Hot for a summer read?
’Tis the season for sun and sand, lobster and leisure, barbecues and books. Especially books. In the mood for dreamy literary fiction? A dark, twisty mystery? A gripping memoir (or perhaps a biography of the Godfather of Soul)? Sports, anyone? Here are some suggestions for your summer reading list.
Lead art by Jasu Hu
literary fiction
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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
In her first novel since 1997, Roy burns with righteous anger — at globalism’s inequities, at sectarian violence in all its forms — in language that is ferocious and, quite often, darkly funny.
— Anthony Domestico
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The Bear and the Nightingale
Arden’s immersive, beautifully written debut — at once fairy tale, bildungsroman, and domestic drama — will transport you to the cold, dark forests of medieval Russia even as you’re sweltering on the beach.
— Anthony Domestico
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Thick as Thieves
Turner is a criminally underrated writer, and this stand-alone novel from her “Queen’s Thief” series shows her again playing with narrative perspective, mixing history with fantasy to brilliant effect.
— Anthony Domestico
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Pond
Imagine a short-story collection written by Emily Dickinson, and you’ll get the weird genius of this book, which explores the fastidious mind and odd sensibility of a woman living in an Irish cottage.
— Anthony Domestico
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Mrs. Dalloway
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”: the perfect opening for this nearly perfect novel about a single day in June of 1923.
— Anthony Domestico
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The Chalk Artist
Goodman’s latest combines fantastical flourishes (an imagined video game called “UnderWorld”) and realistic Cambridge details (Grendel’s Den and Café Algiers) in a narrative about art and ambition.
— Anthony Domestico
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The Maytrees
Set in Cape Cod, that most summery of places, Dillard’s slim novel helps us attend to the wonder of human existence, our transient, imperfect loves set “before the backdrop of fixed stars.”
— Anthony Domestico
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Counternarratives
Keene’s story collection is truly radical — in its politics, in its stylistic restlessness, in its rethinking of the myths we tell ourselves about race and sexuality in the history of the Americas.
— Anthony Domestico
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Seven Surrenders
Summer is the perfect season for a sci-fi epic, and “Seven Surrenders,” the second in Palmer’s “Terra Ignota” series, splendidly balances political philosophy, theology, and complex world-building.
— Anthony Domestico
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The Terranauts
Amid growing climate-change fears, a group of ambitious and attractive young scientists move into a biodome as an experiment and prove that constant 80-degree temperatures aren’t the key to happiness.
— Eugenia Williamson
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After Claude
Protagonist Harriet — recently dumped by the titular Claude — suffers from a personality as discomfiting as a Manhattan summer, but far funnier.
— Eugenia Williamson
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State of Wonder
A research scientist travels to the Amazonian rain forest and tangles with a highly credentialed hybrid of Kurtz and Dr. Moreau.
— Eugenia Williamson
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The Deep Blue Good-By
In the first installment of MacDonald’s classic crime fiction series, dissolute detective Travis McGee rescues an imperiled woman while enjoying the Florida sun from his houseboat.
— Eugenia Williamson
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Friday
In this 1960s French retelling of Robinson Crusoe, our hero’s notorious Puritanism gives way to amorous feelings for his tropical surroundings.
— Eugenia Williamson
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God Says No
A confused black, gay teenager who loves Disneyland stumbles toward knowledge while bouncing around the Christian South.
— Eugenia Williamson
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A Separation
When her estranged husband goes missing, a young woman travels to a rural fishing village in Greece and finds, well, other things.
— Eugenia Williamson
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Telex From Cuba
American expats enjoy the fruits — both literal and metaphorical — of pre-revolutionary Cuba. Until Fidel and Raul Castro arrive.
— Eugenia Williamson
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Two Serious Ladies
In this acerbic art novel, a pair of fancy women yearning for experience do things unbecoming of their station, including consorting with prostitutes in hottest Panama.
— Eugenia Williamson
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Vacation
A man with a misshapen head staggers around Central America to seek revenge on a man whom he believes broke up his marriage.
— Eugenia Williamson
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nonfiction
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Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl
The cofounder of Sleater-Kinney and co-creator of “Portlandia” delivers a riveting memoir of self-discovery that recounts her impressive rise in the male-dominated field of rock music.
