In T.C. Boyle’s novel The Terranauts, his twenty-sixth book, four men and four women are sealed inside a self-contained ecosystem, called E2, for two years.

Rich and Pretty, the début novel by Rumaan Alam, has received much well-deserved acclaim. On the surface, one might categorize the book as another breezy summer release about two young women and their trials in New York City, but a reader doesn’t need to get very far into the text to understand why Lincee Ray of the Washington Post, for one, has proclaimed that Alam “transforms a whimsical beach read into compelling literary prose.”

Go into almost any bookstore, and you’ll likely see an entire section dedicated to books about writing. These self-help—or “reference”— guides for writers, though not a new phenomenon, have become an increasingly popular genre (just count the number of shelves dedicated to these books, or do a Google search for “craft of writing,” and you’ll see what I mean).

Infinite Home is the second novel by the immensely talented young writer Kathleen Alcott. Published earlier this year, Infinite Home has already found itself on several must-read book lists for 2015, and for good reason. Alcott excels at creating a group of characters that feels natural and unique, and every single one of them grabs at the reader’s heart in different ways.

Mia Alvar’s debut story collection In the Country, published in June, has already received a great deal of attention and praise, and for very good reason. Mia has written a book that explores themes of identity, displacement, and belonging with characters that will break your heart with their strength and simultaneous vulnerability. These characters feel real in a way that only the best fiction can manage.

Shelly Oria’s debut collection, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0, gives us 18 stories that follow characters negotiating the tricky natures of their closest relationships, including lovers in a long-term three-way, an estranged father and daughter, a man and his only friends in town, and a woman addicted to married men and her therapist friend who tries to cure her.

On April 1, 2015, Ecco will publish T.C. Boyle’s 25th book of fiction, The Harder They Come, a novel set in Northern California that follows three characters in rotation: Sten Stensen, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran and retired school principal; Sten’s troubled son, Adam; and Adam’s older, damaged lover, Sara.