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Summer reading list

Cool books for hot days

Looking for a spine tingler? Or perhaps something lyrical and literary? How about a moving memoir or creepy crime, a sports standout or stories headed for the big screen? Time to make a list and check it twice.

Lead art by Asia Pietrzyk

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literary fiction

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  • The Locals

    By Jonathan Dee

    Dee consolidates all manner of contemporary angst — financial, personal, political — into this saga revolving around the fictional Berkshires burg of Howland, Mass., a land of wealthy summer residents, blue-collar townies, and, soon, a hedge-fund millionaire mayor.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for The Locals
  • The Mars Room

    By Rachel Kushner

    The summer heat can feel like a prison, but this devastating novel, set in an actual prison with a single mom and former stripper serving two life terms, will remind you of what it really means to be confined.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for The Mars Room
  • My Life as a Man

    By Philip Roth

    This quasi-autobiographical, quasi-sequel to “Portnoy’s Complaint’’ about the impressively unhappy marriage of a successful young writer has the benefit of not being beholden to its predecessor, as well as a full panoply of Rothian totems sure to vex and delight.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for My Life as a Man
  • Stone Arabia

    By Dana Spiotta

    The tangled relationship of a middle-aged sister and her reclusive rock musician brother will feel familiar to fans of Brenda and Billy from “Six Feet Under’’ in this story about art and memory.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for Stone Arabia
  • Landscape with Invisible Hand

    By M. T. Anderson

    Though billed as a YA novel, even the stodgiest adults will be floored by this lethal little dystopian satire of a world fleeced by aliens shaped like coffee tables bearing technological gifts at a steep price.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for Landscape with Invisible Hand
  • The Night Ocean

    By Paul La Farge

    As it turns out, there’s nothing funnier than the imaginary sex diaries of Rhode Island’s most famous prude, racist, and germaphobe, horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for The Night Ocean
  • You Should Have Left

    By Daniel Kehlmann

    A fractious couple rents a creepy vacation house in the mountains, thus entering an extremely cliched tableau that yields nothing less than a gorgeous, surprising meditation on narrative and meaning.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for You Should Have Left
  • The House of Small Shadows

    By Adam Nevill

    For fans of “The Wicker Man’’ (no, not the Nicolas Cage version) Nevill delivers a languidly terrifying novel of a troubled woman assigned to catalogue a collection of awful dolls, puppets, and taxidermy in a majestic house.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for The House of Small Shadows
  • The White Bone

    A story told through the perspective of a baby elephant during a drought in the sub-Sahara has no right to be as moving, as harrowing, nor as dire a warning as this is.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for The White Bone
  • A Box of Matches

    By Nicholson Baker

    This extremely compact and extremely comforting novel about a textbook editor and father contemplating by the fire his pet duck, his life, and his navel will forever alter the way you think about washing dishes by hand.

    — Eugenia Williamson

    A book cover for A Box of Matches
  • Shadow & Claw

    By Gene Wolfe

    A hidden gem. “The Book of the New Sun” tetralogy, the first half gathered here, can provide a summer’s worth of delights, from its blend of sci-fi and fantasy to its Joycean linguistic exuberance as it follows a traveling torturer and his sidekicks.

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for Shadow & Claw
  • The Changeling

    By Joy Williams

    Initially reviled and recently reissued, this novel about the unraveling and transformation of a hard-drinking young mother displays the typical — which is to say, absolutely singular — Williams pleasures: visionary weirdness, metaphysical wit, and sentences that explode rather than unfold.

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for The Changeling
  • Frankenstein in Baghdad

    By Ahmed Saadawi, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright

    Saadawi uses fantasy — specifically, a monstrous creature cobbled together from body parts of bombing victims in US-occupied Baghdad — to explore the hellishness of war in this darkly comic novel.

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for Frankenstein in Baghdad
  • Emma

    By Jane Austen

    My favorite Austen novel is great any time of year, but when you’re suffering through another awkward, sweltering summer outing, just remember: It’s not as bad as our clueless would-be matchmaker’s infamous Box Hill picnic.

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for Emma
  • Lavinia

    By Ursula K. Le Guin

    The last novel published by the late master takes a silent figure from the “Aeneid,” Aeneas’s wife (and later widow) Lavinia over whom a civil war is fought, and gives her life by giving her a voice.

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for Lavinia
  • Zama

    By Antonio di Benedetto

    This Argentinian classic about a Spanish imperial administrator awaiting a transfer to Buenos Aires while stationed in remote 1790s Paraguay explores what happens when things — society, the metaphysical framework provided by religion, the psyche — fall apart.

