Parul Sehgal and John Williams of the New York Times Book Review present part 2 of their look at the 10 Best Books of 2015.

First up, "The Door" by Magda Szabo. This novel was originally published in Szabo’s native Hungary in 1987. It’s an intense and haunting story about a writer much like Szabo and her relationship with a servant, an older woman named Emerence who veers from indifference to generosity to rage. The book’s dark humor and sense of the absurd make it unforgettable.

Next is Lucia Berlin’s “A Manual for Cleaning Women.” When Berlin died in 2004, her work was largely unknown. This collection of her short stories brought her well-deserved literary fame this year. She wrote about women living on society’s margins with a startling mix of plain talk and gallows humor. The stories have gained her comparisons to people like Raymond Carver and Denis Johnson, but like all writers worth reading she has a voice that’s entirely her own.

“Outline,” Rachel Cusk’s eighth novel, is unconventional and lethally intelligent. It’s formed as a string of one-sided conversations between a divorced woman traveling in Greece and the people she meets and listens to along the way. The book takes well-worn subjects — like adultery, divorce and boredom — and makes them freshly menacing.

Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout” is a cheerfully outrageous satire about a young black man’s desire to segregate his local school and to reinstate slavery in his home. It considers almost 400 years of black survival in America with both delicate profundity and boldly challenging humor.

And rounding out the list is a book that finishes a quartet: Elena Ferrante’s “The Story of the Lost Child.” Ferrante’s brilliant series offers a deep exploration of female friendship set against a backdrop of poverty, ambition, violence and political struggle. 

My favorite fiction that didn’t make this list is "Beauty is a Wound," Eka Kurniawan's weird, funny, fabulist story of a family that's also an allegory of Indonesia's chaotic struggle for independence.

And my honorable mention for fiction goes to “Man at the Helm,” a comic novel by the British writer Nina Stibbe. It’s about two young sisters obsessed with finding their mom a new husband. In the rich comic tradition of Wodehouse and Waugh, it has sparkling things to say about family, love and courting on nearly every page.

For more on the year's most noteworthy books, visit nytimes.com/books.