PROPERTY: Stories Between Two Novellas, by Lionel Shriver. (Harper Perennial, $16.99.) Greed, and the many ways it can lead people astray, anchors this wry collection of short fiction, with stories that leap across the globe. Times reviewer Stephen McCauley praised the book, writing that Shriver’s “confident grasp of the material and her natural gifts as a storyteller will keep you in her spell and leave you, at the end, slightly altered.”
TWO SISTERS: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad, by Asne Seierstad. Translated by Sean Kinsella. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) What compels Europeans to join ISIS? Seierstad examines the question through the story of Ayan and Leila, who left behind their family in Norway to head to Syria in 2013. The book is an absorbing attempt to understand their radicalization.
THE DISTANCE HOME, by Paula Saunders. (Random House, $17.) For Leon and René, siblings growing up in South Dakota and the principal characters of this debut novel, ballet offers an escape from their grim home life. Leon is spurned by their father, who sees his soft-spoken, stuttering son as inferior to René. Saunders follows the pair as they struggle to find their place in the world and Leon tries to overcome his personal trauma.
BENEATH A RUTHLESS SUN: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found, by Gilbert King. (Riverhead, $17.) King, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, looks into a notable miscarriage of justice in Jim Crow-era Florida. A white woman accuses a black man of rape, but the sheriff goes after a white teenager with a developmental disability, committing him to a hospital to avoid a trial. “King tells this complex story with grace and sensitivity, and his narrative never flags,” Times reviewer Jeffrey Toobin wrote.
LOST EMPRESS: (A Protest), by Sergio de la Pava. (Vintage, $17.) In his polyphonic novel, de la Pava touches on the NFL and the criminal justice system. Nina has been jilted — her father gave control of the Dallas Cowboys to her brother, leaving her an inconsequential team in New Jersey instead. The narrative then expands to Rikers Island and beyond, and even includes a stolen Dalí painting.
AND NOW WE HAVE EVERYTHING: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready, by Meaghan O’Connell. (Back Bay, $16.99.) O’Connell’s is the rare book about parenthood that contains little advice. Instead, she reflects on her decision to have a child, desire for an Instagram-worthy pregnancy and fears about failing as a mother. This bitingly funny memoir will appeal not only to parents but to nonparents, too.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.