The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt: “Sibylla …finds herself trapped as a single mother after a misguided one-night stand. Lacking male role models for a fatherless boy, Sibylla turns to endless replays of Kurosawa’s masterpiece Seven Samurai. But Ludo is obsessed with the one thing he wants and doesn’t know: his father’s name.”

The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kate Tempest: “Becky, Harry, and Leon are leaving London in a fourth-hand Ford with a suitcase full of stolen money, in a mess of tangled loyalties and impulses. Kate Tempest’s novel … captures the contemporary struggle of urban life, of young people seeking jobs or juggling jobs, harboring ambitions and making compromises.”

Allegheny Front by Matthew Neill Null: “Set in the author’s homeland of West Virginia, this panoramic collection of stories traces the people and animals who live in precarious balance in the mountains of Appalachia over a span of two hundred years, in a disappearing rural world.”

Also this month: We’ll interview Ann Friedman (!) and find out how Zoe Zolbrod is celebrating the publication of The Telling.