G is for Great Dane. The Friend (Riverhead), Sigrid Nunez’s seventh novel, marks a departure for the author, whose past work has trodden territory such as class, friendship, and sexuality, often with a historical bent. The Friend covers equally meaningful ground, but it does so on four paws. In this slim but pitch-perfect novel, a writer loses her best friend and mentor suddenly and without explanation. Overheard at his memorial: “Now he’s officially a dead white male.” The only thing she has left of him, aside from his wisdom and funny anecdotes, is his forlorn dog. As she sequesters herself with the dog, increasingly fixated on its care and canine secrets, afraid someone will come take him away, they experience the layers of grief together. Wry and moving, The Friend is a love story, a mania story, and a recovery story. So: a love story.

Like water for chalk-lit: Michael Korda draws his way out of an ocean of grief in Catnip (Norton). Laurie Anderson emerges through uncharted surfaces after Hurricane Sandy with All the Things That I Lost in the Flood (Rizzoli). Akwaeke Emezi parts the seas of the self in her engrossing debut novel, Freshwater (Grove/Atlantic). Essayist Peggy Orenstein catches the feminist wave in Don’t Call Me Princess (Harper). An American Marriage (Algonquin) is Tayari Jones’s whirlpool of race, resilience, and rich writing. Cherie Burns goes deep into the world’s most elusive pieces of jewelry while Diving for Starfish (St. Martin’s).

IN SHORT

Ticktock, ticktock: John Banville traces the trail of his own life with Time Pieces (Knopf). Martin Amis tackles giants in The Rub of Time (Knopf). VF.com film critic and debut novelist Richard Lawson heals more than wounds in All We Can Do Is Wait (Razorbill). Marilynne Robinson asks, as no one else can, What Are We Doing Here? (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll’s Directorate S (Penguin Press) debriefs us on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Laura Smith explores emotional wanderlust in The Art of Vanishing (Viking). Jorge Ramos is a Stranger (Vintage) in a Cheetos-colored land. Prolific pressman Warren Hinckle makes his way by Ransoming Pagan Babies (Heyday). Mark Whitaker pivots to Pittsburgh’s black renaissance in Smoketown (Simon & Schuster). Karen Crouse goes for the gold in snowy Norwich (Simon & Schuster). John Heminway covers an untold W.W. II tale In Full Flight (Knopf). Tara Westover gets herself Educated (Random House). V.F. contributor Sheila Weller is perfectly polished in Pomellato (Rizzoli). Joanne Lipman elucidates office life in That’s What She Said (Morrow). Innocence trumps violence in Rhiannon Navin’s Only Child (Knopf). Krystal Sital unlocks the Secrets We Kept (Norton). Postmodern short-story legend Robert Coover will be right back. He’s Going for a Beer (Norton).