdered her mother. She’s been haunted by the question her entire life, lingering on true-crime message boards, and has been tormented by the possibility that her father is innocent. Times reviewer Karen Valby praised the book, saying that “the writing is rich and moody, without any unnecessary fuss.”
CONCEIVABILITY: What I Learned Exploring the Frontiers of Fertility, by Elizabeth Katkin. (Simon & Schuster, $17.) What Katkin experienced in her years trying to have children is harrowing: eight fresh in vitro fertilization cycles, two frozen IVF attempts, seven miscarriages. Her memoir, a candid, practical guide for what other women may face, amounts to an indictment of many traditional infertility treatments.
COME WEST AND SEE: Stories, by Maxim Loskutoff. (Norton, $15.95.) In this debut collection of 12 stories, by a former student of David Foster Wallace’s, the myths of the American West are turned on their head, with bizarre twists in stories about isolated trappers and militia members. One centers on a lonely homesteader fighting a physical attraction to a female bear.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.