Depending on one’s age, summer reading lists can convey a sense of obligation or a feeling of liberation. For children, summer reading is often an annoying or even daunting duty, a book or two that they are expected to master before entering their new grade in the fall. For adults, on the other hand, summer reading typically describes the books tossed into the carry-on, the fun titles you read for pure pleasure, even escapism, on a beach if you’re lucky. Clearly, one of the perks of adulthood is reaching an age at which nobody is forcing you to read anything. And yet, we’ve noticed that people still like to receive some direction: if not a mandatory reading list, at least a bit of a road map. So here is ours, divided among fiction, nonfiction, mystery/thriller, and romance. The books within each category are arranged by publication date, so that the moment you finish your summer equinox hammock read you can turn to a new set of recommendations for the big Independence Day beach read. (Anyway, we hope someone around here is having that sort of a summer.) Enjoy whatever freedom you can find this summer, and we hope you spend some of it enjoying a book or several.
fiction
Alan Opts Out
This socially savvy comedy of manners observes what happens when a top ad exec loses his taste for getting and spending and moves out into the backyard playhouse, even as his wife campaigns to climb the local pecking order. (June 2) — Marion Wink
Blunt Instrument
The first crime novel from Bloom introduces Dell Chandler, English prof turned P.I., investigating the murder of a faculty member at a small Connecticut college. Who bonked Oliver Bullfinch with a bust of Nathaniel Hawthorne? Bloom’s writing is witty and winsome as ever. (June 2) — MW
The Fire Agent
This sweeping historical spy novel is inspired by the author’s grandfather’s life, spanning the course of both World Wars. German-Jewish agent Ernst Baerwald’s adventures in Italy and Japan involve chemical warfare, misplaced idealism, and two dazzling women. Paced like a thriller, written like a dream. (June 2) — MW
The Typing Lady: And Other Fictions
The death of a bird haunts a pregnant woman. A scholar cultivates a titillating relationship with her student. A technical writer feels imprisoned in a studio apartment. In her elegant collection, Ozeki showcases vintage typewriters, a praise song for the protean forms of language. (June 2) — Hamilton Cain
Whistler
A middle-aged suburbanite encounters her half-forgotten stepfather in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum, falling down a rabbit hole of memories, centered on a car accident when she was 9. The indomitable Patchett spins a sparkling tale of family secrets and a vanishing literary culture. (June 2) — HC
Baby in a Box: Stories
A middle-aged woman’s fling with a younger man misfires. An heirloom triggers a teenager’s spiritual crisis. Dumped by her boyfriend, a lawyer hooks up with a secretive cop. Braunstein’s characters bob in and out of danger, marionettes strung along by furtive desires. An exquisite collection. (June 9) — HC
Rasputin Swims the Potomac
What if our current president ran for a third term, while simultaneously the American public was swept by a wave of inconsolable weeping, and only a mysterious wrestler named Rasputin was able to comfort them? Political satire par excellence. (June 9) — MW
Social Animals
June’s new friends at the dog park are not who they seem; both have ulterior motives. As the three women bond and their twisty story unfolds, Perri’s novel explores our love of dogs and the power of finding your people. (June 9) — MW
Villa Coco
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Less” is back with a tale of a young American art archivist and a 92-year-old Baronessa, set at her crumbling villa in the Tuscan hills. A bawdy, sun-soaked romp about finding your true self at any age. (June 9) — MW
Ghost-Eye
In 1969 a 3-year-old girl in an upscale, vegetarian Calcutta family demands fish for dinner, insisting she’s from a destitute village — has she been reincarnated? Her anxious parents consult specialists amid an India reborn as multicultural democracy in this inventive twist on the postcolonial novel. (June 16) — HC
The Top of the World
“Dirty Dancing” meets “The Fault in Our Stars” in this tender novel about sibling bonds, found family, and the kindness of strangers. In the summer of 1975, a grieving sister travels to the Poconos to better understand her brother’s final months. (June 30) — MW
Country People
When a West Coast professor takes a job at a college in rural Vermont, her husband agrees to handle child care duties. He befriends a group of charming kooks and investigates a shadowy force in the forest as Mason flips the dark-academia novel on its head. (July 7) — HC
Dangerland!
