new fiction books summer 2022

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16 novels we're excited for this summer

From prolific prize winners to hotshot debuts, the best and brightest books to devour this season.

Sun's out, fun's out! EW's 2022 Summer Preview has dozens of exclusive looks at the most anticipated TV shows, movies, books, and music of entertainment's hottest season. Continue to visit ew.com throughout the week for more previews of what you'll be watching, reading, and listening to in the months to come.

For some, it's strictly the season of SPF and Summer Fridays. But for dedicated book lovers, the weeks between May and September are golden for another reason: the rush of great new fiction. Whether you choose to stay cool indoors or stuff them all in a sandy tote bag and go, these 16 novels promise sweet escape.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

The queen of the contemporary smart-lit summer set (see: The Vacationers , Modern Lovers , All Adults Here ) pulls a sort of reverse 13 Going On 30 in her latest, about a Manhattan private-school admissions officer on the cusp of 40 who wakes up in another world — specifically, the morning of her 16th birthday, circa 1996. (May 17)

The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker

Six doomed sisters, all heiresses to an early 20th-century firearms fortune: What do they have to do with a reclusive lesbian painter in modern-day New Mexico? The latest from Walker — whose first novel Dietland became an unexpected smash, and then a TV series — is already earning comparisons to The Virgin Suicides for its singularly unlucky siblings and gothic mystery. (May 17)

Either/Or by Elif Batuman

Batuman, a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker , returns to the scene of her lauded 2017 debut The Idiot — a mordantly witty continuation of first-gen Harvard student Selin and her mid-'90s misadventures in sex, self-actualization, and studying abroad. (May 24)

The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz

The author of literary page-turners like Admission and Y ou Should Have Known — which went on to become the high-trash Nicole Kidman limited series The Undoing in 2020 — plunges into family dysfunction with her latest; the sprawling tale of a set of wealthy, troubled triplets birthed in the earliest days of IVF. (May 31)

An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie

Written when its author was just 23, this vivid, urgent debut — set in a predominately Jamaican neighborhood in Bristol, England — grapples with fate and circumstance as it follows Sayon, an ambitious young dreamer whose turn to drug-dealing comes with brutal consequences. (May 31)

Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perotta

Sequels are perhaps a dish best served cold; at least that's the hope for Perotta's return to the indelible Type-A teenager he (and by extension, a young, unsinkable Reese Witherspoon ) made famous in his sly 1998 satire Election and its subsequent film adaptation. This time around, she's a single mom and assistant high school principal sliding into middle age, but her competitive instincts remain undimmed. (June 7)

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han

Remember roughly four years ago when Hawaii announced that it was about to obliterated by a nuclear missile, and then said "never mind"? Han sets his much-buzzed debut in the months leading up that— a richly imagined, era-straddling saga exploring several generations of a Korean American clan. (June 7)

So Happy for You by Celia Laskey

If your taste in onscreen matrimony leans more toward Leslye Headland's lacerating Bachelorette than any toothy Julia Roberts rom-com, Laskey's bleakly comic send-up of the wedding industrial complex — centered on queer academic-turned-reluctant-maid-of-honor Robin and her best friend, the beatific bride-to-be Ellie — might ring your bell. (June 7)

Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky

A thirtysomething escapee from a bad California romance crash lands in a beach house in North Carolina, only to be struck by a Category Five hurricane (and quite possibly a vase to the back of the head, thanks to a murky one-night stand) in the pitch-black latest from Dermansky ( Very Nice , The Red Car ); think of it as a beach read for nihilists. ( June 14)

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

The author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation , EW's pick for the best book of 2018, turns her inimitable lens to a medieval fiefdom ruled by deeply tribal ideas of class, family, and faith. The result reads like a cracked fairy tale, both familiar and fantastically strange. ( June 21)

Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin

The moms of a remote mountain village keep disappearing, sucked up into the clouds like some kind of parental Rapture in the latest from the Saint X author, which has already drawn breathless references to modern masters of the domestic macabre like Shirley Jackson. ( June 28)

Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown

Brown ( The Weird Sisters ) explores the meaning of motherhood and the limits of a blended family in her vivid character study of four biological siblings adopted by three sets of parents, set across the span of a single (and singular) vacation. ( July 12)

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

"One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown": So begins the latest from Hamid — a slim, surreal fable as profound and piercingly humanist as his Booker Prize shortlisted The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West. ( August 2)

Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins

After a 15-year absence, the Pulitzer Prize finalist ( Evidence of Things Unseen ) returns with Thirst , a rich historical fiction centered on a Southern California ranch family circa WWII and shot through with shades of Chinatown . (August 2)

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Reid ( The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo , Daisy Jones & the Six ) concludes her series of bright, bingeable novels about famous women with Soto , centered on a onetime tennis star looking to recapture her former '90s glory. (August 30)

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

O'Farrell follows 2020's National Book Critics Circle winner Hamnet , her lucid re-imagining of Shakespeare, with a vivid dip into Renaissance Florence, where a young girl named Lucrezia is abruptly thrust into royalty when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding, leaving her to be the terrified replacement. ( September 6)

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30 of the best books to sink into this summer

Maybe you're the kind of person who doesn't pick their next read based on the weather. But some of us reach for a specific type of book to read in the summer. More than a genre, a summer read is a mood: A book that's breezy and transfixing, able to hold our attention as we enjoy the outdoors.

Speaking to TODAY about beach reads , authors opened up about their own summer reading routines and provided a few recommendations to add to your summer reading list. Lily King, author of Read With Jenna pick “Writers & Lovers ,” said she likes getting her summer reads messy as she brings them to the beach and park. “I want proof of summer on the pages,” King told TODAY.

The only question is: Where to begin? We’re rounding up a few of the 2022 new releases, from novels and memoirs to romances and comedies, that fit the summer mood.

"Every Summer After" by Carley Fortune

"Every Summer After"

Search #beachread on Instagram, and you’re likely to see this cover. Speaking to TODAY, Carley Fortune said she was inspired by her childhood in Barry’s Bay, a small lakeside town in Canada, while writing this love story that switches perspectives between childhood summers and two adults trying to right their adolescent wrongs. Read an excerpt on TODAY .

"Book Lovers" by Emily Henry

"Book Lovers"

Emily Henry’s rom-coms know the beach read assignment: They’re frequently set on vacation and involve writers or bookworms. “Book Lovers” follows in the tradition of “Beach Read” and “People We Meet on Vacation,” taking place over book editor Nora Stephens’ month-long trip to a North Carolina town, where she runs into a rival: an equally successful book agent. It doesn’t take long for the transformation from enemies to lovers to occur.

"Neruda on the Park," by Cleyvis Natera

"Neruda on the Park"

"Neruda on the Park" is about a community in New York that is on the verge of gentrification and the residents whose futures, and close-knit connections, are being threatened. Eusebia, an older resident, comes up with the idea to start a crime ring to scare away new residents. Her family responds in their own ways. Natera, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, said the novel was inspired by her own life and childhood in Harlem.

"Meant to Be Mine" by Hannah Orenstein

"Meant to Be Mine"

Do you believe in fated love? The protagonist of “Meant to Be Mine” does — she’s staked her romantic future on a prophecy that her grandmother laid out for her. When Edie, a fashion stylist, meets singer Theo Larsen she knows she’s met the man her grandmother’s visions. Whether he can actually live up to them remains to be seen.

"Counterfeit" by Kirstin Chen

"Counterfeit"

Once college roommates, Winnie and Ava lost touch. When they meet again at a coffee store, Winnie has a proposition. "Counterfeit" runs at the pace of a heist movie, as in, once you start reading you won't be able to stop.

"So Happy for You" by Celia Laskey

"So Happy for You"

If you’re going to multiple weddings this year, “So Happy For You” might speak to you in a visceral way. A fast-paced satirical thriller, “So Happy For You” is set in the near future, where a declining birth rate leads to a government incentive-spurred wedding fever. Best friends since childhood, Ellie and Robin have grown apart in recent years — especially given their disagreements about marriage. The tension grows to a tipping point when Ellie asks Robin to be her maid of honor.

"Tracy Flick Can't Win" by Tom Perrotta

"Tracy Flick Can't Win"

Tracy Flick is a character first made famous in Tom Perrotta’s 1998 novel “Election” and the movie adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon. Years after for high school student body, Tracy is now a middle-aged mom and assistant principal, revisiting her past while still yearning to be recognized in that old familiar way.

"Hurricane Girl" by Marcy Dermansky

"Hurricane Girl"

Marcy Dermansky’s books are written in sparse but punchy prose, each sentence guaranteed to make you think. “Hurricane Girl” is about a woman on the run from her boring life. But if she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, how will she know when she finds it?

"More Than You'll Ever Know" by Katie Gutierrez

"More Than You'll Ever Know"

As a true crime reporter, Cassie Bowman finds the truth behind the stories that grip people most. She comes across an article about Lore Rivera, a woman who carried out a double life with a family in Mexico and one in the U.S., and thinks she’s found the ultimate career-defining moment. “More Than You’ll Ever Know” is an intertwining story about ambition, motherhood and more.

"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" by Gabrielle Zevin

"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"

Sadie and Sam bond over their shared love of video games. And one day, they’ll go on to make one of the world’s most successful ones. But they don’t know that yet. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” is a decade-spanning feat in storytelling, switching perspectives as the story winds through the years.

"Carrie Soto Is Back" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

"Carrie Soto Is Back"

The title of “Carrie Soto Is Back” is the story that Carrie Soto, a tennis great, wants to tell the world — and her doubters, of whom there are many. At 37, six years into her retirement, Carrie watches a younger tennis player beat her record. She decides to leave retirement for a year to take back what she feels is hers.

"The Mutual Friend" by Carter Bays

"The Mutual Friend"

This debut novel from the creator of “How I Met Your Mother” follows the intersecting lives of a few New Yorkers. A clever and all-seeing narrator (who is also a character) tells their stories, and it’s worth reading the book just to experience the satisfying ending, with everything fitting together just so.

"These Impossible Things" by Salma El-Wardany

"These Impossible Things"

A Read With Jenna pick, “These Impossible Things” tracks the lives of three Muslim-British friends in the U.K., all navigating the pressures of family expectations with the desire to forge their own trails. El-Wardany told TODAY she wrote the book in a span of a month. “I just want to tell a story of (Muslim women’s) lived experience that doesn’t make us the butt of a joke,” she said.

"Our Wives Under the Sea" by Julia Armfield

"Our Wives Under the Sea"

Leah returns from a deep sea mission — and she's forever changed. At first, her wife, Miri, only clocks the small alterations. But as time goes on, Miri now has to learn to reconcile the new version of Leah with the woman she fell in love with. This is a melancholy novel about falling in love and then watching love change; a great option if standard rom-coms aren't appealing to you at the moment.

"Olga Dies Dreaming" by Xochitl Gonzalez

"Olga Dies Dreaming"

Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo are both prominent New Yorkers: Prieto is a politician and Olga is a wedding planner. Behind the scenes, they’re dealing with a family reckoning after their mother returns — 27 years after her disappearance. This is a rom-com that also deals with family and healing — and acknowledges the way all these kinds of love are connected.

"The Latecomer" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

"The Latecomer"

Can't resist some juicy sibling drama? You’ll find it here, in droves. “The Latecomer” is narrated by the literal latecomer of her family: Zoe is significantly younger than her triplet older siblings, who do not get along. Born into a wealthy and ruptured family, Phoebe seeks to understand what happened before she was born, and how she can fix it now that she’s here.

"The Force of Such Beauty" by Barbara Bourland

"The Force of Such Beauty"

Falling in love with a prince is not a fairy tale, as the protagonist of this engrossing novel discovers. Caroline is a former Olympian-turned-princess of a small European country. Her role becomes more like a trap; her husband, more like a captor. Bourland said she was inspired by real-life royals when writing this novel set in pre-recession Europe.

"The Palace Papers" by Tina Brown

"The Palace Papers"

Whether you follow news of the royal family or not, Tina Brown's exhaustive account of the last 25 years in the Windsor family history, from Princess Diana to Meghan Markle, is inclined to fascinate. Brown writes in sparkling, relentlessly clever prose, making a history lesson seem more like gossipy party.

"Honey and Spice" by Bolu Babalola

"Honey and Spice"

Sexy and emotionally astute, Bolu Babalola, author of “Love and Color," wrote a romance that will stay with you. “Honey and Spice” takes place in the university years, as characters are figuring themselves out through their relationships. Podcast host Kiki Banjo starts a mutually beneficial fake relationship with a playboy.

"Love Marriage" by Monica Ali

"Love Marriage"

For Yasmin Ghorami, love is the easy part of her relationship. Merging families is not. In the lead-up to the wedding, her family clashes with her fiancé’s. Through just one marriage, Monica Ali’s book gets at so many cultural truths and tensions.

"Kaleidoscope" by Cecily Wong

"Kaleidoscope"

Not all beach reads need to be light and airy. "Kaleidoscope" is a moving story about grief and one prominent family adjusting around a sudden loss. Cecily Wong captures the gradations of loss but also the power of love in the novel, which may be exactly what you need this summer.

"Rough Draft" by Katy Tur

"Rough Draft"

NBC anchor Katy Tur speaks honestly about her upbringing in this memoir . Tur’s parents were photographers who documented L.A. by helicopter and as a result, she and her brother grew up in the sky. As an adult, Tur’s relationship with her father, who transitioned later in life, became more complicated.

"Normal Family" by Chrysta Bilton

"Normal Family"

Think of the title of this book as a joke: There are no normal families. Chrysta Bilton unpacks her family origin story, which began when her mother, a single gay woman, made an under-the-table deal with a sperm donor that resulted in two kids. As Bilton got older, she learned she had many more siblings around the country: 35, to be precise.

"Harlem Sunset" by Nekesa Afia

"Harlem Sunset"

Move over Hercule Poirot. Louise Lloyd, the central character of Nekesa Afia's books, will be your new favorite mystery solver. She gets to the bottom of crimes from her vantage point in a speakeasy in 1920s Harlem. Read the first installment in the series to learn Louise's origin story.

"The Last Housewife" by Ashley Winstead

"The Last Housewife"

Shay Evans is in a rare category. She's one of the few who got out. "The Last Housewife" is about the ramifications of a cult on the women who escaped the leader's thrall, and the ones who did not.

"Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus

"Lessons in Chemistry"

Find this runaway hit where history meets humor. The book follows a chemist in the 1960s who doesn’t get the respect she deserves. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she becomes the host of a famous cooking show. With her platform, she encourages viewers to push the boundaries the same way she did at work.

"The Paris Apartment" by Lucy Foley

"The Paris Apartment"

The author of “The Guest List” returns with another novel written in the vein of Agatha Christie. Jess moves to Paris from London. As she’s settling in, her brother comes to stay — and then promptly disappears, leaving her to learn his whereabouts and the secrets he’s been keeping.

"By the Book," by Jasmine Guillory

"By the Book"

If your favorite part of the movie "Beauty and the Beast" is the library, then this fairytale redux from Jasmine Guillory is written with you in mind. Working in publishing was always Isabelle's dream job, but the reality of being the company's only Black employee is far from ideal. When she's tapped to travel to an author's mansion to help him hurry along on his book, she gets a break from the office but finds a new web of complications.

"Woman of Light," by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

"Woman of Light"

Kali Fajardo-Anstine's collection "Sabina & Corina" focused on indigenous women in Colorado in the present day; "Woman of Light" travels to the past. Luz "Little Light" Lopez is fending for herself in 1930s Colorado, and dealing with visions about her ancestors and all they had lost not so long ago. Through her psychic connection to them, she has a chance to save their stories.

"One Italian Summer," by Rebecca Serle

"One Italian Summer"

Katie and her mom, Carol, were supposed to go on a two week-long mother-daughter trip to Positano. And then, tragically, her mom died. Bereft, Katie can barely make it on the plane. When she arrives in Italy, she's shocked to find her mother, alive and well — and 30 years old. Through a trick of magical realism and a bend in space and time, she has a chance to get to know Carol in a new way before she's gone.

Elena Nicolaou is a senior entertainment editor at Today.com, where she covers the latest in TV, pop culture, movies and all things streaming. Previously, she covered culture at Refinery29 and Oprah Daily. Her superpower is matching people up with the perfect book, which she does on her podcast, Blind Date With a Book.

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53 Hottest Summer Reads of 2022

JUNE 7, 2022

by Kirstin Chen

A delightfully different caper novel with a "Gone Girl"–style plot twist. Full review >

by Carter Bays

A major accomplishment. Full review >

JULY 19, 2022

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A fun literary remix. Full review >

JULY 5, 2022

by Alice Elliott Dark

Elegantly structured, beautifully written, and altogether diverting, with a powerful message about land ownership in America. Full review >

MAY 3, 2022

by Hernan Diaz

A clever and affecting high-concept novel of high finance. Full review >

MAY 17, 2022

by Emma Straub

Combine Straub's usual warmth and insight with the fun of time travel and you have a winner. Full review >

JUNE 14, 2022

by Elin Hilderbrand

Honestly, who needs Nantucket. It could hardly be more fun than this book. Full review >

by Gabrielle Zevin

Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have. Full review >

JULY 12, 2022

by Dan Fesperman

An engrossing, deep-in-the-weeds thriller. Full review >

AUG. 2, 2022

by Mohsin Hamid

A provocative tale that raises questions of racial and social justice at every turn. Full review >

by Emily Henry

A heartfelt and hilarious read about books, sisters, and writing your own love story. Full review >

by Ellyn Gaydos

Lyrical and cleareyed insight into farming from a writer devoted to both crafts. Full review >

by Jack Parlett

An illuminating, well-written history of a unique place. Full review >

JUNE 28, 2022

by Benedict Allen

A compelling story about the need to satisfy one’s yearnings at all costs. Full review >

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Thought-provoking examinations of human motivation, choices, follies, and morality. Full review >

by Sarah Stodola

A thorough and appropriately alarming analysis of how we made paradise and how it might be saved. Full review >

by Ron Shelton

Fans of the film will have new reasons to appreciate it—and the team that made it. Full review >

by Malachy Tallack

An engaging book that will make many readers head for the nearest stream to toss in a line. Full review >

by Mark Vanhoenacker

A sparkling addition to the literature of flight. Full review >

by Chrysta Bilton

A wholly absorbing page-turner that everyone will want to read. You should probably buy two. Full review >

by Ice-T & Spike with Douglas Century

This well-crafted memoir is a bracing reminder of how a few choices can separate success from a troubled life. Full review >

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT

edited by Barry Lyga ; illustrated by Colleen Doran

Thirteen solid stories from an all-star lineup. Full review >

JUNE 21, 2022

by Melanie Crowder

Never less than riveting. Full review >

by Naz Kutub

An intense read that’s packed with adventure, humor, and lots of soul. Full review >

by Shveta Thakrar

A lush fantasy. Full review >

by Rebecca Barrow

There is not a word wasted in this sad and harrowing tale. Full review >

by Elizabeth Kilcoyne

In Kilcoyne, YA horror has found a new standard-bearer. Full review >

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

A rich, romantic tale of identity, agency, and love. Full review >

by Cynthia Hand , Brodi Ashton & Jodi Meadows

Energetic, clever, and absorbing. Full review >

AUG. 30, 2022

by Karen M. McManus

An edge-of-your-seat page-turner; the strongest yet from a master of the genre. Full review >

by Goldy Moldavsky

A hilarious, page-turning take on influencers and true-crime fandom. Full review >

MAY 31, 2022

by Ebony LaDelle

A sweet, charming story with both heartwarming and heart-rending moments. Full review >

CHILDREN'S

JUNE 1, 2022

by Kyoko Hara ; illustrated by Kazue Takahashi ; translated by Alexandrea Mallia

Another sweet story of friendship and family. Full review >

by Tolá Okogwu

A delightful blend of adventure, heart, and Afrofuturism. Full review >

VALENTINA SALAZAR IS NOT A MONSTER HUNTER

by Zoraida Córdova

Fun and heartwarming. Full review >

by Evan Griffith

A lush backdrop and sweet characters facing complicated problems will keep readers hooked. Full review >

by Buffy Sainte-Marie ; illustrated by Buffy Sainte-Marie & Michelle Alynn Clement

These connected tales bring characters and their rich cultural inheritance to satisfying life. Full review >

SEPT. 20, 2022

GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

by Jonathan Schnapp ; illustrated by Jonathan Schnapp

Something wicked this way comes...hopefully, a sequel in the making. Full review >

by Julie Abe ; illustrated by Shan Jiang

A thrilling take on “Cinderella” with magic and dragons. Full review >

AUG. 23, 2022

by Paulina Ganucheau ; illustrated by Paulina Ganucheau

A cornucopia of wholesome cuteness. Full review >

by Iain Lawrence

A superb tale of survival and courage. Full review >

developed by James Howe & Deborah Howe adapted by James Howe & Andrew Donkin ; illustrated by Stephen Gilpin

This pets’-eye-view farce bares fangs but draws laughs instead of blood. Full review >

by Dan Abdo & Jason Patterson ; illustrated by Dan Abdo & Jason Patterson

More punches and punchlines in pursuit of truth, justice, and the Berzerker way. Full review >

by Halcyon Person & Chris Bridges ; illustrated by Parker-Nia Gordon

Cheerful and charming. Full review >

by Liz Garton Scanlon ; illustrated by Sean Qualls

A familiar narrative about urban versus rural childhoods that’s made fresh by distinct artwork. Full review >

by Julio Torres ; illustrated by Julian Glander

Great for stimulating creative thinking and art activities: What else can ordinary objects be? Full review >

by Cathy Camper ; illustrated by Sawsan Chalabi

A fun, informative window into the experiences of Arabs in the diaspora. Full review >

by Diane deGroat ; illustrated by Diane deGroat

A super blend of everyday courage, the inner lives of readers, and rising to the challenge of doing something difficult. Full review >

by Ian Falconer ; illustrated by Ian Falconer

A snug, funny round of hijinks by low dogs. Full review >

by Bob Graham ; illustrated by Bob Graham

A celebration of small miracles and the hope that makes them happen. Full review >

by Barbara Nascimbeni ; illustrated by Barbara Nascimbeni

Unique illustrations create an enticing day at the beach for a mischievous mutt. Full review >

by Elana K. Arnold ; illustrated by Doug Salati

Gently engaging and cheerful. Full review >

AUG. 1, 2022

by Jane Yolen ; illustrated by Doug Keith

Childhood magic shared with a new generation. Full review >

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22 Must-Read Books to Pick Up This Summer

From Akwaeke Emezi to Elif Batuman, take a peek at our most anticipated releases of the season.

Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

As the bustling summer months slowly begin, we’re looking ahead at the best new books of the upcoming season.

Ahead, you’ll find reads from debut authors like Leila Mottley—who wrote Nightcrawling when she was just 17 years old!—and see some familiar names like Ottessa Moshfegh who’s making her long-awaited return after her bestselling 2018 novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation . Whether you’re looking to lounge on a beach chair with a lush romance novel or dive into some thought-provoking nonfiction, you’re sure to find something here for your summer vibe.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

Straub’s modern take on 13 Going on 30 skips all the fluff and goes straight for the gut. Brimming with whimsy and humor, the story of a young woman’s second chance at life is grounded by the unforced father-daughter relationship at its center. Come for the nostalgia, stay for the tenderness. — Juliana Ukiomogbe, assistant editor

Out May 17.

Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri

Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri is back, and this time, with an ode to language. In this collection of personal essays, Lahiri waxes poetic about the complexities of translation—from its origins in Ovid’s myths to her personal experiences of translating her own work from Italian to English. Her observations are as plentiful as they are enlightening. — JU

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

Emezi’s first foray into romance, and their third book released this year, is high on our list of most-anticipated reads. Set in the tropical Caribbean, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty follows a young woman named Feyi as she attempts to heal from a previous relationship and ends up finding a new love in the process. — JU

Out May 24.

Either/Or by Elif Batuman

Five years after the release of The Idiot , Batuman returns with its much-anticipated sequel, Either/Or . The novel picks up where its predecessor left off and finds our protagonist Selin back at Harvard for her sophomore year, with even more astute observations and tongue-and-cheek commentary than before. — JU

Avalon by Nell Zink

Doxology author Nell Zink returns this summer with the dreamy and delicious—yet unquestionably insightful— Avalon . A young woman raised in a Buddhist colony in Southern California meets (and falls in love with) an East Coast college student, who opens her eyes to a penchant for the arts...only for their long-distance relationship to falter between the coasts. — Lauren Puckett-Pope, associate editor

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories by Lydia Conklin

An apt title for a gleefully queer collection of stories, Lydia Conklin's Rainbow Rainbow weaves between hope and despair, love and fear as its characters—a lesbian comics artist, a sex addict, a trans vlogger, various teenagers coming-of-age (and into their sexuality)—wrestle with the fraught dynamics of gender identity and queer romance in the 21st century. — LPP

Out May 31.

Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour

A love story as vibrant as its cover, Yerba Buena is neither breezy nor light-hearted, but it is nevertheless a perfect beach read: Two women meet at a fashionable restaurant known as—you got it—Yerba Buena, and there embark on a journey of addiction, self-discovery, renewal, and, perhaps, real commitment. — LPP

Neruda on the Park by Cleyvis Natera

The impacts of gentrification—and generations of shifting social status—ignite a fascinating ripple effect in Cleyvis Natera’s debut Neruda On The Park , in which members of a Dominican family in New York City clash around the wealth (or lack thereof) that defines their choices. Exciting but nuanced, this is a book you'll want to race through, then pick up and start again. — LPP

Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind by Fariha Róisín

In this timely and urgent examination, Like a Bird author Fariha Róisín breaks down wellness culture through the lens of social justice and its genesis in Indigenous communities. From ashwagandha and meditation to body dysmorphia and “the self-care industrial complex,” she charts the path forward for a more inclusive approach to wellness. — JU

Out June 2.

Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

The author of National Book Award finalist Sabrina & Corina returns this summer with another tale of the American West, this time chronicling no fewer than five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family. Each ancestor is connected to Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a seer who experiences visions of the past—in all their tenderness and horror. — LPP

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley

Anyone who’s been captivated by Sloane Crosley’s essays will recognize a similar puckish sense of humor undergirding this novel, a Cultish -meets- Christmas Carol -like exploration of what it’s like to confront your past (that is, if Ebenezer Scrooge were a Gen X woman with a colorful roster of exes.) — Véronique Hyland, fashion features director

Out June 7.

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

Fast money, crooked cops, and dire consequences are at the forefront of Mottley’s electric debut novel, which she wrote when she was just 17 years old. Striking prose and unforgettable characters—including a young Black woman in relentless pursuit of justice—make for a shocking page-turner and timely reflection. — JU

The Twilight World by Werner Herzog

Fans of Herzog’s films—filled with obsessive characters, quixotic journeys, and the natural world as antagonist—will by captivated by his first novel, which draws on the true story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who held out defending an island in the Philippines for nearly three decades after the end of World War II. Part Aguirre , The Wrath of God , part Apocalypse Now , and part fever dream, Herzog’s The Twilight World casts a spell that asks us to consider who we are and what we’re fighting for. — K atherine Krueger, features editor

Out June 14.

The Wild One by Colleen McKeegan

Colleen McKeegan’s debut novel tells the story of three women—Amanda, Catherine, and Meg—who are the only who know exactly what happened to the man who died during their summer at Camp Catalpa. That is, until one of them spills the beans to her toxic boyfriend, forcing the trio to reunite 10+ years later. The story, which alternates between “then” and “now,” is a gripping mystery, but equally as compelling is McKeegan’s exploration of the complicated psyche of female friendships, unresolved trauma, and the desperate lengths girls will go to in order to fit in. —Kayla Webley Adler, deputy editor

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

After the massive success of My Year of Rest and Relaxation , Moshfegh returns with something completely different, albeit a little strange. Set in a fictional medieval village, Lapvona follows a slew of characters—from an abused shepherd boy to a cruel and sadistic lord—as they navigate religion, morality, and the complexities of the human experience. — JU

Out June 21.

Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch

From the author of the deeply affecting memoir The Chronology of Water and novels The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children comes a novel that revolves around a girl able to time travel with the help of a talking turtle. Despite that unusual premise, there’s so much that feels deeply present about Yuknavitch’s latest novel: the ever-expanding police state, lower Manhattan under water, and a woman on a mission to rescue other vulnerable women. Yuknavitch’s words are incantations, and Thrust is a triumph. — KK

Out June 28.

The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories by Jess Walter

Many a book has attempted to lure readers with a fashionable young woman on its cover and promises of a glittering tale from abroad. But Jess Walter (of Beautiful Ruins renown) has a lot more to offer in this story collection, about a transfixing cast of characters navigating fame, performance, identity, aging, and romance in spots scattered between Europe and America. — LPP

Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola

Anyone who’s read Bolu Babalola’s tweets knows she’s got a crackling sense of humor. As a debut novelist, she blends that signature wit with the warmth of romance in Honey & Spice , about an independent young Black woman at the British Whitewell University who discovers that—when it comes to love—“fake relationships” more often than not turn true. — LPP

Out July 5.

Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah

Quaking with age-old righteous anger but nevertheless luminescent with hope, Calling For A Blanket Dance follows Ever Geimausaddle, a young Native American man caught in the crosshairs of family, nation, and self, searching to understand his values and beliefs in a country desperate to strip them away. — LPP

Out July 26.

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West was one of the most interesting novels I’ve read in recent years; I still find its heartbreaking tale of migration and connection popping into my thoughts unprompted. I expect nothing less from The Last White Man , another tale of poignant magical realism, in which Hamid’s characters wake up to find their skin color has suddenly and inexplicably changed. Haunting and arresting in equal measure. — LPP

Out August 2.

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The Ultimate Summer 2022 Reading List

Math + books = .

It’s June. We’re barbecuing. We’re sweating on the subway. We’re building forts in the backyard, and we’re building them out of our massive summer TBR piles (use a tarp). Yep, it’s that time of year again —so let the list of lists commence.

If you’re new here, here’s how it works:

1. I read all of the Most Anticipated and Best Summer Reading lists that flood the internet this time of year (or at least as many as I can find). 2. I count how many times each book is included. 3. I collate them for you in this handy list.

This year, I read through 36 lists, which recommended a grand total of 514 books. As always, I avoided narrowly themed or genre-specific lists (like “thrillers” or “business books” or “Hallmark novels”), though I included those marked either fiction or nonfiction. (The full list of lists is at the end of this post.) I have included those books recommended at least three times below, in descending order of frequency. The recommendations this year are a little more diffuse than usual—I noticed more older books being thrown into the mix, and the top scoring book only got 13 nods (as opposed to 21 for last year’s top scorer). Like everything else, it’s probably because of the pandemic. Or inflation!

Still, if you want to Read the Book That Everyone is Reading (or at least recommending) this summer, or even if you’d just like to Judge Everyone For Their Taste in Books, Please, here’s where you should start:

Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man Tom Perrotta, Tracy Flick Can’t Win

Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic Akwaeke Emezi, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty

Kirstin Chen, Counterfeit

Joseph Han, Nuclear Family Morgan Talty, Night of the Living Rez

Isaac Fitzgerald, Dirtbag, Massachusetts Abdulrazak Gurnah, Afterlives Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Latecomer Taylor Jenkins Reid, Carrie Soto Is Back

Bolu Babalola, Honey & Spice Marcy Dermansky, Hurricane Girl Hernan Diaz, Trust Werner Herzog, tr. Michael Hofmann, The Twilight World Elin Hilderbrand, The Hotel Nantucket Patrick Radden Keefe, Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks Nina LaCour, Yerba Buena Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Elif Batuman, Either/Or Geraldine Brooks, Horse Viola Davis, Finding Me Ada Calhoun, Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me Adrian McKinty, The Island J.M. Miro, Ordinary Monsters Rasheed Newson, My Government Means to Kill Me Jody Rosen, Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle David Sedaris, Happy-Go-Lucky Sarah Stodola, The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach Kaitlyn Tiffany, Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It Jess Walter, The Angel of Rome and Other Stories Lidia Yuknavitch, Thrust

Imogen Binnie, Nevada Howard Byrant, Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now Lydia Conklin, Rainbow Rainbow Ingrid Rojas Contreras, The Man Who Could Move Clouds Maya Deane, Wrath Goddess Sing Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Woman of Light Jenna Fischer & Angela Kinsey, The Office BFFs: Tales of the Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There Emily Henry, Book Lovers R.F. Kuang, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau Chinelo Okparanta, Harry Sylvester Bird Nicole Pasulka, How You Get Famous Rebecca Rukeyser, The Seaplane on Final Approach Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake Erika L. Sanchez, Crying in the Bathroom Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street David Yoon, City of Orange Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

The list of lists:

The New York Times Book Review’s 88 Books to Bring Your Summer Alive • The New York Times’ What Should I Read This Summer? • The Washington Post’s 21 Books to Read This Summer • The Atlantic’s Summer Reading Guide • Publishers Weekly’s Summer Reads: Staff Picks ; Fiction ; Mystery/Thriller ; Romance ; SF/Fantasy/Horror ; Comics ; Nonfiction • Vulture’s 17 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer • BuzzFeed’s 34 New Summer Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down • Thrillist’s 27 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer • People’s The 20 Best Books to Read This Summer • The Daily Beast’s Best Summer Beach Reads of 2022 • Vogue’s 7 of the Best New Beach Reads to Unwind With This Summer • TIME’s 27 New Books You Need to Read This Summer • The Chicago Tribune’s Books for Summer 2022 • EW’s 16 Novels We’re Excited For This Summer • Mother Jones’ Nine New Books That Will Make You Smarter This Summer • CBS News’ Best Summer Beach Reads for 2022 • Elle’s 21 Must-Read Books To Pick Up This Summer • The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s 45 New Books for Summer Reading in 2022 • Book Riot’s 40 of the Best Summer Reads for 2022 • The Wall Street Journal’s Guide to Summer Books • The Skimm’s 20 Buzzy Books to Read at the Beach (or On Your Couch) This Summer • Fortune’s 10 New Page-Turning Novels You Should Read This Summer • The New York Post’s 27 Novels You’ll Want to Pick Up This Summer • Esquire’s The 20 Best Books of Summer 2022 • Five Books’ Notable Novels of Summer 2022 • The Boston Globe’s Summer Reading 2022 • Town & Country’s 33 Must-Read Books of Summer 2022 • and of course, Literary Hub’s 35 Novels You Need to Read This Summer ; 29 Works of Nonfiction You Need to Read This Summer ; and 9 Short Story Collections You Need to Read This Summer

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The 33 Must-Read Books of Summer 2022

Buzzy novels, compulsively readable non-fiction, and a few deliciously guilty pleasures.

Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

This season, you have no excuse for being without something good to read. Offerings include explosive novels, revealing memoirs, brilliant biographies, and everything in between. No matter what you like to read, there's a title coming out this summer that's sure to be just what you're looking for.

Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me

New York Times-bestselling author Ada Calhoun offers a must-read memoir about artistic ambition and a complicated father-daughter relationship. Calhoun’s journey began as a simple mission, to finish what her father, art critic Peter Schjeldah, had started—a biography detailing the life of poet Frank O’Hara. However, what ensued was an unimagined trip down memory lane, where Calhoun not only discovered O’Hara’s past, but confronted her father’s, and her own.

On Gin Lane

If you’re looking to dive into historical fiction this summer, look no further than Brooke Lea Foster’s On Gin Lane . It’s the summer of 1957, and New York City socialite Lee Farrows seems to have it all: a handsome fiancé, a load of money, and a beachside hotel on Gin Lane in Southampton. But after a tragic incident occurs during the hotel’s opening weekend, Lee’s picture perfect life is suddenly shattered and she is forced to reckon with herself.

Belle Greene

Alexandra Lapierre’s Belle Greene tells the true story of Belle da Costa Greene, a librarian and intellectual living in New York City during the early 1900s. At the time, Greene was best known for managing the personal library of J. P. Morgan. But behind her monumental achievement was a well kept secret, her race. Greene was in fact a Black woman and the daughter of a famous Black activist, passing as white to experience freedom and control her own destiny.

The Midcoast: A Novel

The Midcoast , one of the most anticipated novels of the year, follows a chilling story of crime and drama small town Damariscotta. After Andrew returns to Damariscotta and visits old acquaintances Ed and Steph Thatch, he’s impressed by their lifestyle, and maybe even a bit jealous too. But not everything is as it seems, and Andrew soon discovers that the Thatches are hiding dangerous secrets.

Cult Classic

Sloane Crosley's Cult Classic is unputdownable. The story centers on Lola, out to dinner in Chinatown, in New York City, when she runs into on of her ex boyfriends. Soon, she bumps into another. Before long, Lola is running into nearly every person she's dated, and it's no longer just coincidences. No spoilers, but this is a fun, gripping read on relationships, modern love, and what closure truly looks like.

Nuclear Family: A Novel

The latest from Ottessa Moshfegh ( Eileen, My Year of Rest and Relaxation ) is a story of secrets and power set in a medieval village, where a young boy growing up without a mother finds himself on an unexpected path. Over the course of an eventful year, he'll question everything he's been told, find himself at odds with the most terrifying man he knows, and uncover truths that will change the course of his live forever.

The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories

Jess Walter’s intriguing and witty collection of short fiction stories shines a light on the lives of a diverse range of characters experiencing existential crises while searching for inspiration. Despite the fact that The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories is fictional, it’s unequivocally relatable and insightful, perhaps even encouraging the reader to do a little bit of their own introspective thinking.

Tracy Flick Can't Win: A Novel

When Tom Perrotta's Election (and the beloved movie it inspired) was released, it made the bulldozer of an overachiever Tracy Flick into a pop-culture touchstone. More than two decades later, Perrotta is revisiting Flick in this dark, funny new novel, which finds her back in high school as an assistant principal whose life isn't quite as perfect as she might have planned. It's a witty, sly look at the things we want, the people who get in our way, and how much of it really matters. We can't be the only ones keeping our fingers crossed for a big-screen adaptation.

City of Likes

When Megan Chernoff and her family move to New York City, she isn't expecting to fall in with a crowd of posh and polished social-media influencers. But when one of the set's queen bees takes Megan under her wing, a picture-perfect world seems to be at her fingertips. It's worth remembering, however, that things are rarely as they seem—especially on Instagram. In Jenny Mollen's observant novel, the world of momfluencers is a dazzling and dangerous backdrop for a story about friendship, deceit, ambition, and how we choose to let the world see us.

Horse: A Novel

Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks's latest novel spans centuries. Set in 1850 Kentucky, 1954 New York City, and 2019 Washington, D.C., Brooks charts the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred race horse named Lexington. The story begins with an enslaved groom named Jarett and goes through Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, who teamed up to understand the Black horsemen lost to history.

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks

Anything Patrick Radden Keefe is a must-read— Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland are his two other books—and his newest are no exception. Well, it's not quite new: Rogues is twelve of his New Yorker articles in one collection, featuring profiles of everyone from the late Anthony Bourdain to an international black market arms dealer. Nevertheless, a must read for anyone who loves a good story.

Growing Up Getty: The Story of America's Most Unconventional Dynasty

In this deep dive on one of the world's richest and most storied families, T&C contributor James Reginato looks closely not only at how the Getty family's riches and influence were built—including impressive and unprecedented access to diaries, love letters, and more—but uncovers at a new generation of family members who are redefining what it means to be a modern scion and making their own way in the world, famous last name or not.

Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence

Nearly two decades after first profiling the now-disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein for the New Yorker , Ken Auletta couldn't stop thinking about him. Despite the reporting in both The New Yorker and the New York Times that eventually toppled Weinstein, Auletta wanted to explore more deeply how his subject became who he did and why he was able to get away with his barely concealed behavior for so long. In this fascinating, revealing new book, the writers gets to the heart of how Harvey was made, and the ways he built a world that protected him from consequences—until, of course, it didn't.

Learning to Talk: Stories

Hilary Mantel's sprawling Wolf Hall was a worldwide sensation—a best selling trilogy that spawned a television series and a Broadway show. In the author's latest, she goes in a much more succinct direction ; Learning to Talk is a collection of short stories that put all of the author's skill and style on display in a more truncated form.

The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach

For a book that's not a thriller, this could be one of the scariest beach reads imaginable this summer. That's because Sarah Stodola's journalistic look at beach resorts—their history, their impact, and how they've changed the world of luxury travel—pulls back the curtain on paradise and reveals some of the shocking truths behind the surf and sand.

Sisters in Resistance: How a German Spy, a Banker's Wife, and Mussolini's Daughter Outwitted the Nazis

Italy's Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, kept secret diaries during World War II, and these documents were key evidence used by the prosecution at the post-war Nuremberg Trials—but they almost didn't make it there. Ciano's wife (and Benito Mussolini's daughter), Edda, along with Hilde Beetz, a German spy, and Frances De Chollet, an "accidental spy," worked to make sure the diaries were published for use by the allies. A little-known history finally comes to light in Sisters in Resistance .

Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness (and Plants)

Whether you're actually tending a garden this summer or simply dreaming of one, this must-read book from Maria Failla (creator of the hit Bloom & Grow Radio podcast) shares not only sage advice for living with and caring for plants, but delves into the science behind what makes cohabitating with them so beneficial.

Rough Draft: A Memoir

“By the time I was two years old, I knew to yell ‘Story! Story!’ at the squawks of my parents’ police scanner. By four, I could hold a microphone and babble my way through a kiddie news report. By the time I was in high school, though, my parents had lost it all. Their marriage. Their careers. Their reputations,” MSNBC anchor Katy Tur writes in her memoir. In Rough Draft , she details her childhood as the daughter of journalist parents, and her career from local reporter to national correspondent.

Can't Look Away

This thriller from the talented author of Tell Me Lies (which is currently being developed into a series for Hulu) follows Molly, whose life in an affluent Connecticut town seems to offer everything she could want, but still somehow leaves her wanting. When a bolt of excitement comes care of a new-to-town friend, Molly's outlook improves—until it becomes clear that this newcomer has an agenda, and Molly's buried past is threatening to catch up with her and fast.

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The best new fiction of 2022 so far, from fantasy sequels to highly anticipated thrillers

When you buy through our links, Business Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more

We gathered the top-rated and best-selling fiction books of 2022 so far.
These picks include new historical fiction, romance, fantasy, and sci-fi books.
For more great books, check out the best books of 2022 so far , according to Goodreads.

Every year brings new and amazing books to shelves everywhere, but it can be overwhelming to sort through hundreds of titles to find a book that truly stands out from the rest. Fortunately, with reviews from readers, bookshops, and editors, the most memorable new titles still rise to the top.

To create this list of recommendations, we pulled readers' favorite new fiction books from a variety of sources including top-ranking titles on Goodreads , bestseller lists on Audible and Libro.fm , and books readers can't stop talking about on social media. From fantasy sequels to heart-pounding historical fiction, here is some of the best new fiction of 2022 so far.

The best fiction books of 2022 so far:

"black cake" by charmaine wilkerson.

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.81

Insightful, memorable, and masterfully written, " Black Cake " is a transportive and expansive novel that begins as Byron and Benny inherit a traditional Caribbean black cake and a voice recording in the wake of their mother's passing. In this story of heritage, memories, and history, the siblings must unravel their mother's story to create a new and deeper understanding of her, their family, and themselves.

"All My Rage" by Sabaa Tahir

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $12.99

Salahudin and Noor were more than best friends until a terrible fight destroyed their bond, leaving each of them to face their familial and personal challenges alone. As Sal tries to hold his family and their business together after his mother's passing and Noor attempts to avoid her uncle's wrath as she applies to college against his wishes, the two must decide the value of their friendship and what they need to move forward.

"Book Lovers" by Emily Henry

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $12.82

Emily Henry's latest beach-read romance follows Nora Stephens, an NYC literary agent whose own love life is far from perfect. When her sister, Libby, suggests a trip for just the two of them to a storybook-like town in North Carolina, Nora agrees in the hopes of becoming the heroine of her own story but almost immediately runs into Charlie Lastra, a brooding book editor — and her greatest rival.

"Violeta" by Isabel Allende

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $22.84

" Violeta " is an epic new historical fiction novel about Violeta del Valle, born in 1920 in South America to a family of sons. Told in the form of a letter, Violeta's life spans a century of extraordinary events, from personal heartbreak and great triumphs to the fight for women's rights and two terrible pandemics.

"True Biz" by Sara Nović

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $18.91

At the River Valley School for the Deaf, Charlie is a new transfer student, Austin is the school's "golden boy," and February is their headmistress, fighting to keep the school open while juggling personal challenges of her own. " True Biz " follows the students and the school as they are rocked by personal, political, and familial unrest over a tumultuous year that will change their lives forever.

"House of Sky and Breath" by Sarah J. Maas

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.74

" House of Sky and Breath " is the highly anticipated sequel to Sarah J. Maas' " House of Earth and Blood ," both of which are loved by readers for the spellbinding magic systems, their deep care for the characters, and the exhilarating, suspenseful plot that keeps them invested for 800 pages. In this sequel, Bryce and Hunt have saved Cresent City and are looking for a moment of peace but as the rebels slowly chip away at the Asteri's power, the two know they cannot stay silent while others are oppressed.

"Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $18.48

In this story set in 1960s California, Elizabeth Zott is a chemist whose male coworkers see her as little more than a woman in the way. When her career takes a sharp turn and she finds herself the star of a beloved American cooking show, people still aren't happy, as she not only takes a unique approach to cooking, but in many ways is teaching women to defy the status quo in this funny and feminist historical fiction read.

"How High We Go in the Dark" by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.99

As humanity is challenged with rebuilding after a climate plague reshapes life on Earth, this science fiction novel bends to follow linked narratives of those affected in a vast variety of ways, from a scientist searching for a cure to a painter and her granddaughter looking for a new home planet. Loved for its intricate and imitate connections between characters, themes, and stories, " How High We Go in the Dark " is a tale of compassion, resiliency, and hope.

"Daughter of the Moon Goddess" by Sue Lynn Tan

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $23.49

Inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess, Chang'e, " Daughter of the Moon Goddess " is about Xingyin, who grew up on the moon, unaware that she is being hidden from the Celestial Emperor until her magic reveals her existence and she's forced to flee her home and leave her mother behind. To save her mother, Xingyin disguises her identity, learns mastery and magic alongside the emperor's son, and sets off on a dangerous quest of magic, honor, and betrayal.

"Young Mungo" by Douglas Stuart

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $23.99

Born into different religions, Mungo and James should be sworn enemies yet find safety in each other as their close friendship blooms into love. When Mungo is sent on a fishing trip with two of his mother's friends from AA, darker intentions arise in this story of masculinity, queerness, division, and violence.

"This Time Tomorrow" by Emma Straub

Available for pre-order on Amazon and Bookshop , from $21.99

When Alice wakes up on the morning of her 40th birthday, she seems to have been transported back in time to 1996 to relive her 16th birthday. Though her father is ailing in the present day, she's reunited with her younger, full-of-life dad and, armed with decades of experience, relives the day with a new perspective, bringing new meaning to memories and leaving Alice wondering if she could — or should — change anything about that day.

"Reminders of Him" by Colleen Hoover

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.57

" Reminders of Him " is a Colleen Hoover story of redemption as Kenna Rowan returns to her town after a five-year prison sentence, hoping to reunite with her young daughter, though all those who knew her determinedly shut her out. Turning to the local bar owner, Ledger Ward, Kenna finds a remaining link to her daughter, but when the two form a deeper connection, romance brings greater risk and Kenna must find a way to fix the past in order to solidify a better future.

"Memphis" by Tara M. Stringfellow

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $18.28

During the summer of 1995, 10-year-old Joan moves with her mother and younger sister into their mother's family home in Memphis, fleeing their father's violence, though the home is marked by a history of violence all its own. In her grief, Joan begins to create portraits of the women in North Memphis and unravels a past, present, and future of matrilineal tradition, healing, and curses from the stories of those she encounters.

"Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St. John Mandel

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $16.25

Part time travel epic and part pandemic literature, " Sea of Tranquility " is a science fiction novel that spans centuries from an airship terminal in the Canadian wilderness in 1912 to a moon colony 300 years in the future to tell a story of humanity and the many ways we are impacted by a pandemic world. Unique, profound, and memorable, this new novel combines speculative and literary elements to take readers on a fast-paced journey.

"Four Treasures of the Sky" by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $18.69

Though Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for which she was named, everything changes when she's kidnapped and smuggled from China to America. " Four Treasures of the Sky " is a story of self-discovery, Chinese history and folklore, and the ways in which Daiyu had to continuously change herself to survive.

"The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea" by Axie Oh

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $16.99

In Mina's homeland, the people believe the Sea God curses their land with terrible storms and war so they sacrifice a beautiful maiden in the hopes their choice will one day be his "true bride" and end their suffering. When Shim Cheong, Mina's brother's beloved, is chosen as the sacrifice, Mina throws herself into the water in her place and is swept away to the Spirit Realm. There, she sets out to wake the Sea God and end her home's suffering once and for all.

"Brown Girls" by Daphne Palasi Andreades

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $16.31

In Queens, New York, young girls and women of color are growing up in the center of vibrant culture, learning to balance their immigrant heritage with the American world around them. " Brown Girls " reads like a literary poem dedicated to the young women who experience this unique crossroads as they make their own place in the world, a story that continues to resonate with many readers.

"Peach Blossom Spring" by Melissa Fu

Lily desperately wants to understand her family's heritage, but her father refuses to speak about his childhood and his story of fleeing his family home with his mother in 1938 as the Japanese army encroached on their land. " Peach Blossom Spring " is a powerful story of war, migration, and heritage that jumps across continents and centuries to convey the importance of telling our stories.

"Don't Cry for Me" by Daniel Black

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $22.48

As Jacob lays on his deathbed, he knows there are many truths he must share with his son, Isaac, though the two have not spoken in many years. Through letters, Jacob reveals ancestral stories, long-buried secrets, and hopeful explanations for his reaction to Isaac's being gay. " Don't Cry for Me " is an emotional historical fiction novel about reckoning, reconciliation, and healing.

"Take My Hand" by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $18.90

" Take My Hand " is a new historical fiction novel inspired by true events that begin with Civil Townsend in 1973 as she takes a job fresh out of nursing school at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic in Alabama. In her first week, she encounters 11- and 13-year-old sisters whose situation raises alarms for Civil. Decades later, Civil is ready to retire when history returns in this story of bravery, institutional racism and classism, and the ways Black communities have been targeted and attacked throughout history.

"The Diamond Eye" by Kate Quinn

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.87

Though Mila Pavlichenko's life in 1937 Ukraine revolves around her library job and her son, everything changes when Hilter invades and she's sent into war with a rifle, quickly becoming one of the deadliest snipers known to the Nazi regime. When her 300th kill makes national news, she's pulled from the war for a goodwill tour in America until an old enemy and new foe pull Mila into a battle deadlier than the war.

"Kaikeyi" by Vaishnavi Patel

Available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $21.99

" Kaikeyi " is a beautiful new retelling of "The Ramayana," an ancient Indian epic. In this retelling, Kaikeyi is raised in her father's kingdom, taught to revere and respect the gods yet never receives the help she needs. When Kaikeyi discovers the magic inside her, she transforms into a warrior and queen with the power to change the world for women until her past, destiny, and present collide and force her to weigh the consequences of resistance.

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Our critics pick their favorite new books for your summer reading list

Jeffrey Brown Jeffrey Brown

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Whether you’re on vacation at the beach or find yourself with a little more time for reading, summer is always a good time to pick up a new book. Jeffrey Brown has recommendations from two News Hour regulars for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

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Geoff Bennett:

Whether you're on vacation at the beach or find yourself with a little more time for reading, summer is always a good time to pick up a new book.

Jeffrey Brown gets recommendations now from two "NewsHour" regulars for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown:

And to talk about summer books and reading, I'm joined by Ann Patchett, author and owner of Parnassus Bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee. And Gilbert Cruz, he's the editor of The New York Times Book Review.

Thanks, both, for joining us.

Ann, you want to start with fiction?

Ann Patchett, Owner, Parnassus Books:

Sure thing.

I am very excited about "Sandwich" by Catherine Newman. If you want a book that has you from hello, this is the one. Family goes to the cape every summer for two weeks. They have kids in their 20s. They have elderly parents and they eat sandwiches. They are very near Sandwich, and they are the sandwich generation.

That's a real summer book, isn't it?

Ann Patchett:

Ah, it is the ultimate summer book.

And, also, if you're feeling a little stressed, get a copy of "Sipsworth" by Simon Van Booy. This one has been flying off the shelf. This is an elderly woman who's very isolated. She meets a mouse, and the mouse brings all of these wonderful people into her life. It sounds hokey. It's not. It is a really terrific book.

And for something a little darker, "Bear" by Julia Phillips, which has the whole fairy tale vibe. Two young sisters working so hard in a very tough existence on an island off the coast of Washington,it all changes when a bear comes to their neighborhood, and it drives the sisters apart.

Also want to give a quick shout-out to something that just came out in paperback, "Crook Manifesto," Colson Whitehead. Love this book so much. If you want some mystery, some cops and robbers, some corruption, some great writing.

Gilbert Cruz, what do you have for us in fiction?

Gilbert Cruz, Books Editor, The New York Times:

The first one is "Swan Song." Elin Hilderbrand, she is a writer who puts a book out every summer. They're all about Nantucket. They all have drama. They all have romance. And somehow I have found myself reading one book of hers a summer for the past decade.

I'm sort of — I have only been to Nantucket for two hours on, like, the coldest day that I can recall. So I have no idea what it's like to be there in the summer, but I sort of do because I have read a dozen Elin Hilderbrand books.

So I'm a big horror person. There's a book called "Horror Movie" by Paul Tremblay. And there's some people who save their scary stuff until October, until the fall. I'm not that person. I like it all year round. And I think there are many people like me.

This is about essentially an independent horror movie that was made years and years ago. A bunch of tragedies happened. It's become a cult film. And the only person left from the production has started to encounter some weird things. So that's "Horror Movie" by Paul Tremblay.

And then, finally, another genre book, a fantasy, "The Bright Sword" by Lev Grossman. If you have heard of Lev Grossman, it's because of his "Magicians" trilogy, which were a set of books that essentially imagined, what if Harry Potter, but with older people and cursing and all the stuff that older teenagers get into.

This new book imagines the days and the months after the death of King Arthur. So there have been many retellings of the King Arthur legend, books, movies, musicals. This one is sort of a sequel.

You went with all genre books for the summer.

OK, Ann, how about nonfiction?

Hanif Abdurraqib, "There's Always This Year," which is — "On Basketball and Ascension." This is a collection of essays about family and love and grief and fathers. But, most importantly, it's all woven together through the lens of basketball.

Hanif Abdurraqib is one of my favorite writers and just someone I learned from every time I read one of his books. Brilliant.

"My Black Country" by Alice Randall, which is a journey through country music's Black past, present, and future. Alice is a fiction writer and a scholar. This is the story of all the people who have been erased in country music's past, and she is restoring them into the landscape. It's a terrific book.

And "Consent" by Jill Ciment, a very slim little memoir. Jill Ciment was 16 years old when she first kissed her art teacher, who was 46. They got married and they stayed together until he died at 86. And it is her looking back on her life and thinking, it was a happy marriage, but, knowing what I know now, maybe there was something a little wrong about that.

And a great book that just came out in paperback that could be read as a companion piece, my favorite, "Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma" by Claire Dederer. You have got a book club, read these two together. Terrific.

Gilbert Cruz, what are your choices for nonfiction?

Gilbert Cruz:

Well, if I sort of went genre with my fiction choices, I'm also going to go a little pop culture with my nonfiction choices.

So the first book I'm going to talk about is "The Future Was Now" by Chris Nashawaty. This is — I love movies, and I think for a lot of people my age who love movies, the summer of 1982, if you care about science fiction and fantasy, stuff like that, was one of the biggest summers of all time. So it had "E.T.," "Poltergeist," "Blade Runner," "Tron," a "Mad Max" sequel, a "Star Trek" sequel.

And this is essentially a history of that summer, a history of those movies. So I'm looking forward to reading that one.

Another pop culture nonfiction book that's coming out later in June is called "Cue the Sun!" the invention of reality TV. This is by Emily Nussbaum. She's been a TV critic for many wonderful publications. And this is a history of modern reality TV. I don't watch reality TV. I never really have. And that means that I am out of the mainstream.

And so from "Cops," to "Survivor," to "The Bachelor," to "The Apprentice, to "Big Brother," to "Love Is Blind," these are some of the most popular shows of the past several decades. And Emily Nussbaum does an amazing job of sort of sketching that whole history in what they're billing as sort of the first comprehensive history of this very important genre.

Ann, have a bookstore. You have a lot of young readers and I know you wanted to give some choices for them.

Yes, I never want to miss a chance to plug some great kids books.

Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey, two of their classics have just come out in board books. So these are good for babies, for little kids. You can chew on them, "The Old Truck," "The Old Boat," beautiful, simple, terrific illustrations, great, clear story.

If you have a slightly older kid, absolutely, you want to buy a copy of "Ahoy!" by Sophie Blackall. This is a book about imaginative play and how you can have a summer adventure no matter where you are or what you have got to work with. I adore this book and everything Sophie does.

And America's favorite author for young people, Kate DiCamillo has a new novel out called "Ferris." It's about raccoons, chandeliers, S&H Green Stamps, grandmothers, love and happiness. It's a story about a happy family. Call me crazy, my favorite.

Ann Patchett and Gilbert Cruz, thanks very much.

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In his more than 30-year career with the News Hour, Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe. As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists. Among his signature works at the News Hour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with The New York Times.

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The 20 Best Books of Summer 2022

Our favorite books of the season delve into everything from biker bars to beaches, Hollywood to high school, young love to bad sex.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Remember the children’s summer reading program at your local library? Whether it trafficked in gold stars, free food, or toys from a treasure chest, no doubt you remember the swell of accomplishment you felt at each reading milestone ticked off your list. We’ve got some good news for you: summer reading programs aren’t just for kids. You can design your own summer reading program—and your own reward system, too.

Wondering where to begin? We’ve got twenty suggestions for you, all drawn from this summer’s blockbuster line-up of new literary releases. Our favorite books of the season delve into everything from biker bars to beaches, Hollywood to high school, young love to bad sex. Whether you’re into novels, short stories, memoirs, or nonfiction, there’s something here for every type of reader.

Not all of these books have hit shelves yet, but if you see something you like, pre-order it now and thank yourself later. Have it delivered to your little slice of summer paradise, and you’ll be rewarding yourself with new grown-up treats in no time.

Tracy Flick Can't Win, by Tom Perrotta

Nearly 25 years after Election was published, Perrotta's hyper-competent heroine returns. Now in her forties, Tracy Flick is ruminating on roads not taken: the #MeToo movement causes her to question a long-ago sexual encounter with a teacher, while caretaking responsibilities have dashed her law school dreams and led her back to Green Meadow High School as the beleaguered assistant principal. With her boss set to retire, Tracy seems like a shoe-in for the top job—but first, she’ll have to overcome the male stakeholders seeking to derail her ascension. Told with Perrotta’s piercing wit, wisdom, and exquisite insight into human folly, Tracy’s second act delivers acerbic insight about frustrated ambition.

