If you’re willing to suspend disbelief when reading fiction, Matt Haig’s new novel, “The Life Impossible,” is an engaging story. Some readers — like my teenage daughter who devoured Haig’s bestselling book, “The Midnight Library” — may not vibe as well with the septuagenarian narrator recovering from varicose vein surgery, but the book’s plot takes care of her physical deterioration soon enough.

The action is set in Ibiza, the Spanish island famous for its nightclubs. When the narrator, Grace Winters, suddenly inherits a rundown house there, she leaves behind her tragic life as a childless and widowed mathematics teacher in England for an adventure. As Grace pieces together the fate of a collegiate acquaintance, Christina, who gifted her the house, she meets Alberto Ribas, a “once respected marine biologist” who now gives diving tours in the Mediterranean. On one of those dives, Grace’s life is forever altered by a blue phosphorescent light she swims toward under the water. “La Presencia,” or “The Presence,” imbues her with actual superpowers, the details of which are too much fun to spoil here.

And while at this point the plot proudly strays from reality, it’s not embarrassed by it. Grace is a reliable narrator, and the structure of the novel is her telling her story to a former student. Grace’s reawakening to the wonders of the natural world forms the second half of the story, as she and a cast of characters work to save parts of Ibiza from development.

Really short chapters — some just a sentence long — help the pages fly. And while some may finish the last sentence shaking their head at the implausibility of it all, Grace’s realization that everything on Earth is worthy of admiration and preservation is a message the whole world can get behind. — Rob Merrill, Associated Press

Nana Ekua Brew- Hammond’s new novel, “My Parents’ Marriage,” spins endlessly on this hypothetical question: If our parents’ marriage is often a blueprint for how to navigate future relationships, what happens when that marriage, marred by repeated infidelity and estrangement, leaves much to be desired?

For Kokui, the novel’s Ghanaian protagonist, the result is emotional turbulence, with one knotty circumstance after another spooling out in an otherwise conventional plot.

Soul-searching with a pragmatic edge, the novel opens just before Christmas in 1972 at Accra’s Ambassador Hotel ballroom, where beautiful young women and monied, military men, many of them married, mingle in a celebratory atmosphere. In attendance because of her father’s wealth and status, Kokui retreats to the veranda to get some air. There, she meets a young man named Boris. The encounter, brief but memorable, will change the trajectory of Kokui’s life, mainly for the better.

But first, there is the demoralizing situation of Kokui’s parents’ marriage. From about 1941 to 1974, Mawuli, Kokui’s father, married six times and fathered about 12 children, some with women he never wed. Kokui’s mother, Micheline, is Mawuli’s fourth wife, but, having left him, she resides across the border in Togo.

In a patriarchal society where women suffer many disadvantages, Micheline refuses to divorce Mawuli, believing daughters Kokui and Nami, who visit often, will benefit from their father’s wealth.

Traumatized by the “devastation of abrupt, cataclysmic upheaval” from her childhood, Kokui is desperate to break away from her philandering father’s heavy influence. Eventually, Kokui marries Boris and they move to America. The last half of the novel tracks the ups and downs of the couple’s new life as immigrants. There are fights over family and finances.

By the time shocking news forces the couple back to Accra, we are, like Kokui, a little wiser but also road weary. — Angela Ajayi, Minneapolis Star Tribune