1. The Last Trial by Scott Turow (Grand Central Publishing)

Dubbed “Bard of the Litigious Age” on the cover of Time three decades ago, Turow returns to his fictional Kindle County in Illinois, which he introduced in Presumed Innocent, with defense attorney Alejandro “Sandy” Stern in the twilight of his career. Turow has a gift for transforming issues of the day into riveting, suspenseful courtroom thrillers, and now he has the charming Stern representing a Nobel Prize-winning doctor and scientist accused of insider trading and covering up deaths involving a cancer treatment he developed. Tension mounts in Turow’s courtroom as deft legal maneuvering propels the suspense.

2. Economic Dignity by Gene Sperling (Penguin Press)

As the coronavirus pandemic devastates the economy and unemployment claims surge to epic heights, economist Sperling argues that numbers don’t tell the whole story. In his prescient new book, Sperling, former economic adviser to presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, makes a case for reforms so that people can meaningfully “participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” He explains how racism, poverty, and the flawed judicial system undermine dignity, but he also provides policy solutions, including support for caregivers and contract workers, the creation of green jobs, and a universal basic income for dislocated workers who need to retool so the vast gap of inequality can be reduced.

3. The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants by Adam Goodman (Princeton University Press)

The ICE raids of recent years may be shocking, but as Goodman explains in his compelling, well-documented book, they are part of a well-oiled machine that forces, coerces, and scares immigrants into fleeing the United States in what amounts to mass expulsion. Blending human stories, data, and policy analysis, he contends that this machine is built on three expulsion mechanisms: “formal deportation, voluntary departure, and self-deportation.” A historian, Goodman has scoured archives, interviewed migrants, made use of U.S. and Mexican news outlets, and obtained records through the Freedom of Information Act, and he makes a persuasive case that over decades authorities built a framework for this coercive federal immigration bureaucracy.

4. Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Vivek H. Murthy (Harper Wave)

As Zoom fatigue sets in and social distancing takes its toll, Murthy’s clarion call to battle loneliness as a health crisis hits the best-seller list. Murthy, President Barack Obama’s surgeon general (2014-17), argues that social media feeds the current “epidemic of loneliness” by presenting a false impression of everyone else’s popularity and success, and that in this wired environment it is challenging to make connections in a world that rewards self-sufficiency. Murthy calls for creating a caring, collective society with greater shared public space and networks of support for the lonely crowd — things that may be more challenging, yet more vital than ever, in the current COVID-19 climate.

5. A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton)

What begins as a funny novel becomes, in Millet’s hands, a brutal, prophetic, deeply moral one informed by the environmental crisis of climate change. Her deft touch and elegant style elevate A Children’s Bible beyond the familiar, as a group of teenagers vacation with their parents at a rented waterfront mansion. As sea levels rise on the eve of a hurricane, the young people strike out on their own and come to comprehend the disastrous world they will soon inherit.