Cult Classic, by Sloane Crosley

Crosley brings her prodigious gifts as a humorist to this crackling novel about Lola, a thirty-something with cold feet about her impending nuptials who keeps bumping into former flames. But as it turns out, it’s not coincidence behind these run-ins: Lola is patient zero in a wellness cult’s quest to offer romantic closure on demand. At once acerbic and poignant, Cult Classic ’s tour through heartbreaks past yields bittersweet truths about finding love by swipe. It’s as fine a treatise on modern romance as they come.

How You Get Famous: Ten Years of Drag Madness in Brooklyn, by Nicole Pasulka

Pasulka takes us tumbling down a glittery rabbit hole in this engrossing look at the last decade of Brooklyn ballroom culture. How You Get Famous introduces readers to electric performers like Merrie Cherry, who overcame a stroke to continue her drag career; Aja, a multiple-time contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race ; and Sasha Velour, who made waves with her bald head. Through this electric constellation of performers, Pasulka paints a vivid portrait of a singular subculture: joyful and scrappy, it’s gone on to galvanize a community and inspire a wider cultural movement.

Nuclear Family, by Joseph Han

In this electric debut novel, we meet the Cho family: Mr. and Mrs. Cho run a popular Korean plate lunch restaurant in Hawai'i, where they dream of growing the business into a franchise their adult children, Grace and Jacob, will someday inherit. But trouble is brewing on the other side of the Pacific: while teaching English in South Korea, Jacob makes international headlines when he’s arrested for attempting to cross the Demilitarized Zone. Back in Hawai'i, gossip threatens to sink the family’s fortunes, but the truth is stranger than anyone can imagine: Jacob was possessed by the ghost of his grandfather, who’s desperate to find the family he once abandoned in North Korea. Through a multitude of hilarious and heartbreaking perspectives, Han tells a charged story about identity, migration, and borders.

Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me, by Ada Calhoun

When Calhoun once went looking for a childhood toy, she stumbled upon a far greater treasure: dusty cassette tapes of interviews recorded by her father, art critic Peter Schjeldahl, who started but never completed a biography of the gone-too-soon poet Frank O’Hara. As a lifelong O’Hara fan, Calhoun gleefully committed to finishing what Schjeldahl started, but the task proved to be anything but easy. Like her father before her, Calhoun was stonewalled by Maureen O’Hara, the poet’s prickly sister and executor; the project also revealed the faultlines in her complicated bond with Schjeldahl, whom she longs to impress. In this heartfelt memoir, Calhoun recounts how going in search of O’Hara revealed so much more—namely, the painful complexities of parents, children, art, and ambition.

Lapvona, by Otessa Moshfegh

Five novels into her prolific and varied career, Moshfegh continues to surprise, delight, and disgust. Her latest madcap outing finds us in the medieval fiefdom of Lapvona, where plague ravages the population, drought chokes the fields, and cruel Lord Villiam controls the village larder as his subjects starve. Enter Marek, a thirteen-year-old boy questioning his belief in God amid all this misery, who comes under the tutelage of Lord Villiam’s lessons about “this stupid life.” Haunting, absurd, and full of trademark Moshfeghian gross-outs, Lapvona is a trenchant allegory for our own pandemic-riddled world of theocracy and corruption.

The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach, by Sarah Stodola

Quick—picture your perfect vacation. Does it involve staying at a resort and sipping a Mai Tai on the beach? We’re not out to yuck anyone’s yum, but beachgoers everywhere need to read this gripping account about the dark side of paradise. In The Last Resort , Stodola investigates the origins of beach culture, revealing that our understanding of the beach as paradise is actually a modern concept; it wasn’t until the 18th century that the seaside wellness craze changed our views about the ocean, once seen as a fearsome foe. Today, beach travel has become de rigueur, but it carries heavy costs, as it strangles local economies, threatens natural resources, and widens social inequality. After reading The Last Resort , you’ll never look at an all-inclusive vacation quite the same way.

The Angel of Rome, by Jess Walter

One of our finest practitioners of the short story form returns with an ebullient second collection. Fans of Walter’s seminal Beautiful Ruins will fall hard for the swoony title story, in which a Nebraska co-ed studying Latin in Rome encounters the Italian bombshell of his teenage dreams. In another darkly comedic standout, a middle-aged divorcée goes to desperate lengths to find a home for his aging father, a “horny alcoholic toddler” unfit for traditional assisted living. Elsewhere, a woman suffering from cancer seeks out her stoner ex—the only person who can assuage her fear of dying. Wise, poignant, and generous of spirit, these stories remind us that Walter is a national treasure.

Night of the Living Rez, by Morgan Talty

An astounding new voice arrives in this debut collection of twelve linked stories, all set in the Panawahpskek (Penobscot) Nation of Maine. In one standout story, two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow , stage a heist at the tribal museum; in another, a grandmother suffering from dementia mistakes her grandson for her dead brother, believing that he’s come back to life. Talty’s accomplished stories turn an unflinching eye on the hardships of life in this community, like drug addiction and economic instability, while also capturing the scrappy growing pains of adolescence. Night of the Living Rez is proof that Talty is an important new writer to watch.

Harry Sylvester Bird, by Chinelo Okparanta

The title character of Okparanta’s gutsy new novel is a white teenager born to xenophobic parents, but everything changes for young Harry Sylvester Bird on a safari in Tanzania, when he develops an enduring fascination with Blackness. Harry soon escapes to college in Manhattan and begins to identify as Black, joining a “Transracial-Anon” support group and longing for “racial reassignment.” When he falls in love with Maryam, a student from Nigeria, a study-abroad trip to Ghana’s Gold Coast puts both their romance and his identity to the test. Outlandish and arresting, Harry’s miseducation is a deft satire of prejudice and allyship.

Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence, by Ken Auletta

Twenty years ago, Ken Auletta wrote a definitive New Yorker profile of Harvey Weinsten, which exposed the movie mogul as a violent and volatile person. But one story remained frustratingly ungraspable: though it was rumored that Weinstein was a sexual abuser, none of his victims would go on the record. Award-winning journalists including Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantor, and Ronan Farrow would later draw on Auletta’s reporting in their quests to expose the truth about Weinstein. Now, with his erstwhile subject behind bars, Auletta is revisiting him anew—and paying dogged attention to the systems that allowed him to operate unchecked. From the executives who abetted him to the brother who covered his tracks, Weinstein didn’t act in a vacuum, Auletta reveals—rather, he was enabled at nearly every turn. Exhaustively reported and utterly enraging, Hollywood Ending is a damning look at Hollywood’s history of corruption and complicity.

Pretty Baby, by Chris Belcher

As a financially strapped PhD student in Los Angeles, Belcher fell into an unusual side hustle: she began working as a pro-domme, fulfilling the fantasies of male clients aroused by feelings of shame and weakness. Belcher found unique power in the work as a queer woman: “My clientele wanted a woman who would never want them in return, and at that, I excelled,” she writes. But as she illuminates in this discerning memoir, the work had its drawbacks: namely, the brutality and blackmail of men. In a lucid examination of power, sexuality, and class, Belcher tells a gripping story about the performance of identity, inside and outside of the dungeon.

The Great Man Theory, by Teddy Wayne

Divorced, demoted, and living with his mother, Paul is having a rough year. Downgraded from lecturer to adjunct, he scribbles away at a grand theory of the universe titled The Luddite Manifesto , but struggles to improve his reduced circumstances. Soon he’s driving for a rideshare company and attempting to make good with his tweenage daughter, all while his outrage about our abhorrent orange president festers. Just when Paul seems to hit rock bottom, another trap door opens, leading the novel to a shocking crescendo of pent-up rage. Wise and grimly funny, Wayne’s dyspeptic satire of the Trump years paints a vivid portrait of male misery.

Bloomsbury Publishing Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional, by Isaac Fitzgerald

In this bleeding heart memoir, Fitzgerald peels back the layers of his extraordinary life. Dirtbag, Massachusetts opens with his hardscrabble childhood in a dysfunctional Catholic family, then spins out into the decades of jobs and identities that followed. From bartending at a biker bar to smuggling medical supplies to starring in porn films, it’s all led him to here and now: he’s still a work in progress, but gradually, he’s arriving at profound realizations about masculinity, family, and selfhood. Dirtbag, Massachusetts is the best of what memoir can accomplish: blisteringly honest and vulnerable, it pulls no punches on the path to truth, but always finds the capacity for grace and joy. “To any young men out there who aren’t too far gone,” Fitzgerald writes, “I say you’re not done becoming yourself.”

Honey & Spice, by Bolu Babalola

If you fell for Love in Color , Babalola’s sensuous retelling of ancient love stories from around the world, then her sophomore outing won’t disappoint. Ambitious college sophomore Kiki Banjo has no time for the mediocre guys she dubs “wastemen,” but before too long, she meets her match in Malakai Korede, the transfer student who becomes her collaborator at the college radio station. A fake romance intended to promote their professional projects soon gives way to real feelings, but can Kiki move beyond the careful walls she’s constructed around her heart? Clever, confident Kiki is a romantic heroine for the ages, while the witty repartée and pop culture passion between these young lovers make for a vivacious romp.

The Last White Man, by Mohsin Hamid

This extraordinary novel opens with a Kafkaesque shock: Anders, a young white man, awakens to discover that he has “turned a deep and undeniable brown.” One by one, the rest of the world follows suit; as time passes, each person loses their “memories of whiteness,” leading to a restructuring of civilization as we know it. When whiteness is stripped away, along with all of its privileges and structures, what remains? In this provocative fable about race and social justice, Hamid offers a hopeful tale of transformation within and without.

Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution, by Nona Willis Aronowitz

When Teen Vogue ’s sex columnist decided to end her marriage at 32 years old, chief among her complaints was “bad sex.” Newly divorced, Aronowitz went in search of good sex, but along the way, she discovered thorny truths about “the problem that has no name”—that despite the advances of feminism and the sexual revolution, true sexual freedom remains out of reach. Cultural criticism, memoir, and social history collide in Aronowitz’s no-nonsense investigation of all that ails young lovers, like questions about desire, consent, and patriarchy. It’s a revealing read bound to expand your thinking.

Perish, by LaToya Watkins

In this beautifully wrought debut novel, Watkins chronicles multiple generations of the Turner family, all gathered at the bedside of Helen Jean, their dying matriarch. Helen Jean’s choices have rippled across the generations, irrevocably shaping the lives of descendants like Julie, who resents how Helen Jean once controlled her emotional weather, and Jan, who yearns to leave their troubled Texas town far behind her. Perish offers a moving look into Black communities, bringing complexity and nuance to this story of intergenerational trauma and the toll it takes on the human spirit. But for all the secrets, resentments, and bitterness here, Watkins has generosity of spirit enough to entertain the possibility of forgiveness; miraculous and moving, light glimmers at the edges of this wise novel.

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, by James Hannaham

Hannaham’s buoyant sophomore novel introduces us to the unforgettable Carlotta Mercedes, an Afro-Latinx trans woman released from a men’s prison after serving two decades. Returning home to Brooklyn, she encounters a gentrified city she doesn’t recognize, as well as a host of new stressors; life on the outside soon involves an unforgiving parole process and a family that struggles to recognize her transition. Over the course of one zany Fourth of July weekend, Carlotta descends into Brooklyn’s roiling underbelly on a quest to stand in her truth. Angry, saucy, and joyful, Carlotta is a true survivor—one whose story shines a disinfecting light on the injustices of our world.

Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis, by Beth Macy

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Ronan Farrow, Jia Tolentino, and other New Yorker writers on the classic books that changed their lives.

A man in a knight’s suit of armor sits on a horse and overlooks rolling hills below.

Don Quixote

A few weeks into my freshman year of college, I received in the mail a Penguin Classics paperback copy of “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes . It had been sent to me by my father. This was weird, because I couldn’t picture him in a mall—there were two main bookstores in my home town and both were in the mall—nor at the post office, so how the story of a minor noble imagining impossible adventures made its way to me was itself impossible to imagine. I set the book aside as a curiosity. A few weeks after that, my impractical and dreamy father died of a heart attack. The font of that copy of “Don Quixote” was tiny as footnotes or as asterisked medical warnings, and this augmented my impression of the book as a site of necessary veiled knowledge, and of hopeful mystery. The first time I finished the book, I felt, above all, that I had spent so much time with these characters, and now it was over, and I would miss them very much.

As it turned out, the self-proclaimed knight errant Don Quixote and his servant Sancho Panza aren’t characters one misses—they are always around. Even if you’ve never read the book , you recognize them on street corners, in line at grocery stores, and even in history. When I was eighteen, it seemed obvious to me that Don Quixote, charismatic and unfettered by ordinary reality, was a hero, and that it was essential to see the world not as it is but as it ought to be.

Later, it seemed equally obvious to me that Quixote—who gets out of paying what he owes, who is unwaveringly unaware of the damage he so often causes to people he thinks he is saving, who envisions a world in which he is superior to most everyone else—was an incidental monster of sorts, even if a tender and appealing one. Sancho’s advice, so often mocked, is, at times, really pretty wise; he receives more unjust blows than his master; and, when pressed, he can tell a credibly incredible story as well as the best of them; Sancho was the unrecognized hero.

But it was so sad when Don Quixote renounces his delusions.

And so on . . .

I’ve needed the sometimes irritating companionship of Cervantes’s imagined men over the years; they mumble about how certainty is (obviously) for fools, and enchantment is ubiquitous, and that one shouldn’t place too much value on how things end.

— Rivka Galchen

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A man stands nose-to-nose with a dog who has a clock on his side.

The Phantom Tollbooth

I don’t believe in spirit animals, but, if forced to choose one, I would name the ugly buzzard that was, for probably too much of my childhood, my favorite character in fiction. The Everpresent Wordsnatcher is “a large, unkempt, and exceedingly soiled bird who looked more like a dirty floor mop than anything else,” as described by Norton Juster in “The Phantom Tollbooth,” his magnificently imagined 1961 novel about the extraordinary adventures of an ordinary boy named Milo. During a particularly dangerous stretch of his journey, Milo suggests that he and his fellow-travellers pause until morning. “They’ll be mourning for you soon enough,” the Wordsnatcher butts in, kicking off a malicious marathon of wordplay that tickled and inspired my fourth-grade brain. The character is many obnoxious things—a pathological interrupter, a hygiene nightmare—but it is also an inveterate punster, and for that it still gets the freest of passes from me.

Like millions of other fans, I have read and reread Juster’s classic—the acknowledged “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” of its era—more times than I can remember, marvelling at the author’s delirious sense of play. It was the book I checked out from the library more times than any other; the book that it always pained me to finish, in much the same way that it pained Milo to conclude his journey; and the book that I purchased a few years ago in a handsome Leonard S. Marcus-annotated 2011 hardcover edition, telling myself that my own two children would read it someday, though likely not until after I’d plowed through it a few more times myself. The puns might be for the birds, but truly, they’re for all of us.

— Justin Chang

A scrapbook collage of papers, including one photo of a mountainous terrain with a lake.

In the Freud Archives

When I worked at The Cut, there was a genre of news item we referred to as “niche drama”: an Instagram scrapbooking community riven by plagiarism accusations, a scandal over snacks at a hippie preschool—that sort of thing. Such stories offered the voyeuristic pleasure of entering insular worlds, encountering their often mystifying behavioral codes and meeting the eccentrics who populated them.

“In the Freud Archives,” by Janet Malcolm , is niche drama elevated to art. First published as a book in 1984 (and including previous reporting for this magazine ), it recounts a tale of social and intellectual beef among Freud scholars and psychoanalysts. I had come to Malcolm’s work via my college interest in photography; her first book, “Diana and Nikon,” collects her early writing on that subject. I did not read “In the Freud Archives” until a few years after graduation, but in the time since then, whenever I’m reporting, it’s never been far from my mind. For one thing, that’s because the book is so good: Malcolm’s ability to penetrate the world of psychoanalysis, her close reading of its texts, and her deftly rendered character studies combine to create something that’s engrossing and (quietly) very funny. But I also think of “In the Freud Archives” so often because it’s a cautionary tale. After its publication, one of Malcolm’s subjects—the loudmouth upstart scholar Jeffrey Masson—sued for defamation.

His case ultimately hinged on five quotations that Malcolm didn’t have on tape, three of which she’d taken down in a notebook that she later misplaced. Every time my voice-recorder app freezes, every time a notebook isn’t where I thought I left it, my mind goes to “In the Freud Archives.” This is, by any rational standard, insane: I should be so lucky to get quotes juicy enough that someone would bother suing over them. (One of Malcolm’s disputed passages had Masson describing himself as an “intellectual gigolo.”) But, more than the actual fear of legal trouble, what the book represents for me is an encapsulation of Malcolm’s great themes: the inevitable perils of trying to understand and represent other people, and the power struggles intrinsic to such fields as psychoanalysis or journalism. It’s a reminder to only do work you’d be willing to defend under oath.

— Molly Fischer

An illustration of a field with a swirling tornado in the background.

My first encounter with Cormac McCarthy was “Suttree,” his fourth novel and, now that I’ve read most of the rest of them, my favorite. This took place about a decade after it was published. I was a junior in college, and one of my roommates, an athlete who’d turned book-serious after a year off, was reading the Vintage Contemporaries edition. He made a notecard for each fancy word, with the definition on the back. Sometimes, when we were all hanging out, just being idiots, he’d run through them for effect. “Rictus.” “Flitch.” “Incruent.” “Littoral.” “Hortatory.” “Alembics.” “Anthroparians.” “Grumous.” “Cimmerians.” “Cuspidine.”

When it was my turn with the paperback that summer, I girded for some heavy going. I was entering a phase of favoring what you, or at least I, might call hard books. Joyce, Pynchon, Barth. Who can say where the pretentiousness yielded to honest enthusiasm, but it did. Anyway, “Suttree,” being a Cormac creation, had its share of elaborate sentences and possibly highfalutin metaphysics, to which I was especially susceptible at that time and may be less so now, but what really grabbed me (as it has many others—not saying I’m alone here) was the lowdown humor—the bar talk, the greasy characters, and misbegotten capers. If I’d been a notecard kind of guy, I might have kept a log just of the greetings. “ What say Sut.” “Look what’s loose.” “How’s your hammer hangin?”

Cornelius Suttree is a taciturn and, in some way, broken man in Knoxville, who’s just out of jail and down on his luck. He has turned away from his wealthy upbringing, and his wife and child, to live in a houseboat and make a go of netting catfish and carp in the Tennessee River. The novel is episodic, with a tricky structure and a shambling kind of plot. I was especially smitten right off the hop by the dialogue, which, if I can breezily assess an entire body of work, a year after the author’s death , may really be the most exquisite thing about it, notwithstanding the grumous alembics and flitchy rictuses.

You aint goin to believe this.

Knowin you for a born liar I most probably wont.

Somebody has been fuckin my watermelons.

I said somebody has been . . .

No. No. Hell no.

The following year, for my senior thesis, I tried to write a novel, in which a broken-in-some-way young protagonist holes up in a boathouse and hauls lobster traps and runs into trouble with some rough characters from City Island. The teacher who graded it, the writer Russell Banks , whom we also lost last year, deemed the prose “pedestrian.” One didn’t need a notecard to understand that. Or remember it.

— Nick Paumgarten

Books & Fiction

Book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature, twice a week.

Two men wearing cowboy hats on horseback herd cows.

