Like its characters, Brian Castleberry’s second novel, “The Californians,” is full of ambition. It spans eras of American history, and threading through it all are the intersected stories of two families, the Stiegls and the Harlans.

There’s a helpful family tree in the preface. The plot starts in the present day, with the destruction of Tinsley, California, by a wildfire. The novel’s opening sentence foreshadows what’s to come as a young man flees the devastation: “In a couple of days, Tobey Harlan will steal from the walls of his father’s home three large paintings by Di Stiegl … valued in the tens of millions.”

It’s a strong start, but the novel’s structure makes it hard to deliver on that promise. After Tobey makes it safely to a house in Stockton, we’re treated to a Variety article from 1928 about the end of silent cinema, and then we zoom back to 1925 and meet Klaus von Stiegl, a German who loves movies and basically invents himself as a film director and makes his way from Queens to Hollywood. Then it’s on to 1979, when Klaus’ granddaughter Diane (“Di” for short) drops out of NYU and starts a career as an avant-garde artist. Between chapters there are also snippets from letters, text messages, and more news stories and reviews, all designed to establish the time period and fill in plot details before we return to the story’s characters.

The connecting tissue between Klaus and Di — art — is the most resonant theme of the novel. Those characters, often in crisis, are always creating, leaving something behind to be appreciated or ignored. There’s a great scene featuring Klaus and Di, in 1971, when he tells her: “In America, art is always paid for by somebody and griped about by somebody else. … Occasionally something breaks through, people see it, people like it, their lives are changed by an infinitesimal degree.”

That’s as good a summary of “The Californians” as any, and readers will have to decide if the novel does indeed break through for them. — Rob Merrill, Associated Press

Anyone who spends time on the internet knows that our demographics, preferences and interests are assiduously tracked by Big Tech companies. What if those companies shared the information with a government intent on determining not only if we had broken the law, but also if we planned to commit crimes?

That’s the question that Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami explores in “The Dream Hotel.”

Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American, is detained at the airport as she returns to Los Angeles from a conference in London. Because a sleep device controlling her insomnia allows her dreams to be tracked without her knowledge, Sara has been deemed likely to commit a violent crime and taken to a “retention center” for 21 days of observation. That period is repeatedly extended unilaterally by center employees.

The controls that Sara suddenly finds herself subject to stem from the Crime Prevention Act that Congress passed after dozens of people were shot dead during a Super Bowl halftime show in Miami. Outraged citizens noted that the shooter’s past was littered with red flags that could have prevented the killings.

A new Risk Assessment Administration then began tracking many aspects of citizens’ lives. The stated mission is to keep American communities safe using advanced data analytics tools to investigate suspicious individuals and identify public safety risks to prevent future crimes.

At the retention center, Sara yearns for nearly a year to be reunited with her husband and their twin toddlers, a girl and boy. Sara doesn’t even remember the dream that made her subject to retention — a nightmare about killing the spouse she loves.

“Police officers used to patrol neighborhoods they called ‘rough,’ stopping and searching people they thought were suspicious,” Lalami writes, “now they sift through dreams.” — Anita Snow, Associated Press