This spring, a wide range of promising books invite readers into worlds both familiar and strange. Several novels follow characters who vanish, withdraw or confront unsettling changes. Others explore memory, identity and hidden histories. In non-fiction, memoirs, science writing and global affairs offer their own compelling journeys – from reflections on a life in nineties alternative rock to the habits of Antarctic penguins to a deep dive into contemporary statecraft. In these collective pages, flowers become revolutionaries, reality shows unsettle domestic life and lost epic poems are rediscovered. Intimate or expansive, grounded or fantastical, this season’s crop reveals the many...