What happens in Vegas leaves Vegas and hops into your beach bag in this laugh-out-loud satire of love, marriage, and money. In a gated community, developer Kurt and realtor Eugénie circle decades-long almost-romance amid gossip galore and nanny drama. (July 7) — MW
The Great Wherever
This Black generational epic gathers the Lambs — living and dead — at their Tennessee farm after a lucrative offer forces four heirs to decide its fate. Broke Aubrey plans to sell, until history is revealed and the ghosts have their say. (July 7) — MW
Single Girls
Former Cosmo editor Searles pays tribute to the magazine’s famous founder, Helen Gurley Brown, with a fizzy novelized bio. Brimming with retro New York glamour, it warmly portrays the smart, ambitious group of women behind “How to Unleash Your Secret Inner Sex Kitten.” (July 7) — MW
It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories
A lothario plays the field, leaving broken hearts in his wake. A lawyer recalls her stint as a waitress on the Lower East Side. Nunez dazzles in her debut collection of stories, highlighting characters as they map the contours of their inner lives. (July 14) — HC
Cool Machine
The two-time Pulitzer laureate hits a high note with the conclusion to his Harlem Trilogy. As the city rebuilds in the Reagan years and punk rockers flood lower Manhattan, Ray Carney faces friend and foe alike with steely reserve, mulling one more heist for old time’s sake. (July 21) — HC
Beginning Middle End
Stirred by dry winds and a fitful volcano, a divorced woman and her daughter embark on a journey from myth-drenched Sicily, pondering the perils of love as their internal compasses point toward literature and philosophy. Luiselli pushes the formal envelope in her most audacious work yet. (July 28) — HC
The Amateur
Bohjalian’s 26th novel revisits the Lolita plot as a fictional memoir by one-time golf prodigy Mira Winston. The secret relationship she had with a much older man in the 1970s was dragged into the limelight by a fatal accident on the golf course. Unputdownable. (Aug. 4) — MW
Etna
A trained military dog flees a never-ending war and heads home, meandering through a charred landscape and remnants of cities, aided by a canine resistance and a few flawed humans. Yoon’s Homeric parable punches above its weight, minimalism deftly crafted for maximalist impact. (Aug. 4) — HC
Sunrise
A Cessna plane crashes into a Wyoming lake and a young woman staggers out, uninjured. As she searches for her missing boyfriend she stumbles into an abandoned, pristine mining town where a pair of conjoined mysteries await, unraveling her sense of time and place. (Aug. 11) — HC
A Tender Age
To be a kid in the 1970s was wondrous strange, as Jeon-Gi would attest: he spends days with a ragtag posse, roaming his Westchester neighborhood, evenings with his Korean immigrant parents, until a stab of violence alters him in Lee’s beautiful coming-of-age tale. Working-class suburbia has never looked so good. (Aug. 11) — HC
Big Little Truths
The “Big Little Lies” moms are back a decade later, struggling with off-the-charts teenage drama, bumps in their own roads, and the bizarre news that the high school principal has received a severed finger in the mail. Hurry up, before it hits HBO. (Aug. 25) — MW
Dèy
A shooting at a Miami mall traumatizes a real estate agent, compelling her to examine the cluttered rooms of her own life. Although unharmed, Magnolia mulls relationships with family and feelings about her Haitian-American heritage. A searching work from one of our most gifted and consistent writers. (Aug. 25) — HC
Life of M
A master of cerebral prose, Cusk balances a foreground story — a narrator enlisted to ghost-write the autobiography of M, a glamorous female actor — with riffs on art and identity in an atomized world. A formally daring meditation on the pitfalls of fame. (Aug. 25) — HC
Nonfiction
The Land and Its People: Essays
Sedaris has always made us laugh, and increasingly his essays touch on deeper, softer feelings as well. Here he gathers pieces about marriage, siblings, and the uncanny experiences available to anybody whose eyes are open to this wild world. (May 26) — Kate Tuttle
Unreasonable Women: Three Stories of Violence, Imprisonment, and Extraordinary Survival
Van der Leun tells the stories of three women imprisoned for protecting themselves against abuse. They include a Michigan woman who pays a stiff price for helping authorities solve a cold case; a Missouri factory worker struggling to keep her family together; and a California woman trying to escape generations of family violence. (June 2) — Chris Vognar
