Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies (houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010)

In a clever thematic inversion of James’s The Ambassadors, Ozick describes escaping children, a controlling father, and a bewildered aunt commisioned – much against her will – to sort out family troubles. All of the characters are deeply selfish, which makes it hard to feel much empathy, but the story holds intriguing, sometimes tragic, twists.