JUNE
The First Gentleman
by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
This thriller, the third in the best-selling partnership between the former president and the prolific novelist, follows a grieving journalist as she chronicles the murder trial of Cole Wright, an N.F.L. star as well as the president’s husband. “When we first got writing,” Patterson recently remarked, “we simply could not have dreamt this one up.”
Little, Brown June 2
Atmosphere: A Love Story
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Reid, the author of “Daisy Jones & The Six,” infuses the stratospheric tension of a 1980s space mission with a cosmic love story in her latest novel. Joan Goodwin, an obsessive astronomy professor and a fresh face on NASA’s space shuttle program, is questioning her own ideas of life and love as she prepares for her flight. Upon liftoff, her problems amplify.
Ballantine, June 3
Flashlight
by Susan Choi
Absences — of relatives, family memories and a historical record — abound in Choi’s slippery and explosive novel, which hinges on a Korean American family’s fateful trip to Japan. When Louisa, an only daughter, washes up alone on shore after a beachside walk with her father, she has no recollection of how she ended up there or how he disappeared.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, June 3
Meet Me at the Crossroads
by Megan Giddings
The sudden appearance of seven mysterious doors across the world draws attention from religious sects, covetous billionaires and everyday people who speculate over what lies on the other side. Olivia and Ayanna, two Black teenage siblings in the Midwest, differ in their opinions — Is it a door to nowhere? To a land paved with golden paths? — until one of them accidentally steps through and vanishes.
Amistad, June 3
Parallel Lines
by Edward St. Aubyn
Tenuous relationships and grave predicaments serve as the connective tissue in St. Aubyn’s latest novel, which follows an overlapping cast of characters dealing with childhood trauma, climate catastrophe and a life-threatening diagnosis over the course of a year.
Knopf, June 3
The Slip
by Lucas Schaefer
Schaefer’s ambitious debut follows what happens when Nathaniel, a 16-year-old from Massachusetts, disappears while visiting his stoner uncle in Austin, Texas. The ensuing narrative, packed with such eccentric characters as a phone sex hotline worker, an evil clown and a boxing coach from Haiti, meditates on shifting identities and America’s social fabric.
Simon & Schuster, June 3
Great Black Hope
by Rob Franklin
David’s world is careening off a cliff. Less than a month after the death of his roommate, the daughter of a famous soul singer, he is arrested for cocaine possession while partying in the Hamptons. Wracked with guilt, grief and questions about his roommate’s presumed overdose, David retreats to Atlanta, where he seeks refuge from noxious tabloid reporters and an “unnameable ache” that threatens to eat him whole.
Summit, June 10
So Far Gone
by Jess Walter
Rhys Kinnick, a journalist and a recluse, is living off the grid in the woods near Spokane, Wash., when his grandchildren are kidnapped by thugs. With the help of an unlikely crew, Rhys springs into action to locate them, even if it means leading his squad straight into a firefight.
Harper, June 10
King of Ashes
by S.A. Cosby
The best-selling Southern crime novelist returns with a gripping story about a finance manager who, while visiting his injured father in Virginia, becomes slowly ensnared in his brother’s dangerous dealings with a vicious drug syndicate.
Pine & Cedar, June 10
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
by V.E. Schwab
Set across three historical periods — 16th-century Spain, 1827 London and contemporary Boston — Schwab’s latest novel follows three queer women seeking love and autonomy as they become vampires and, in their new condition, grapple with loss, jealousy, forbidden relationships and the loneliness of immortality.
Tor Books, June 10
The Sisters
by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
This epic by Khemiri, a Tunisian Swedish author and playwright, is narrated in part by Jonas, a writer a lot like his creator. Entranced by his childhood neighbors, the three eccentric daughters of a Tunisian carpet seller and a mysterious Swedish man, he watches their lives drift apart and cross paths in Stockholm, Tunis and elsewhere as they navigate the rough and uncertain waters of adulthood.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, June 17
Bug Hollow
by Michelle Huneven
The idyllic existence of a middle-class family in California is turned on its head when Ellis, the Samuelson clan’s beloved eldest son, drowns in a freak accident during his first semester at college. Huneven chronicles the ensuing bruises and fissures, and the Samuelsons’ attempts over decades to reassemble in the face of unbearable trauma.
Penguin Press, June 17
El Dorado Drive
by Megan Abbott
After skipping town to evade a nagging creditor in 2008, Harper returns to her Detroit suburb months later to find her two older sisters, once in the throes of debt, sporting fresh highlights and driving a Lexus. When they convince her to join the women-led pyramid scheme that reversed their fortunes, troubles begin to compound.
Putnam, June 24
Among Friends
by Hal Ebbott
The tightly knit families of Emerson, a shifty lawyer, and his college friend Amos, a psychiatrist, gather to celebrate Emerson’s birthday at his country house outside New York City. As the weekend progresses, minor incidents expose cracks in their “smooth, edgeless” lives, revealing curdled emotions and underlying resentments that culminate in a shocking betrayal.
Riverhead, June 24
I’ll Be Right Here
by Amy Bloom
After the end of World War II, Gazala, a young Frenchwoman, leaves Paris with the help of her employer, the writer Colette, and lands in New York. There, she takes on work as a baker, develops a close friendship with two sisters and reconnects with her adopted older brother, in a multigenerational tale of love, compassion and found family.
