Whether you’re looking for a fun beach book or an intellectual novel, the days are long and summer is an excellent time to catch up on your reading. Lucky for us, stacks of new books have been released in recent months, with more to come later this summer. Here are 20 you may want to add to your list:
1. TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
Let the Great World Spin author Colum McCann’s eighth book TransAtlantic spans across history as McCann tells the stories of three iconic crossings—aviators Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown’s crossing of the Atlantic to get to Ireland in 1919; Frederick Douglass’s international lecture tour to Ireland in 1845 and 1846; New York Senator George Mitchell’s 1998 departure to Belfast to bring Northern Ireland’s Peace Talks to conclusion—and weaves them together with the journeys of three women. TransAtlantic traces both one family’s journey and the development of Irish-American relations as a whole.
2. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman’s first book for adults since 2005’s Anasi Boys, modern fantasy The Ocean at the End of the Lane is about magic and the power of stories. Gaiman describes it as “an astonishingly personal sort of a novel.”
3. The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell
Set in the 1920s, The Other Typist follows the prim and prudish Rose Baker, a typist in a New York City Police Department precinct. While Rose has the power to sentence a person to life in prison with a few keystrokes at her job, once she leaves her workplace she’s faced with conventional gender roles. The ‘20s, however, are a time of exciting change, and Rose sees women bobbing their hair, smoking and attending speakeasies. She becomes drawn to the glamorous Odalie, the new girl at the office, and together the two women navigate the changing times of the ‘20s and the dual lives of women in a man’s world.
4. The Kings and Queens of Roam by Daniel Wallace
Penned by the author of Big Fish, The Kings and Queens of Roam is about polar-opposite sisters Helen and Rachel McCallister. Helen is older and bitter, while Rachel is beautiful, naïve and blind. After their parents’ sudden death, Helen is in charge of caring for Rachel. But Helen convinces Rachel that the world is dark and dangerous, a place she could never survive on her own. Until Rachel “makes a surprising choice that turns both their worlds upside down.”
5. My Education by Susan Choi
“Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He’s said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He’s condemned on the walls of the women’s restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one has warned Regina about his exceptional physical beauty—or his charismatic, volatile wife.” Choi is also the author of American Woman, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Person of Interest. In her newest novel, she tells the story of Regina’s mistakes and misadventures while exploring the relationship between desire and duty.
6. The Son by Philipp Meyer
Philipp Meyer (American Rust ) spins a multigenerational saga in his new novel The Son, which follows a texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century.
7. The Execution of Noa P Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver
Elizabeth L. Silver’s thriller features heroine Noa P. Singleton, a twenty-something college dropout on death row for the murder of Sarah Dixon. But Sarah’s attorney mother Marlen suddenly tells Noa that she has changed her mind and wants the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison. That is, if Noa is willing to reveal the events that led to Sarah’s death.
8. Southern Cross the Dog by Bill Cheng
Cheng’s first novel, Southern Cross the Dog follows the journey of Robert Chatham in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Having lost everything, Robert embarks on an odyssey through the Deep South into the Mississippi hinterland, encountering characters such as piano-playing hustlers and a family of fur trappers. The novel explores the beauty and complexity of the past and has been likened to novels by Cormac McCarthy.
9. The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell and A Field Guide to Getting Lost , is back with The Faraway Nearby. Solnit explores the significance of stories and how they construct our lives by telling a few tales of her own. An excerpt from the first passage: “Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story.”
10. A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Game of Thrones Companion
Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer
Because who wouldn’t want to dine like a Lannister? A Feast of Ice and Fire provides 100 different recipes inspired by George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones. Recipes are divided by region (the Wall, the North, the South, King’s Landing, Dome and Across the Narrow Sea) and include rack of lamb, beef and bacon pie and stuffed grape leaves. Plus, there is a foreword by George R.R. Martin, who has endorsed the book.
