There has never been a better time to curl up at home with a good book. Its practically our duty.

With social distancing rules in effect to slow the spread of of the coronavirus, you cant go out anyway, except for some fresh air or a trip to the grocery store. But you can escape into books, especially if whats on TV reruns of old basketball games and NCIS marathons arent to your taste.

Unlike the movies, publishers will still release their expected blockbusters this spring.

The Mirror and the Light ($30, Henry Hold and Co., on sale now), the final book in Hilary Mantels trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, follows King Henry VIIIs chief minister from the height of his power to his downfall. John Grisham returns to Camino Island in late April for another breezy crime tale in Camino Winds (Random House, $28.95, April 29). It swirls around the suspicious death of an island resident during a hurricane.

And Stephen King scares up a new collection of stories in If It Bleeds (Scribner, $30, April 14). The title story features investigator Holly Gibney, whom King fans know from the Mr. Mercedes series and The Outsider.

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A prominent Texas author also has a book due. In Simon the Fiddler (William Morrow, $27.99, April 14), Paulette Jiles focuses on a character who made a brief appearance in her best-seller News of the World.

Here, from places in between, are 10 more books five fiction and five nonfiction to help you get away without leaving home.

The Companions, Katie M. Flynn (Scout Press, $27, on sale now): Its our bad luck that Flynns debut novel feels so topical. The Companions is set two years into a quarantine following the outbreak of a deadly virus in California. Residents break their isolation with companions, machines some lifelike, others not containing the uploaded consciousness of the dead. One is Lilac, a teenage girl who goes rogue to solve the mystery of her untimely death.

Days of Distraction, Alexandra Chang (Ecco, $26.99, March 31): In her debut novel, Chang tells the story of a tech reporter I write about gadgets for people with money to spend who leaves San Francisco to follow her boyfriend to a small New York college town. The cross-country trip leads to questions about her relationship shes Chinese-American and he is white as well as her cultural history and career choice.

Afterlife Julia Alvarez (Algonquin Books, $25.95, April 7): The author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of Butterflies returns with her first novel for adults in more than a decade. Its a slim book that begins in tragedy and searches for a way out. Its about a writer and teacher whose husband dies as she is about to retire, upending her life just as she thought it was coming to rest. The turmoil continues when a pregnant, undocumented teen shows up at her home.

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Broken, Don Winslow (William Morrow, $29.99, April 7): Top-notch crime writer Winslow published The Border, the final volume of his cartel trilogy about the cross-border drug trade, just last year. His new book goes the other way. Broken is a collection of six novellas that jump from New Orleans to San Diego to Hawaii for a reunion with characters from his best-seller Savages and finally back to the border. That story, The Last Ride, is a sort of western that begins with an image of a girl in a cage.

A Childrens Bible, Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton & Co., $25.95, May 12): Think about activist Greta Thunbergs fury at adults who are leaving their children and grandchildren a spoiled world. Thats the emotion the drives acclaimed novelist Millets latest, about a group of children who have to fend for themselves after they are separated from their heedless parents while on vacation.

The Hot Hand, Ben Cohen (Custom House, $32.50, on sale now): Cohen, who covers the NBA for the Wall Street Journal, begins thinking about streaks in terms of basketball, the player with the hot hand who just cant miss. Thats a myth, according to his research. But hes seen it happen, and wants to know more, so he follows the idea of unbeatable performance into investing, technology, music and literature including the stories weve all been hearing about Shakespeare and the plague.

El Jefe: The Stalking of Chapo Guzmn, Alan Feuer (Flatiron Books, $28.99, May 19): As co-leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, El Chapo Guzmn was both a criminal and a celebrity something like Depression Era-gangsters Al Capone and John Dillinger in the U.S. New York Times reporter Alan Feuer, who covered Guzmns 2019 drug trafficking trial, charts his rise from teenage smuggler to drug lord a mix of tall tales and brutal crimes.

Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife, Bart D. Ehrman (Simon & Schuster, $28, March 31): Well more than half of all Americans believe a literal heaven or hell awaits them when they die. There was a time, says religion historian Bard D.Ehrman, when everyone believed that and, much earlier, a time when no one did. His new book traces beliefs in the afterlife from before the birth of Christ to the early centuries of Christianity when heaven and hell as we know them now came into being.

Remain in Love, Chris Frantz (St. Martins Press, $29.99, May 12): David Byrne, who had enjoyed a renaissance of late with his Broadway show American Utopia, was the face of Talking Heads. Husband and wife Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth were the backbone, the rhythm section that moved the band from skeletal punk to New Wave and funk. Frantz must have been taking notes, because he tells the story of the band and his marriage in amazing detail Lou Reed, for instance, once told Byrne to wear long sleeves onstage because his arms were so hairy.

Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, Olivia Laing (Norton, $26.95, May 12): British art critics collection, drawn from a monthly magazine column and other pieces published in the past five years, includes profiles of Georgia OKeeffe, Robert Rauschenberg and David Hockney and love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. She writes that she looks to art for ideas to resist and repair in turbulent times. Art provides material with which to think, she writes. After that, friend, its up to you.

If youre unable to focus right now on a novel or work of nonfiction, here are three upcoming books you can dip into and out of.

Illustrator Lisa Brown sums up classic novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye and The Handmaids Tail funny-pages style in three-panel comics in Long Story Short (Algonquin Books, $14.95, April 7)

Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham, who run the stationery company Ash + Chess, apply their colorful, whimsical graphic style to landmarks and icons of LGBTQ history in The Gay Agenda (Morrow Gift, $19.99, April 28).

In short, short essays and quotes taken from her Twitter feed, poet Maggie Smith offers solace and encouragement in the face of loss in Keep Moving (One Signal, $24, May 5)

Jim Kiest is the arts and entertainment editor for the San Antonio Express-News. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | jkiest@express-news.net | Twitter: @jimik64

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10 new spring 2020 books to help you pass the time as you shelter in place from the coronavirus - San Antonio Express-News