Dominion is set in the fictional small town of Dominion, Mississippi in the year 2000. The novel focuses on the Winfrey family, with the family’s patriarch Sabre Winfrey Jr. the reverend of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, as well as a locally successful entrepreneur. The Winfreys outwardly represent the pinnacle of Southern Black success and religious devotion. Behind this facade, though, is a more unflattering reality, with Sabre’s relationship with his wife Priscilla somewhat broken by his relentless infidelities and hypocrisy.

The Correspondent is an epistolary novel told via the letters from and to the 73-year-old retired lawyer Sybil Van Antwerp, mostly covering a span of her later life in the 2010s. Living in Annapolis, Maryland, she is generally an ‘ordinary woman’ who is notable primarily for her commitment to the art of letter-writing (though she does also dabble in emails where absolutely necessary). The book covers her letters to friends and relatives, and the authors of books that she loves (including a notable correspondence with Joan Didion), as well as a few more interesting interchanges that form the basis of significant plot developments.

Fundamentally is the story of Nadia, an academic of Middle Eastern origin based in the UK, who has recently been poached from her cushy job in academia to go to Iraq to lead a UN taskforce focused on deradicalising women associated with ISIS. While her new role has some honourable intent behind it, she’s also escaping dissatisfaction with her life back home, where she has been disowned by her mother for straying too far from Islam and (in related news) dumped by her English girlfriend Rosy.