By The New York Times

A selection of summaries from The New York Times Book Review:

ANNIHILATION, by Jeff VanderMeer >> (Picador, 224 pages, $18.) This science fiction novel, which won the Nebula Award when it was first published, takes place in Area X, a part of Earth humans have avoided for years, save 11 failed expeditions. Now printed in a 10th-anniversary edition, the first book in VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach Trilogy” follows four unnamed researchers, all women, as they embark on a 12th survey of the toxic ecosystem.

HOW TO SAY BABYLON: A Memoir, by Safiya Sinclair >> (37 ink, 352 pages, $18.99.) Sinclair, a prizewinning poet, puts forth what a New York Times reviewer called a “breathless, scorching memoir of a girlhood spent becoming the perfect Rasta daughter and an adolescence spent becoming one of Jamaica’s most promising young poets,” reckoning with her fundamentalist childhood’s impact on her life.

CHEAP LAND COLORADO: Off-Gridders at America’s Edge, by Ted Conover >> (Vintage, 304 pages, $19.) Conover decided to buy his own plot of land in Colorado’s rural San Luis Valley, where 5 acres go for $5,000 or less, after interviewing many of its working-class, off-grid residents. His approach to describing them, Times critic Jennifer Szalai wrote in her review, “isn’t so much about pinning people down as letting them reveal themselves.”

DAY, by Michael Cunningham >> (Random House, 288 pages, $17.) On April 5, 2019, Isabel and Dan, married and raising kids in a Brooklyn brownstone, tell Robbie, their kids’ beloved gay uncle, that he needs to move out of their attic. Over the course of three days three years apart and the onset of a never-named pandemic, this novel delves into the intricacies and fallout of their decision.

THE GUEST ROOM, by Tasha Sylva >> (Holt, 368 pages, $18.99.) “Careful what you look for,” Tess, this thriller’s narrator, thinks as she digs around a grave at the novel’s start. It’s not just graves: Ever since she’s had to rent out her late sister’s room, she hasn’t been able to stop digging through its occupants’ things, a compulsive prying that goes unnoticed until Arran, her newest tenant, seems just as curious about her.

THE HEAT WILL KILL YOU FIRST: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, by Jeff Goodell >> (Back Bay, 416 pages, $23.99.) A longtime climate reporter takes stock of the heat waves, hurricanes, wildlife deaths, immigration patterns and more that stem from rising global temperatures. It’s “a propulsive book, one to be raced through; the planet is burning, and we are running out of time,” a Times reviewer wrote.