Summer was made for slow, languid days and stories that linger long after the final page. We’ve curated some of the upcoming season’s standout titles, from immersive novels to gripping nonfiction. Yearning for a witty memoir or a lush Costa Rica setting? Maybe a laugh-out-loud political satire? Perhaps you might want to time-travel to Eve Babitz’s glamorous and gritty Los Angeles, or bite into a high-octane thriller. Pour yourself a cold drink, here are our book reviewers’ selections to start planning your hot summer stack.
— Sophia Kercher
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FICTION
Rasputin Swims the Potomac
By Ben Fountain
Flatiron
(June 9)
Fountain’s 2012 hit novel “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” is a masterpiece of satire, and somehow, he’s managed to do it again. His latest book — which is very difficult to condense into a short item, but let’s try — tells the story of a U.S. president and reality show star seeking a third term in office, but whose campaign is threatened by a mysterious illness sweeping the nation that causes people to break out weeping. There’s also a reporter named Clarence Thomas Jr., an ex-country music star with a White House job, and the titular pro wrestler, who might have paranormal powers. It’s a lot, for sure, but Fountain pulls it off with his gleefully absurd sense of humor. — Michael Schaub
It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories
By Sigrid Nunez
Riverhead Books
(July 14)
Years ago, I once had the pleasure of speaking with Nunez over Zoom, and even then, I felt I was in the presence of one of the great writers of our time. It’s easy to admire her work — anyone who has read her will agree, especially readers of “The Friend,” which won the National Book Award. After a celebrated career, she returns with a collection of 13 short stories that explore mortality, thorny relationships and intellectual curiosity — hallmarks of her writing. Each piece reads like a finely crafted essay, enriched by astute literary references and poignant observations. With remarkable tenderness, Nunez navigates themes of aging, death and mental illness. Reading her work feels like having lunch with your smartest, wisest, most empathetic friend. — Maddie Connors
Yellow Pine
By Claire Vaye Watkins
Riverhead Books
(July 21)
Rose, the hero of Watkins’ third novel, is torn. How much of her life does she dedicate to domesticity, now that she’s reunited with her ex, Miles? And how much does she dedicate to Nothingness Flats, her home in the Mojave Desert that’s being uprooted and flattened for the sake of a massive solar array? Watkins’ story thrives in exposing the dilemmas that climate change has increasingly forced us into, and she writes with a wisdom that’s informed by classic books about desert life — Edward Abbey, Joy Williams, Ben Ehrenreich and more all get name-checked — alongside her own lyrical observations about the complex desert ecosystem. — Mark Athitakis
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Cloudthief
By Nathaniel Rich
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(July 14)
Rich, who’s written two serious, well-researched books about climate change, assumes a noirish tone for his fourth novel, an ersatz heist story narrated by Tim, a journalist whose career options have been withering as badly as the environment. While seizing on a story about Manhattanites living in storage facilities, he meets Virginia, with whom he concocts a plan to infiltrate a massive Oklahoma data center. “Cloudthief” serves as a lively thriller, but it’s also an informed indictment of how much we sacrifice — environmentally and intellectually — when we casually offload our collective wisdom onto resource-hoovering facilities that have become the “nerve ganglia of our society.” — M.A.
“Beginning Middle End” by Valeria Luiselli
(Knopf)
Beginning Middle End
By Valeria Luiselli
Knopf
(July 28)
Valeria Luiselli stunned the literary world with her 2019 novel “Lost Children Archive,” which beautifully explored themes of family and immigration. Her new novel revisits those topics with the same intelligence and wit. It follows the narrator and her 12-year-old daughter as they travel to Sicily, visiting the site where the narrator’s grandmother, an archaeologist, worked years before. Both mother and daughter reflect on the troubles besetting their own family, as the mother tries to write a novel. Luiselli’s prose is elegant as ever — she handles difficult themes with grace, and the two main characters prove to be unforgettable. It’s quickly becoming apparent that Luiselli is one of the country’s most gifted novelists. — M.S.
Crocodilopolis
By John Manuel Arias
Bloomsbury
(Aug. 25)
Arias’ follow-up to his 2023 debut novel, “Where There Was Fire,” is a lush, sweeping tale about two Costa Rican brothers, Seth and Osario, who are the troubled inheritors of the country’s political upheavals as well as their own family drama. As Seth seethes about his separation from his home country (and the family fortune), Arias interweaves a backstory involving assassination, undisclosed parentage and (as the title suggests) the perilous creatures slithering across the landscape. Evoking classics of the ‘60s and ’70s Latin American boom, the novel is sensual and darkly comic, suffused with the sense that, as Arias writes, “fate was a cruel, playful thing.” — M.A.
