Your beach is where you make it, and the perfect summer read can set the tone.
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The Anchoress, Robyn Cadwallader
Released: May 12
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The idea of locking yourself in a chilly room alone might sound nice in the middle of a hot summer day, but The Anchoress’s main character, Sarah, takes being alone to a whole new level. Set in 13th century England, Sarah vows to live in a small church cell for the rest of her life, with the hopes of escaping her troubles. What Sarah finds, though, is that even in the solitary walls of her cell, she can’t escape the outside world.
-Jillian Deutsch [/slide] [slide]
Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, by Julie Iromuanya
Released: May 12, 2015
Publisher: Coffee House Press
In Iromuanya’s first novel, the main protagonist is hard to like. Job, an immigrant from Nigeria, has been putting his family’s money into a savings account instead of completing medical school and becoming a doctor. He manages to elude his family’s disappointment by pretending he is a doctor, and even convinces his new wife, Ifi, of his occupation for awhile. Job’s narrative is a contradictory one as Iromuanya explores our contemporary idea of The American Dream.
-Joanna Demkiewicz [/slide] [slide]
Dietland, Sarai Walker
Released: May 26
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Dietland is the fun, feminist novel you want for the days when you’re not feeling confident about your bikini bod. Walker’s first novel features Plum, a “fat” woman who has tried every diet plan on the books. Now she just lives her life trying to be as invisible as possible. That all changes, though, when a group of vigilante women approach Plum, and she embarks on a journey à la Thelma and Louise that teaches her the price of beauty.
-Jillian Deutsch [/slide] [slide]
Saint Mazie: A Novel, by Jami Attenberg
Released: June 2
Publisher: Grand Central
Inspired by Joseph Mitchell’s 1940 New Yorker profile about Mazie Phillips, the famed box office attendant of The Venice movie theater in New York City’s Bowery neighborhood, this piece of historical fiction is deliciously fun. Set during The Great Depression and at the height of Prohibition, Attenberg redefines what makes a “saint” in Mazie’s party girl spirit.
-Joanna Demkiewicz
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In The Unlikely Event, by Judy Blume
Released: June 2
Publisher: Knopf
This is no Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, but Blume’s heart is still big as ever. Intrigued by her own experience as a youth in 1952 when three separate plane crashes occurred within three months in her New Jersey community, Blume creates a cast of characters to explore grief, humanity and moving on.
-Joanna Demkiewicz
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Sweet Forgiveness, by Lori Nelson Spielman
Released: June 2
Publisher: Plume
In Spielman’s second novel (her first, The Life List, was an international bestseller), the author explores a hokey idea (chain letters) with real gusto. Characters send Forgiveness Stones to strangers along with a letter asking for forgiveness. When Spielman’s protagonist, a popular TV talk show host, invites the Forgiveness Stones creator onto her show, family secrets are exposed.
-Joanna Demkiewicz
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Louisa Meets Bear: A Novel, by Lisa Gornick
Released: June 9, 2015
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
Gornick’s third novel comprises a myriad of stories and characters, most of whom occupy different times and places, yet all of whom are somehow connected or related. Each “section” reads like a standalone piece but gains impressive traction as you read on and are able to connect the missing pieces. In the title chapter, “Louisa Meets Bear,” we are thrown into a torrid yet unhealthy love affair between two Princeton students circa 1975. Gornick is able to weave in themes of desire, class, death and family for a truly striking read.
-Joanna Demkiewicz [/slide] [slide]
Valley Fever: A Novel, by Katherine Taylor
Released: June 9, 2015
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Valley Fever is perfect company for a glass of wine and a sweaty summer evening. Taylor’s second novel is, after all, set in wine country. After a breakup leaves her homeless, Ingrid returns to her childhood home to help her aging parents harvest grapes on their family vineyard. In processing her breakup, Ingrid discovers she has a knack for harvesting and an ability to let go of the soured past she left behind. Taylor’s novel is much like a nice glass of wine: complex and refreshing.
-Joanna Demkiewicz [/slide] [slide]
In The Country: Stories, by Mia Alvar
Release date: June 16, 2015
Publisher: Knopf
Alvar’s first collection of stories adds necessary prose to the diaspora canon. These nine stories tell the tales of the men and women of the global Filipino diaspora — from a model and a journalist to a pharmacist and a student — and how they respond to their displacement. The varied perspectives offer a colorful take on the universality of understanding and interacting with borders and home.
