Challenges we all face — in one form or another — are reflected in new books this month: Nonfiction titles about climate change, Indigenous issues and racism offer new perspectives on reality — yet so do fiction titles about parental rage, first-responder trauma and past loves. However, as long as there are humans writing, there will also be books filled with wit and joy. Happy reading!

FICTION

Shadow Ticket

By Thomas Pynchon

Penguin Press: 304 pages, $30

(Oct. 7)

At 88, in his first novel in more than a decade, Pynchon turns not to dystopian modern America, but to the comforts of noir fiction. His gumshoe, Hicks McTaggart, starts out in Depression-era Milwaukee, investigating the disappearance of the heiress to a dairy fortune. Like a cheese sauce, the plot thickens — before long Mc

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