18 of the Best Books for National Reading Month

The lonely hearts of Sara Majka's Cities I've Never Lived In fight their isolation by attempting to outrun it. Each of these 14 graceful stories features characters in acts of calamitous flight–a father leaves, a night student goes missing. The divorcée in the standout "Reverón's Dolls" pinballs between men and cities, but can't stay ahead of her melancholy, admitting: "I was afraid of getting worse...I was afraid that this life I was leading–though everything was beautiful and filled with sensation–might prove too brittle, might fall apart in ways that would surprise me."