From a distance, Paul G. Tremblay’s The Cabin At The End of The World might be mistaken for a simple thriller. However, closer examination reveals it to be a powerful meditation on love, faith, madness, power, and sacrifice. A young girl and her fathers find their vacation interrupted by a group of bizarre strangers who believe they can only save the world by forcing the threesome to kill one of their own. The trip struggles to outwith their captors without falling under their spell, as violence escalates in the cabin and the outside world is rocked by a series of disasters that may (or may not) have supernatural implications. Tremblay has built a richly detailed cast of characters who all, captor and prisoner alike, feel trapped by forces beyond their control. Their struggles hold up a mirror to the full extent of humanity’s beauties and horrors. Tremblay weaves together the best of apocalyptic sagas, crime fiction, and family drama as he forces us to confront whether we really are worth saving.

The Chronicles of Alice book series is many things. It is an acid trip, a nightmare, a battle cry against sex trafficking, a powerful saga about battling trauma and mental illness, a brilliant parody of Lewis Caroll, a fantasy-horror epic. In all of its forms, however, it is absolutely magnificent. Christina Henry pens the tale of Alice, a young woman trying to survive in a world that is both alien and chillingly familiar. With the aid of magic and her faithful madman, Hatcher, Alice cuts her way through a host of terrifying villains who reflect the darkest underbelly of the human psyche. Henry treads a razor’s edge between grim adventure and lush fantasy: the rapist has big furry ears, the fairy’s wings are sewn to her back, the magic palace has severed heads in the basement. Her Chronicles yank you down the rabbit hole and don’t let go until long after the final page.

Alison Brechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic may be a graphic novel, but that doesn’t make it any less erudite or insightful. The author draws and write the story of her childhood, which she is forced to view in a very different light after a) coming out as lesbian in college, b) discovering that her father, a troubled funeral home (“fun home”) director, was a closeted homosexual who’d had multiple affairs with younger men, and c) her father’s accidental death/potential sucide shortly after her parents’ divorce. In an attempt to ground herself, Bechdel set out to examine connections and differences between her and her father’s sexual journeys. Along the way, she introduces us to a cast of characters whose diversity and complexity are worthy of the greatest fiction. Their story intertwines with a larger tale of America’s gay community stumbling out of the closet. Bechdel is a funny, thoughtful writer who confronts issues of grief, sexuality, family, and redemption with creativity and poise. Whether you’re a comic fan, student of queer history, or just a connoiseur of good writing, Fun Home is definitely work a look.

James McBride’s The Color of Water is the tale of Ruth McBride, the author’s mother, a white woman raising a black family during the racially divided sixties. The story switches between McBride’s childhood and Ruth’s, as the author sets down his memories of his mother while investigating the events that shaped her. We discover that Ruth McBride was a runaway from an abusive Jewish household that declared her dead, a pillar of her community in a predominantly African-American part of New York, an “eccentric” wrestling with the loss of two husbands, a wise and brave warrior in the endless battle against prejudice, the fiercely loving monarch of her twelve-child kingdom, and a heroine worthy of the greatest fiction. While learning about her story, we witness McBride’s growth and his struggle to find a cultural identity in a racially divided world. We are also introduced to Ruth’s mother, a disabled immigrant trapped under the thumb of a monstrous husband, who nonetheless managed to pass down great strength to her daughter and grandchildren. Together, these people build a story about how race, gender, faith, class, wealth, poverty, and love have shaped American life over the generations. Overall, this is a thoughtful and fascinating book, not to mention a labor of true love. James McBrides manipulates our heartstrings, funny bones, and thinking caps with the skill of a virtuoso.

Snow White Learns Witchcraft is Theodora Goss’ tribute to the raw power of fairy tales, recast with the open-mindedness and finesse of modern stories and poems. Each new story, no matter its form, comes across as a small, bright piece of a world almost, but not quite our own. In these worlds, the ice talks, girls hunt their own shadows or turn into wolves, lizards are travel writers, bears turn out to be excellent husbands, and princesses befriend wolves. While the old fairy tales preached humility and obedience, Goss shows us the value of creativity, feminism, and community. Not only is she an important storyteller, she’s also a damned good one. Readers who are lured by her witty and imaginative writing will discover a whole new meaning for the words “happily ever after.”

