The woman who had two navels And, Tales of the tropical gothic

NOTES ON A FOREIGN COUNTRY: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, by Suzy Hansen. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) In this remarkably revealing book, Hansen wrestles bravely with her country's violent role in the world and the ways America has failed to "interrogate" itself. WARNER BROS: The Making of an American Movie Studio, by David Thomson. (Yale University, $25.) Thomson's history details the development of a brash studio that gave us gangsters, dames, gunfire, wisecracks, a wry, hard-boiled tone and the much-beloved wartime Oscar winner, "Casablanca." WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL, by David Williams. (Algonquin, $24.95.) This oddity of a novel examines how the utopian world of the Amish grapples with disaster in the form of a global power outage brought on by a solar storm. Can a community that holds itself apart survive the rest of society's collapse? OUT IN THE OPEN, by Jesús Carrasco. (Riverhead, $26.) This bleak and beautiful debut novel recounts a few days in the life of a boy fleeing his tormentors in an unforgiving, dystopian landscape of unrelenting harshness. Faced with horrible suffering, Carrasco asks, will we dispense grace or cruelty? MADE FOR LOVE, by Alissá Nutting. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99.) This futuristic novel about a woman with a chip in her brain races along like an antic thriller and allows the author to offer deft observations on love, sex, intention, childhood and gadgets. THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS AND TALES OF THE TROPICAL GOTHIC, by Nick Joaquin. (Penguin, paper, $18.) Joaquin (1917-2004) is considered one of the Philippines' greatest writers, and there is a constant duality in the works collected here: war and resistance, the hopeful and the tragic, the desperate and the despot. GLASS HOUSES, by Louise Penny. (Minotaur, $28.99.) In the latest Three Pines mystery, Chief Inspector Gamache combats modern Canadian drug smugglers by delving into the Spanish past. SARGENT'S WOMEN: Four Lives Behind the Canvas, by Donna M. Lucey. (Norton, $29.95.) The glittering world of the late-19th-century 1 percent is revealed through the back stories of society women who posed for portraits by John Singer Sargent. GRACE, by Paul Lynch. (Little, Brown, $26.) The Irish writer's third novel asks timeless questions about suffering and survival through the story of two children expelled from their impoverished home in the midst of the Great Famine. When you're starving, Lynch seems to be asking, are you truly alive? The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

A collection of short stories and a play by Joaquin (1917-2004), one of the Philippines' leading writers in English, who finds passion and melodrama in the nation's colonial and Catholic history.The first story, "Three Generations," tells of a young man who defies his father first by choosing the priesthood over a law career and then by reuniting his pining grandfather with a young woman. It hints at the "tropical gothic" of the title but is more conventional than most of the collection. Ghosts, saints, and visions are common as Joaquin (Gotita de Dragon and Other Stories, 2014, etc.) moves among folklore, legend, and even some sci-fi. In "Cndido's Apocalypse," a teenage boy alienated from his family and life in general begins to see people without clothing and then without flesh. In an entertaining quasi-mystery that begins with a crucial toothbrush ("The Order of Melkizedek"), siblings' efforts to rescue their sister from a cult center on a Rasputin-like figure who reappears over many centuries. In "The Summer Solstice," a religious festival's wild dancing turns one woman into a sort of a pagan queen in her husband's bemused eyes. One of the two navels may not exist in the tortuous, episodic title story as it shifts between Hong Kong and Manila and touches on exile, failed revolution, WWII, and Filipinos' uncommon musical gifts. The play that closes the collection ("A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino") shows two spinster sisters trying to hold on to a once-vibrant and grand old house. Their survival may depend on selling their father's final work of art, a painting of Aeneas carrying his father, Anchises, from the ruins of Troy. The drama is rich in themes but rather dreary and heavy-handed. Steeped in Filipino history and culture, Joaquin's work is a welcome discovery. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.