Random House, June 24
JULY
A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart
by Nishant Batsha
The personal and political intermingle in this World War I-era love story between Cora, an idealistic aspiring writer, and Indra, a budding Bengali revolutionary. As the U.S. is pulled into the war, the radicalism that brought the two together becomes a liability, forcing the couple to take a hard look at their beliefs and ambitions.
Ecco, July 1
Our Last Resort
by Clémence Michallon
Frida and Gabriel reunite at a luxury resort in the Utah desert, hoping for a fresh start in their sibling relationship. But the illusion of paradise is shattered when another guest is found dead and Gabriel becomes the prime suspect. To clear their names, Frida is forced to confront their pasts — namely, the fallout from their childhood in a cult.
Knopf, July 8
Vera, or Faith
by Gary Shteyngart
Vera, a precocious half-Jewish, half-Korean 10-year-old, narrates this complex family drama set against the backdrop of a dystopian near-future America. As her father and stepmother’s marriage begins to crumble, Vera seeks out her mysterious birth mother in an effort to understand where she fits in this chaotic world.
Random House, July 8
These Summer Storms
by Sarah MacLean
Alice Storm returns, reluctantly, to her estranged family’s Rhode Island estate after the untimely death of her billionaire father, Franklin. What begins as a funeral morphs into a series of challenges Franklin created for his heirs to gain access to his money — prompting an unexpected romance and a family-wide reckoning.
Ballantine, July 8
Bring the House Down
by Charlotte Runcie
Hayley, a struggling actress, wakes up from a one-night stand to find that the man she’s just slept with is a theater critic who’s written a career-ending one-star review of her Edinburgh Festival Fringe show. Humiliated, she revamps her show into a viral takedown that challenges her reviewer’s misogyny and nepotism, and upends the power dynamics between artist and critic.
Doubleday, July 8
The Payback
by Kashana Cauley
Three down-on-their-luck mall workers, on the lam from a draconian new force known as the Debt Police, hatch a plan to live many a millennial’s dream: an “Ocean’s Eleven”-esque heist of their student loan company to erase their debts and exact revenge.
Atria, July 15
If You Love It, Let It Kill You
by Hannah Pittard
Pittard, a novelist and English professor, spins the tale of a university professor named Hana P. whose quiet life is upended by the way she is portrayed in her ex-husband’s scathing debut novel. The result is an autofictional examination of the consequences of autofiction, which isn’t nearly as confusing as it sounds. (For the nonfiction version, New York Magazine has you covered.)
Holt, July 15
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping
by Sangu Mandanna
After resurrecting her recently deceased great-aunt, the witch Sera Swan is drained of her powers and stuck running an enchanted inn. When she’s not dealing with guest demands and a mischievous talking fox, Sera finds an old spell and a handsome magical historian who could help her again become one of the most powerful witches in Britain.
Berkley, July 15
The Other Wife
by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
An unexpected loss brings Zuzu, a lawyer, back to her hometown and triggers something of a midlife crisis. What if she’d chosen art over law school? What if she pursued her college best friend, Cash, rather than her now-wife, Agnes? And what if it’s not too late to change everything?
Riverhead, July 15
Not Quite Dead Yet
by Holly Jackson
A famed Y.A. author’s first foray into adult fiction centers on Jet Mason, the wayward daughter of a wealthy Vermont family. After a brutal attack by a mysterious intruder, Jet is told she has just days before her head injury leads to a deadly aneurysm. So begins a race against time to preemptively solve her own murder.
Bantam, July 22
Angel Down
by Daniel Kraus
In World War I France, five soldiers are sent on a mission into No Man’s Land to put a mortally wounded comrade out of his misery. But in a supernatural twist, rather than finding a fallen serviceman, they find a literal fallen angel, who may be just what they need to face their own inner demons and end the war once and for all.
Atria, July 29
AUGUST
People Like Us
by Jason Mott
The follow-up to Mott’s National Book Award-winning “Hell of a Book” weaves the stories of two Black authors — one on an international book tour, the other confronting a deadly school shooting — into a comedic, surreal exploration of love and loss.
Dutton, Aug. 5
Loved One
by Aisha Muharrar
A disorienting encounter at her ex-boyfriend’s funeral puts Julia on a collision course with Elizabeth, her ex’s ex. Muharrar, a writer and producer on “Hacks” and other TV comedies, describes what unfolds as a “relationship post-mortem,” with both women re-evaluating past romances and trying to understand their connection to one another.
Viking, Aug. 12
The Possession of Alba Díaz
by Isabel Cañas
Alba, her fiancé and her parents are sequestered in a Mexican silver mine to escape the plague sweeping the region. But in the refuge from one catastrophe lurk others: Alba is possessed by a demon, and enchanted by her fiancé’s troubled cousin, Elías.
Berkley, Aug. 19
Hemlock & Silver
by T. Kingfisher
The Hugo Award-winning author returns with her own horror-steeped spin on Snow White. A healer named Anja is summoned by the king to save his dying daughter, Snow. When her typical methods don’t work, Anja turns to a magic mirror, which houses a dark realm, for answers.
Tor Books, Aug. 19
Katabasis
by R.F. Kuang
Two rival graduate students form an unsteady alliance to track down their esteemed Magick professor Jacob Grimes, who happens to be in hell. Guided by spells, Greek mythology and classic literature, these fledgling academics must venture through the underworld to save Grimes’s soul if they want to salvage their own careers.
Harper Voyager, Aug. 26
The post 31 Novels Coming this Summer appeared first on New York Times.
