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Like Corpus Christi, Barry Lopez’s Resistance (Knopf; $18), due out June 1, evokes a similar sense of foreboding, but it’s more explicitly political. In these nine interconnected stories, Lopez, author of the National Book Award–winning Arctic Dreams, responds to the grim social and ideological changes occurring in the United States. His stories take the form of fictional testimonials from characters who’ve rejected the mainstream and have drawn the suspicious attention of the government as a result. The characters are expats and travelers, those who’ve spurned the status quo and chosen the cultural and geographic periphery instead. Malfeasance looms.

In the opening story, an American couple in France receive a letter asking them to cease creating their art "because we ‘were terrorizing the imaginations of our fellow citizens.’" The letter comes from "Inland Security, the group of people we had come to call the Idiots of Light, for the way they are dazzled by their god. Their ranks include people who celebrate the insults of advertising and the deceptions of public relations campaigns as paths to redemption ... and from those in the Department of Commerce who argue for the calming and salutary effect of regular habits of purchase." Lopez describes circumstances not dissimilar to what we now know. In other stories, a man blinded in the Vietnam War struggles with his memories of combat, and a woman in Buenos Aires looks on as her family disintegrates. The stories are set off with illustrations by Alan Magee, famous for staggeringly realistic paintings of beach pebbles and objects like pears and wrenches. Like Magee’s prints, Lopez’s stories are unsettling precisely because they are so lifelike, their circumstances well within the realm of possibility.

The stories in J. Eric Miller’s debut, Animal Rights and Pornography (Soft Skull Press; $10.95), coming in July, move from the mildly unsettling to the downright uncomfortable. Born in Colorado to a miner and a taxidermist, Miller writes dark and subversive tales of transgression and rage. In "Invisible Fish," a night guard tortures the animals in a mall pet store, leaving the shop owner to wonder what’s happening as his animals become increasingly damaged and sullen. "And in the morning," writes Miller, "the Owner asks himself, why have the two rats turned on this one, poking out his eyes? Where have the iguana’s back feet gone? Why would the rabbit drown in such a shallow dish? How is it that the ferret’s asshole has turned to blood?" And so on.

Miller writes of a man raping another man as a woman dances behind glass at a peep show in Times Square, of a man having sex with a woman wearing a fur coat and becoming enraged at her indifference to animal life, of strippers and their husbands and lovers and customers. These are raw works, blunt and sometimes disturbing. Soft Skull Press champions transgressive texts, publishing the work that mainstream houses avoid; it’s an ally of underground and underrepresented art.

On the other hand, E.L. Doctorow, the best-selling author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and World’s Fair, has no problems finding representation. But Doctorow’s popularity doesn’t mean he isn’t as cynical as the rest of us, and his latest collection, the just-released Sweet Land Stories (Random House; $22.95), suggests that he’s embittered by the state of the world — and this country in particular — these days. Sweet Land Stories, like Resistance and Animal Rights, deals with alienation all across the country, from Alaska to DC.

Life and land are anything but sweet for these characters. In "Baby Wilson," originally published in the New Yorker, a man is nearly drawn into his girlfriend’s baby-kidnapping scheme. "Walter John Harmon" involves a religious cult and a cuckold. But "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden" is the most direct political critique. A six-year-old boy is found dead on the White House lawn, and the FBI agent on the case must confront an arrogant and secretive presidential administration and its broad and profound abuse of power. In this land, the white picket fence is rotting at the gate. Doctorow’s characters are marginalized, and rather than condescend to them, he treats them with compassion and subtlety, illustrating the breakdown of the American dream through people who refuse to give up on it.

These tales are not light. But these are not light times. The stories can be consumed quickly, but many will take a long time to digest. Your afternoon on the sand will be all the more satisfying for it.

Nina MacLaughlin can be reached at nmaclaughlin[a]phx.com.