— Eric Liebetrau
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The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey
In a book perfect for armchair travelers, one of America’s classic pioneer tales receives a fresh update from Buck, who spent a summer retracing the 2,000-mile journey from Missouri to Oregon.
— Eric Liebetrau
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St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street
For decades, the legendary New York City street has been home to hippies, punks, anarchists, vagrants, and freaks of all stripes, and Calhoun brings it to colorful life in this vibrant history.
— Eric Liebetrau
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The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
Summer means travel, and Pulitzer Prize winner Caputo takes readers on the ultimate journey from Key West to Deadhorse, Alaska, all narrated from a vintage Airstream trailer.
— Eric Liebetrau
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Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
One of the best graphic memoirs of the past decade, New Yorker artist Chast’s story movingly follows the last years of her parents’ life in a narrative saturated in both genuine emotion and laugh-out-loud humor.
— Eric Liebetrau
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Barbarian Days
One of the quintessential summer pastimes gets the literary treatment in the New Yorker writer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of surf and travel, which ranges across decades and continents.
— Eric Liebetrau
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Fresh Off the Boat
This sharp, hilarious coming-of-age memoir, now an ABC sitcom, is packed with tales of food, immigration, basketball, and hip-hop, and it helped launch Huang into the mainstream.
— Eric Liebetrau
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Lab Girl
The recent autobiography award winner of the National Book Critics Circle, Jahren’s warm memoir testifies to a lifetime of curiosity and determination in pursuit of science.
— Eric Liebetrau
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The World’s Largest Man
The Oxford American humor columnist grew up in rural Mississippi, and he entertainingly mines his childhood and adolescence with his eccentric father to create one of the funniest memoirs of recent years.
— Eric Liebetrau
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Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs
Packed with plenty of evocative photographs, the acclaimed photographer’s memoir is a tender, heartfelt revelation of her Virginia upbringing and probing exploration of the mechanics of her art.
— Eric Liebetrau
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Kill ’Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul
Hardly a straightforward biography of the Godfather of Soul, McBride’s narrative proceeds through penetrating anecdotes and digressions that cohere into a rhythmic encapsulation of the essence of a one-of-a-kind artist.
— Eric Liebetrau
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The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese
Though the tale hangs on a celebrated cheesemaker in Spain, Paterniti’s memoir/travelogue/cultural history/murder mystery is far greater than a mere celebration of food; it is a masterfully rendered page-turner that is simply impossible to put down.
— Eric Liebetrau
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Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
In the wake of a childhood rape, Gay writes that she “ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe.” A bold and tender exploration of trauma’s marks on the body and soul.
— Kate Tuttle
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Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Meticulously reported and chilling in its implications, Mayer’s book follows the money trail to the ultrarich conservative donors whose financing has created, she argues, a kind of shadow political party.
— Kate Tuttle
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Priestdaddy
Bitingly funny and dizzyingly intelligent, this memoir by poet Lockwood chronicles her life as the daughter of a Catholic priest, one who grew up in thrall to both the sacred and the profane.
— Kate Tuttle
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Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter
This lively new biography traces the roots of Potter’s enduring animal stories, from a childhood steeped in art and natural history to a stifling family life in which imagination was Potter’s only freedom.
— Kate Tuttle
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We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
Starting with an imaginary application to appear on television as the bachelorette, Irby’s essays tackle romance, race, beauty, health, and family. Irby’s writing is bold and honest, funny and sad, utterly entertaining.
— Kate Tuttle
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Richard Nixon: The Life
A rich new biography of the only president to have resigned from office, Farrell’s book portrays Nixon’s deep insecurities and fears while never excusing his crimes.
— Kate Tuttle
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My Soul Looks Back
A time capsule of 1970s black New York, Harris’s memoir describes a life and times defined by art, food, and fabulous friendships (with Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and others).
— Kate Tuttle
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Edie: American Girl
Stein’s multivoiced biography of one of Warhol’s great muses has been entrancing readers with its heroine’s dazzling, terribly brief life since it was first published in 1982.
— Kate Tuttle
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All the President’s Men: The Greatest Reporting Story of All Time
Behind the scenes with the journalists whose reporting exposed a corrupt and lawless presidency. Republished with a new subtitle and updates on Watergate’s legacy in 2014, the book is as relevant as ever.