The Book of Birds: A Field Guide of Wonder and Loss
A book about birds, yes, but about so much more. Here, MacFarlane’s words and Morris’s illustrations combine to not only identify but explore and celebrate the winged creatures that inhabit our yards, our memories, our imaginations. (June 9) — KT
Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America’s Future
I have long been fascinated by the bygone pomp and pageantry of World’s Fairs. Here the historian Bordewich digs into the 1876 edition held in Philadelphia, a Gilded Age affair attended by 10 million people including Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, and P.T. Barnum, and featuring new inventions from the typewriter to the telephone. (June 9) — CV
A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy
A studious look at the man widely considered the greatest filmmaker in the medium’s history, stretching from his silent era films to his final ’70s output. Moral uses archival research, unpublished interview transcripts, and firsthand accounts from collaborators to examine how Hitchcock’s reputation has been shaped over the last hundred years. (June 9) — CV
The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers
While seeking the online scammer who was catfishing his own mother, Barragán came upon a much larger story. His exploration of the young Nigerian men who make a living trying to fool and fleece lonely American women expands into an examination of the real human beings behind our anonymous online lives. (June 9) — KT
The Cruelty of Nice Folks: Why Minneapolis is the Story of America
Ellis, a Minneapolis native, returns to his hometown in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to look at the city’s quiet history of white supremacy. Part memoir, part reportage, the book examines the ways in which “nice liberalism” can mask long-simmering racial tensions and prevent real progress. (June 16) — CV
Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America
What could be more American than a road trip? Taking a page from Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley,” Hough brought her dog, Woody, along as she drove the highways across our giant, troubled, still somehow exuberant country. (June 16) — KT
Sex in Public: The Transformative Social Power of Our Erotic Lives
Jones takes sexual experience from a personal level to a more societal realm, analyzing the moral panics that have increased policing of gender and sexuality. The book is rooted in her own sociological research as a professor of women, gender, and sexuality at Stony Brook University. (June 16) — CV
Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites
OK, maybe this isn’t the book to bring along on a camping trip or to the musty old lake house, but for the curious there’s an undeniable appeal to learning about creatures we can’t see or even feel but that have such a huge effect on our health and well-being — and that’s not to mention the charming eccentrics who study them. (July 7) — KT
A Vast Horizon: Friends and Lovers, Freedom and War
One of those sprawling, multi-character true stories that scratch the “I should have been born in a different generation” itch. In this case, the generation is lost, but the characters are brilliant: Picasso, Man Ray, Dora Maar, Lee Miller. (July 7) — KT
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
In the tradition of Gilbert King’s Pulitzer-winning “Devil in the Grove,” Colloff’s investigative book looks at an epic trail of Florida injustice. Con man Paul Skalnik married nine women, preyed on teenage girls, and made up stories about fellow inmates to get out of prison, all the while enabled by prosecutors in Pinellas County. Colloff, a reporter at ProPublica and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, goes searching for the truth. (July 14) — CV
Unsayable: A Life in Writing
The Pulitzer-winning author of “The Hours” reflects on how he became a writer, starting from his toddler years of naming and categorizing everything and developing into his life as a gimlet-eyed observer of his surroundings. It’s a master novelist demystifying the story of how he gained his superpowers. (July 21) — CV
Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women’s Movement and the Future of American Politics