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for Zama
  • Indivisible

    By Fanny Howe

    The Cambridge poet’s real masterpiece is this theological novel in which the narrator, a filmmaker with foster kids and an alcoholic husband, haltingly seeks after the unknown and unknowable God who she feels always “godding inside of [her].”

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for Indivisible
  • Her Body and Other Parties

    By Carmen Maria Machado

    Machado’s debut collection, a National Book Award finalist, is as generically omnivorous as it is formally inventive, borrowing tropes from horror, fairy tales, and police procedurals, often making them weird and always making them new.

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for Her Body and Other Parties
  • Suicide Blonde

    By Darcey Steinke

    Set in the grungy precincts of 1990s San Francisco, this novel about a young woman, her unfaithful former lover, and junkie prostitute friend, is pure perfection: sacred and profane, luridly erotic and exquisitely lyrical — hot, compacted, gem-like.

    — Anthony Domestico

    A book cover for Suicide Blonde

nonfiction

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  • Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

    By Andrew Solomon

    An ambitious and beautiful book about differences between parents and children — whether caused by disability or circumstance — and the ties that bind us; Solomon’s book won nearly every award when it was published in 2012, but this lyrical meditation on love is worth revisiting.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
  • Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

    By Margot Lee Shetterly

    Even if you’ve already seen the movie, the book on which it’s based is the best kind of summer read: an immersive narrative history of the early days of NASA, centered on the extraordinary women who broke every kind of ceiling.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
  • I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

    By Michelle McNamara

    Published two years after its author’s untimely death of an undiagnosed heart condition — and only a month before police arrested a suspect in the Golden State murders — this book blends creepy true crime with an astute and often moving examination of why an unsolved series of rapes and murders held so many in its thrall.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
  • Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

    By Caroline Fraser

    Those of us who grew up reading Wilder’s “Little House’’ books thought we knew everything about her life, and by extension, those of settlers in the American West; Fraser, digging into letters, diaries, and financial records, reveals the stranger, more complicated story behind the iconic books and their author.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
  • Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion

    By Michelle Dean

    Just as witty, thoughtful, and (occasionally) gossipy as the women it profiles, Dean’s “Sharp’’ is a wildly entertaining and informative group biography of women writers, including the likes of Dorothy Parker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Pauline Kael.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion
  • The Right Stuff

    By Tom Wolfe

    Dazzling prose, dizzying feats, and a gimlet-eyed view of male ambition — the late, great Tom Wolfe’s most sweeping nonfiction work reads like a contender for the Great American Novel.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for The Right Stuff
  • The Secret History of Wonder Woman

    By Jill Lepore

    If you want the escapism and wild storytelling of the summer’s blockbuster comic book movies but still like your books to come with an Ivy League pedigree, this book — juicy yet scholarly — will strike just the right note.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for The Secret History of Wonder Woman
  • The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas

    By Anand Giridharadas

    Ten days after 9/11, a down-on-his-luck white man with visions of himself as an “American terrorist,’’ shoots a Bangladeshi immigrant in the face at a Dallas-area convenience store; journalist Giridharadas, the American-born son of immigrants, leads readers into revealing depths of both men’s stories.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas
  • We Should All Be Feminists

    By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    A slim but powerful essay on the enduring importance of, and urgent need for, women’s rights and those who will stand up for them. Slip a copy into your teenager’s beach bag — or your husband’s.

    — Kate Tuttle

    A book cover for We Should All Be Feminists
  • Born to Run

    By Bruce Springsteen

    The Boss proves as explosive on the page as he is on stage. We all know Springsteen is a master storyteller, and his memoir bears that out. It’s a rich, front-to-back chronicle packed with memorable anecdotes and candid assessments of music, songwriting, and even philosophy.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for Born to Run
  • Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

    By Alan Stern and David Grinspoon

    Take the ultimate summer journey — to Pluto. NASA project leader Stern and astrobiologist Grinspoon lead readers on a remarkable trip through our solar system, providing one of the best recent additions to the literature of space exploration.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto
  • Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators and Fading Empires

    By Simon Winchester

    Capturing the saga of the world’s biggest ocean in a single book is no small feat, but Winchester is the right author for the job. ​Selecting 10 aspects of the world’s biggest ocean, the Pacific, ​and its environs, Winchester provides electrifying tales of history, nature, war, and technology. If you enjoyed his “Atlantic,” this is a no-brainer follow-up.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators and Fading Empires
  • The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea

    By Jack E. Davis

    A professor of sustainability studies offers an exemplary environmental, geographical, and cultural history of the Gulf of Mexico. A well-deserved winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history, the book moves smoothly and engagingly from the indigenous peoples to the present.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea
  • Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art

    By Virginia Heffernan

    Simultaneously incisive and delightfully entertaining, this journey through the wilds of the Internet is both personal and universal, reflecting the author’s love of — and wariness about — the possibilities and pitfalls of online life.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art
  • Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture

    By Ken Jennings

    The all-time “Jeopardy!’’ champion brings his vast knowledge and unique wit to the world of comedy, exploring the trends that have shaped the American comedy scene over the decades. Packed with his own insight in addition to key interviews, it’s another winner for Jennings.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture
  • The World’s Largest Man

    By Harrison Scott Key

    Growing up in rural Mississippi, Oxford American humor columnist Key learned the ways of hunting, fishing, and fighting from his gruff, imposing, decidedly Southern father. The author’s memoir, one of the funniest in recent years, brings “Pop” — and the rest of his family and friends — to vivid life.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for The World’s Largest Man
  • Love and Other Ways of Dying

    By Michael Paterniti

    This sparkling collection of essays provides a full demonstration of Paterniti’s gift for long-form narrative nonfiction. From travel to food (also check out the author’s “The Telling Room”) to slice-of-life vignettes, this carefully selected gathering displays an essayist in full bloom.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for Love and Other Ways of Dying
  • Raptor: A Journey through Birds

    By James Macdonald Lockhart

    For any fan of Helen Macdonald’s “H Is for Hawk,” Lockhart’s enchanting journey across the British Isles in search of 15 different birds of prey is a must-read.

    — Eric Liebetrau

    A book cover for Raptor: A Journey through Birds

mysteries

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  • A Necessary Evil

    By Abir Mukherjee

    In Mukherjee’s second engaging police procedural set in colonial India, the assassination of the heir to a diamond-rich kingdom finds Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee tangling with maharajahs, political advisers, and a harem.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for A Necessary Evil
  • Head On

    By John Scalzi

    Scalzi’s premise, in which FBI agents Chris Shane and Leslie Vann navigate murder investigations in a world transformed by a “locked-in” virus, is perfectly imagined, while offering an equally perfect skewering of contemporary issues.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Head On
  • London Rules

    By Mick Herron

    The latest non-assignment of the Jackson Lamb-led team at Slough House proves irrefutably that these sidelined MI5 agents are among the agency’s smartest. An excellent installment from an already terrific series.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for London Rules
  • Blackout

    By Alex Segura

    Miami freelance investigator and recovering alcoholic Pete Fernandez has plenty to reckon with in his fourth misadventure, as his own emotional baggage and a long-cold murder case swerve home to roost.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Blackout
  • Dead Pretty

    By David Mark

    Mark’s latest police procedural featuring gentle-giant cop Aector McAvoy is his most hair-raising yet: Alongside a missing-persons case, the series arc involving McAvoy’s arch-enemies, the Headhunters, takes a particularly chilling turn.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Dead Pretty
  • The Salzburg Connection

    By Helen MacInnes

    High time for a proper resurrection of World War II-Cold War-era, spy-thriller-writer MacInnes: A chest secreted inside a lake, a dead photographer, his widow, and a New York lawyer collide in the Austrian Alps.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Salzburg Connection
  • The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

    By Dorothy Gilman

    The entire cozier-than-cozy Mrs. Pollifax series — which debuted in 1966, featuring a grandmother-turned-CIA-agent — is good fun; this installment has a particularly wonderful set of secondary characters.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax
  • The-Seven-Per-Cent Solution

    By Nicholas Meyer

    This enticing 1974 bestseller finds Sherlock Holmes and John Watson collaborating with Sigmund Freud, first in an attempt to wean Holmes off his cocaine addiction, then in pursuit of a mystery.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The-Seven-Per-Cent Solution
  • The Sound of One Hand Killing

    By Teresa Solano, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush

    Twin mysteries plague sibling detectives Borja and Eduard as they investigate a murder at one of Barcelona’s fanciest meditation centers while puzzling out the story behind a dead neighbor.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Sound of One Hand Killing
  • If I Die Tonight

    By Alison Gaylin

    The pitfalls of small-town living — boredom, exploitative thrill-seeking, rumor, gossip, big-fish-small-pond egos, and delicious undertones of menace — loom large in this tale of a high-school student felled by a hit-and-run.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for If I Die Tonight
  • The Woman in the Water

