Truth may be stranger than fiction, but that’s all the more reason to escape into a more rewarding world.

Let’s face it, it’s been a bizarre year.

If you’ve been looking for a way to escape the endless cycle of reality television, 24/7 cable coverage and bizarre tweets that constitute political “discourse’’ these days, here are some reading recommendations that provide needed balance, eloquent emotional impact and perspective on a world beyond the ongoing carnival.

Most do not deal directly with political and social issues; it’s rare, particularly in fiction, for such work to be produced in real time. But the critique is implicit, and the words matter – and are delivered with far more care than what you may be reading on Facebook.

Many are available at local bookstores. Lest we forget, a library card gets you free admission to the excellent libraries throughout the county, with a special shout-out to the Monterey Public Library, which is particularly receptive to suggestions about new purchases of interest.

This list, featuring new (and newish) releases, offers recommendations for highbrows and crime aficionados alike; the only criteria for what was chosen, regardless of genre, is that it be well-written.

Enjoy your respite from the political shouting matches as you sink your teeth into a more valuable use of your time.

The Accomplished Guest

by Ann Beattie

Beattie rose to fame with early works like Chilly Scenes of Winter and Distortions. Her latest collection of short stories deals with many of the same characters from her post-’60s g-g-g-eneration. They’re older now, and facing issues of mortality, but still have the same misgivings about their circumstances, their relationships with their peers and families, and with themselves. A modern master.

The Underworld

by Kevin Canty

A card-carrying member of the Montana literary mafia, which has boasted the likes of Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane, Canty’s latest is a fictional retelling of a real-life mining fire in the 1970s that took the lives of almost everyone in the town. Canty eloquently describes the survivors’ attempts to deal with the damage, often with the help of drink and drugs.

What You Break

by Reed Farrel Coleman

Blurbed by no less a fellow crime aficionado than Lee Child of Jack Reacher fame, Coleman here portrays former Long Island cop Gus Murphy, who gets entangled with some rough company from Russia. Don’t tell Putie…

The Late Show

by Michael Connelly

Devotees of Harry Bosch (shortened from Hieronymous), the weary cop who has been Connelly’s longtime protagonist meet Detective Renee Ballard. She’s the new girl in town, and she’s ready for action. A worthy successor, by all reports.

Glory Days

by Melissa Fraterrigo

This first novel uses the Bruce Springsteen tune as a jumping-off point for the problems of Nebraskans dealing with foreclosed farms in the Great Recession, venturing into magic realism through the medium of Fredonia The Great, a woman with the unwelcome gift of second sight, on offer at a local carnival.

Bad Dreams and Other Stories

by Tessa Hadley

Like Beattie, Hadley, a British writer, is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, and someone who alternates between short stories and novels. Expert in both, she has a fine sensibility, particularly tied into the lives of girls and young women.

I.Q.

by Joe Ide

A new talent on the crime thriller scene, Ide combines an obsession with Sherlock Holmes with the East Long Beach gang scene. Add in involvement by a psychologically troubled rapper and his unreliable entourage, and you’re in for a great ride.

Lonesome Lies Before Us

by Don Lee

Veteran novelist Don Lee recounts the adventures of a struggling alt-country musician; his girlfriend, working as a housekeeper at a fancy hotel that sounds a lot like the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay; and his reunion with his ex, a country star of (almost) Faith Hill proportions. The mood is muted, and the details are just right.

Do Not Become Alarmed

by Maile Meloy

In her latest work, accomplished novelist and short story writer Meloy portrays a pleasure trip gone terribly wrong. In a parental nightmare, four children disappear when the cruise ship they’re on lands at a port in Central America. Meloy is the sister of Colin Meloy of the band The Decemberists; there is talent to burn in that family.

Trajectory

by Richard Russo

Russo’s Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2002, and he’s best known for his depictions of blue-collar life in novels like Nobody’s Fool (adapted into a movie starring Paul Newman) and its sequel, Everybody’s Fool. In this story collection, he focuses a satirical eye on Americans abroad, and a tale of a screenwriter dealing with an impossibly ego-driven actor who sounds a lot like Newman’s one-time co-star, Robert Redford.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

by Robert M. Sapolsky

Sapolsky, a Stanford neuroscientist and MacArthur Fellow, offers a primer here on human behavior and the neurological stimuli that influences it. Amazingly, he manages to do so in layman’s terms, with smarts, humor (yes, science can be funny!) and insight. Be forewarned: it’s 790 pages, so beginners might want to start with Sapolsky’s earlier works, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and A Primate’s Memoir, his account of his field experience with baboons. Great stuff (really).

The Virginity of Famous Men

by Christine Sneed

This Midwestern writer has a knack for inventive titles, and keen insights into the psycho-sexual dynamics between men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children with characters ranging from a Hollywood executive having a midlife crisis affair (with a much younger woman he met on set in Mexico) to a mother dealing with her angry son on a vacation gone very wrong. It’s smart and strong.

The Mother of All Questions

by Rebecca Solnit

Solnit is a rare social critic who manages to combine deep social passion with literary skill, poetic perspective and an almost breathtaking range of interests. This is a sequel of sorts to her hilariously pointed Men Explain Things To Me. She’s still not giving an inch, nor should she.

River Under The Road

by Scott Spencer

Best known as the author of Endless Love, an amazing novel of teen obsession unfortunately adapted into not one but two terrible films, Spencer’s latest spans two decades, with 13 parties, many gone terribly wrong, as the fictional frame. A major work by a major writer.

Only The Dead Run

by Neely Tucker

Former foreign correspondent and Washington Post magazine staff writer Tucker scores with this compelling tale of a lunatic who goes on a shooting rampage in the capital (sound familiar?) and reporter Sully Carter’s attempts to get at the real story of what’s driving him. Good for journalism junkies and thriller addicts alike.