It’s hot. For me, the jingle of the ice cream truck sparks an immediate need to be on a beach with a novel in hand. If you happen to be near a body of water (salt, fresh, chlorinated or otherwise), here are the books I’d put in your hands this summer. Some are already out; others are worth waiting for.
How about a wedding weekend with lots of drama?
We Are Gathered Here Today
by Bobby Finger
If you loved “The Wedding People” and “Seating Arrangements,” welcome to another weekend of revelry and vows. Finger’s third novel begins with an invitation to the wedding of Elaine Wheeler and Rupert Alexander in Billington, Texas (summer garden party attire). Fin, the officiant, also happens to be master of ceremonies at the Hour of Disrespect, a tradition in which close friends criticize the proceedings (the dress, the vows, the food) — but only for an hour. In this case, it’s complicated because the bride is part of the group.
“Guests leave a wedding with hope, unburdened by the work of keeping it,” Finger writes. “But before that, there’s only dancing to Whitney Houston.” What happens when the music stops is anyone’s best guess. (Comes out June 16)
I like novels about rich people behaving badly
Alan Opts Out
by Courtney Maum
If you appreciate witty novelists along the lines of Rumaan Alam and Sloane Crosley, meet Maum, whose novels drop every few years like cool albums for people in the know. This time she sinks her white-hot kebab skewer into the high-end grill set in Greenwich, Conn., where families reminiscent of the ones in “Your Friends & Neighbors” keep up with the Joneses (or the Rockefellers). Alan Anderson leaves his advertising career just as his aspirational wife tries to infiltrate an elite club called the Queen Annes. As he gets back to basics — moving into the family playhouse, eschewing consumerism — she climbs the social ladder. The family is in for a reckoning that will take their town by storm. (Comes out June 2)
Give me a frothy love story
The Shampoo Effect
by Jenny Jackson
This one is the platonic ideal of a beach read: fun and fast-paced, with a cover that screams, “Can I borrow your sunscreen?” It also features one of my favorite setups (dating back to “Up Island,” by Anne Rivers Siddons), in which an outsider arrives in a clubby enclave and makes waves. Here it’s Caroline Lash, who lands in Greenhead, Mass., and falls for an outdoorsy local who’s almost too good to be true. The problem is, his on-again-off-again girlfriend is pregnant and still very much in the picture. In her debut novel, “Pineapple Street,” Jackson brought us into the storied world of Brooklyn Heights; here, she delivers us to the land of clam rolls with the same anthropological eye. (Comes out June 30)
How about an old-fashioned friendship yarn?
Take What You Can
by Naima Coster
When we meet Val and Milly, they’re bobbing around in a sea kayak in the south of France, having met as the only two Black students on a study abroad program. Val jumps in the water; Milly hangs back. In some ways, this becomes a metaphor for their friendship, which reaches new heights years later when Val moves from North Carolina to New York City so the pair can raise their babies together. Coster’s story of motherless daughters partnering to raise their own daughters is a reminder of the power of found family — and the way it can cause just as much struggle as the old-fashioned kind. (Comes out Aug. 4)
I love heartfelt family dramas
Whistler
by Ann Patchett
Patchett’s novel begins with a chance encounter between Daphne Fuller, an English teacher, and her former stepfather, Eddie Triplett, whom she hasn’t seen in years and remembers fondly. Their meeting sets in motion a series of events that might be hard to swallow if you have a difficult time wrapping your mind around the fact that Daphne had completely lost track of Eddie — if she loved him so much, why didn’t she Google him? But once you dispense with such details, it’s a pleasure, as always, to sink into Patchett’s world of sisters, mothers and old hurts. As in “Tom Lake,” she includes a story within her story; and, as with “The Dutch House,” the strong connection between siblings is what sticks with me. (Comes out June 2)
I want something dark
Helpless
by Jessica Knoll
Ten years after her best-selling debut, “Luckiest Girl Alive,” Knoll is back with another smart thriller that explores the long shadow of sexual violence. This time a successful Hollywood producer returns to her alma mater to attend the funeral of a former professor who happens to be the uncle of the guy who got away — or really, the one she got away from. Their reunion is fraught, then dangerous, then takes a “Gone Girl”-esque turn. This is the book to grab if you’re craving a prickle of fear. Be forewarned, the ending is a doozy. (Comes out July 7)
I’m in the mood for a novel that reads like a movie
Love You More
by Emily Giffin
Remember “Sweet Home Alabama”? Giffin has given us a modern Midwestern update of that classic story in which a high-flying city girl is yanked back to her cozy hometown and the boy she left behind. In this case, the woman is a soon-to-be-wed doctor; the childhood home is in small-town Wisconsin; and the first love grew up a few cornfields away. Giffin is a reliable spinner of the kind of romances my daughters and I can agree on (classic, uncomplicated, hold the vampire sex). This time, she gives the proceedings a little shimmer of suspense. (Comes out July 7)
I’d like a touch of the extraterrestrial
Take Me With You
by Steven Rowley
“Humor can be kind and still be funny,” declares a character in Rowley’s latest romp. The observation applies to all of his novels — from “Lily and the Octopus” to “The Guncle” to “The Celebrants” — but is especially true of this one, where the laughs are more wistful than wicked.