Lonesome Dove

Last year, I found myself with an opportunity that was, in the context of my season of life, more precious than diamonds: I was pregnant, with a two-year-old, and was packing up my apartment to move, two weeks before my due date; glimmering before me was a work trip to Thailand, where e-mails sent in New York during the day would not reach me during my waking hours. Most important, I had forty-eight hours that I could spend completely alone, doing whatever I wanted, before I had to return home. The No. 1 thing I wanted to do was be of no use whatsoever, and the No. 2 thing I wanted to do was read. I manically and desperately solicited book suggestions from friends and strangers. I needed the perfect novel, I told them; I needed something that would transport me mentally the way I was transporting myself physically, that would evacuate me away from hyperfunctional bourgeois domesticity in 2023 Brooklyn. I wanted total surrender, sensory absorption, uncontrollable emotional attachment—a reality within the book which superseded anything around me. In the midst of so much real and incipient parenting, I wanted to read like I was a child.

Despite maintaining a mile-long mental roster of books that I want to read and haven’t, I wasn’t sure how many books out there were left that would do this to me. Then a friend recommended Larry McMurtry ’s “Lonesome Dove.” I’d neglected McMurtry; having grown up in Texas, I’d felt, incorrectly, that I’d somehow always been reading him. I fell into the novel the way a stone disappears down a well. A journey of former Texas Rangers north from the Mexico border to Montana, a grand quest that unstitches its own mythology with every line, the book had me spellbound, obsessed with the characters, who felt realer to me than my own self: Call and Gus, bristlingly human and noble because they aren’t; brilliant Deets, scrappy Janey, magnificent Clara. I gasped and sobbed and clutched the book when it was over. I was so thankful for the reminder that reading can still be like this, that the realm of the unread always holds, somewhere, the exact thing I’m looking for, whatever it is.

— Jia Tolentino

My Life as a Body

When I was asked to contribute an entry about a book that has influenced me, my first thought was to reach for something like Henry James ’s “The Portrait of a Lady,” or maybe Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Line of Beauty.” These selections would have been sincere: “Portrait” was one of the first books to teach me how content and form can reflect and bolster each other in a novel; “Beauty” gave me a sense of literature’s unparalleled ability to portray how simultaneously awful and alluring the recent past can be. Still, when I pondered it a beat longer, I realized that I had to be fully honest here: if we were talking about a book that has truly affected me deeply, the only real choice was one by Norma Klein.

Klein, a New York native who died suddenly in 1989, when she was only fifty, published more than two dozen novels in her relatively brief career, many of which were aimed at a young-adult readership. In the manner of the Y.A. genre, her writing often features teen protagonists who are going through some kind of life crisis—a breakup, a friendship conflict, parental divorce or injury—but to think about her books as plot-based would be to sell them short. What most distinguishes her novels, instead, is their realistic, almost meandering quality, as if capturing the texture of life itself.

Like the work of her more well-known friend and fellow-novelist Judy Blume, some of Klein’s writing has been banned for its frank treatment of teen sexuality. When I was a young reader, this element of titillation was likely the first thing that led me to sneak her books from my older sister’s shelf and read them in secret, but I don’t think titillation was Klein’s aim. What I’m guessing she wanted was to present her young protagonists as fully and sensitively rendered subjects—sexual, yes, but also psychological and intellectual.

It’s hard to pick just one, but if I were to start with Klein I’d maybe choose “My Life as a Body” (1987), which, like many of her novels, takes place on New York’s Upper West Side, and as such has the flavor of peak-era Woody Allen (in a good way). Augie Lloyd is a tall, awkward, and brilliant high-school senior who is certain she’s just “a neuter, a brain, a weed,” and not made for sex or love. This changes when she is asked to tutor Sam Feldman, a new kid in her class who finds himself in a wheelchair after a devastating car accident, and the two begin an affair. All of this might sound overwrought and maudlin, but I promise you it’s not. It’s funny, sympathetic, and very good at depicting the disappointments and excitements of high-school sex, as Augie discovers that living a life of the mind doesn’t preclude living a life of the body. Also, don’t let the Y.A. designation fool you: this book is a great read for everyone. In fact, someone should really reissue it. McNally Editions or NYRB Classics, write me?

— Naomi Fry

Landscape for a Good Woman

In graduate school, I remember hearing a story about a young scholar who was told that they wrote “too well” for serious academic work. Probably apocryphal, but the point of this cautionary anecdote was that questions of style, wit, or form were less important than the substance of our insight. Yet I’ve always been drawn to scholars who toy with expectations for scholarly writing, offering hybrid models that toggle between soft intimacy and sober detachment, and few books have dazzled me like Carolyn Kay Steedman’s “Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives,” originally published in 1986. Steedman is a historian specializing in labor and class; her book is a bracing, careful depiction of everyday life on the social fringes of twentieth-century England. But she vividly embodies this experience by sharing stories, some drawn from her mother’s upbringing in the nineteen-twenties, others recalled from her own childhood in the fifties. Steedman reads her mother’s sensibility (and her own, austere, childhood horizons) through critical, historical lenses that neither of them comprehended at the time. They were just trying to survive the world outside their door, as well as one another. It’s not an admiring or sympathetic view of her mother—some of it is quite withering—but she writes movingly of the structures and forces that made her who she was, reckoning with how the cascading disappointments of her mother’s life found shape in a political orientation steeped in bitter resentment. “She lived alone, she died alone,” Steedman writes, “a working-class life, a working-class death.”

An old building in New York City with an entrance to an M.T.A. station outside.

The Puttermesser Papers

“Read with the mind-set of a carpenter looking at trees,” Terry Pratchett once wrote, and before I set about the carpentry of writing, with the dawning freakout of each new deadline, one of the books I return to most often is Cynthia Ozick ’s “The Puttermesser Papers.” The book, a kind of urban picaresque following a sardonic, hyper-intellectual New York lawyer through her career, violent demise, and even afterlife, is the product of an astoundingly ambitious and patient creative process. It was initially published episodically, including in The New Yorker , over the course of two decades, with the main character aging alongside Ozick herself. The result is a wild delight: a work of magical-realist, jet-black comedy, steeped in Jewish mysticism, starring one of New York’s great literary heroines, and rendered in dazzling, lapidary prose.

Soon after we meet Ruth Puttermesser (the name, Ozick tells us, is meant to evoke the German for “butter knife”), she resigns from a white-shoe law firm, where her gender and Jewishness furnish a deadpan view of the blueblood leadership’s politely veiled prejudices (“They were benevolent because benevolence was theirs to dispense,” Ozick writes), and takes a new role at the New York City Department of Receipts and Disbursements, in the bowels of a Kafkaesque sendup of city government. Puttermesser is insatiably, stubbornly intellectual: a woman, from her school years, “looking to solve something, she did not know what.” The character’s vision of Heaven evokes Borges’s Library of Babel, a space for infinite reading where she yearns to study “Roman law, the more arcane varieties of higher mathematics, the nuclear composition of the stars, what happened to the Monophysites, Chinese history, Russian, and Icelandic.” (The actual heaven she ultimately enters is, in keeping with the book’s acid sensibility, less idyllic.)

Puttermesser, and the book, serve as a eulogy for a lost strain of deep knowledge and thoughtful discourse. Ozick’s lament for the waning space afforded to big, thorough thinkers feels surprisingly timely in the era of TikTok . Nobody particularly wants Puttermesser’s naked intellectualism, nor her knowledge of the world and her roots in it: not her married lover, who walks out on her after she chooses Plato over sex, and not her dysfunctional colleagues in city government. In a dazed state of pique, she performs an ancient Hebrew ritual and creates a golem, who serves as both daughter and life coach, turning the book, briefly, into a madcap buddy comedy, and culminating in an unhinged plotline in which Puttermesser, relying on the golem’s designs, becomes mayor of an idealized, reformed New York.

This, and a succession of other capers, end in disillusionment. The golem becomes unsustainably horny, bedding much of, and ultimately bringing down, Puttermesser’s administration; Puttermesser’s one deep romantic relationship comes undone as the pair becomes enmeshed in an unhealthy pantomime of the love life of George Eliot ; a Russian émigré cousin turns out to be no martyr but a crass hustler. Ozick is fixated on the encroachment of imposters and charlatans. These figures, and others representing societal decline—Puttermesser is ultimately violently murdered—suggest a darkly current world view, in which truth is in short supply and justice is ephemeral. (“Do and undo, till nothing’s true,” Ozick writes, in an epigraph that she presents as a translated ancient proverb but which is, in a sly meta-joke, actually invented.)

Ozick, who is ninety-six, is a singular voice as both an essayist and novelist, and often unsung in discussions of the male-dominated tradition of great American writers, despite her influence. David Foster Wallace , among others, cited her as an inspiration; his annotated copy of “The Puttermesser Papers” included a studied list of Ozick’s ornate word choices: “pullulating,” “pleonasm,” “telluric”! Ozick’s legacy, always obscured by sexism, has been further complicated by ugly, marginalizing statements about the Palestinian people made in the early aughts. That context, especially against the backdrop of the present agony of Palestinians , creates painful dissonance with her work’s wounded humanism—and, ironically, underscores the urgent need for it. (“ ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ is a glorious, civilizing, unifying sentence, an exhortation of consummate moral beauty, difficult of performance, difficult in performance,” she conceded, in one of her essays.)

“The Puttermesser Papers” is not glib. Its nihilism is juxtaposed with an aching belief in the power and beauty of the human mind, which Ozick seems to find all the more potent in the face of humanity’s inevitable downfalls. The impermanence of life and pleasure “is the heart and soul of everything in our lives. It makes ambition. It makes tragedy. It makes comedy,” Ozick said, in a 1997 interview about the book. “That is why mortality dominates our lives and also makes us write. Because we’re writing against that doom.”

— Ronan Farrow

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The Best Fiction Books » New Literary Fiction

Notable new novels of summer 2024, recommended by cal flyn.

Another year, another summer stretching out before us... another reading dilemma? Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn offers a succinct round-up of the novels that should be on your radar in the summer of 2024: highly anticipated works of fiction from well-known literary figures and 'breakout' books that have quickly amassed significant critical attention – to guide you on your way.

Parade: A Novel by Rachel Cusk

Long Island Compromise: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Caledonian Road: A Novel by Andrew O'Hagan

All Fours: A Novel by Miranda July

The Hypocrite: A Novel by Jo Hamya

1 Parade: A Novel by Rachel Cusk

2 long island compromise: a novel by taffy brodesser-akner, 3 caledonian road: a novel by andrew o'hagan, 4 all fours: a novel by miranda july, 5 the hypocrite: a novel by jo hamya.

W hat are the novels everyone is talking about in summer 2024?

We also recently spoke to Monica Ali, chair of this year’s jury, about the six novels shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction . Of the winning book, V. V. Ganeshananthan’s Sri Lankan civil war story Brotherless Night , she said: “Once you’ve read this book, you’re never going to forget it. It’s absolutely searing, deeply moving… an utterly compelling piece of storytelling.” One of the shortlisted novels, Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost — which centres on an actor joining a production of Hamlet in the West Bank—was also recently announced the winner of the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award for second novels.

Let me kick off with Rachel Cusk’s latest offering, Parade. Every new novel by Cusk is a major literary event, although her experiments with form—and her unpicking of what she has previously called the “ underpinnings ” of narrative—are often initially received with bafflement . Parade is an extended exploration of identity in which multiple individuals, all identified as ‘G’, muse on the creation of art.

Slowly, Cusk has been stripping away the layers of the novel—starting with plot, now character—to reveal its fundamental mechanisms. And so, though Parade is far from a light beach read to throw in your carry-on case as an afterthought, it’s certainly a notable new novel that pushes at the very bounds of what it means to write fiction. (It feels, reflects LitHub , “so much like the next stage in a complex journey the author has been undertaking for decades now.”)

Sounds intimidating. Anything a little cheerier?

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s hit first novel, Fleishman Is In Trouble , was a sprawling, satirical account of the divorce of two Manhattan urbanites. It’s smart, great fun, and was adapted (by Brodesser-Akner) into an Emmy-nominated television series starring Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg.

All this is to say that her second novel, Long Island Compromise , has been hotly anticipated on both sides of the Atlantic. It unpicks the long lasting consequences of the 1980s kidnapping of a wealthy businessman, as well as—more broadly—the story of his Jewish-American family and their pursuit of financial and social success. “The family epic is my favorite kind of novel, and, as a magazine writer I have learned there is nothing more revelatory of a person than where that person is from,” Brodesser-Akner told Vanity Fair . “That idea, plus my fascination with Long Island culture—which to me has always been equal parts romantic, criminal and tragic—gave birth to the family at the center of the book, the Fletchers—the kind of family that is wealthy enough for their money to have bought them security, but also to leave them in danger.”

Great, I love a good, long novel I can get my teeth into. Any other big books you would recommend for my summer vacation read?

Well, it feels like all of London is talking about Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road . (All of England, apparently, according to the Washington Post . ) It is, as the Guardian describes it , a “state of the nation burlesque” in the Dickensian mould, that is, a social novel with an ensemble cast: “a bold, bullish tale of hubris and corruption, a book simultaneously dazzled and disgusted by the city it depicts.”

It stars the celebrity art historian Campbell Flynn, who has risen swiftly through the social ranks thanks to his great intellect and aristocratic wife (and who bears, one might note, some superficial resemblances to the author himself, the Glasgow-born writer and LRB editor-at-large who has long been a stalwart of the London literati). Flynn is overdue a fall, it seems, and on his way down we meet a great many of his near-neighbours on the Caledonian Road , an Islington street that spans every social class along its mile-and-a-half extent.

Sounds great. What other summer 2024 novels have caught your eye?

I mentioned the filmmaker Miranda July’s exuberant, autofictional All Fours as a forthcoming title in my spring highlights . Well, it’s now out and is shaping up to be something of a literary phenomenon. It’s a midlife crisis novel ( The New York Times reviewer hailed it “the first great perimenopause novel”) in which the protagonist, a married artist in her forties, upends her life, departs on a cross-country road trip, but instead holes up in a roadside motel barely 20 miles from home where she embarks on an affair with a much younger man.

Soon the relationship is over, but she keeps the motel room where she interviews friends and loved ones about relationships and ageing. “The narrator of All Fours is in the process of losing her ability to carry a child,” explains Vox. “She fears she is losing her ability to attract men. She looks those problems straight in the face. Then she explodes them open with effervescent joy.”

Interesting. And I think you also wanted to mention Jo Hamya’s The Hypocrite ?

Thank you, yes. This one jumped out at me: it centres on the relationship between a noted novelist and his playwright daughter, as she presents a new drama written by her about the period they spent together in Sicily a decade earlier. “I had a clear image suddenly of a man in a theatre, watching a play of his life,” says Hamya of the sudden burst of inspiration that became this book, “and I knew that he would disagree with everything that was happening on stage, but he couldn’t leave. I thought about it for hours that night because it was a really interesting formal challenge. Could I write something where both parties were wrong and they were both utterly sympathetic, but the reader would still—especially if they spend time on the internet—feel conscious of wanting to take sides?”

It is, essentially, an extended study of ethical grey areas and the manner by which the sense of moral correctness shifts from generation to generation. The Hypocrite, says the i , “confirms [Hamya] as a fine chronicler of modern anxieties. I have rarely underlined so many passages in a book.” Sounds good to me. I think we could all do with a little less moral certainty in life.

Any other honorable mentions, while we’re talking about the notable new novels of summer 2024?

If you’re at all interested in sci-fi, you’ll certainly want to know about the collaboration between Adrian Tchaikowsky ( Children of Time , Alien Clay ) and the Hollywood star (and graphic novelist!) Keanu Reeves. Their first novel together, The Book of Elsewhere , is based on Reeves’ popular BRZRKR series.

Hot on the heels of the hit Netflix adaptation of his high-concept romance One Day , David Nicholls recently released You Are Here , a witty and tender love story about two jaded divorcees hiking across the north of England.

Kevin Barry ( Night Boat to Tangier ) will publish The Heart in Winter , a historical novel set in 1890s Montana; two-time Booker finalist Chigozie Obioma will publish a mystical Biafran war novel, The Road to the Country ; and the fantasy author and previous Five Books interviewee Lev Grossman will publish The Bright Sword , a highly anticipated follow-up to his The Magicians trilogy.

What new novels are you looking forward to reading in summer 2024? Let us know: get in touch via social media.

June 25, 2024

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

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©Nancy Macdonald

Cal Flyn is a writer, journalist, and the deputy editor of Five Books . Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape , her nonfiction book about how nature rebounds in abandoned places, was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Ondaatje Prize, and the British Academy Book Prize. She writes regular round-ups of the most notable new fiction, which can be found here . Her Five Books interviews with other authors are here .

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10 most-anticipated sci-fi books coming out in july 2024.

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10 Trippiest Sci-Fi Books Of All Time

11 most anticipated thriller books coming out the rest of 2024, 10 underrated sci-fi books that should be on everyone's radar.

Sci-fi books with a unique premise or that follow up existing series are the most highly anticipated for July 2024.
Speculative thrillers that utilize sc-fi tropes have garnered a lot of interest in July 2024.
There's always excitement for the release of a creat space opera or traditional science fiction novella.

July 2024 will be a great month for sci-fi , with several highly anticipated books arriving on bookstore shelves. From space operas to speculative thrillers, the coming month means a great many options for those looking for something new to read during the summer. Of course, there are also a few long-awaited sequels to established book series on the way, which means July is when readers can finally dive back into these beloved sci-fi worlds.

The science fiction genre has existed for centuries, with Mary Shelley's 1818 title Frankenstein often credited as the very first. These days, dozens of new sci-fi novels are released monthly, most of which will only gain slight traction with audiences. However, some develop significant hype before they even release, whether because of a unique new idea or the cliffhanger ending of a previous installment. In July 2024, there are a handful of sci-fi novels whose release book fans are buzzing about .

While many sci-fi books bend the bounds of reality, these 10 sci-fi novels are truly trippy, making their world-bending plots all the more memorable.

10 The Failures By Benjamin Liar

July 2, 2024.

The Failures is Benjamin Liar's first published novel, but it's already making quite an impact. Set in a mechanical world created by a host of gods that long ago abandoned their creation, the story follows a group of heroes on their second attempt to repair their home after a previous failure. The novel is the first in a promised trilogy, establishing a complex world and lore that readers can expect to be fully immersed in.

It's the worldbuilding that seems to have captured preliminary readers of The Failures . Liar's story has been called " genre-bending, " with a unique approach to sci-fi/fantasy that makes this trilogy unlike anything readers have seen before . So long as The Failures holds up to the hype following its release, there will most certainly be a new, complex sci-fi world for readers to call home.

9 The Icarus Changeling By Timothy Zahn

The Icarus Changeling is the third book in Timothy Zahn's The Icarus Saga , which includes The Icarus Hunt (1999), The Icarus Plot (2022), The Icarus Twin (2023), and The Icarus Job (2024), with two more books expected after the July 2024 installment. The Icarus Job has an impressive 4.44 out of 5 stars on GoodReads , and this overall approval has naturally increased the anticipation for The Icarus Changeling .

Though part of a larger series, The Icarus Changeling holds up well on its own , making it the perfect introduction to the sci-fi world Zahn first established in 1999. This installment revolves around the agents of the secret Icarus Group and follows Gregory Roarke, who must hunt down a mysterious teleportation portal before the rival Patth gets there first. However, a variety of murders make this mission far more complicated.

8 Made For You By Jenna Satterthwaite

Another debut novel from a promising writer, Made For You, is a highly unique sci-fi thriller that has everyone talking leading up to its July 2, 2024 release. The story follows Julia, a synthetic human cast to compete on " The Proposal ," a The Bachelor -type reality show . Julia seemingly gets her happily ever after, but when her husband goes missing, she is suddenly at the center of a murder investigation.

Made For You has been billed as a fast-paced thriller combining the guilty pleasure of reality competition with the most delicious science fiction tropes. Full of twists and turns, it also contains something of a whodunit, giving readers the opportunity to make their own guesses about who killed Julia's husband. Then, of course, there is the obligatory question of what a synthetic human is really capable of feeling.

Book Covers for Middle of the Night, The Midnight Feast, and One Perfect Couple

There are plenty of exciting thriller books coming out during the remainder of 2024, and the most highly anticipated have fun and twisty premises.

