1. Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now by Evan Osnos (Scribner)

Politicians who have been in the public eye for decades can make for dull reading, but in his beautifully written, insightful portrait of Biden, Osnos makes a case that while the nation in crisis may yearn for soaring rhetoric, the Scranton-born, Amtrak-riding grandfather who has endured so much personal loss “might offer something like solace, a language of healing.” As voters head to the polls for this momentous election, Osnos draws on his years covering Biden for the New Yorker to provide a rich narrative for the former vice president’s life, and perhaps a richer one than the episodic pastiche provided by the candidate: “The defining pattern of his life – a journey of improbable turns, some spectacularly fortunate and others almost inconceivably cruel,” writes Osnos. “Biden’s ambition to reach the highest rungs of American power has driven his rise for more than five decades.”

2. She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh (Scribner)

In her insightful, original debut, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, Smarsh explored lives of the rural working poor through her extended Kansas family, and now she extends that inquiry but focuses on the appeal and influence of Dolly Parton. In her lucid, engaging style, Smarsh takes an expansive approach to Parton, who prevailed over the sexism of the country music business with grit, entrepreneurial spirit, charisma, and musical talent. Smarsh homes in on the culture that Parton personified and shaped, keying into the wit and resilience of the women who are at the heart of her music.

3. Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation by Peter Cozzens (Knopf)

Cozzens’ dual biography recovers the stories of the legendary Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his overlooked brother, Tenskwatawa, known as the “Prophet,” who formed an alliance of Native people in the region now known as Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois to block the incursion of white settlers. The brothers established the Prophetstown settlement as a base from which to fend off their nemesis, territorial governor William Henry Harrison, and support England in the War of 1812. Tecumseh died in battle and Tenskwatawa’s power diminished as the Native confederation evaporated, leaving him to live out his last days on a Kansas reservation in a dramatic arc Cozzens vividly evokes along with the arduousness of frontier life.

4. Memorial by Bryan Washington (Riverhead)

Washington’s debut novel centers on two Houston guys in a dysfunctional relationship, a Black day care teacher and a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant, in what the immensely talented writer has cracked is a “gay slacker dramedy.” While Washington does return to Houston’s Third Ward, which grounded Lot, his much-acclaimed collection of interconnected stories, he now extends his gaze to Osaka, Japan, and the turbulence in the flight paths of families and the emotional disturbances that often separate them. Alternately narrated by the two men, now on different continents and both with divorced parents and fathers who need care and with a feisty mother in the mix, Washington’s big-hearted novel travels into territories of class and race as he evokes the yearning, yet complicated, need for home.

5. Popol Vuh: A Retelling by Ilan Stavans, Gabriela Larios (Illustrator), and Homero Aridjis (Foreword) (Restless Books)

The Popol Vuh is widely considered the Maya Bible, transmitted through three millennia, and in this exquisitely illustrated volume, Latin American literature scholar Stavans reimagines what is also known as the Mayan K’iche’ people’s text of creation. A roster of characters – the deities, lords, idols, white men, and K’iche’ people, as well as the animals, such as jaguar, vampire bat, centipede, and coyote in the book’s frontispiece – are helpful markers through this mystical, mythical landscape. “Sunset has fallen on the K’iche’ people. Our lands have been taken away, our leaders have been subjugated,” Stavans writes in his opening. “Our voice has been silenced.”