Alexandra Jacobs

“The Tokyo Suite” explores class divisions in contemporary Brazil via the twinned stories of a high-powered TV executive and the desperate caretaker of her child.

In her first novel since “Americanah,” she draws on a real-life assault as she follows the lives of three Nigerian women and one of their former housekeepers.

Edmund White seems to hold nothing back in his raunchy, stylish, intimate new memoir, “The Loves of My Life.”

The standout essays in Megan Marshall’s “After Lives” recall her troubled father and the fate of a high school classmate.

In “Memorial Days,” Geraldine Brooks retreats to an island off Australia hoping to pick up the pieces after the sudden death of her husband.

Imani Perry’s impressionistic “Black in Blues” finds shades of meaning — beautiful and ugly — in art, artifacts, music, fashion and more.

In a vibrant collection of “essays on the future that never was,” Colette Shade takes a cold look at the cheery promise of the 2000s.

In “The Woman Who Knew Everyone,” Meryl Gordon offers a thorough biography of Perle Mesta, Washington’s colorful, and oft-mocked, “hostess with the mostes’.”

Adam Ross’s “Playworld” is about a child actor and the real-world dramas that engulf his adolescence.

In “Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words,” Michael Owen offers a sympathetic portrait of the lyricist, overshadowed in a life that had him tending the legacy of his younger sibling George.