Notable recent fiction where the automobile is central (as plot engine, setting, or symbol), mostly from the last ~10–15 years

 Notable recent fiction where the automobile is central (as plot engine, setting, or symbol), mostly from the last ~10–15 years:

Road-trip / driving as the story

• Hernan Diaz — Trust (2022): includes memorable driving/automobility motifs tied to wealth, control, and modernity.
• Lauren Groff — Florida (2018, stories): several pieces use cars and driving as pressure-cookers for intimacy, threat, and escape.

Crime / noir where cars matter

• S.A. Cosby — Blacktop Wasteland (2020): a heist novel rooted in car culture—mechanics, fast driving, and the emotional pull of “one last job.”
• Attica Locke — Bluebird, Bluebird (2017): Texas highways and car travel as the connective tissue of investigation and place.
• Don Winslow — The Cartel (2015) / ** The Border (2019)**: cross-border movement, surveillance, convoys—automobility as infrastructure of power.

Speculative / near-future automobility

• Cory Doctorow — Walkaway (2017): not strictly “car fiction,” but transportation systems and mobility politics are central.
• Ling Ma — Severance (2018): features long drives and highway drift that capture late-capitalist emptiness.

Literary fiction where cars are symbolic, not just props

• Colson Whitehead — The Nickel Boys (2019): cars appear as instruments of authority/escape in a historically grounded narrative.
• Tommy Orange — There There (2018): cars and transit underpin movement, precarity, and urban geography.