The title of this layered and compassionate novel echoes a question that is often asked in the wake of a tragedy: “How might things have been different if _____ hadn’t occurred?” While the novel considers such what-ifs, it is mainly concerned with real consequences–in particular, the ways in which a tragic, unexpected loss upends the plans and dreams of the people it affects, leaving them to try to reassemble their broken lives. By weaving together the stories of multiple characters who are affected by such a loss, Fox portrays this process with insight and empathy, and shows how it can deliver unanticipated gifts.

More often than we might care to admit, we enter marriage or other committed relationships with more haste than reflection; we move forward without clearly thinking things through or fully imagining what a future with this partner might look like given what we know (or sense) about them and ourselves.

In her painfully honest, witty, and perceptive new novel, And So We Die, Having First Slept, Jennifer Spiegel acknowledges this reality without judgment, and without suggesting that such relationships are necessarily doomed. Instead, through the struggles of the married couple at the center of the novel, Spiegel makes the case that it’s never too late to confront the most difficult truths about our partners and ourselves, which offers at least the hope of transformation or redemption—something denial never does.

How do we attain and hold onto happiness? Although this question has been the implied or overt subject of countless self-help books, it has no neat or simple answers. The stories in Virginia Pye’s compelling new collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, acknowledge this reality in fresh and perceptive ways. And they allow us to witness transformational moments in the lives of characters who are seeking out happiness or life satisfaction, or struggling with its elusiveness.

Timothy Gager’s captivating new collection of flash fiction, Every Day There Is Something About Elephants, immerses us in revelatory episodes or situations from a range of lives. All the stories, even the more surreal ones, capture truths about human experience, with all its darkness, absurdity, and moments of recognition.

A criminal act intensifies the conflict between two estranged and contrary sisters—one a butcher, the other a vegetarian cellist. A mime sublets half of a family’s duplex, then makes them the subject of perhaps the most astonishing trick of his career. A couple enters uncomfortable new terrain in their marriage when one of them believes their toddler has become a devourer of small objects.

This is just a sampling of the offbeat dramas that unfold in Jacob M. Appel’s entertaining and thought-provoking story collection Coulrophobia & Fata Morgana. Instead of running counter to reality, the quirkiness of the stories feels true to the strangeness, and the struggles, of lived experience.

One of the fiction-writing super powers I admire most is the ability to inhabit a wide range of characters and worlds, and to write about each of them with great empathy and understanding. In her story collection This Far Isn’t Far Enough, Lynn Sloan shows a special gift in this regard. She immerses us in the lives of everyone from a deceived and disillusioned widow, to an anxious soldier pulled into a possibly criminal scheme, to a worried mother of an aspiring prizefighter. As Sloan explores the inner and outer and conflicts that these characters face, she does so with deep feeling and insight.