11 Books You Should Read This Summer

Watkins’ second book is packed full of intriguing, fully realized characters— a real feat, give that they appear only for the length of a short story—living in the middle and aftermath of personal crises and discoveries. Many are navigating family bonds gone awry, and Watkins expertly weaves into these stories the way inequality and race structure daily lives. In a piece about her first book, Perish, Texas Monthly asked, “Has Texas finally found its William Faulkner?,” which is to say: If you are looking for expertly crafted writing in your summer reading, this is an obvious choice. (Plus, short stories are perfect for when you’re traveling from place to place.) —Nora Biette-Timmons

Out August 29. Preorder it at Bookshop or Amazon.

My idea of a summer read is neither an Emily Henry-esque beach read, nor spicy NBA fanfic, but a devastating novel about the perils of the art world and the role of desire in young adulthood. (I can be such a summer bummer!) In Crimp’s first foray into fiction,she weaves protagonist Anna into a web of drunken debauchery, professional yearning, and romantic obsession as she claws her way to the top of her class as an opera student at the London Conservatory. When Anna meets an older man, Max, her perfect ascent comes to an unsettling halt, and she begins to lose herself within a man who couldn’t care less. Come for the lurid affair, stay for the tingling prose about performances in life, and in art. —Emily Leibert

Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

If you are one of the lucky ones headed off to a foreign vacation this summer, this eye-opening book will remind you just how much of a privilege the legal ability to do that is. Miller starts with her own story, of meeting the man who would become her husband, a displaced Syrian, in Turkey in the mid-2010s. Miller is Lebanese American, and writes about the surreal experience of learning just how different her ability to move throughout the world would have been had her relatives not emigrated for a few more decades. The rest of the book is an engaging combination of history, interviews, and her own anger at our frequently unjust world.

This book will be especially emotionally resonant if you have ever been separated from a loved one through circumstances beyond your control. Love Across Borders has the emotional rollercoaster of a romance novel, but all the love stories (and the heartache within) are all too real. An almost guaranteed tearjerker that will leave you more knowledgable—and more frustrated—than when you first picked it up.
—NBT

Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

5 out of 5 beach chairs. Dark, funny, and breezy read equally great for a plane, beach, or trip to the woods. This is the rare book that everybody is talking about that literally everybody should read. Beagin pulls off writing a protagonist that stalks for fun and...we like it. —Andy Mills

Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

I admit I haven’t read this yet and am just anticipating doing so, but Michell’s second novel has one of the most gripping, enticing summaries I’ve read in a long, long time: “At home in Seoul, former journalist Sae is waiting with two clingy toddlers for her husband to come home from work. He has never been this late before. Her children are crying, and Sae, exhausted and anxious, turns on the TV to distract herself. She clicks to the news, which shows a horrific disaster, the collapse of a massive skyscraper where Jae was an engineer. Minutes, then hours, and then days pass. No one has seen Jae, but things aren’t adding up. There are rumors that the foundation was unstable. Jae, who was working on a luxury pool at the top floor, was reported to have been working in the basement. The government was involved, the contractors missing.” She is “is troubled, terrified, and...suspicious,” and embarks on her own investigation.

I cannot wait to dive into this book on a lazy summer weekend afternoon—perhaps at the Rockaways, or perhaps in the comfort of my own cool living room. In any case, I expect to devour it in one sitting. —NBT

Out July 11. Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

If you’re burnt out, exhausted, or just treading water and looking forward to whatever sort of “break” summer might offer, might I recommend a book that will interrogate your (and society’s) views on ambition and careers? When so much of the way we work under capitalism is measured (from the titular gold stars elementary schoolers get to the performance reviews that determine how much money we’re given in exchange for our labor) and chasing the high of approval becomes so ingrained in so many of us, how do we move forward when we become stuck? Stauffer raises these questions and many, many more. She doesn’t exactly answer them—it’d be nice if she did, but also, everyone’s responses will be different—but she interrogates these ideas in a way that will get your wheels turning. —NBT

Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

What a strangely beautiful novel. Highly recommended. The first 100 pages or so are a bit slow, with lots of scene setting, but then it just gets better and better and better in a sad and lovely and beautiful way, with a perfect ending. I will absolutely read this again someday.

Just read it. The more I talk about it the less fun it is. —AM

Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

What could be a better snack to accompany learning about the history of a food that isn’t found in nature? Hot dogs are the peak of human ingenuity, in my humble opinion, and I would only trust Jamie Loftus (of “Lolita Podcast” and “My Year In Mensa”) to take me through their history. —Caitlin Cruz

Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

I’m sticking with my recommendation of The Guest, which is about a low-level grifter wandering around a Hamptons-esque beach town after getting thrown out by her boyfriend. In my review last month, I wrote that Cline “manages to impart the infinite feeling of living moment-to-moment in the most exciting way imaginable; this is a book I tore through, the kind that made me want to rush through my daily obligations to get back to it. Who needs living when you’ve got The Guest in your bag?” I meant it! An amazing beach read about a terrible time at the beach. —Rich Juzwiak

Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

5 out of 5 picnic blankets. Murder is the way to get me into a non-fiction book , but this is so much more than true crime. You’ll end up learning a bunch of stuff about the IRA and the politics of other countries you may no care much about—and it might take half of the summer to finish—but I promise it’s worth it. —AM

Buy it at Bookshop or Amazon.

I had gotten into a nonfiction kick for a few years and forgotten a bit about fantasy/sci-fi, which had always been my genre of choice as a kid and young adult (A Wrinkle in Time and The Phantom Tollbooth are still my favorite books). It was lovely to reconnect with the fantasy novel as an adult via Susanna Clarke’s beautiful Piranesi—especially reading from a post-pandemic perspective. The protagonist, Piranesi, lives nearly alone in a giant house full of infinite hallways and statues, with the sea flooding the floor below him and the clouds permeating the floor above. He fends for himself, survives by fishing, and meticulously documents and maps out the wonders of the house, to the extent that he can now predict the tides.

He only knows of one other living person in his world—the Other—who he thinks is in his friend and in his same boat, metaphorically speaking. Then the secrets of the house and the Other begin to unravel, and it becomes a real page-turner.

Piranesi is a beautiful meditation on loneliness—or rather, aloneness—and paints this parallel world with such detail that you start to feel like you can see it and are living in it yourself. Highly recommend. —Laura Bassett