NONFICTION
Trash! A Garbageman’s Story
By Simon Pare-Poupart
Melville House
(June 16)
One man’s trash is another man’s memoir. At least, according to Pare-Poupart. What we throw away doesn’t take long to resurface, sometimes in the form of a witty, wise and gripping memoir. Translated from French, Pare-Poupart’s must-read memoir follows his journey as a garbage man in Montreal and the people who pick up what we wish to leave behind. Who better to tell the tale of the city than the man who has spent years rifling through its junk? The memoir serves as a charming and brilliant meditation on trash, consumerism and class. Imagine if Anthony Bourdain were your garbage man. Pare-Poupart never veers into self-pity; in fact, he loves his job, and readers will love this book. — M.C.
Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were)
By Eve Babitz
New York Review Books
(June 23)
Nine months ago, I wrote a letter to a man who broke my heart and never sent it. I deemed this an act of maturity and self-preservation, definitely not cowardice. Besides, no sense in wasting good writing on a bad man. Thankfully, Babitz did exactly that — no rambling thoughts, petty accusations or amusing missives left unsaid. Finally, bitterness triumphs! For our pleasure, a collection of her letters to friends, family and ex-lovers is being published. The resulting book is scandalous, funny and delicious. It’s Babitz at her best. She’s the one who got away, if only to come back to give you a piece of her mind. Some of the letters are sentimental and moving. Others are salacious — the kind of letters we might write if we were braver, bolder, well, Eve Babitz. — M.C.
American Alt: A True Story of Madness and Friendship in a Fractured Country
By Chris Lockhart
Bloomsbury
(July 7)
How do you begin to put back the pieces of a fractured mind? That’s the question Marine veteran Michael Dodd asked after he found himself in a psychiatric hospital after plotting to kill Jay Inslee, then-governor of Washington, in 2021. Dodd was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and asked his friend Lockhart, a medical anthropologist, to help him figure out what brought him to his lowest moment. Lockhart explores themes of mental illness, conspiracy theories and trauma with intelligence and compassion, and his writing is first-rate. This is a sometimes-chilling book, but — in this particularly fraught moment in American history — an absolutely vital one. — M.S.
You Won’t Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters
By Rachel Aviv
Knopf
(July 7)
My executioner, my best friend, my greatest champion — I’m talking about my mother, of course. She drives me crazy. And yet, not long ago, I felt the sudden impulse to tattoo her name on my arm. I don’t know any woman who doesn’t live some version of this life, locked in a sentimental, twisted waltz with the difficult woman who raised her. Mercifully, Aviv has bravely attempted to untangle the mother-daughter dynamic and bring it into the light. Drawing on stories she reported for the New Yorker about mothers and daughters, Aviv examines their roles and the ways they come to define one another. With prose so heartfelt and insightful, I was in tears by the preface. — M.C.
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
By Pamela Colloff
Knopf
(July 14)
ProPublica reporter and New York Times Magazine staff writer Pamela Colloff has earned a well-deserved reputation for her thoughtful writing on the American criminal justice system. In her gripping first book, Colloff considers the case of Paul Skalnik, a fabulist, con man and predator who falsely claimed a man he was in jail with admitted to killing a 14-year-old girl; the man was sent to death row by prosecutors, and Skalnik gained freedom. It wasn’t the first time Skalnik lied to get out of jail. Colloff’s reporting is, as usual, dogged and exhaustive, and the book reads like a thriller, but never sacrifices the humanity of the people Skalnik hurt. It’s a hell of an achievement. — M.S.
Tin Can Coast: A History of Industry, Greed, and Fishing in the Golden State
By Joseph Ogilvy
Bloomsbury
(July 21)
Sardines, tuna and abalone have all at some point been abundant along the California Current, a 1,900-mile stretch of the Pacific that has been ripe for explorers and fishers for centuries. And as Ogilvy, a writer and chef, makes clear in this thorough history, it’s an area that’s also been subject to conflict and exploitation, from Spanish and Russian authorities squabbling over otter poaching in the 1800s to the demise of the tuna industry in the 1980s. Ogilvy’s book is a study of the history and risks of overfishing, but it’s also powerful nature writing, rich with his own first-hand observations, along with a lively story about the consequences of rapacious capitalism, international disputes and technological innovation. — M.A.
