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In the late 1800s, around the time of the end of the Undergound Railroad, Lesinda is working for a Black journalist in a Canadian town founded by people who escaped slavery. When a newly arrived elderly woman shoots a slave hunter — and refuses to flee before she’s arrested — Lesinda is tasked with gathering her testimony. Only she doesn’t want to give it for free. But she will trade a story for a story, which opens Lesinda up to a world of Black and Indigenous history across North America, including a secret that may change Lesinda’s world forever.

Mushrooms + surreal/trippy plots seem to have us in a headlock. in Ghost Music, An Yu writes of them as a way for two women to bond before some seriously weird stuff happens. It starts as Song Yan begs her husband for a child, which he refuses. When his mother visits, she, too, urges him to give her grandkids. But then a package of mushrooms native to the mother’s province arrives at the Beijing apartment. Packages with the same contents arrive weekly, and the two women cook the mushrooms in various dishes. Once Song Yan receives a letter from the sender of the packages, her world slides into the nonsensical — she winds up in a strange house, finds a long-disappeared famous musician, and experiences all other manner of surrealism.