The meaning of justice can often feel impossible to crack. In prescient and engaging books, both fiction and nonfiction, authors weave moving narratives as their characters struggle against inequity. 

In nonfiction, journalist Eva Fedderly makes a compelling debut with “These Walls,” which focuses on New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex, which is scheduled to be replaced with smaller institutions. She deftly considers the history and future of incarceration, and interviews people trying to design more humane jails, as well as prison abolitionists and incarcerated individuals.

And in fiction, Tananarive Due’s harrowing speculative thriller “The Reformatory” tells the story of Robert, who, for trumped-up reasons, is held in a segregated reform school for boys. Robert navigates sadistic administrators and ruthless peers while his sister races to free him from an institution known for abusing its students – particularly its Black ones.

Striking and engaging, these works pull vital lessons from difficult stories.

1 The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters

After their youngest daughter, Ruthie, vanishes during a summer of berry-picking in Maine, a Micmac family from Nova Scotia struggles to move forward. Indigenous Voices Award winner Amanda Peters delivers an un-put-down-able novel of identity, forgiveness, and insistent hope.

2 Tremor
by Teju Cole

Tunde, a Nigerian professor living in the United States, grounds Teju Cole’s novel of ideas, moods, views, and questions. A trip to Lagos amplifies a chorus of other voices; they’re quirky and ordinary, sometimes profane, always human. The result is probing – and often revelatory.

3 Beirut Station
by Paul Vidich

Lebanese American CIA agent Analise Assad joins a plot to assassinate a deadly terrorist holed up in Beirut in 2006. She and her partners – a Mossad agent, an old CIA hand, and a journalist – plan and parry. This well-plotted thriller deftly mixes spy craft with questions about identity and justice.