A History of the World In 10(1/2) Chapters by Julian Barnes opens with an insect spilling the dirt secrets of life on Noah’s ark. It only gets stranger, funnier, and more subversive from there. Barnes’ web of engrossing stories reveals the searing impact of faith, for better or worse, on the human imagination. His careful drawn characters travel up jungle rivers, make interconnected journeys to the fabled Ararat Mountain, visit the afterlife, cope with various threats of extinction, and try to care for themselves and each other in the face of brutal, onrushing history. The world Barnes has built for us is bizarre and relevant in equal measure, and definitely worth a visit.

In a genre dominated by admittedly pleasant explosion and skintight latex, Kelly Sue DeCommick’s Bitch Planet pushes the limits of what comics do for us. DeCommick has been built a grim world where all the problems facing modern women–racism, transphobia, homophobia, condescension, double standards, stereotyping, victim blaming, assault–have been sanctified by the government. Women who are judged non-compliant by the vigorous standards of the ruling patriarchy are shipped off to Bitch Planet, a violent world that epitomizes the worst of America’s prison system. But on Bitch Planet and Earth alike, a feminist revolution is blooming…Bitch Planet is a funny, searing tribute to the power of family, integrity, courage, and self-love in the face of a system that thrives on hate and fear. The artwork is fascinating and beautiful, supplemented with wickedly subversive “ads” at the end of each issue. You’ll hope, rage, and mourn alongside a diverse cast of fascinating characters. You also get a closer look at the way our society abuses, judges, and brainwashes women; no sci-fi extremes needed. Bitch Planet is a razor-edged wakeup call for anyone who’s ever thought: “It could never be me–I’m a good girl.”

When I started reading Max Porter’s Lanny I knew that it was nothing like anything that I’d ever read before. It starts with a god assembling himself out of the forest’s bits and pieces, and only grows more fantastic from there. The titular character, Lanny, is a strange, talented boy who is adored by the adults in his life. One of these “adults” is Dead Papa Toothwort, a powerful, ever-adapting earth spirit whose actions will have a tremendous impact on Lanny’s fate. Their story is based around magic, be it the ancient kind that reshapes reality or the ordinary kind that makes domestic life worth living. Max Porter uses a chorus of fascinating voices to explore the the wonders and horrors that can appear a rural English community. Like Papa Toothwort himself, Lanny is built of countless strange bits and pieces to create a beautiful, terrifying whole.

This science fiction I’ve read in the past has worked to horrify me, thrill me, shock me, or bend my mind. That’s all well and good, but it’s nothing like what Kim Stanley Robinson wants to do over the course of New York 2140. He is more focused on building a clear picture of the future, one that straddles the line between hope and realism. The particular focus of this picture is New York City, now flooded after decades of global warming. Humanity has begun taking steps to save itself, but not before the city’s familiar streets and cars were replaced by canals and boats. Robinson’s characters all share the same packed apartment building, the threads of their stories slowly winding together as they each try to wring good out of a corrupt, messy world. Their methods are subtler than laser fire or biohacking, but no less powerful. The riveting fiction is held together with real-life quotes and groovy science. Overall, Robinson has built a sweeping tribute to New York’s past, present, and possibilities. His voice is witty and sharp, even if the book occasionally dips too far into financial technobabble. Storyteller and prophet both, Robinson is a clear master at making learning both important and fun. 

Andre Aciman wrote Out of Egypt to tell the story of his family, three generations of wealthy Jews living in Alexandria, Egypt. For decades, the Acimans would navigate the knotted cultures of their adopted homeland, before being steadily driven out by a revolutionary government. This memoir contains many stories, all interwoven in a richly embroidered tapestry. There’s the story of a country: Egypt, a land turned into an ethnic melting pot by generations of colonialism, whose subjugated Arabic people turn to anti-Semitism during their search for a national identity. It is the story of a city: Alexandria, an ancient metropolis whose sights, sounds, and smells are picked out in loving detail by Aciman. It’s the story of the family: a group of multilingual Jews who fight, flirt, brag, scheme, gossip, hate, love, and occasionally lose everything as the world changes around them. And it’s the story of a boy, Andre Aciman, who faces hate and cruelty during his childhood, but still manages to flourish in a magical stew of traditions and innovations. His relatives are eccentric and often dysfunctional, but fiercely living nonetheless. Each carefully researched fabric of this book is held together with a lush, witty voice. Aciman’s family may have been driven out of Egypt, but in the pages of this book he has made a triumphant return.