And then there is the appendix. You have turned the last page of Lucy Ives’s intricate, darkly funny debut, and a curious timeline appears. Have you missed a plot point or two or 10?

“Let’s Not Do That Again” is a political comedy of manners that reads like the love child of Page Six and a long episode of “Veep.”

In “Went to London, Took the Dog,” Nina Stibbe, author of “Love, Nina,” delivers a funny-sad portrait of midlife.