McElya, a Cambridge resident and history professor at the University of Connecticut, looks at the watershed protests surrounding the 1968 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City and the first Miss Black America Pageant. With appearances by Hillary Clinton, Betty Friedan, Anita Bryant … and Donald Trump. (July 28) — CV
The Cruelest Game: Chasing Greatness in Professional Tennis
Maybe your cruelest tennis opponent is a sadistic brother-in-law, but those who play the game at the highest level face more painful adversaries, on and off the court. If you ever dreamed of serving for the championship at center court, let Futterman’s sharp observations disabuse you: You’re happier at the town courts. (Aug. 4) — KT
The Ego Trip: Psychedelic Toads, a Trail of Deaths, and the Guru Who Peddled Transcendence
A wild, twisty, true crime ride that digs into the bizarre story of toads that secrete a substance that can either cure your intractable depression, make you think that you are a god, or perhaps lead to your death. Cults, hucksters, wild animals, and breaking the law: What more can you want from a summer read? (Aug. 4) — KT
Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir
Tanimoto, a survivor of the US atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, was featured in John Hersey’s indelible narrative nonfiction book “Hiroshima.” This is his own account, written in the immediate aftermath, of that day in 1945 that ushered in a new age of death and destruction. Modern Library publishes it here for the first time. (Aug. 4)
The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn
Few historians become household names, but Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” became a cult classic, and then (with more than 4 million copies sold) just a classic. Zirin traces Zinn from his early days as a processor at Spelman to his engagement with most of the 20th century’s most urgent struggles. (Aug. 4) — KT
Save a Seat For Me: Notes on American Fatherhood
Neal, a prominent chronicler of Black culture based at Duke University, turns his eye toward what it means to be a father. He looks at his own experiences as a son and and as a dad, and explores changing perceptions and expectations of fatherhood in pop culture and in American life. (Aug. 4)
Triage
With a title suggestive of the grievous wounds so many Americans — and maybe America itself — are trying to endure, Rankine’s latest book challenges not only genre boundaries but also those that keep us from understanding and reckoning with the pain we feel, and that we may cause. (Aug. 4) — KT
Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumph of Graceland
Kahn, who was a member of the “Graceland” production team and tour manager for Simon collaborators Ladysmith Black Mambazo, interviewed nearly 100 people, including musicians, producers, engineers, journalists, and music executives, in tracing the trajectory of this 1986 pop masterpiece. He also digs into the controversy surrounding how the album was made and who was compensated. (Aug. 11) — CV
Three Tenses: A Transmission From the Nineties
In this work, which defies easy categorization, Park revisits writing he had long believed lost, a collection of essays, experiments, “an autobiography with lies.” Grappling with his own earlier self, the current Park ponders how an artist develops a unique point of view, a voice that can be heard. (Aug. 11) — KT
What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity
The 2024 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Acemoglu here invites us to think about the challenges of inequality even in a time of widespread material comfort. You may disagree with some of his conclusions (I do), but there’s no denying the urgency of the conversation. (Aug. 11) — KT
Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America
A stirring example of what narrative journalism can do, Ali’s book brings readers into the lives of American Muslims, many of whom still face rampant bigotry even as they contribute to the communities in which they live and work. (Aug. 25) — KT
American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump
Attack, attack, attack. Deny, deny, deny. That was the playbook of Roy Cohn, the closeted hatemonger who sat at the left hand of redbaiting Senator Joseph McCarthy and, later, mentored an aspiring real estate mogul named Donald Trump. Bird, who won a Pulitzer for his Oppenheimer biography “American Prometheus,” and Goldmark trace the dark lineage. (Sept. 1) — CV
Mystery/Thriller
Murder Most Delicious
