It was probably very old-fashioned of her, but she did not like to see a grown man cry.” There is something practically trademarkable about Elizabeth Strout’s characters and their cadence. Fans of Lucy Bartonwill clock a familiar constellation of personalities in the Pulitzer Prize winner’s exquisite new novel, Anything Is Possible (Random House). Here are small-town sisters who could not be more different, a daughter longing for her mother, and Lucy Barton herself, all grown up and ready to face her family once again. Family is equally inescapable in Patricia Lockwood’s poignant Priestdaddy (Riverhead), which gives “confessional memoir” a new layer of meaning. From its hilariously irreverent first sentence, this daughter’s story of her guitar-jamming, abortion-protesting, God-fearing father will grab you by the clerical collar and won’t let go.

Soup’s on: In The Dinner Party (Little, Brown), Joshua Ferris invites you to make a meal out of his mordant tales about life’s quicksilver changes. Dr. Rock Positano and John Positano step up to the plate with Dinner with DiMaggio (Simon & Schuster). Paul Theroux ladles a steaming cup of dysfunctional-family chowder in Mother Land (Houghton Mifflin). Over at the Chiltern Firehouse (Ten Speed), chef Nuno Mendes sends out a dish of the restaurant’s famous crab doughnuts. Books to savor—or to consume in one sitting.

IN SHORT

Francesca Segal pushes a modern family through The Awkward Age(Riverhead). Susannah Meadows pulls back the hospital curtain to reach The Other Side of Impossible (Random House). Readers will rejoice for My Life with Bob (Henry Holt) by Pamela Paul, a book collector’s book collector. Richard Rothstein divvies up the history of segregated America in The Color of Law (Liveright). Holger Hoock plucks at the sutures of the American Revolution in the Scars of Independence (Crown). Stephen Kennedy Smith and Douglas Brinkley celebrate the centennial of the birth of JFK (Harper). In You Don’t Look Your Age (Flatiron), famed documentary producer Sheila Nevins reflects on her reflection. Leading Lady (Crown Archetype) and studio head Sherry Lansing shines in Stephen Galloway’s biography. Neil deGrasse Tyson makes a big bang with Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Norton). Richard Ford’s memoir is born Between Them (Ecco). Édouard Louis fashions beauty out of biography in The End of Eddy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). James Moore is fashion’s focus in this Nicolas Moore-edited retrospective (Damiani). Fiona Lewisreconstructs her life in Mistakes Were Made (Some in French) (Regan Arts). Cabin porn goes coastal in Nina Freudenberger’s Surf Shack(Clarkson Potter). War correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman has a heart of boldness in Love, Africa (Harper). Haruki Murakami’s cats are back in Men Without Women (Knopf). Sam Walker’s The Captain Class (Random House) is a real team player. The M.B.A. reaches its limit in Duff McDonald’sThe Golden Passport (Harper Business)—all that Scholes is not gold. The aspirational class gets a kick in the quinoa, courtesy of Elizabeth Currid-Halkett’s The Sum of Small Things (Princeton). Last but never least, a sans-adjective salud to Mary V. Dearborn on her biography of Ernest Hemingway (Knopf).