ANXIOUS PEOPLE by Frederik Backman (Simon & Schuster). Backman is yet another famous and beloved writer that the column has overlooked. He's out of the ordinary in a number of ways, all of which help to create books that are extraordinary even though his characters are as ordinary as you and me and those who live around us. There's . . . h'm, sinew here; it isn't just that it won't give you tooth decay. It's penetrating without being overbearing, maybe; smart and thoughtful but not really literary, in that he doesn't brandish irony. The stories are about real people in the midst of real lives, so of course there are ironies in them—but not in the writing, the author's voice. In this novel we have a hostage situation, people locked in a bank with a bank robber; you'll believe in them, and feel for and root for them, and won't put the book down. And then you'll look in the front matter for earlier titles to pick up. (I'd tell you who's making a movie of one of his earlier novels, but it might tempt you to wait for that instead of picking this one up right away.)

EL JEFE: THE STALKING OF CHAPO GUZMAN by Alan Feuer (Flatiron). The life and career of the Mexican drug lord is a legend to readers of Don Winslow's great epic Cartel trilogy of crime novels, praised at length in this column. But its outline is somewhat familiar, too, to readers of the newspapers in recent years (even decades). Feuer, a New York Times journalist chiefly, has a light-handed, not quite sardonic style (of mind, too, apparently) that seems just perfect for this summing up that's both definitive and intelligible—still an epic, both richly detailed and compelling, in one entertaining, appalling volume.

GIVE ME YOUR HAND by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown). Terrific new psychological suspense novel by the great Abbott. Thrilling as a thriller, as always with her, and as always an education in how people—smart women, especially—can be with each other. About much of which, if you're like me, you will be learning something new every day if you live forever. Yes, yet another thing; but this endless learning is especially enriching and enjoyable.

A QUESTION OF BETRAYAL by Anne Perry (Ballantine). Just the second of this highly charged series, set (so far) in hot spots in Europe in a fiery-hot decade, the 1930s. This is the brave (but not fearless) free-lance photographer Elena Standish, who became entangled with Britain's MI-6 and now works undercover for them. Now, she'll have to travel into and around Mussolini's Italy, on a mission to rescue a former (faithless) lover.