When a bistro chef drops dead in a tony Paris neighborhood, everyone from the perfectionist baker and the nosy florist to the agoraphobic detective don their investigative caps. This cozy foray by the author-also-known-as-Danielle Trussoni is as delectable as it is entertaining. (May 26) — Daneet Steffens
The Final Chapter
A canny, double-layered literary puzzle emerges — boasting tantalizing narrative twists and James Bond-ish turns — when an espionage-thriller manuscript by long-missing best-selling author Jon Durward surfaces, along with a request for his frenemy, C.B. Everett, to help prepare it for publication. (June 2) — DS
Someone Else’s Husband
Multiple sleights of hand propel this pleasurably head-spinning thriller. The time-and-place-shifting tale includes an expedition up Mount Kilimanjaro, a posse of wealthy friends whose relationships date back to college and childhood, and intimate glimpses into the oft-tangled territory of marriage. (June 16) — DS
Every Lie I Told
PR maven Jackie Swift responds to an SOS text from her sister, kicking off a weeklong, twists-fueled chase across Manhattan, as Davidson expertly delves into the dicier aspects of an industry notorious for coverups, whitewashing, and laser-focused ambitions for narrative control. (June 16) — DS
The Pinnacle
The murder of a Bollywood star sets off multiple races across Mumbai as her has-been actor husband, their feisty American assistant, and their local servant scramble to fend off potential arrest, possible blackmail, and definite gangsters in this propulsive thriller. (June 16) — DS
It Could Have Been Her
Wannabe private investigator Jane Trevally finds her sleuthing hands full when she finds a lost dog, pursues a missing girl, and visits a creepy old house, recognizing it as the spot she’d been lured to decades earlier by a predatory seducer. (June 23) — DS
The Au Pair
When a down-on-his-writing-luck novelist and his high-flying corporate wife hire a hot Norwegian nanny, the predictable chaos ensues. At the same time, this compulsive thriller gleefully and skillfully skewers both stereotypical tropes and the contemporary publishing landscape. (June 30) — DS
Wisdom Corner
Former vigilante-for-hire Virgil Wounded Horse, having renounced violence, is making a new life for himself on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation. But when murder, arson, and corruption rear their ugly heads, Virgil finds his best intentions challenged to a life-threatening degree. (July 7) — DS
The Shadow Step
Recent widower DS Declan Miller, an amateur ballroom dancer prone to excellent comic wisecracking, trades eloquent barbs with his police partner, tangles with the local drug queenpin, and experiences his own real-life version of 1990s film “Truly, Madly, Deeply.” (July 21) — DS
You’ll Be Sorry
An immersive and intricate police procedural that takes place deep in the remote New Hampshire mountains, this enjoyable thriller boasts multiple mysteries, plenty of familial intergenerational twists and ties, and one very exuberant dog — excuse me, “canine opportunist” — to boot. (Aug. 4) — DS
The Tailor
When an unassuming tailor and part-owner of a bespoke clothing shop is found murdred on a London-bound train, neurodiverse and endlessly tenacious DS George Cross finds himself immersed in a case with far-reaching consequences, including himself as a possible target. (August 11) — DS
Heart of Glass
Twenty-five years ago, three friends shared a life-changing moment. Now, with a docuseries raising new questions about what happened, journalist Barb Bonifacio investigates multiple mysteries that meld criminal activity with reality-TV mayhem in one seriously turbocharged, not-to-be-missed thriller. (Aug. 25) — DS
Romance
Score
In “Score,” like “Reel” before it, a brilliant romance blooms behind the scenes of a Harlem Renaissance biopic — this time between screenwriter Verity Hill and her ex-boyfriend, composer “Monk” Bellamy. In college, their soul-deep spark lit up every room but couldn’t survive a crisis. A sequel that burns bright on its own. (May 19) — Carole V. Bell
Bromantasy
In this cozy comedic romantasy Mo and Juniper are only decade-long roommates and besties, platonic longtime companions even if Juniper accidentally calls Mo Daddy and can’t help admiring how handsome he is. Friendship turns to more when they take on one of the King’s quests. (May 26) — CB
Dolly All the Time
When single mom schoolteacher Dolly returns home to Rhode Island to help with the fallout from a fire, she gets entangled in a ludicrous but lucrative fake-dating scheme to boost the reputation of the local scion. This unlikely midlife love story shines with Monaghan’s patented New England grit and Cinderella sparkle. (May 26) — CB
