GC

In this tautly woven tour de force, the paths of four very different women intersect, briefly but significantly, in ways that will change each of them forever. MacKenzie Bezos’s Traps is a propulsive exploration of the snares we build for ourselves, and of how life’s trials and reversals can lead to startling freedoms. Dana is a beautiful young security guard trained in special ops can disarm a bomb or suture a wound but is terrified of committing to the man she loves. Lynn is a fiercely independent older woman living alone in Nevada and running a ranch for rescued dogs.

Luther Albright is a devoted father and a designer of dams, a self-controlled man who believes he can engineer happiness for his family by sheltering them from his own emotions. But when an earthquake shakes his Sacramento home, the world Luther has constructed with such care begins to tilt: His son's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre and threatening, his loving wife seems to grow distant, the house he built with his own hands shows its first signs of decay, and a dam of his design comes under investigation for structural flaws exposed by the tremors.