7 The State Of Paradise By Laura Van Den Berg

July 9, 2024.

The State of Paradise connects our world and recent history with the world of science fiction, tricking readers into thinking they know what's happening before sending their expectations hurtling. Described as a " heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida's underbelly ," there's no question why van den Berg's novel is one of the most highly anticipated within the genre for 2024 .

The story picks up in the years following a global pandemic, during which a free and addictive virtual reality device, MIND's EYE, was distributed to citizens.

The title of The State of Paradise refers, in part, to the Florida setting, where the summer heat accentuates the mind-bending twists and turns of reality. The story picks up in the years following a global pandemic, during which a free and addictive virtual reality device, MIND's EYE, was distributed to citizens. As the Florida weather becomes increasingly unbearable, people begin to go missing, leaving the ghostwriting protagonist to grapple with the mystery and questions about reality.

6 All This & More By Peng Shepherd

Peng Shepherd wowed critics with The Book of M and The Cartographers , and readers are now looking ahead in anticipation of the July 9th release of This & More . Totted as " inventive ," " mind-bending ," and " extra-eccentric ," the story follows a divorcee single mom who believes she missed her chance at a worthwhile life. However, this changes when she is selected to star in All This and More , a TV show that gives contestants the very real opportunity to change their past decisions to create a whole new life.

Of course, this doesn't work out to be the fairytale All This & More 's protagonist hopes, and the quantum technology that makes her new life possible begins to feel a little off. The unique thing about Shepherd's newest novel is that it puts readers in the driver's seat, allowing them to make the big decisions about the protagonist's new reality in the most unsettling ways.

5 This Great Hemisphere By Mateo Askaripour

New York Times bestselling author Mateo Askaripour takes on social issues in his books, including Black Buck , which addresses racism in corporate America with humor. Now, 2024's The Great Hemisphere takes on similar parallels through mystery and sci-fi. The speculative novel follows Sweetmint, a young woman born as an Invisible in a world split into hemispheres following an environmental crisis.

The divided world of The Great Hemisphere allows for a thought-provoking but jarringly fast-paced story as Sweetmint is pulled into a dangerous mystery. Her brother, whom she believed was dead, turns out to not only be alive but the primary suspect in a murder. As Askaripour's novel follows her through this chaos, the author explores the ways that society's concept of reality can be manipulated.

Beggars-In-Spain-By-Nancy-Kress-Songs-Of-Distant-Earth-By-Arthur-C-Clarke-Blood-Music-By-Greg-Bear

Sci-fi books like Dune or 1984 have remained memorable and highly praised for years, but there are some novels that don't get enough attention.

4 The Family Experiment By John Marrs

Set in the same universe as his previous novels, The One and The Marriage Act , John Marrs' The Family Experiment explores a future in which overpopulation takes the UK toward its breaking point. It becomes impractical for families to have real babies, so a company creates Virtual Children, digital babies that grow through to adulthood and must be accessed through the metaverse and a VR headset.

Marrs' speculative novel sees the company that created Virtual Children roll out a reality TV competition called The Substitute. In this competition, ten couples raise ten babies up to 18 in a condensed nine months, all for the chance to either keep the virtual baby or take home enough money to start a family of their own. The Family Experiment is an offputting concept, somewhat dark and twisted , that explores the desperate desire for parenthood and the lengths couples will go to satisfy it.

3 Descent By Marko Kloos

July 16, 2024.

Marko Kloos The Palladium Wars series includes Aftershock (2019), Ballistic (2020), Citadel (2021), and the upcoming Descent (2024), which will continue the story that is classic sci-fi through and through. The series is set in a galaxy on the brink of war and follows the efforts of those who would go to any lengths to secure peace. Descent sees all this tension brought to a head.

There are space pirates, plenty of battles, terrorists, and, of course, a great deal of political intrigue.

Kloos' 2024 novel follows various protagonists across the galaxy, among the most notable being Aden Jensen, who lost a decade of his life as a prisoner of war. If he hopes to secure long-lasting freedom, he must return to his home planet and act as a spy against the nationalist uprising there. There are space pirates, plenty of battles, terrorists, and, of course, a great deal of political intrigue.

2 Gravity Lost By L.M. Sagas

July 23, 2024.

L.M. Sagas' Gravity Lost is the sequel to Cascade Failure (2024), which introduced the ragtag crew of the Ambit. Protagonist Jal winds up an accidental member of the AI-run spaceship's crew, stuck between the universe's primary two powers, the Trust and the Union. The Ambit's crew is akin to Guardians of the Galaxy , with just as much explosive action and space-family dysfunction.

Gravity Lost sees Jal and her pals participate in a jailbreak , freeing a prisoner that they themselves had helped put away. However, with the Union and Trust both determined to get their hands on him, it's imperative that certain dirty secrets be extracted first. This installment of Sagas' series will see the characters confronted with their own uncomfortable truths, and it might just tear them apart.

1 Navigational Entanglements By Aliette de Bodard

July 30, 2024.

This novella, by Nebula, Ignyte, and Locus Award-winning author Aliette de Bodard, combines the features of a grand space opera with those of a Xiancia drama. The story jumps between two primary characters, Việt Nhi and Hạc Cúc, members of two Navigator clans who must work together after an imperial envoy is found dead from clan poison.

Toted as an adult queer sci-fi , there's a lot to look forward to with Navigational Entanglements . It's a short and sweet story with a great deal of action and a decent amount of worldbuilding for its length. Việt Nhi and Hạc Cúc working out their differences is sure to be the highlight, with a " found family " dynamic that is often highly enjoyable in a great sci-fi book.

Summer, Summer, Summertome: 10 Exciting New SFF Books Out July 2024

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

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For your reading enjoyment this month, we have an Arthurian fantasy; alternate history set in 15th-century West Africa; a historical epic with shades of The Godfather + dragon relics; a specialty shop that sells dreams — literally; a Spice Carrier who comes up with plans to escape while traveling between the eight kingdom spice gates; adventurous kids who accidentally summon a 300-year-old ghost pirate; and more! Plus, at the end of the post, find out which hugely-popular fantasy series has a new book coming out this month. (Hint: More like witch hugely-popular fantasy series, lol.)

So get your TBR prepared, make sure you put plenty of time on your meter (you don’t want your dragon to get a ticket), and get ready to find something great to read in the sand this summer. (But be sure to watch out for sandworms.)

The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy Books Out July 2024

cover of Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi; illustration of a Black woman in a red-and-gold dress and head gear standing in front of an elephant

Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi (Forge Books, July 2)

This is a loose retelling of Persephone , set in 15th-century West Africa! Òdòdó is a member of a blacksmith guild, a group of outcasts in Timbuktu, who encounter problems when their land is conquered by a warrior king. Then things get even worse for Òdòdó when she is kidnapped by none other than the warrior king himself, who wants her as his bride. As Òdòdó adjusts to her new surroundings, she discovers she likes navigating the privilege and power her new life affords her. She must decide if (or more likely, when) she will make her move and break free from the warrior king.

cover of The Night Ends with Fire by K. X. Song; illustration of a person in red standing in front of a mountain-sized Phoenix engulfed in flames

The Night Ends with Fire by K. X. Song (Ace, July 2)

This is another fantasy inspired by an older story, this one based on the legend of Mulan. Desperate to escape an impending marriage and her terrible father, Meilin disguises herself as a man and joins the imperial army under her father’s name. Soon, she has made a friend in Sky, starts having visions of a sea dragon who offers her power, and crosses paths with an enemy prince. With the fate of her kingdom beginning to look bleak, Meilin will have to decide which of these three she can trust to help her save the day.

cover of Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi; white with a red dragon eye in the center

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi (Knopf, July 9)

Calling all fans of wealthy families, political machinations, backstabbing, and dragons! Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi is back with a fantasy about the son of a powerful family in Navola, who is getting ready to take his father’s place at the head of the table. The di Regulai family has vast wealth and influence — and an alluring fossilized dragon eye that seems to contribute to their power. Davico must decide who he can trust to keep his family’s legacy from crumbling, and if the enchanting relic is ultimately going to help him or hurt him.

cover of The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee; illustration of a big blue building with brightly lit windows surrounded by clouds

The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee, Sandy Joosun Lee (translator) (Hanover Square Press, July 9)

If you need a feel-good read, this cozy fantasy debut has you covered. Translated from Korean, it’s about a department store nestled in the subconscious of humans (and animals), where you can shop for the dreams you desire. Penny is a new hire, looking forward to helping people make their dreams a reality. Well, a dream reality. And speaking of dreams coming true, this was a crowdfunded publication that became a million-book bestseller in Korea!

cover of The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons; illustration of castles in the mountains whose outlines also form a dragon against a red sky

The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons (Tor Books, July 9)

Jenn Lyons is no stranger to dragons, having authored the awesome Chorus of Dragons series. This is a standalone fantasy with dragons, plus adventure and a heist! Anahrod lives alone in the jungle with her drake companion, and she likes it that way. But when she is rescued from capture by a group of misfits, it turns out they need her help. They want her to steal from a dragon hoard. But doing so would mean going against the very person Anahrod has been trying to avoid, Neveranimas, who wants her dead. Just what does she owe the people who saved her, and is she willing to pay it?

cover of The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur; teal with a black sword, black antlers, and a gold crown in its center

The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur by Lev Grossman (Viking, July 16)

From the author of the Magicians trilogy comes a reimagining of the Arthurian legend. In this story, the Round Table is seated with misfits and outcasts, and King Arthur has just died. Collum, a knight who arrived in Camelot hoping to join the group, must now lead them against the darkness that is claiming Britain, both humans and monsters (led by Morgan le Fay, natch.) Only by reclaiming Excalibur and uncovering the truths of Britain’s past and King Arthur’s death will they triumph and restore Camelot to its former glory. (Even though ’tis a silly place.)

cover of The West Passage by Jared Pechacek; illustration of many scenes and characters from the book, including a bird person in yellow, a blue-robed person with a castle for a crown, a blue tower, a gray castle, and a red priestess

The West Passage by Jared Pechacek (Tordotcom, July 16)

This is a wildly imaginative debut that Travis Baldree told me was the best book he read last year when I interviewed him at an event! In the world of Grey, no one thinks much of it when the Guardian of the West Passage dies. She is given a funeral and her position goes unfilled. But her absence leaves the land vulnerable, and now signs of the prophesied Beast have begun to appear. It is up to the Mother of Grey House and the Guardian’s unnamed squire to protect the West Passage and save everyone. But there are great dangers and unthinkable horrors ahead.

cover of Cover of The Spice Gate by Prashanth Srivatsa; illustration of floating white portals on large divots of land, set against a pink sky

The Spice Gate by Prashanth Srivatsa (Harper Voyager, July 16)

Another debut fantasy for your summer reading enjoyment is this story of Amir, a Spice Carrier. In this world, there are eight portals to kingdoms, each with their own distinct spice. Spice Carriers are enslaved people who bear the mark that allows them to pass through the portals and bring spices from other kingdoms to the rich and greedy. Amir is looking to escape this life, but before he can figure out how, he will be drawn into a vast conspiracy between the Spice gates, one involving gods and humans.

SFF New Releases for Kids and Teens

cover of Farrah Noorzad and the Ring of Fate; illustration of a young girl in blue with dark hair and a jinn in black with white hair and purple skin

Farrah Noorzad and the Ring of Fate by Deeba Zargarpur (Labyrinth Road, July 2)

Farrah Noorzad is turning 12 and looking forward to seeing her father, who only visits on her birthday. But this time, her birthday wish goes sideways when she wishes to have more time with her father and he ends up trapped in a magic ring! It turns out, there’s a LOT her family hasn’t told Farrah. Like, the fact that her father is one of the seven jinn kings, and that Farrah herself is half-jinn. And now she must rescue her father and the other kings, with the help of the freed jinn boy who had been trapped in the ring, before all of the jinn realm is doomed.

cover of Dead Good Detectives by Jenny McLachlan; illustration of a young white girl in a hat and glasses holding a map and a young Black boy in a purple sweatshirt sitting on a treasure chest

Dead Good Detectives by Jenny McLachlan (HarperCollins, July 9)

Sid Jones and her best friend, Zen, like to spend time playing around in the cemetery, which is totally normal kid behavior. But then Sid accidentally conjures the ghosts of a 300-year-old pirate named Bones and his obnoxious parrot. Bones needs Sid and Zen to help him retrieve his long-buried treasure to put his spirit to rest once and for all. That is, once he remembers where he buried it. And what it is. Sid and Zen will have to use their wits to figure out where to find the treasure and to outsmart the cemetery’s ghost prison guard, Old Scratch, who wants to keep Bones and his crew for all eternity.

Bonus Mentions

Because I can’t just stop at ten books, in July, be sure to watch for the sequels Ninth Life by Stark Holborn, A Whisper of Curses by J. Elle, Blood Jade by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle, Gravity Lost by L. M. Sagas, and In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran. And Discovery of Witches fans, rejoice! The fifth book in the series, The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness, is out this month, too!

There are also a TON of amazing SFF titles out in paperback this month, including The Grace of Wild Things by Heather Fawcett, Masters of Death by Olivie Blake, He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan, Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong, Forged by Blood by Ehigbor Okosun, Witch King by Martha Wells, and Counterweight by Djuna, Anton Hur (translator).

If you want to learn about more sci-fi and fantasy books, check out the 10 Nebula Award Winners You Should Put on Your TBR and LGBTQ Romantasy Books . And be sure to sign up for our SFF newsletter, Swords and Spaceships , and listen to our SFF podcast, SFF Yeah !

Finally, you can also find a full list of new releases in the magical New Release Index , carefully curated by your favorite Book Riot editors, organized by genre and release date.

Summer Sleuthing: 12 New Mystery, Thrillers for July 2024 Reading

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Best summer books of 2024: Fiction

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Books We Love

Npr staffers pick their favorite fiction reads of 2024.

Meghan Collins Sullivan

Even hardworking news journalists by day need a break from reality in their off hours. In our newsroom at NPR, there are some omnivorous fiction readers. We have fans of romance, historical fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and more. We asked our colleagues what they've enjoyed reading most this year — and here are the titles they shared. (And, OK, yes, we read plenty of nonfiction, too, because NPR gonna NPR. You can see that list here. )

Realistic Fiction

All Fours: A Novel by Miranda July All Fours is a coming-of-age novel for perimenopause. The story follows an unnamed narrator as she begins a cross-country road trip away from her husband and child, but she pulls over to stay in a motel 30 minutes from her house instead. This “trip” still changes her life — through an infatuation with a younger guy who works at a car rental place, she begins a new intimacy with herself, too. I’ve read all of Miranda July’s books, and she’s always doing weird and imaginative things with her characters. This story has all of July’s usual eccentricity, but it also brims with the excitement and fear and possibility that comes with entering the unknown of life’s latter half, especially for women. It felt singularly fresh, and perfectly enjoyable. — Liam McBain, associate producer, It's Been a Minute

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American Spirits by Russell Banks The three stories in this collection are set in a fictional town, but seem so familiar: a local guy who got in a dangerous beef with an out-of-towner that bought up his family’s property and then refused to let him hunt on it; a family that adopts several children then purposely crashes their van off the highway; grandparents who are scammed by people claiming to have kidnapped their grandson. The late Russell Banks’ final writings are a masterful exploration of these kinds of tales, looking at the motivations of ordinary people in a world that’s become increasingly polarized and deeply troubled. — Melissa Gray, senior producer, Weekend Edition

Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj If you want to know the challenges that Palestinian Americans face in the U.S., you must read this book. It follows several families in Baltimore as they wrestle with poverty, religion, living in between two cultures and their pursuit of the American Dream. There is Marcus, a cop who stands up for his Arab sister who is dating a Black man; Samira, who is shamed for being a childless divorcee (despite that she is a successful lawyer); Layla, a high school student who pushes back against the drama club's production of Aladdin , which she says perpetuates racist stereotypes about Arabs. How their lives intersect will leave you at the edge of your seat. — Malaka Gharib, digital editor, Life Kit

Come & Get It by Kiley Reid Told through multiple perspectives, I could not put this snappy page-turner down even though I had no idea where it was going until its jaw-dropping crescendo. Set at the University of Arkansas, this story follows several college students and a writing professor over the course of a year, largely through the lens of their relationship with money — how it motivates them, how it gets them into and (for some) out of situations — as well as race, sexuality, power and social status. As a southerner and the graduate of a southern university, I found myself nodding along excitedly to Reid’s apt depictions of contemporary southern culture. — Beck Harlan, visuals editor, Life Kit

Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel by Venita Blackburn A woman named Coral finds the body of her brother after his suicide, but she doesn't tell anyone right away. Instead, she begins to inhabit his life through his phone, as if she can keep him alive by answering his texts. But what makes the book even odder, even more ambitious, is that it is narrated in the detached voices of automated beings from the future who are all that's left after humanity has wiped itself out. This combination of almost unbearable intimacy and arm's-length anthropology has an explanation of sorts. But more importantly, it serves both to add considerable humor to the text (what would a robot think of human frailty, after all?) and to render Coral's situation more confusing, more disorienting. It's a sad story, but it's also a ride, and that's a tough combination. — Linda Holmes, host, Pop Culture Happy Hour

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years: A Novel by Shubnum Khan The djinn of the title — I pictured a depressed Grinch — haunts this comforting dose of tropes: A girl with a deceased mom moves into an old, possibly magic house with an inaccessible area. Blocked-off rooms being irresistible to teenage main characters, Sana Malek digs her way in, uncovering a tragic family secret or two. The twists and revelations that follow aren't exactly jaw-dropping, but are emotionally wrenching enough to clear out the old tear ducts without leaving a grief hangover. — Holly J. Morris, digital trainer

The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft This is book has so many layers! Let’s start with the premise. Eight translators meet up at the home of a famous Polish novelist to translate her latest work — which is apparently so brilliant it could change the world! — into their respective home languages. But their beloved author goes missing, setting off their search for her in the nearby Białowieża forest — filled with so many layers of wilderness! The narrator is the Spanish translator, but we’re reading the story in English — it’s been translated by the English translator. Those two don’t get along. More layers! If you like language, literature — and fungi — this wild ride of a very esoteric mystery is for you. — Elissa Nadworny, correspondent

Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham Vinson Cunningham worked on the 2008 Obama campaign, so it's no surprise that this coming-of-age story follows a young man working on a thinly (very thinly) veiled version of that very undertaking. It would be easy to make a story like this either a cynical and cutting takedown of politics or a starry-eyed and idealistic discovery of meaning. It's neither. It presents this campaign as a formative stage in the life of a young person who sees what goes into the successful gathering of power, ugly and impressive as it can be. Full of sharp observations about our precarious system of government, it's also insightful about race and wealth and the relationship between the two. — Linda Holmes, host, Pop Culture Happy Hour

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly The loving family at the heart of this very funny and moving novel about a brother and sister is so complex that I drew a diagram — no fooling — halfway through, the better to solidify in my mind ideas like, "Valdin recently broke up with his older boyfriend, who is also his uncle's husband's brother." But despite the messy structure of things, every bond in the book is written to be precious and specific. Greta & Valdin is the rare story to live up to its fearless promotional copy, which calls it a cross between Schitt's Creek and Normal People. Perhaps that sounds impossible; that's what makes it so good. — Linda Holmes, host, Pop Culture Happy Hour

Headshot: A Novel by Rita Bullwinkel Headshot is a real one-two punch of a novel. Eight teenage girl boxers have come to Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada, for the 12th annual Women’s 18 & Under Daughters of America Cup. As each fight plays out in the ring — sometimes brutally, ferociously — Rita Bullwinkel brings to life the internal monologues of the girls. They recite the digits of pi, think about their pasts, their futures, their dreams of being the best in the world — and also of making their opponents chomp on a mouthful of pennies until their teeth break. Bullwinkel’s dynamic writing — moving back and forth in time, in and out of the boxing gym — and short, punchy sentences are a perfect mirror of the girls’ jabs in the ring. It’s a knockout. — Samantha Balaban, producer, Weekend Edition