    By Charles Finch

    Victorian London detective Charles Lenox’s compelling first case, which involves a possible serial killer, runs parallel to his attempts to gain respect from a nascent Scotland Yard, while maintaining his perch among his aristocratic friends and family.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Woman in the Water
  • The Punishment She Deserves

    By Elizabeth George

    An investigation that’s meant to be an open-and-firmly-shut case proves anything but after the death of the main suspect, leaving Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers with her hackles on perpetual alert in a deceptively placid market town.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Punishment She Deserves
  • The Plea

    By Steve Cavanagh

    Lawyer Eddie Flynn’s con-artist history doesn’t protect him from getting dragged into complicated and criminal games — and this one involving murder, money laundering, and a billionaire is a doozy — but it permits him to play right back.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Plea
  • A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising

    By Raymond A. Villareal

    A full-on vampire infestation — or is it a colonization? — hits Earth, as documented in this zippy read via a clever series of narratives, interviews, historical documents, and newspaper reports.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising
  • The Favorite Sister

    By Jessica Knoll

    This thoroughly-modern, behind-the-scenes view of “Goal Diggers,” a high-profile reality TV soap opera showcasing the lives and careers of entrepreneurial women, is rife with deceits, revelations, and possible deadly ambition gone terribly, terribly awry.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Favorite Sister

sports

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  • The Soul of Basketball: The epic showdown between LeBron, Kobe, Doc and Dirk that saved the NBA

    By Ian Thomsen

    The 2010-11 season was a remarkable one ​in the NBA, and it was LeBron James’s first with Miami. Thomsen details that team’s quest for a championship, competing against other greats and other great teams.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for The Soul of Basketball: The epic showdown between LeBron, Kobe, Doc and Dirk that saved the NBA
  • From the Outside: My Journey Through Life and the Game I Love

    By Ray Allen with Michael Arkush

    Celtics fans will get all of the inside and controversial information here as Ray Allen (who, it turns out, is still mad at Rajon Rondo) writes about his long and storied NBA career.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for From the Outside: My Journey Through Life and the Game I Love
  • Tiger Woods

    By Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian

    Two outstanding reporters talked to more than 250 people to compile the definitive biography of one of golf’s brightest stars.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for Tiger Woods
  • Ninety Percent Mental: An All-Star Player Turned Mental Skills Coach Reveals the Hidden Game of Baseball

    By Bob Tewksbury and Scott Miller

    Baseball hall of famer Yogi Berra once said 90 percent of the game is half mental. Here the former mental-skills coach of the Red Sox writes about the role of thinking in the game, trying to prove that theory.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for Ninety Percent Mental: An All-Star Player Turned Mental Skills Coach Reveals the Hidden Game of Baseball
  • Things that Make White People Uncomfortable

    By Michael Bennett and Dave Zirin

    One of the NFL’s best defensive linemen and talkers has a whole lot of eye-raising things to say about football and life. Feeling uncomfortable yet?

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for Things that Make White People Uncomfortable
  • The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and the Making of a Classic

    By Richard Sandomir

    Sandomir now writes obituaries for The New York Times, but before that he wrote this book about an American baseball hero who succumbed to a terrible disease that now carries his name and the making of the movie that secured his place in popular culture.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and the Making of a Classic
  • Betting with an Edge: A Professional Horseplayer’s Life in Thoroughbred Racing

    By Michael Maloney with Peter Thomas Fornatale

    Maloney is the gambler; Fornatale is the storyteller. Together they relate a personal saga with advice on how to win at betting on horse racing in modern times.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for Betting with an Edge: A Professional Horseplayer’s Life in Thoroughbred Racing
  • The Boys of Summer

    By Roger Kahn

    One of the finest baseball books ever written. It details the 1955 season of the Dodgers on their way to a World Series championship, featuring incredible behind-the-scenes stories about Jackie Robinson and other greats. It also contains sports-writing advice I still impart to young writers.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for The Boys of Summer
  • Wooden: A Coach’s Life

    By Seth Davis

    The definitive biography of one of basketball’s greatest coaches; Davis (as you can see on CBS during March Madness) doesn’t fawn. There’s plenty of deserved praise but also plenty of reality checks and things you didn’t know.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for Wooden: A Coach’s Life
  • Seabiscuit: An American Legend

    By Laura Hillenbrand

    This is the best book ever written about horse racing, but it’s so much more than that. It’s really the story of the United States in the first half of the 20th century.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for Seabiscuit: An American Legend
  • Two Ton: One Fight, One Night: Tony Galento v. Joe Louis