Father Material
In the third and (likely final) installment of this best-selling series by the king of British madcap romantic comedy, odd couple Luc and Oliver are living in imperfectly unwedded bliss — having fled their own rainbow-themed wedding — and navigating the uncertainties of expanding their little family. (June 2) — CB
The Missed Connection
Full of wit and chemistry, this is a story about recapturing the one that got away, whoever that may be. When Sasha enlists former private detective Wes to track down the dashing stranger she connected with in first class on the way to Paris, the heat between them threatens to derail her plan. (June 9) — CB
Love Is a Contact Sport
Two decades on, the flame of first love reignites between a romance writer and a newly out and divorced former college athlete. Brent and Renny reconnect at an alumni event and the romance takes root when Renny takes a writing gig at the university where Brent works. (June 16) — CB
Scandal of the Summer
Vasti is a romance-writing professor and a master of the Regency romp. In this sharp and fizzy confection, an unconventional heiress, fleeing scandal in London’s marriage mart for a country estate, finds herself in close quarters with a charming con artist/smuggler and his motley band of ne’er-do-wells. (June 23) — CB
A Deal at Dawn
Katherine and Jaheel face serious challenges in this vital multiracial Regency. Former lovers, the widowed Viscountess and the Duke of Torrance share a tortured history, but to save her daughter she’s lost custody of, Katherine will yield to his wishes. Still, the road to healing and reunion is complicated by racial animus, conspiracy, and illness. (June 30) — CB
Moss’d in Space
In this warm and wickedly clever sci-fi/romance hybrid, sentient plant life provides brilliant comic relief. Torian buys an aged, moss-covered alien starship to save his ailing sister by whisking her away to the last habitable planet. But when the decrepit ship and plan go off course, she needs the help of her former captain and would-be love, leading to an unplanned romantic reunion. (June 30) — CB
The Romance Revival
Nothing is as devastating as when the love of your life suffers a deadly accident, unless it’s a lover who forgets who you are. This sci-fi inspired contemporary serves up mad scientist twists by mashing those tropes together with a researcher who brings her dead, neglected husband back to life, providing the ultimate romantic do-over. (July 14) — CB
Not That Kind of Proposal
First Gracie’s ex begs her to plan his shotgun wedding and then her cherished mentor and boss Agatha dies, leaving her bereft and putting her job in jeopardy. She has to convince Agatha’s grumpy, love-skeptic divorce attorney grandson to not sell the manor, a classically tropey premise that showcases Lavine’s handling of high stakes and humor. (July 21) — CB
International Relations
Max, an ambitious and fast rising but tragically single diplomat with his eye on a plum higher position, endeavors to burnish his reputation by hiring an actor to play his partner. Hunter is a natural in the role. The two fake date their way into a marriage of convenience and, ultimately, love. (Aug. 4) — CB
Heir of Prophecy
After the popular “Lore of the Wilds” duology, Sbrana returns with a dark academia romantasy with a story in which a young woman, conscripted into a magical academy, is torn between saving the world and her attraction to a dark prince. (Aug. 25) — CB
Contributor bios
Carole V. Bell is a Jamaican-born critic, educator, and researcher exploring media, culture, and politics.
Hamilton Cain is a Brooklyn-based book critic and author of a memoir, "This Boy’s Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing."
Daneet Steffens is a book critic and journalist, and a longtime contributor to The Boston Globe.
Kate Tuttle is a past president of the National Book Critics Circle and edits the Globe’s books coverage.
Chris Vognar is TV/pop culture critic of The Boston Globe
Marion Winik is the author of “First Comes Love” and “The Big Book of the Dead”; she hosts “The Weekly Reader” podcast on NPR.
Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books section. You can reach her at kate.tuttle@globe.com Chris Vognar can be reached at chris.vognar@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram at @chrisvognar and on Bluesky at chrisvognar.bsky.social.