The Three

In Lotz’s debut as a solo novelist, four commuter planes crash nearly simultaneously on different continents, with three children as the only survivors. The international consequences of these tragedies are the subject of a book within the book. Edited by a reporter named Elspeth Martins, it is comprised of media excerpts, interviews, audio clips, debates, speeches, diary sections, and other informative scraps and pieces, many of them involving conspiracy theories. The highly inventive, cleverly satiric, and frequently chilling results provide readers Wincott and McHugh with an actor’s showcase of roles. Among them are a righteous Bible-thumper preaching that the end is nigh, a Brooklyn-accented grandmother of one of the survivors, a Japanese witness to the crash, and a gruff, duplicitous old Southern blogger, along with the intrepid, brittle-voiced Martins, with her final jaw-dropping interview with one of the eponymous Three. The performances add up to a mesmerizing audio production. A Little, Brown hardcover. (June)