Henry Henry by Allen Bratton Hal is a profane mess, kind of like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, on whom he’s based: The 20-something is careening through life fueled by drugs, booze, cigarettes, and loveless sex. He both flaunts and loathes his class status, his family’s fortune, and his future as Duke of Lancaster, along with a flat-out-refusal to live up to his father’s expectations. Hal is so wholly unsympathetic that if not for the brilliant writing, you might just give up before discovering the shocking violation at the root of his self-destruction. How can he finally become his own person? This isn’t an easy read. It’s at times dark and highly upsetting, but the author makes you stick with it in hopes of seeing Hal finally grow up. — Melissa Gray, senior producer, Weekend Edition

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo This is one of those beautifully written, keenly observed novels where not that much happens — other than, you know, life itself — but also so much happens. Julia Ames is experiencing a midlife plateau when an announcement from her son sets her reeling, and reflecting on all the relationships — past and present, familial, intergenerational, romantic — that have shaped her life including: Mark, her near-perfect husband; Anita, her near-imperfect mother; and Helen, the older woman who saves Julia in the early days of motherhood. Though the dynamic between Julia and her “spiky” teenage daughter is my personal favorite, Claire Lombardo has written a whole cast of characters so detailed, so specifically themselves, that you almost feel you could reach out and touch them. — Samantha Balaban, producer, Weekend Edition

Victim: A Novel by Andrew Boryga Lying is kind of funny. The stress of someone jumping through increasingly wild hoops to avoid getting caught in a lie is hilarious. Victim is about Javi, a writer from a marginalized community, who fudges his way into the kinds of rooms where people say “marginalized” and “community” a lot. The book is a charming critique of the publishing industry and its surface-level attempts at righting societal ills (which, kind of bold for a debut author), while also staying empathetic towards the well-meaning individuals who give Javi a shot. — Andrew Limbong, correspondent, Culture Desk , and host, NPR's Book of the Day

Romance & Relationships

Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet by Molly Morris What happens when your former best friend comes back from the dead, but only for 30 days? That’s what Wilson needs to figure out when her friend Annie is brought back as part of a local custom in her small California town. To complicate things more, their friend, Ryan apparently hates them both. Wilson is determined to fix things before Annie returns to — well, being dead. This is a beautifully poetic YA work about female friendships, with a touch of magical realism and laugh out loud humor. The dynamic between the trio is filled with teenage angst, love and forgiveness. It considers a common dilemma: How do you accept change when it means giving up what you love? — Hafsa Fathima, production assistant, Pop Culture Happy Hour

Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb This sweet, fake-relationship romance follows the recently divorced empty-nester Celeste as she navigates life as a single woman, once again. This time around, she’s saying yes to life and shaking things up. She didn’t expect the shaking to bring in the sensitive, gentle giant that is John. Or his deep love of birds. Come for the romance but, beware, you might find yourself falling in love with John’s quiet, colorful world of birding yourself! — Christina Cala, senior producer, Code Switch

Girl Abroad by Elle Kennedy Girl Abroad starts with Abbey Bly, 19 years old, ready to step away from her adoring, yet overprotective, father when she is given the chance to study abroad in London. There’s just one hitch: Abbey believes she'll be living with girls there — but arrives to find out all her flatmates are boys. She decides to step into her new-found independence (and hide this fact from her father). Elle Kennedy has written an enjoyable coming-of-age story filled with humor, drama, romance, and a found family. Readers will enjoy the way Kennedy deviates from her usual steamy-angst-centric stories for one with deeper emphasis on self growth, relationship dynamics and figuring out not only who you are, but what you want. — Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez, audio engineer

How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang If a '90s rom-com grew up and went to therapy, this sparkling book would be the result. After penning a popular YA book series, Helen Zhang gets a seat in the writers' room where it’s being adapted into a TV show. Unfortunately, Grant Shepard, is also one of the writers in that room. Grant was the charming homecoming king at their high school whereas Helen was awkward and introverted. He's also the reason Helen's sister is dead — kind of. It’s been years since the accident, but the writers' room reopens old wounds and forces Helen and Grant to be vulnerable with each other. Even as Helen wrestles with their past, the two begin a present-day romance that is sexy and tender. This book is a raised glass to second chances and late bloomers. — Lauren Migaki, senior producer, Education

Say You'll Be Mine: A Novel by Naina Kumar It's a familiar South Asian story: Two people finally relent to their parents' wishes of meeting a potential marriage partner. But Say You'll Be Mine is so much more than that. Meghna is in love with her best friend, who is engaged to someone else. Karthik is an engineer who doesn't really want to get married. But as the two discover, a fake engagement between them may be the answer to their problems. Naina Kumar writes a funny, heartwarming tale, filled with sizzling chemistry. It's hard to not root for them from page one, as they slowly fall in love. It's an incredible book that tackles the merits and shortcomings of culture, finding an identity and of course, true love. — Hafsa Fathima, production assistant, Pop Culture Happy Hour

Sex, Lies and Sensibility by Nikki Payne Set in the heart of vacationland, Nora Dash and Ennis “Bear” Freeman are both fighting uphill battles. After her dad dies, Nora inherits some serious family drama — and a rundown cottage in Maine. Now, Nora and her sister have just months to turn the place into a successful resort. Meanwhile, Bear’s struggling with his own business of guiding visitors through his native Abenaki land. The tours take him through Nora’s backyard and the two team up. Their chemistry is off the charts as they spend hours working and finding stress relief in long runs through the Maine woods. But both are keeping secrets, and have let shame work its way through their lives like an invasive species. The two have to figure out how to move forward once those secrets spill out. — Lauren Migaki, senior producer, Education

Historical Fiction

Cahokia Jazz: A Novel by Francis Spufford It's 1922 and, in this alternate-history detective story, Cahokia isn't a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Illinois. It's a thriving Indigenous-owned and operated city and state with a strong Catholic presence, plus Klansmen, bootleggers and other undesirables. If you try to skim, you'll get lost in the how-deep-does-this-go corruption, careful world-building and sprawling cast. The naive main character, jazz-playing police detective Joe Barrow, shoves his way through exposition, fight scenes, maybe-occult doings, local royalty and personal angst, all backgrounded by a Roaring Twenties aesthetic portrayed in loving detail. Maps and excerpts from (made-up) primary sources will guide you through — if you pay attention. If you're me, you'll take notes. — Holly J. Morris, digital trainer

Clear: A Novel by Carys Davies It’s the 1840s, the last and most brutal years of The Clearances, when Scottish landowners began replacing unprofitable tenants with sheep. Based on that real history, Clear is a novel about a minister, John, who has been dispatched to clear a remote island of its last remaining inhabitant, Ivar. Except just after he arrives, John slips and falls off a cliff. Ivar finds John, nurses him back to health, and invites him into his life; Ivar begins to teach John the many words that all mean some variation of “rough seas” in Norn (a real language), and the pair learn to communicate roughly, but with an unexpected depth. What follows is perhaps the most tender, beautiful story about the connection between two people and what they must overcome to find each other — in every sense of the word. — Samantha Balaban, producer, Weekend Edition

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry You know that feeling — when you are fascinated by someone all the more because you don’t fully understand them? That’s how I feel in English author Sarah Perry’s “presence.” Enlightenment is a tale of two friends, different generations but hailing from the same small Essex town and even smaller congregation. There’s a mystery involving a woman astronomer — but mainly there’s empathy for the complexities of people’s identities and belief systems, a sense of home, and loads of gorgeous writing. — Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition

The Fox Wife: A Novel by Yangsze Choo There’s a little bit of mystery and mysticism on every page of this book. Set in China in the early 1900s, the books centers around two characters in separate, but connecting narratives. A fox masquerading as a young woman that’s set out to avenge her daughter’s death and a detective with an affinity for foxes who is working a murder case. It’s clever and observant, with twists and turns and just the perfect amount of folklore to keep you asking: What is real and what is imagined? — Elissa Nadworny, correspondent

Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili Hard by a Great Forest has all the ingredients of a dark and twisty fairy tale: A mysterious disappearance, a post-war city teeming with danger, a scavenger hunt, riddles, a road trip, escaped zoo animals, an orphan, and a title echoing the first line of Hansel and Gretel. It’s loosely based on author Leo Vardiashvili’s life — he lived through Georgia’s civil war and immigrated to the UK as a refugee in the mid '90s. It’s two decades later in the novel when Saba’s father is pulled back to their homeland in search of something — before promptly disappearing. His last message to his son: Do not follow me. But Saba (of course) follows his breadcrumb trail of clues and, along the way, is forced to confront the question: Can you ever really go home again? — Samantha Balaban, producer, Weekend Edition

James: A Novel by Percival Everett The jokes in James range from chin scratchers to knee slappers to gut busters. Although I’m not sure Percival Everett would even classify them as “jokes.” In his re-imagining of the Huckleberry Finn story, Everett mines language, history and irony to showcase brutal truths about America. And yes, it’s often funny. But, like the original source material, things can quickly turn deadly serious depending on how the river flows. The novel is thrilling, hilarious, heartbreaking, and a strong argument for Everett as one of the best doing it right now. — Andrew Limbong, correspondent, Culture Desk , and host, NPR's Book of the Day

Memory Piece: A Novel by Lisa Ko This is a coming of age story about three friends growing up in and around New York City in the 1990s. Their friendship evolves over the decades as they experiment with, and push the boundaries of, art, performance and technology. I loved that the book makes art feel real and weird and kind of gross — not glamorous and sugarcoated. — Elissa Nadworny, correspondent

Swift River by Essie Chambers After her beloved father mysteriously disappears, Diamond and her mom find themselves living hand to mouth in a faded New England mill town where Diamond is the lone Black resident. Why did a previous generation of Black families abandon it? This propulsive and poetic first novel, by an accomplished documentary film producer, grounds a tender coming-of-age narrative in a history of migration, marginalization and imagination. Threaded through every step of Diamond’s journey is her deadpan wit; of one ramshackle dwelling, she observes, “the whole house looks like it’s having a cigarette.” And she reflects, when a heartbreaking legal issue is finally resolved, “That was the thing about a racist town. It got to decide when it would be kind.” — Neda Ulaby, correspondent, Culture Desk

Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles The first half of this jaunty short-story collection takes place in New York. Among the memorable characters are a Russian immigrant whose chief role in life is to stand in lines; a young antiquarian bookstore employee who gets more than he bargains for in his desire for life experience; and a seemingly straight-laced family man with a big Wall Street job, whose secret pastime, once discovered, upends his and his loved ones’ lives. The second half, devoted entirely to the novella “Eve in Hollywood,” is set in Los Angeles during Tinseltown’s Golden Age. The pithy, film noir-ish thriller picks up where the author’s 2011 novel Rules of Civility left off — with the plucky, scar-faced adventuress, Evelyn Ross, deftly saving the honor of a host of Hollywood starlets. — Chloe Veltman, correspondent, Culture Desk

The Women St. Martin's Press hide caption

The Women by Kristin Hannah "You’re only going to be a nurse until you get married,” her mother said. But Frankie McGrath had other ideas, ones that would lead her away from her wealthy family’s conservative outlook on how daughters should behave. Kristin Hannah’s The Women follows young Frankie’s transformation, when after working as a nurse in California and tending to a wounded soldier, and missing her soldier brother, she joins the Army as a nurse. That takes her from a comfortable life of known expectations, to one of the chaos and danger of war, new career opportunities and love. Tangled love. When Frankie returns home, she finds her country still protesting the war, and those who served. The Women shines a light on a then little-known aspect of the war: the women who also served in Vietnam, as nurses. — Jeanine Herbst, news anchor

You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer This salty and dark historical fantasia feistily explodes well-worn textbook narratives about the meeting of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his captains with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma and his entourage in Tenoxtitlan — now Mexico City — in 1519. Álvaro Enrigue’s depiction of the stressed out, clumsy Cortés and the drugged out, mercurial Moctezuma sets these near-mythical figures into earthy relief. But it’s mostly the intrigues and machinations of these leaders’ canny consorts — the Aztec princess Atotoxtli and the conquistadors’ translator Malinalli — that power the plot. Natasha Wimmer’s English translation sharply delivers the novel’s poetic and witty qualities while at the same time reveling in its core theme: the fundamental untranslatability of human experience. — Chloe Veltman, correspondent, Culture Desk

Mysteries & Thrillers

Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra Nightwatching begins with a scene straight out of a nightmare: A woman is at home with two sleeping children when she hears the footsteps of an intruder on the stairs. The story that follows is by turns suspenseful, uncomfortable and enraging. Tracy Sierra skillfully uses the home invasion to explore the terrifying responsibility of motherhood and to expose the pure horror of being a woman in a society that does not always choose to believe women. — Julie Rogers, historian and curator, NPR Research, Archives & Data strategy

The Hunter by Tana French Set in the hills of Western Ireland, this novel picks up the story of characters introduced in 2020’s The Searcher — retired American detective Cal Hooper and Trey, a teen girl he’s taken under his wing. As French revisits the seemingly bucolic landscape where trouble roils just under the surface, her writing continues to shift from mystery to meditation. While there’s still a knot of questions about crimes — including both fraud and murder — to be untangled, this novel is ultimately about belonging; the ways in which families do, and don’t, owe each other debts; the communities we resist, alienate, or become a welcome part of. Morally shaded and complex, it will leave you thinking about who’s right — and what’s wrong — long after you turn the last page. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming & Production

Sci Fi, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction & Horror

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin Cuckoo is an ingeniously scary novel about a group of kids sent to a conversion camp in the '90s. There’s the terror of the socially accepted abuse the kids face (both at the camp and at home) because they are queer, but there’s yet another horrifying entity preying on them, and trying to make them — different. Felker-Martin’s sharp novel takes on the particular vulnerability of queer kids and the body-snatching that is conversion therapy, and she does it with equal measures of tenderness and grotesquery. As harrowing and disgusting as it is, I also found it quite insightful and beautiful — and for that reason, Cuckoo is a great work of horror. — Liam McBain, associate producer, It's Been a Minute

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

It is the Spanish Golden Age, and kitchen maid Luzia has secrets to hide: her skill at magic and her Jewish heritage. When her employer discovers her spells, Luzia is entered into a tournament to find King Philip, who hopes to increase his military standing, a champion. She is trained by the strange creature Santángel, an immortal with a mysterious past. This is a gorgeously lush, vividly written book that shines with its strong cast of characters. Luzia is a hero you’ll find yourself rooting for right from the start, and the magic system in this world is a breath of fresh air. Once again, Leigh Bardugo proves she never misses the mark when it comes to intricately building fantastical worlds — leaving you thinking about them long after the last page is turned. — Hafsa Fathima, production assistant, Pop Culture Happy Hour

The Husbands: A Novel by Holly Gramazio Lauren leaves her London flat for a bachelorette party one night only to discover a husband at home awaiting her return. Not only was she not married when she left for the night, she doesn’t recognize this man. Slowly she works out that he’s not a threat — and that all evidence on her phone, in conversations with friends and neighbors, and in their apartments points to him being fully integrated into her life. And there he is until he goes into the attic and a different husband emerges, slightly — or drastically — altering Lauren’s life. The pattern continues as Lauren searches for metaphysical clues to what’s going on and wrestles with how to know, if she can ever know, which life is right for her. A rare combination of the truly hilarious and profound. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming & Production

The Ministry of Time: A Novel by Kaliane Bradley You’d think a novel about the bureaucracy of a time-travel government agency might be kinda, boring? But from the moment you meet the book’s enigmatic protagonist — as she starts a new job in the UK’s top secret new time travel agency — to the introduction of the dashing Graham Gore, an 1847 arctic explorer plucked through time, you'll be hooked. Come for the romance, stay for the unraveling of a mystery, the nuanced, genre-bending treatises on race and identity, and the long-lingering ideas on colonialism, empires and the mutability of history. — Christina Cala, senior producer, Code Switch

A Short Walk Through a Wide World: A Novel by Douglas Westerbeke It's the year 1885, in Paris, when 9-year-old Aubry Tourvel encounters a mysterious, wooden, puzzle ball: It may be a blessing or a curse, but it most definitely changes her life. Now she needs to keep moving forever; too long in any one town and she will bleed to death. So her life is all travel and adventure, and through her we wonder at the richness of the globe’s markets, towns, forests and deserts. Over many decades, she meets all types of kind and curious people — as well as cruel and uncaring ones. Sometimes Aubry enjoys quick communion with strangers. Other times, she is surrounded but desperately lonely. This is a ravishing, deeply human book that’s in love with the world, with people, with the new — and yet is infused with a deep, futile longing for home. — Jennifer Vanasco, editor and reporter, Culture Desk

All the New Sci-Fi, Horror, and Fantasy Books to Add to Your Reading List in July

Summer is in full swing and there's no better place to be than in the shade, with a fan pointed directly at you, reading a brand-new novel..

In July, there are multiple new sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books about estranged friends reuniting to confront something dark in their past —call it the It effect —as well as an array of sci-fi adventures, mythology revisions, tales of terror , supernatural mysteries, fantastical romances, and more. Read on!

