10 BOOKS TO READ THIS SUMMER
Big Summer
Jennifer Weiner, Atria Books (Fiction)
Weiner’s 14th novel takes a breezy romp through online influencer culture, levelling a withering gaze at the Instagram fake-it-till-you-make-it crowd.
The City We Became
N.K. Jemisin, Orbit (Fiction)
File this one under prescient fiction: In the Hugo Award winner’s sprawling and provocative new novel, New York City and its denizens battle an alien force intent upon eradicating them.
Deacon King Kong
James Mcbride, Riverhead Books (Fiction)
The U.S. National Book Award-winning author of The Good Lord Bird sets his new novel in a 1969 Brooklyn housing project, where an elderly deacon, for no discernible reason, attempts to kill a local drug dealer, setting in motion several funny, chaotic stories.
Make Russia Great Again
Christopher Buckley, Simon & Schuster (Fiction)
If anyone can succeed at the near-impossible task of satirizing the Trump administration, it’s the author of Thank You For Smoking. His next novel (available July 14) is a fictional memoir by Herb Nutterman, Donald Trump’s seventh chief of staff.
The Mirror & the Light
Hilary Mantel, Henry Holt & Co. (Fiction)
Mantel caps her Booker Prize-certified Thomas Cromwell trilogy with a masterful finale that charts the undoing of Henry VIII’S scheming right-hand man.
Pelosi
Molly Ball, Henry Holt & Co. (Non-fiction)
Underneath Ball’s smart, solid biography of the first female speaker of the U.S. House lies an important lesson: Despite our fixation on political showmanship, politics works best when its practitioners can navigate their way through the convoluted cloakrooms of power.
The Resisters
Gish Jen, Knopf (Fiction)
This dystopian novel, set in a starkly stratified version of the United States, follows a husband and wife — second-class citizens with a history of fighting their corrupt government. But what will they do when they have the opportunity to change their circumstances, thanks to a daughter who turns out to be a baseball prodigy?
Simon the Fiddler
Paulette Jiles, William Morrow (Fiction)
Jiles follows her National Book Award finalist, News of the World, with another Civil War-era western. This one focuses on Simon, a spunky red-headed musician who is no weepy sentimentalist. Yet when he sees Doris, a pretty Irish nanny, he can’t hold his emotions in check.
Rodham
Curtis Sittenfeld, Random House (Fiction)
After fictionalizing the life of Laura Bush with American Wife, Sittenfeld focuses on another U.S. first lady, with a novel told from the perspective of Hillary Rodham. But in this alternate history, Hillary never marries Bill, which means her life turns out differently — even if the misogyny remains the same.
Utopia Avenue
David Mitchell, Random House (Fiction)
The next novel (available July 14) from the author of Cloud Atlas and Number 9dream — both shortlisted for the Booker Prize — follows the swift rise of a British psychedelic band in the late 1960s, with all the hedonism, A-list cameos and LSD you might expect.