Elizabethan comedy meets saw-toothed social satire in Nell Zink’s 2015 novel, which follows the improbable and very ill-starred couple of Lee Fleming (gay) and Peggy Vaillancourt (lesbian, his student). Two children later, Peggy is on the run with her daughter. They hide in a rural black community and pretend to be black themselves. “Maybe you have to be from the South to get your head around blond black people,” the narrator tells us. “Mislaid” is set squarely on the third rail of racial, gender and sexual identity. It attacks every piety in its purview — without ever losing its inimitable screwball charm. — Parul Sehgal