The story of a brief marriage

THEY CAN'T KILL US ALL: The Story of the Struggle for Black Lives, by Wesley Lowery. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $16.99.) As a journalist with The Washington Post covering race and law enforcement, Lowery reported on highprofile deaths including those of Michael Brown, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and followed the Black Lives Matter movement. His book chronicles the movement as well as his evolution and outlook as a reporter. THEY MAY NOT MEAN TO, BUT THEY DO, by Cathleen Schine. (Picador, $16.) After her husband's death, Joy, 86, worries about becoming a burden and being sent offto a nursing home. Her children fret about helping her stave offloneliness and despair, until the return of Joy's old flame sends them into a frenzy. Schine handles death, aging and infirmity with candor and wry humor. TRUE BELIEVER: Stalin's Last American Spy, by Kati Marton. (Simon & Schuster, $17.) A privileged American who worked for the State Department, Noel Field joined the underground Communist movement in the 1930s, before being groomed by Soviet intelligence. Marton charts his transformation from an idealist to Stalinist hard-liner, tracing his ideology to what he saw as failures of capitalism. THE STORY OF A BRIEF MARRIAGE, by Anuk Arudpragasam. (Flatiron, $14.99.) Dinesh is one of hundreds displaced by Sri Lanka's civil war, helping bury the dead in a refugee camp during the final months of the conflict. An unexpected marriage thrusts him into new, unexpected intimacies, all while surrounded by the churn of violence and death. This debut novel is "a book that makes one kneel before the elegance of the human spirit and the yearning that is at the essence of every life," Ru Freeman wrote here. MAKERS AND TAKERS: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street, by Rana Foroohar. (Crown Business, $17.) The recovery after the 2008 crash has been the slowest and weakest of the postwar era, Foroohar, a Financial Times columnist, observes, and finance has stopped serving the real economy. She suggests ways to reverse course and ensure that middle-class Americans and small businesses aren't leftbehind. MOONGLOW, by Michael Chabon. (Harper Perennial, $16.99.) Drawing on his grandfather's deathbed confessions, Chabon has written a hybrid novel based on his grandparents' unlikely marriage (she a French Holocaust survivor, he an American Jew who served in World War II). The story is a lyrical portrait of postwar United States, with digressions on the supernatural and space travel.

The title summarizes the plot of this haunting novel, which takes place in a Sri Lankan civil-war-evacuee camp. The opening scene in which a young boy's shrapnel-damaged forearm is amputated with a kitchen knife prepares readers for what is to come, as newlyweds Dinesh and Ganga, who barely know each other, try to navigate the intimacies of marriage in the midst of great brutality. Debut author Arudpragasam writes in beautifully descriptive language, whether describing Dinesh washing his clothes for the first time in months or the young couple, their lives reduced to physical needs and actions, taking brief respite in the discovery of each other's bodies. As Ganga says, Happiness and sadness are for people who can control what happens to them. This gorgeously written novel is similar to Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan (2012) in the way it captures intimate human experiences in the face of war.--Sexton, Kathy Copyright 2016 Booklist

Arudpragasam's first novel vividly captures a day in the life of Dinesh, a kindhearted young man who chooses to stay behind in an evacuee camp during the Sri Lankan Civil War in order to help the injured and dying. Early in the morning, Dinesh receives a proposal from a stranger named Somasundaram to marry his only surviving daughter, Ganga, as a form of protecting her when the aging man dies, whether of age or during an attack on the camp. Dinesh accepts the offer only to quickly learn that getting to know and sustain a relationship with his new wife during the war will be more difficult than he imagined. In a world scarred by daily shellings and explosions, Dinesh spends his sleepless nights obsessing over how things will be better with his new wife. In Dinesh, Arudpragasam creates a wholly empathetic and doting character, though at times the writing is a bit slow. Still, the author crafts flowing, beautiful sentences that put readers in the middle of the camp with Dinesh and Ganga. Dinesh finds beauty in the worst of situations, which contributes to making this debut deeply moving and hopeful. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.