The story begins with a supernatural twist requiring suspension of disbelief (not easy for me, but here goes): A man disappears into a beam of light in his own backyard. His husband, left to make sense of the loss, takes stock of their life while pondering partnership, grief and community.
Give me an old-fashioned summer romance
June Baby
by Shannon Garvey
A grieving 17-year-old is dispatched to Block Island to work for a mysterious Annie Leibovitz-like photographer and promptly falls in love with her nephew. That’s the setup of Garvey’s debut novel, an old-fashioned love letter to summer romance, sun-fueled creativity and long rides on rusty bikes (the only kind to have at the beach). “June Baby” is another outsider’s story, but it unfolds in the voice of an insider — assured, with a hint of mystery.
How about a thriller with stalker-y vibes?
Boring Asian Female
by Canwen Xu
Who wants to read a novel about law school admissions? Nobody in their right mind. Thankfully, Xu’s zippy novel goes deeper than LSAT scores. When Elizabeth Zhang is rejected by Harvard, she develops an unhealthy fixation on another student who got the nod. What begins as gentle Instagram sleuthing becomes something darker over the course of this tale, which raises important questions while it entertains. Chief among them: Why is higher education such a ridiculous pressure cooker?
Take me to visit a dysfunctional family with oceanfront real estate
Down With the Shipmans
by Meg Mitchell Moore
Moore is a dependable ingredient in any summer reading soufflé. Her airy novels accomplish what they came to do: entertain and transport, without the pyrotechnics of, say, books that eschew quotation marks. In “Down With the Shipmans,” three sisters, laden with baggage, converge on their late mother’s beach cottage, only to learn that their father and his much younger wife are planning to sell the place.
The stakes are high, the drama is juicy and the views are sublime. Moore even provides two beach dogs — Leo (an unruly pit bull mix) and Cinnamon (“golden retriever, red bandanna, long pink tongue”) — to keep things lively. (Comes out June 2)
I want a short book that goes deep
The Things We Never Say
by Elizabeth Strout
I’m so loyal to Strout’s O.G. characters, Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, that I was reluctant to meet Artie Dram. But Strout’s latest addition to her New England universe shares a certain indelibility with his predecessors, if not their Maine chops. Artie, a history teacher at a high school outside of Boston, is floundering as a husband and as a father, struggling to make sense of his place in the world. I won’t call it a midlife crisis; that would be too obvious for Strout. But when Artie uncovers a family secret, his ambivalence begins to make sense. Bonus points for an opening line that sets the tone for the season: “It was the middle of June and the sun all day had kept right on shining with sweet mightiness.”
I’d like to be surprised and slightly weirded out
Enormous Wings
by Laurie Frankel
This book has a strange premise: A 77-year-old woman moves into a retirement community and discovers that she is … pregnant. Yes, you read that right. Her name is Pepper Mills, which, despite Frankel’s perfectly sensible explanation, seems a bit much. Wackiness aside, “Enormous Wings” makes you think about the realities of aging, especially the unfortunate superpower of invisibility. When I finished this one, I texted my octogenarian mom to tell her how much I appreciate her independent streak. Her response: “One of my many attributes.” So true.
I love mother-daughter stories
Pool House
by Mary H.K. Choi
When the dad from a long-ago sitcom dies in real life, his onscreen son and wife and her real-life daughter convene at a mansion in Los Angeles. Like the see-through Lucite furniture in the property’s pool house, Choi’s story is both ethereal and unexpectedly perilous. Brace for the kind of heartbreak reserved for mothers and daughters who have more in common than they care to admit. (Comes out June 9)
I want something unexpected and heartwarming
Man Overboard!
by Kathleen Rooney
Normally a person falling off a cruise ship would signal the end of the story. In this slim, sly novel from the author of “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk,” it’s just the beginning. After Kick Kilpatrick, a 33-year-old former college swimmer, plummets off the 14-story Carnival Valor during a family vacation, he quickly realizes that nobody will miss him. Bobbing around in the “gooey soup,” his life flashing before his eyes, Kick knows he only has one choice: to save himself. But how? (Comes out July 7)
Elisabeth Egan is a writer and editor at the Times Book Review. She has worked in the world of publishing for 30 years.
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