    By Joseph Monninger

    Written in a gripping narrative style, Monninger revisits a fight that was monumental in 1939 because Galento, an overweight, unskilled thug, knocked down the seemingly unbeatable Joe Louis. Spoiler alert: Louis eventually wins the fight.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for Two Ton: One Fight, One Night: Tony Galento v. Joe Louis
  • The Real All Americans

    By Sally Jenkins

    Mostly legend surrounds Jim Thorpe, the Native American who was one of the greatest athletes ever. Jenkins separates truth from fiction ​in a fascinating tale about Thorpe’s days playing football at Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for The Real All Americans
  • The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team

    By Jim Dent

    Bryant’s preseason practices at Texas A&M were the equivalent of a prisoner of war camp. If he coached like that in 2018 he’d be arrested. Somehow players survived and thrived.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team
  • Something in the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics

    By Richard Hoffer

    Like an epic filmmaker Hoffer presents a panoramic view of an incredible athletic event. Yes, this is where John Carlos and Tommy Smith raised the black gloves in the air, but it’s also where the Fosbury Flop first succeeded on a big stage, and much more.

    — Joseph Sullivan

    A book cover for Something in the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics

soon to be movies

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  • Eating Animals

    By Jonathan Safran Foer

    This unblinking (read queasy making) look at commercial meat production by Foer (a committed vegan) is now a documentary, produced by a team that includes the author and Natalie Portman, who also the narrates. Planned release: June 15.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for Eating Animals
  • The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg

    By Nicholas Dawidoff

    Striking biography of a Princeton and Columbia Law grad with a facility for languages who became a backup catcher in the majors, an OSS spy, and later an enigmatic sponger who lived off the good graces of friends and family. Planned release: June 22. Paul Rudd stars.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
  • Adrift: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea

    By Tami Oldham Ashcraft and Susea McGearhart

    Earlier released under the title “Red Sky in the Mourning’’ this survival saga traces Ashcraft’s 41-day ordeal at sea aboard her wrecked sailboat after running into a hurricane that took the life of her fiance. Planned release June 1. Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin star.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for Adrift: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea
  • The Wife

    By Meg Wolitzer

    Sixty-four-year-old Joan Castleman and her husband, Joe, are on a flight to Helsinki where Joe is to receive a prestigious literary prize when it occurs to Joan that she wants out of the 40-year marriage in Wolitzer’s witty and insightful novel. Planned release Aug. 3. Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce star.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for The Wife
  • Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime

    By Ron Stallworth

    Originally published four years ago by Police and Fire Publishing, ​this memoir recalls how the now retired Colorado Springs police detective helped infiltrate a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan during his time on the force. Did I mention that he’s black? Planned release Aug. 10. John David Washington, Laura Harrier, Adam Driver star.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime
  • Crazy Rich Asians

    By Kevin Kwan

    In Kwan’s popular novel of bad manners American-born NYU professor Rachel Chu goes with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, to a wedding back home in Singapore, but what she doesn’t know is that his family is megarich, the nuptials involve celebrities, and relatives will be looking down their noses at her. Planned release Aug. 15. Constance Wu, Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding star.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for Crazy Rich Asians
  • Juliet, Naked

    By Nick Hornby

    After breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, Annie embarks on an unlikely long-distance, e-mail romance with a once revered American singer-songwriter, but uncomfortable epiphanies loom when unforeseen events bring the reclusive musician to Annie’s side of the Atlantic. Planned release Aug. 17. Ethan Hawke, Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd star.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for Juliet, Naked
  • The House with a Clock in its Walls

    By John Bellairs, illustrated by Edward Gorey

    Newly orphaned Lewis Barnavelt is delighted to learn that the uncle he’s been sent to live with is a warlock and his next-door neighbor is a witch but is less enthused to discover there’s a clock hidden in the walls of his uncle’s house that could bring about the end of the world. Planned release Sept. 21. Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Kyle MacLachlan star

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for The House with a Clock in its Walls
  • Boy, Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family

    By Garrard Conley

    When he was about 19, Conley was outed to his loving, fundamentalist parents in small-town Arkansas. They gave their only child a ultimatum: gay-conversion therapy or ostracism. Conley chose the former. Planned release Sept. 28. Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe star.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for Boy, Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family
  • Where’d You Go, Bernadette

    By Maria Semple

    When 15-year-old Bee gets high marks in school she requests as a reward a trip to Antarctica but instead ends up going in search of her genius, reclusive, and now missing mother, a task that requires uncovering hidden parts of her mom’s life. Planned release Oct. 19. Cate Blanchett, Judy Greer, and Kristen Wiig.

    — Paul Makishima

    A book cover for Where’d You Go, Bernadette