— Kate Tuttle
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The Fire Next Time
Race has never ceased to be our most pressing national conversation, and Baldwin still tops any list of writers on the subject (or any subject).
— Kate Tuttle
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In Cold Blood
The original “nonfiction novel,” as Capote described it, tells the unsettling story of a murder in Kansas. True crime is a hot trend today in literature and television; this book remains at the top of the heap.
— Kate Tuttle
mysteries
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Conviction
Brooklyn reporter Rebekah Roberts, desperate to escape the sketchy world of tabloid journalism, gets a letter from a man convicted of murdering a family in Crown Heights proclaiming his innocence. His story hooks her and sets her off on an investigation that tests her loyalty to people closest to her.
— Hallie Ephron
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Cast the First Stone
In 1962 Hollywood, journalist Ellie Stone is assigned to write a profile on a hometown boy who’s just landed a big role in a film — and then goes missing. Full of humor and intrigue, the book examines Hollywood’s dehumanizing ideals as Ellie goes toe-to-toe with the Don Drapers of the film business.
— Hallie Ephron
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Crime Song
A former police detective turned PI is the novel’s morally compromised, drug-addicted anti-hero. In an understated, dialogue-driven narrative (think: “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”) set in Washington, D.C., Frank Marr soon regrets agreeing to check up on a cousin who may be dealing drugs.
— Hallie Ephron
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Darktown
Set in Atlanta after World War II, this police procedural features the city’s first black cops, who face abuse and disrespect from white cops because they’re black and from black citizens because they’re cops. Complications mount when they’re blocked from questioning a white man suspected of murdering a young black woman.
— Hallie Ephron
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The Girl Before
This psychological thriller weaves the tales of two traumatized women (“Now-Emma” and “Then-Jane”). Seeking solace and healing in different time frames, each rents the same minimalist, high-tech house after passing muster from the creepy architect-owner. Are they being haunted or is it all an elaborate test? Read it before Ron Howard turns it into a movie.
— Hallie Ephron
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The Lies We Tell
In Chicago, police detective Gina Simonetti is trying to keep her own debilitating health issues under wraps so she can hang onto her job and keep fostering her delightful toddler niece. We get the human and professional side of a police officer in crisis as she goes after a man who brutalizes women.
— Hallie Ephron
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The Switch
Returning from a business trip Michael Tanner inadvertently walks off with the wrong laptop computer after going through airport security. Tanner’s curiosity gets the better of him, and he takes a peek to see what’s on it. Big mistake. Perfect for fans of “The Fugitive.”
— Hallie Ephron
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A Twist of the Knife
In a gripping third entry of this powerhouse series, ex-FBI agent Brigid Quinn agrees to help her former partner exonerate a man convicted of killing his wife and three children, even though Brigid thinks he did it. Meanwhile, she discovers some uncomfortable truths about her dying police-officer father.
— Hallie Ephron
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Unsub
An adrenaline-fueled rush, this series first has newly minted narcotics detective Caitlyn Hendrix reassigned to homicide so she can track down a sadistic serial killer, the Prophet. Her father was the lead detective who failed to bring him to justice 20 years ago. Shades of “Silence of the Lambs” and the Zodiac Killer.
— Hallie Ephron
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The Force
Winslow brings incisively-researched details, gut-wrenching plotlines, and infinite heart to his all-too-real, highly compassionate tale of decorated New York City cop Denny Malone, who isn’t as clean as he seems and has drawn the notice of the feds.
— Daneet Steffens
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Since We Fell
Lehane’s terrific tour-de-force kicks off with a journalist determinedly searching for her long-lost father, and — after her public, on-the-job breakdown — deftly evolves into a crafty and nuanced page-turner.
— Daneet Steffens
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The Woman From Prague
Accidental spying comes just as naturally as accidental private investigating to Ash McKenna: a mellow three months in Prague comes to a screeching halt when he encounters an evil blackmailer, a Russian assassin, and a femme fatale.
— Daneet Steffens
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Magpie Murders
This double-barreled puzzler involving a mystery writer whose work begins to anticipate real events cleverly melds vintage English-village crime fiction with a snarky contemporary murder mystery. A literary sparkler that is effervescent, riveting, and fun.