The Down Deep by Catherine Asaro

“Major Bhaajan and her gang of Dust Knights act as guides and bodyguards to a member of the Imperial family on a mission of good will in the Undercity. But what awaits them in the Down Deep may ruin the chance at peace forever.” (July 2)

The Failures by Benjamin Liar

This blend of apocalyptic sci-fi and epic fantasy, the first of a trilogy, follows “a scattered group of unlikely heroes traveling across their broken mechanical planet to stave off eternal darkness.” (July 2)

The Gilded Crown by Marianne Gordon

A woman who can resurrect dead souls—serving a mysterious representative of the afterlife—is tasked with bringing back the assassinated heir to the throne, then sticking around to make sure the recently revived princess stays alive. Things get complicated when love enters the picture. (July 2)

The Icarus Changeling by Timothy Zahn

“Gregory Roarke—agent for the ultra-secret Icarus Group—has received a new assignment: locate a teleportation portal on a backwater colony world. But what should be an easy assignment leads to a string of murders, and a race against an alien enemy.” (July 2)

Made For You by Jenna Satterthwaite

A synthetic woman enters a Bachelor -like contest and wins—but the promise of domestic bliss that follows becomes twisted when her new husband goes missing, and she’s accused of being involved. (July 2)

Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi

Set in an alt version of 15th century West Africa and inspired by the myth of Persephone, this fantasy tale explores “the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future.” (July 2)

The Moonlight Market by Joanne Harris

This London-set romance follows a photographer who falls for a mysterious woman, then discovers an alternate world of “strange and colorful beings” caught in a war raging just beyond the notice of regular humans. (July 2)

The Night Ends With Fire by K.X. Song

“Infused with magic and romance, this sweeping fantasy adventure inspired by the legend of Mulan follows a young woman determined to choose her own destiny—even if that means going against everyone she loves.” (July 2)

Rhymer: Hoode by Gregory Frost

The Rhymer Trilogy continues as Thomas Rimor, now living as a hermit in the Sherwood Forest, takes on the identity of Robin Hood to face both his elven and human foes. (July 2)

Wilderness Reform by Matt and Harrison Query

A newcomer at a court-mandated wilderness camp for troubled teens starts to suspect something very sinister is going on with the counselors, so he teams up with his fellow inmates to dig into a dangerous mystery. (July 2)

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All This and More by Peng Shepherd

An unhappy middle-aged woman is chosen to star on a popular TV show that uses quantum technology that allows her to go back in time and fix mistakes in her past life. She’s thrilled at first, but soon realizes getting everything she ever dreamed of isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. (July 9)

Black Tide Son by H.M. Long

The Winter Seas series—following the adventures of privateers—“continues as a prisonbreak to save Benedict leaves him, Sam, and Mary trapped in a desperate race for survival in enemy territory.” (July 9)

The Blood Dimmed Tide by Stephen Aryan

The Nightingale and the Falcon series continues, following Genghis Khan’s grandson on his quest to take over the world—a goal complicated when the Golden Horde faces a burgeoning civil war. (July 9)

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

A long-struggling actor finally gets his big break—then learns studio execs are planning to kill off his character in his show’s season finale. Then he realizes monsters from horror movies he’s made in the past have seemingly come to life and are seeking revenge. (July 9)

The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee, translated by Sandy Joosun Lee

This cozy fantasy tale asks: “What if there was a store that sold dreams? Which would you buy? And who might you become when you wake up?” (July 9)

Daughters of Olympus by Hannah Lynn

A retelling of the myth of mother-daughter duo Demeter and Persephone. (July 9)

The Family Experiment by John Marrs

This speculative thriller imagines that in a dangerously overpopulated world, some couples opt to have a “virtual child”—and then allow a reality show to follow along as they “raise” it, hoping to win the prize of the right to have a real baby. (July 9)

Let Gravity Seize the Dead by Darrin Doyle

When a family moves to a remote cabin once owned by the father’s grandparents, the teen daughters begin to feel reverberations of sinister spirits lurking from a century before. (July 9)

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi

In a setting that evokes a fantasy version of Renaissance Italy, influential families battle for power—including one rising scion who must unravel the mystery of an ancient artifact that seems to be influencing his path. (July 9)

The Price of Redemption by Shawn Carpenter

“A debut swashbuckling fantasy following a powerful sorceress, the Marquese Enid d’Tancreville, as she is forced on the run where she meets a vast cast of characters including a young sea captain who has need of a sea mage.” (July 9)

Shadowstitch by Cari Thomas

In this sequel to Threadneedle , Anna is back to concealing her magic to keep her coven safe—until a rapidly spreading hunt for witches means she must team up with Effie to try and protect them. (July 9)

The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons

This standalone fantasy tale is described as combining “conniving dragons, lightning banter, high-stakes intrigue, and a little bit of heat.” (July 9)

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

A librarian who tends a collection of spellbooks goes on the run with her assistant (a sentient spider plant) when the city falls into a fiery revolt—ending up in her island hometown, where she makes magical jam and opens a magical store. (July 9)

These Deathless Shores by P.H. Low

“A richly reimagined tale of Captain Hook’s origin, a story of cruelty, magic, lost innocence, and the indelible power of stories.” (July 9)

This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour

“A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.” (July 9)

Toward Eternity: A Novel by Anton Hur

This speculative novel set in a near-future world where immortality is nearly attainable explores one central question: “What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?” (July 9)

Unraveling by Karen Lord

This standalone fantasy novel explores “the dark truth behind a string of unusual murders leads to an otherworldly exploration of spirits, myth, and memory, steeped in Caribbean storytelling.” (July 9)

The Backtrack by Erin La Rosa

A woman returns to her childhood home after 20 years, where the nostalgia she feels for her teen years takes a strange twist when her old CD player reveals it has the power to turn back time. (July 16)

The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness

The All Souls series that began with A Discovery of Witches continues the story of witch Diana Bishop and vampire Matthew de Clermont. In this adventure, Diana decides the way to ensure safety for their young children is to dig into her family’s mysterious past. (July 16)

Blood Jade by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle

The Phoenix Hoarde series continues as Emiko Soong, guardian of the sentient city of San Francisco, embarks on a murder investigation that points toward a long-hidden secret in her magical family’s past. (July 16)

Bright Objects by Ruby Todd

“A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences, in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance.” (July 16)

The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur by Lev Grossman

The latest from the author of The Magicians trilogy is described as “a triumphant reimagining of the King Arthur legend for the new millennium.” (July 16)

Descent by Marko Kloos

The military sci-fi Palladium Wars series continues as a POW is given a chance at freedom and a fresh start, but it comes with a dangerous risk: he’ll need to go undercover and sabotage an interstellar rebellion. (July 16)

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

The author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw explores another slasher tale, this one set in late-’80s small-town Texas, and told from the POV of its teenage killer. (July 16)

In the Belly of the Whale by Michael Flynn

“Aboard a colossal generation ship, Earth’s brightest minds have forged a strict regime to ensure survival of the human race. The unintentionally oppressive rules form uniquely distinct societies as the years pass, until differences in ideology, class, and cultural identity stirs up rebellion among the beleaguered crew, igniting the first whispers of revolution.” (July 16)

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

This Chronicles of Narnia -inspired story follows two childhood friends who go missing together in a state forest, and return six months later with only murky memories of what happened to them. Fifteen years on, they reluctantly reunite to track down a girl who’s vanished from the same woods. (July 16)

A Rose by Any Other Name by Mary McMyne

“The lush, magical story behind Shakespeare’s sonnets, as told by one of his most famous subjects—the incendiary and mysterious Dark Lady.” (July 16)

The Second Son by Adrienne Tooley

“An epic clash of deities explores the two facets of pain—rage versus sadness—in this rousing followup to The Third Daughter , a dark crown fantasy duology with a sweeping sapphic romance.” (July 16)

The Spice Gate by Prashanth Srivatsa

“Delve into this debut fantasy and journey through the Spice Gates as Amir, a young man born with the ability to travel between the eight kingdoms, unravels the power that keeps the world in balance.” (July 16)

Talio’s Codex by J. Alexander Cohen

“Ten years ago, the theft of his codex destroyed Talio Rossa’s career as a magistrate in the four cities. But when his ex-wife—finally willing to forgive finding him in bed with a man—presents him with a long-shot legal case, he has the chance to get his career back on track.” (July 16)

The West Passage by Jared Pechaček

“When the Guardian of the West Passage died in her bed, the women of Grey Tower fed her to the crows and went back to their chores. No successor was named as Guardian, no one took up the fallen blade; the West Passage went unguarded. Now, snow blankets Grey in the height of summer, foretelling the coming of the Beast. The too-young Mother of Grey House and the Guardian’s unnamed squire set out to save their people.” (July 16)

The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker

This collection gathers 13 scary stories from Adiba Jaigirdar, Alexis Henderson, Chloe Gong, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, H. E. Edgmon, Kalynn Bayron, Karen Strong, Kendare Blake, Lamar Giles, Mark Oshiro, Naseem Jamnia, Tiffany D. Jackson, and Terry J. Benton-Walker. (July 16)

Yoke of Stars by R.B. Lemberg

“An apprentice assassin and an inquisitive linguist trade interwoven tales in order to enact revenge.” (July 16)

The Body Harvest by Michael J. Seidlinger

“J.G. Ballard’s Crash meets Albert Camus’s The Plague in a transgressive horror novel for the TikTok generation.” (July 23)

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

The famous actor and the acclaimed author team up for this novel inspired by Reeves’ BRZRKR comics; it’s about an immortal warrior who teams up with a black-ops group in order to fulfill his death wish, then gets pulled into a mystery even greater than his own existence. (July 23)

The Dissonance by Shaun Hamill

A trio of former friends must reunite 20 years later to revive the magical powers they cultivated as high-schoolers to save a kidnapped teen and prevent an apocalypse they may have unintentionally set in motion. (July 23)

The Drowning House by Cherie Priest

When a house washes ashore on a Pacific Northwest island after a vicious storm—and a man goes missing—his estranged friends must uncover the dwelling’s evil history if they want any hope of finding him. (July 23)

The Factus Sequence - Ninth Life by Stark Holborn

When an elusive outlaw is finally captured at the edge of the galaxy, a bounty hunter must agree to hear stories about all of her lives in order to collect his reward. (July 23)

Grand Theft AI by James Cox

In 2051 San Francisco, a seasoned thief and an underworld fixer team up for the ultimate high-tech heist (July 23).

Gravity Lost by L.M. Sagas

In this sequel to Cascade Failure , “everyone’s favorite fierce, messy, chaotic space fam is back with more vibrant worlds, and the wildest crew since Guardians of the Galaxy .” (July 23)

Hera by Jennifer Saint

Zeus’ wife gets the feminist-retelling treatment in this tale inspired by Greek mythology. (July 23)

In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran

“A cosmic war reignites and the fate of the orisha lie in the hands of an untried acolyte in this first entry of a new epic fantasy novella duology.” (July 23)

The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton

“Rival ornithologists hunt through England for a rare magical bird in this historical-fantasy rom-com reminiscent of Indiana Jones but with manners, tea, and helicopter parasols.” (July 23)

Queen B: The Story of Anne Boleyn, Witch Queen by Juno Dawson

The third entry in the author’s Her Majesty’s Royal Coven series “takes us back to the reign of Henry VIII and the origins of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven under the beautiful, the bewitching, Anne Boleyn.” (July 23)

Brothersong by TJ Klune

The fourth and final book in the author’s Green Creek fantasy romance series about shape-shifting wolves follows Carter as he hits the road in search of Gavin. (July 30)

The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982 by Chris Nashawaty

The film critic and culture writer looks back at the action-packed summer of 1982—which saw the release of E.T. , Tron , Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan , Conan the Barbarian , Blade Runner , Poltergeist , The Thing , and Mad Max: The Road Warrior —and explores how those films came to be, as well as their lasting impact on Hollywood. (July 30)

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

This adult epic fantasy follows a dying woman who slips into the world of her favorite fantasy novels, where she’ll need to navigate an array of monstrous fictional characters—including herself, newly cast as a villain in the story. (July 30)

Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard

“A compelling tale of love, duty, and found family in an exciting new space opera that brings xianxia-style martial arts to the stars.” (July 30)

One Year Ago in Spain by Evelyn Skye

After her boyfriend slips into a coma, a woman realizes she’s able to communicate with his soul—which has become divided from his body and has no memory of her. In order to heal him, she’ll need to put aside her own doubts about their relationship and convince his soul to fall in love with her again. (July 30)

Saturation Point by Adrian Tchaikovsky

A scientist must enter “the Zone,” a stretch of equatorial rainforest where the climate has become so extreme that warm-blooded creatures cannot survive without protection, on a dangerous rescue mission—and uncovers a corporate conspiracy in the process. (July 30)

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel , Star Wars , and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV , and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who .

A grid shows portions of 16 book covers.

16 New Books Coming in July

New novels from J. Courtney Sullivan and Liz Moore, a memoir by a “hacktivist” member of Anonymous — and more.

Credit... The New York Times

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The cover of “The Cliffs” is a photo of rocky coastal cliffs at sunset.

The Cliffs , by J. Courtney Sullivan

A dilapidated lavender mansion, perched high on a craggy bluff in Maine, turns out to be more than a home: It’s the key to a century of hopes, misdeeds and family ghosts.

Knopf, July 2

The God of the Woods , by Liz Moore

Moore’s fifth novel takes place at an Adirondack summer camp where the daughter of the owner goes missing. Strangely — and alarmingly — she isn’t the first person in her family to disappear from this secluded idyll. Who is responsible?

Riverhead, July 2

Private Revolutions , by Yuan Yang

This story of four women’s coming-of-age spans six years in China in the 1980s and ‘90s, offering a portrait both sweeping and intimate — as much a study of a radically changing society as of four very different people.

Viking, July 2

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Entertainment

Here Are the 12 New Books You Should Read in July

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

E ven if you can’t escape rising summer temperatures to more comfortable climes, you can at least get lost in a good book . The best new books coming in July include Kevin Barry’s Western romance, Lev Grossman ’s reimagining of King Arthur’s legend, and Laura van den Berg ’s unsettling new novel set in Florida’s underbelly.

Keep Shark Week going with shark scientist Jasmin Graham’s debut memoir focused on her work with the most misunderstood fish in the sea. Hit the road with Turkish author Ayşegül Savaş’ third novel, about a couple running into unexpected trouble finding a new apartment for their family. And gaze deeply into beauty writer Sable Yong’s thoughtful essay collection on the role of vanity in today’s culture.

Here, the 12 new books you should read in July.

The Cliffs , J. Courtney Sullivan (July 2)

A decade ago, best-selling author J. Courtney Sullivan became obsessed with a purple Victorian mansion she discovered while on vacation in Maine. Now, that unique home is at the center of her haunting new novel, The Cliffs. After losing her mother, getting laid off, and separating from her husband, archivist Jane Flanagan returns to her coastal Maine hometown to discover that the long-abandoned gothic house she was obsessed with as a teen has a new owner. Genevieve, a wealthy outsider, has given the once-dilapidated dwelling a misbegotten makeover that she believes has awakened something sinister. In this provocative ghost story that questions how we right our wrongs of the past, the two must team up to rid the mysterious 19th-century home of its spirits and overcome their own demons.

Buy Now: The Cliffs on Bookshop | Amazon

The Heart in Winter , Kevin Barry (July 9)

The Heart in Winter, Irish author Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, is a rollicking romance that is as wild as the Old West where it takes place. In 1891 Butte, Mont., a reckless young poet and doper named Tom Rourke falls in love with Polly Gillespie, the new wife of the extremely devout captain of the local copper mine. The twosome ride off on a stolen horse together toward San Francisco, only to be pursued by a posse of mad gunmen hired by Polly’s husband. In order to survive in this rip-roaring love story, the outlaws make choices they may live to regret.

Buy Now: The Heart in Winter on Bookshop | Amazon

State of Paradise , Laura van den Berg (July 9)

In Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise, a ghostwriter travels to Florida during an unspecified pandemic to look after her aging mother. But when she arrives, the unnamed narrator discovers that it’s her little sister who really needs help. Struggling to process the death of their father, her sibling has become obsessed with a virtual reality headset that allows her to reconnect with the dead. Then she suddenly goes missing, alongside countless other Floridians, leading the protagonist to launch an investigation into the mysterious tech company behind the headsets. What ensues is a page-turning story about the challenges of learning to let go.

Buy Now: State of Paradise on Bookshop | Amazon

The Anthropologists , Ayşegül Savaş (July 9)

Inspired by her 2021 New Yorker short story, “ Future Selves ,” Ayşegül Savaş’ perceptive new novel, The Anthropologists , follows a nomadic couple as they struggle to find an apartment in an unnamed foreign city. Asya and Manu, a documentarian and nonprofit worker, are looking to finally put down roots together in a place that is all their own and nothing like where they came from. But as they tour each real-estate listing, envisioning what their future could look like, something always seems off, and they can’t quite place why. The idealistic lovers find themselves chafing against society’s idea of adulthood and look to kindred spirits—a reticent bon vivant, a lonely local, and their poetry-loving elderly neighbor—in hopes of figuring out how to live a good life.

Buy Now: The Anthropologists on Bookshop | Amazon

Die Hot With a Vengeance, Sable Yong (July 9)

With her debut essay collection, Die Hot With a Vengeance, Sable Yong looks to understand why vanity is still such a dirty word in a culture so obsessed with beauty. The former Allure editor offers thought-provoking analysis on social media’s impossible beauty standards , the rise of questionable wellness trends , and whether blondes really do have more fun. Going beyond just sharing her insights from working in the industry, she also weaves in stories of her own complicated relationship with self-image as she grew up feeling like an outsider in her mostly white neighborhood. With humor and candor, Die Hot With a Vengeance shows why beauty should be a tool of self-expression, not self-hate.

Buy Now: Die Hot With a Vengeance on Bookshop | Amazon

The Lucky Ones , Zara Chowdhary (July 16)

Zara Chowdhary’s debut memoir, The Lucky Ones, is a moving tale of survival that spans more than two decades of anti-Muslim violence in India . As a teenager in the early 2000s, Chowdhary bore witness to India’s worst communal riots in over 50 years, which turned Hindu and Muslim neighbors against one another. Chowdhary offers a harrowing account of the violence that occurred—and continues to this day —between the two groups, tracing the political, economic, and social repercussions of 80 years of ongoing bloodshed.

Buy Now: The Lucky Ones on Bookshop | Amazon

Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist , Jasmin Graham (July 16)

Throughout shark scientist Jasmin Graham’s riveting debut memoir, Sharks Don’t Sink, she compares herself to the oft-misunderstood titular fish. Despite being denser than water, sharks manage to float because they just keep swimming. Graham had to do the same in order to move up in the white male-dominated profession of marine biology. She shares stories of growing up fishing with her dad and describes her struggle to find her place in academia as a Black woman and how that led her to start Minorities in Shark Sciences , an organization that provides support and opportunities for those underrepresented in the marine science field. Graham also makes the case for thinking about sharks differently, and urges us all to help protect these vulnerable, prehistoric creatures.

Buy Now: Sharks Don't Sink on Bookshop | Amazon

The Bright Sword , Lev Grossman (July 16)

Best-selling author Lev Grossman, a former TIME critic, is back with a new, sweeping medieval epic that offers a fresh take on the legend of King Arthur . In The Bright Sword, a gifted young knight named Collum arrives in Camelot in the hopes of competing for a spot at the Round Table. Sadly, though, he’s too late; King Arthur died in battle two weeks earlier, and the knights that survived him are more Bad News Bears than Game of Thrones . Still, Collum joins this lovable band of misfits realizing there’s too much at stake, and their fight has just begun. Together, the group becomes Camelot’s only hope of reclaiming Excalibur, reuniting the kingdom, and keeping Arthur’s foes—dastardly half-sister Morgan le Fay, his fallen bride Guinevere, and disgraced hero Lancelot—from reclaiming the crown.

Buy Now: The Bright Sword on Bookshop | Amazon

Liars , Sarah Manguso (July 23)

In essayist and poet Sarah Manguso’s unflinching second novel, a writer named Jane believes she’s found a supportive partner in John, a visual artist who becomes her husband. But after the birth of their first child, she begins to feel swallowed up by John’s ego. When her own career starts to take off, it’s John who pulls away, leaving Jane to take a closer look at their marriage, which, she realizes, may have never been on solid ground. As she examines the pieces of her life, Manguso’s plucky protagonist makes stirring observations about marriage and identity.

Buy Now: Liars on Bookshop | Amazon

Catalina , Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (July 23)

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s debut novel follows Catalina Ituralde, a brash undocumented immigrant from Ecuador on the verge of graduating from Harvard. She’s got a stacked resume and pretty good grades, but her immigration status has made her post-grad prospects rather bleak. This is a major problem for Catalina, who takes care of her grandparents on top of everything else. After years of working to infiltrate Harvard’s high society and as commencement looms over her head, she falls for a sanctimonious anthropology student and begins wondering if she’s found a solution to her woes or just another problem. This sardonic, semi-autobiographical novel is sure to delight fans of Elif Batuman’s The Idiot .

Buy Now: Catalina on Bookshop | Amazon

Someone Like Us , Dinaw Mengestu (July 30)

Dinaw Mengestu’s fourth novel, Someone Like Us , is a beguiling meditation on love, loss, and the need to belong. As his marriage unravels, war journalist Mamush returns to the tight-knit Ethiopian community in Washington, D.C. where he grew up to seek solace. But once there, he discovers that Samuel, his larger-than-life father figure, has unexpectedly died. In hopes of better understanding Samuel, Mamush embarks on a cross-country expedition to trace the older man’s immigration journey—only to unearth a shocking secret about his own lineage.

Buy Now: Someone Like Us on Bookshop | Amazon

They Dream in Gold , Mai Sennaar (July 30)

Playwright and filmmaker Mai Sennaar’s debut novel, They Dream in Gold, is a tender romance that spans decades, generations, and continents. It’s love at first sight when Bonnie and Mansour, African immigrants abandoned by their mothers, meet in New York in 1968. The two bond over Mansour’s music, a blend of Senegalese gospel and American jazz, which they each believe has the power to change the world. When Mansour goes missing while on tour in Spain, a pregnant Bonnie must team up with his mother, grandmother, and aunt to solve the mystery of his disappearance. In detailing their plight, Sennaar unveils a story about motherhood, the African diaspora, and the resilience of Black women.

Buy Now: They Dream in Gold on Bookshop | Amazon

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