-Joanna Demkiewicz [/slide] [slide]
Tiny Little Thing, by Beatriz Williams
Release Date: June 23, 2015
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
In a novel that smacks distinctly of the Kennedys’ Camelot days, two lovers’ dual perspectives on their extra-marital affair cut short evokes the longing for love that summer fosters so well. Their perspectives span two of the worst years of the Vietnam War (1964-1966), and in this highly politicized time of American history, the Cape Cod backdrop provides a deceiving backdrop for the dark dealings happening within “the Big House.”
-Kaylen Ralph [/slide] [slide]
Local Girls, by Caroline Zancan
Release date: June 30, 2015
Publisher: Riverhead
Set smack dab in the middle of Florida, there’s not a more perfect backdrop imaginable for the perfect summer read on the hottest summer days. Like the oppressive heat of a Floridian August, female friendships, especially those in the post-high school transition, can weigh you down until you’re gulping for air. Tack on a Ryan Gosling-esque celebrity character, who mysteriously ends up in the same bar as the three 19 year-old protagonists, and you’ve got the makings of a page turner even the beach can’t beat.
-Kaylen Ralph
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The Star Side of Bird Hill: A Novel, by Naomi Jackson
Release date: June 30, 2015
Publisher: Penguin Press
Jackson’s debut novel takes us from vibrant Brooklyn to the even livelier Barbados in this coming-of-age story. After 16-year-old Dionne’s mother mysteriously settles into an unwavering depression, she sends Dionne and her 10-year-old sister Phaedra to live with their grandmother in a small Barbados town. Dionne finds summer love while Phaedra falls in love with Barbados itself and accompanies her grandmother, a nurse, on her midwife excursions. When the girls’ absent father suddenly reappears and wants to reclaim his daughters, Dionne and Phaedra face a difficult decision.
-Joanna Demkiewicz [/slide] [slide]
The Small Backs of Children: A Novel, by Lidia Yuknavitch
Release date: July 7, 2015
Publisher: Harper
Yuknavitch’s stunning second novel offers us characters without names — poet, writer, filmmaker — to explore our relationship with art and reality. After a photojournalist captures a horrifying image of a girl fleeing from an explosion in modern-day Eastern Europe, the photojournalist’s friend, a writer, is hospitalized for depression. The image of the girl wins awards, but the writer sinks deeper into her illness; her friends, then, attempt to pull her from her suicidal thoughts by bringing the now infamous girl to the United States. Yuknavitch questions war, art, ego and love — a complex cocktail well-paired with a summer night.
-Joanna Demkiewicz [/slide] [slide]
The Blue Girl, by Laurie Foos
Release Date: July 14, 2015
Publisher: Coffee House Press
If you could feed someone your secrets, would you? Not in the metaphorical, I-can’t-handle-this-alone-or-I’ll-burst way, but literally. What if you could bake your secrets into moon pies and feed them to a girl who doesn’t really exist? Part fantasy, but totally fantastical, this is a book that will give your sweet tooth a twinge of the rottenness that exists in all of this, and a taste of the dark secrets unsaid, especially those between mothers and daughters.
-Kaylen Ralph
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Pretty Baby, by Mary Kubica
Release Date: July 28, 2015
Publisher: Mira
Kubica’s first book, The Good Girl, invites a comparison to Gone Girl for reasons beyond the similar-sounding titles. The emerging author’s talent for the twisted continues with Pretty Baby, effectively perverting the premise of “the Good Samaritan” into a familial tale of what happens when you trust the wrong person, no matter how innocent she may seem.
-Kaylen Ralph
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Barbara the Slut and Other People, by Lauren Holmes
Release Date: August 4, 2015
Publisher: Riverhead
This is a collection of short stories that are striking individually, but collectively constitute a heartbreaking study in anomaly and contradiction. The title tale, “Barbara the Slut,” successfully challenges the primary assumption of every iconic teen movie — sluts are dumb and desperate — without vanquishing the villain(s) or sending the victim off into the sunset on a white knight’s horse. The other stories tackle tropes just as tried and true, and the cacophony of contradiction defines the collection beautifully.
-Kaylen Ralph
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Infinite Home, by Kathleen Alcott
Release Date: August 4, 2015
Publisher: Riverhead
An unlikely chorus of characters make Infinite Home the sanctuary that its title and setting proclaim. Like any classic tale of misfits, the merry band of outsiders that inhabit Edith’s Brooklyn brownstone are not exactly your average Joes and Jills. Despite their varied reasons for seeking shelter, a turn of events ensures that what was once a group of single vagabonds must band together to save the temporary lodging that becomes their home.
-Kaylen Ralph
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