— Daneet Steffens
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The Child
A gruesome discovery under a London house drives journalist Kate Waters to pursue a missing-baby story, but, this being a Barton thriller, there’s more to pretty much everything than meets the eye.
— Daneet Steffens
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Based on a True Story
When a writer befriends a ghostwriter, the scene is set for a tension-filled tale about a tangled, stifling relationship that gleefully channels both Stephen King’s “Misery” and 1992’s “Single White Female.”
— Daneet Steffens
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The Daughter of Time
An injured policeman spends his hospital time ruminating over the mystery of Richard III and whether the king, in fact, had his nephews murdered. An elegant and provocative crime-fiction classic.
— Daneet Steffens
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The Martin Beck police procedurals
Start with “Roseanna,” first published in Sweden in 1965, and don’t stop until you’ve read all 10 installments of this original — and still one of the best — Nordic noir series.
— Daneet Steffens
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Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less
In this pitch-perfect caper, when a millionaire tricks four men out of their money, they decide to get their revenge — and their money — by conning him right back.
— Daneet Steffens
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Quiet as a Nun
The first of Fraser’s entertaining mysteries featuring television journalist Jemima Shore sees Shore returning to her old convent school when a nun dies in an ancient tower under suspicious circumstances.
— Daneet Steffens
sports
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Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship on and off the Court and Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White
The prolific Abdul-Jabbar likes to be introduced these days as a writer who used to play some basketball. “Coach Wooden” demonstrates how a progressive black Muslim and a conservative white Christian can create a friendship based on respect, curiosity, and open minds. “Writings on the Wall” explores the nation’s most critical social issue more thoughtfully than any politician has done and actually offers hope.
— Bill Littlefield
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Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son
The biography by a veteran sportswriter makes a case for the cocky and combative star shortstop and legendary manager as both charming and insufferable, which sounds about right for the guy who both championed Jackie Robinson’s arrival in Brooklyn and insulted him as fat and slow.
— Bill Littlefield
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The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside
Essays by journalists, fiction writers, and people in the game examine the sportboxing as business, cultural curiosity, and craft. The piece titled “Why I Fixed Fights” by Charles Farrell is especially instructive, even for those who don’t aspire to fix fights.
— Bill Littlefield
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Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. The United States of America, 1966-1971
Montville, who has written for the Globe and Sports Illustrated, has accomplished the unlikely: He’s written a fresh, ambitious book about one of the most written-about men in the history of sports or anything else. Shouldn’t have been surprised. He’s a writer who never disappoints.
— Bill Littlefield
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Kill The Ámpaya! The Best Latin American Baseball Fiction
This collection reminds us through baseball stories that people are just people — a crucial lesson in these times when some of our leaders apparently don’t feel that immigrants qualify for that distinction.
— Bill Littlefield
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You’re Welcome, Cleveland: How I Helped LeBron James Win a Championship and Save a City
Embittered superfan Raab provides the antidote to his own gonzo excoriation of James for leaving the Cavs as a free agent before bringing home a championship (“The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of LeBron James”). While the first book was bile-driven and hilarious, the second is a father-and-son-centered celebration of the return of the prodigal star and paradise found. In Cleveland.
— Bill Littlefield
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The Range Bucket List: The Golf Adventure of a Lifetime
Golf writer Dodson has characterized this book as his “love letter to Arnold Palmer.” It’s that and more, and the “more” includes his revealing and entertaining account of a luncheon four years ago with Donald and Eric Trump at one of their clubs. All the signs were there.
— Bill Littlefield
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Long Shot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter
Hodges makes his case that he was blackballed by pro basketball for his political activism and inclination to encourage Michael Jordan et al to consider such matters as black history and social responsibility. Hodges sued the NBA in 1996, four years after being waived by the Bulls and drawing scant interest from the other teams.
— Bill Littlefield
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Champion of the World
Dundas’s debut novel harkens back to the 1920s, the days before professional wrestling became fake. It follows the unlikely comeback attempt of former-champ-turned-circus-performer Pepper Van Dean in a world of gangsters, bootleggers, and stacked decks.
— Bill Littlefield
