How does the world end? Futurist and Vanderbilt history professor Michael Bess lays out four convincing scenarios in Planet in Peril: Humanity’s Four Greatest Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them. After making well-researched arguments for the existential dangers of global warming, nukes, pandemics, and uncontrolled artificial intelligence, Bess offers hopeful antidotes to our imminent mass destruction.

Alive at the End of the World is the latest apocalyptic collection of poetry from Memphis native Saeed Jones. A copious Twitter user and cultural sage, Jones is also author of two earlier collections: When the Only Light Is Fire (2011) and Prelude to Bruise (2014).

A cult hero for the first half of his career, Cormac McCarthy is now a literary institution. As he approaches 90, he delivers two companion novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, which fuse dizzying intellectual exploration with his trademark gift for depicting outsiders drawn unwillingly into gripping intrigues with lethal consequences.

Joy Harjo’s Catching the Light offers short vignettes on the meaning of language, poetry, and place, taking us to a realm between ordinary reality and artistic vision.