Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of the most outstanding new writers to be published in America in recent years. Her “Funeral Party” appeared in 1999 in both Russia and America, and the earlier and longer “Medea and Her Children” followed here in 2002. Now we have “Sonechka” (Schocken, 242 pages, $23), an even earlier novella bundled with some more recent stories.

Ms. Ulitskaya is a master of simply stating the metaphysical dynamics of social situations. “The Funeral Party” describes the final days of Alik, a blithe, redheaded artist attended by at least three fully imagined lovers and a community of Russian Jews, all now living in New York. Alik is receding: “It was as though he wasn’t there, yet they were all focused on him and he felt this.”

Ms. Ulitskaya is also quite comfortable with going just a foot over her characters’ heads. Alik, a skeptic, sees a rabbi: “In their joking conversation everything was beneath the surface; both understood this, and their banter brought them to the serious point which occurs when people connect, a connection which leaves an indelible trace.” At that point, the rabbi suddenly feels ready to begin serious theological talk.

Ms. Ulitskaya demonstrates the conservative sturdiness of a natural storyteller, but she makes plenty of time for abstraction: Her charm is in this ease of range. A priest whom Alik sees hastens to point out that “There’s also a form of intellectual chastity which won’t allow anything to be discussed or articulated. We’re surrounded by the most primitive forms of religiosity, and it’s hard to bear.” Alik is impressed, but changes his mind when the priest tries to talk about women. “‘What a simpleton,’ Alik thought.”

Such quick turns of mind exemplify “Sonechka.” In 70 pages, Ulitskaya unpacks a wholly unpredictable but smooth novel. As World War II begins, Sonechka is an unmarriageable bookworm, but then Robert, a brilliant artist, marries her. They make a successful household, and Robert finds fame. Then their daughter becomes wild. Then Robert has an affair with her daughter’s friend, Jasia, an affair that Sonechka accepts. Then Robert dies. Then Sonechka goes on.

Ms. Ulitskaya’s method of storytelling and characterization are identical. Developments are presented only as necessary at the last minute – but instead of seeming unearned, these twists show unsuspected rooms, already well lived-in.

Flat-nosed Gavrilin, devotee of all the arts, was in the habit of delving into every conceivable journal. In the library he happened one day upon a long article about Robert in an American art history journal. A brief biographical sketch concluded with an exaggerated report of his death in Stalin’s labor camps in the late 1930s.

And suddenly, Gavrilin is dear to us and Robert has a future.

The ultimate appeal of Ms. Ulitskaya’s work is its abundance of definition. She takes us into Sonechka’s shy, domestic mind and explains its subtlety without vagueness: “‘Or perhaps [Jasia]’s just very cunning,’ she told herself, not entirely spontaneously, knowing in her heart that this was not the case.” Sentences like that – kind, exact, surprising – should earn Ms. Ulitskaya a larger reputation than she yet has.

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Thomas Rogers begins his comeback novel, “Jerry Engels” (Handsel, 248 pages, $24) with a caricature worthy of John Updike or Philip Roth. It is a note of operatic adolescence: “Looking up at the crescent moon he let loose with one of those sustained ululations of erotic sadness or sad eroticism that sometimes rise along fraternity rows.” Such nonchalant – and unrealistic – expressiveness of broken-hearted boys has been essential to American novels for decades.

Thomas Rogers has considerable talent, unknown to many, since his last novel was published in 1980. “At the Shores,” now reissued in paperback, told the story of Jerry Engels’s lovesick high school years. Now at Penn State, Jerry is accidentally Byronic, and has accumulated 42 lovers by the time he finds permanent shelter with Elizabeth, his freshman English teacher.

Elizabeth quickly realizes she has more than the kouros she had bargained for. “I feel like I’m being sucked into some kind of vortex,” she complains. “Every time I see you, you’re up to something different. You chase me, you borrow my car, you fight, and now here you are mixing me a drink with my own bourbon.”

Jerry is on a bender, indulging deep in his own personality. He is presumptuous, but that is his greatest virtue: He makes decisions instantly, without consideration, precipitating a life of spontaneous complexity. As in the erotic picaresques of Cocteau or even Bataille, Mr. Rogers lets us infer that desire equals decisiveness.

Jerry’s decisiveness has a manic quality. After he discovers that his friend Anne is gay, he takes her out for lobster in order to draw her out and become her informal counselor. He orders martinis, wine, and digestifs, but in the end must borrow from Anne in order to pay for dinner. His insistent friendship with Anne is saint-like, unconvincing, but still crucial to his characterization.

Mr. Rogers wants Jerry to be an American folk hero. While those around Jerry are blinkered by their specificity – Anne’s sexuality, his sister’s savviness, his best friend’s insistence on reliability – Jerry must remain open, capable of anything. He is terrified by his own desire,” while also grousing that “this country is just lousy with fear about sex.”

Mr. Rogers is preparing a sequel to “Jerry Engels,” and the resultant trilogy could become a classic. Jerry is no Rabbit Angstrom, and his theme of sexual liberation is too belabored. But despite the novel’s 1950s setting – Jerry lives in a world of simonized cars, sometimes feels heartsore, misses his high school natatorium, and resents being called goofy – Jerry lives very viably in the 21st century.

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“It’s only in films, you know, that jungles are empty of people.” So says Kanai, the Indian intellectual who guides Indian-American Piya through her exploration of the Ganges Delta in Amitav Ghosh’s fifth novel, “The Hungry Tide” (Houghton Mifflin, 333 pages, $25). Indeed, Mr. Ghosh’s novel could be set anywhere: It is a classic, well-built novel in which themes political (Piya is a do-gooder but an outsider), private (Piya loves her silent type guide, Fokir, but Kanai is more available), and purely novelistic (Kanai’s uncle and Fokir’s mother may have had a love affair) all happen to resolve over Garjontola, a feeding ground for the river dolphins Piya is studying. Sometimes lifeless as fiction, Mr. Ghosh’s well-researched novel aspires to nonfiction. But his scrupulous cetology too often gives way to more mundane matters, as when he explains that “candles and lamps were expensive and used as sparingly as possible.”