1. The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth by Sam Quinones (Bloomsbury)

Following Dreamland, his searing, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning investigation into the opioid crisis, Quinones saw the next iteration in the cycle of addiction: fentanyl, a form of synthetic methamphetamine that displaced heroin on the streets and had the power to be even more deadly. In his deeply reported book, Quinones tells the stories of users and provides a panoramic view of how this drug was cheaply produced in Mexican labs, shipped into the U.S. by drug traffickers, and fought by drug enforcement agents. He discusses the neuroscience of addiction and how bolstering community bonds is the best defense against this new chapter of the crisis.

2. Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl (Simon & Schuster)

The talents of essayist and playwright Ruhl break the conventions of the traditional confessional memoir in her extraordinary personal narrative that recently won a spot on the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Longlist. Ruhl tells the dramatic story of after delivering twins and having her first play hit Broadway, developing Bell’s palsy. Paralyzing the left side of her face and rendering her unable to smile, the condition endured for a decade. Ruhl has a gift for crisp dialogue, dramatic pacing, sly wit, and discursive sensibilities.

3. Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War by Howard W. French (Liveright)

In his robust, original history, French brings a distinctive understanding of an overlooked trajectory involving Africa’s role in the success of capitalism in America and Europe, and the role of Portugal as its engine. French, a Columbia University professor and past New York Times Africa correspondent, argues that slave labor was essential to the production of gold, sugar, and cotton and critical to the global economy. French ingeniously connects the dots of history, from Africa to its connections with Europe and the conflicts that can be traced to the 15th century.

4. The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish (Knopf)

When this engrossing novel opens, wise beyond his years 16-year-old Corey and his mother, artistic, literary college dropout Gloria, are bleakly eking out a life together when she’s diagnosed with ALS. Corey comes under the influence of his unreliable, absent father, Leonard, a self-described genius, and an MIT security guard. Lish evokes the nuances of this tender mother-son relationship with care and enlarges his novel with a constellation of characters in a propulsive story of suspense and the dynamics between men in blue-collar New England in the 1980s.

5. I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart (Two Dollar Radio)

Protests that sparked the 2014 revolution in Ukraine provide the context for Pickhart’s dazzling debut novel. Drawing from the folkloric oral history of Ukraine and fusing it with the reporting from journalists, Pickhart focuses on a quartet of characters at the center of a Kyiv protest against the president in which more than 100 people were massacred. Pickhart fully develops these intersecting characters, from an American doctor to a former KGB spy, deftly changing points of view, all of which is enhanced by a chorus of past Ukrainian singers killed by a Russian czar.