Authors share their summer reading plans (pt. 1)
Lots of great books to add to your TBR list!
The summer solstice takes place on June 20-21, depending where you live. That means it’s time for my annual survey of what authors are planning to read this summer. Writers are a great source of recommendations, especially of books that are flying below the radar. I sent out a request for summer reading lists and within days I had received 17 responses. I’ve decided to share 10 of those now, with another 10 coming in a second post early next week. Sixteen more authors have agreed to send me their lists, so it looks like this will be three-part series. I’ve added several books to my already endless TBR list; I know you will do the same.
Authors are listed in random order.
(Apologies to my readers in the Southern Hemisphere. I know it’s the winter solstice for you. There’s that damn Northern Hemisphere bias again!)
I’d also love to do a post on what the readers of Read Her Like an Open Book are planning for their summer reading. Send your list in a comment or via email and I’ll post it the week of June 30.
Maggie Shipstead (author of Great Circle, You Have a Friend in 10A: Stories, Astonish Me, and Seating Arrangements)
I was thinking I didn’t really have summer reading plans (mostly I play Libby roulette) but then it occurred to me to look at my Libby holds list, and here we go:
1) Flashlight by Susan Choi. I don’t know what it’s about; I don’t need to know what it’s about. I’m going to read whatever Susan puts out.
2) Into the Ice by Mark Synnott. This book combines a lot of my interests (sailing memoirs, the Arctic, the Franklin expedition), and I absolutely loved Synnott’s book about Everest.
3) The Museum Detective by Maha Khan. I love mysteries, and this one is set in Pakistan and is about a female archeologist searching for a missing family member and also there’s the discovery of a mummy that ties in somehow. I’m fuzzy on the details, but I see that as a good thing.
4) The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller. Another obvious choice for an Arctic enthusiast like myself. I read a recommendation somewhere and immediately put a Libby hold on it. It’s the fictional memoirs of a trapper in Svalbard starting in 1916. For anyone looking for a nonfiction version, I’d highly recommend A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter.
5) Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt. Another recommendation from a source I don’t remember. The first of Boyt’s novels to be published in the U.S. (I think?), this one’s about a woman raising her granddaughter.
6) James by Percival Everett. I haven’t read it yet!
7) Abandon Me by Melissa Febos. She has a new memoir out about a celibate period (The Dry Season), but I want to start with its predecessor, this memoir about a terrible breakup.
Aaaand I think that’s it!
Caroline Leavitt (author of Pictures of You, Cruel Beautiful World, and Days of Wonder)
Just about all of these summer books have personal backstories for me, which makes them all the more must-reads.
Mercy by Joan Silber: I was always roaming about the Lower East Side during the late 70s and early 80s, and I admit to having more than my fair share of nostalgia for it now. Silber, a friend and favorite writer, has come to the rescue. Here potent drugs, one out-of-control night, and a panicked act by a young man create terrible ripples through the years, all the while asking rich questions about the nature of mercy. This is a novel I know I’m going to wish that I had written!
A Dog in Georgia by Lauren Grodstein: Full admission, I already read this beauty, but I’m going to read it again for the pure pleasure of interviewing Lauren later. Why am I so taken with this book? First, there is a dog, and I worship dogs even though I am really allergic to them. Secondly, it is set in the Republic of Georgia, and it’s not just about finding a missing mutt, it’s about finding ourselves.
Ashes to Ashes by Thomas Maltman: I first discovered Maltman when he came to me years ago to developmentally edit his gorgeous manuscript, which became the highly acclaimed Little Wolves. I was really excited to see that he has a new one coming out, Ashes to Ashes, set in the same prairie town in Minnesota, where members of a congregation discover that the ashes from Ash Wednesday are not coming off.
Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How it Transformed Art, Science and History by Anika Burgess: My husband Jeff, a non-fiction aficionado, already read and raved about this book, excitedly telling me fascinating tidbits as he read, including the original terror of seeing an X-ray of yourself. Plus, I’m currently writing about a photographer in the 1930s, so I want to know everything.
Fools for Love by Helen Schulman: I tend to want to read everything by authors I love, and I cannot wait to dip into this new collection of short stories about poetry and plays, sex diaries and misadventures of the heart. The nice thing about new work from an already loved author is that it makes me now want to find my copies of her older works and reread them, too.
Please Don’t Lie by Christina Baker Kline and Anne Burt: The origin story is so delicious, I had to grab this book. Kline and Burt, two acclaimed novelists, and friends for over a decade, have penned a taut twist-and-turning thriller about a city-girl newlywed planted into the Adirondacks, only to have to face her past—and herself. I love each of these authors on their own, so I cannot wait to read them together.
Carlos Santana: Love, Devotion, Surrender by Jeff Tamarkin: Of course, the backstory here is that the author, music journalist Jeff Tamarkin, is my husband. This book’s a stunner, so rich with history and visuals (as well as Jeff’s brilliant writing) that every page is really a work of art. Full of rare photography, ephemera from Carlos’ personal archive, the book includes exclusive interviews with producer Clive Davis, band members, and Carlos himself, as well as a fascinating history of one of the world’s greatest guitarists ever.
Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll: A book from the woman who sued Trump and won? Count me in. I’ve been a fan of E. Jean Carroll’s since her days writing an advice column for Elle and I am always hanging out on her Substack community. She’s that extraordinary combo of smart, funny, and brave. America thanks you, E. Jean and so do I.
The Curtain Falls in Paris by Victoria Zackheim: Decades ago, editor/playwright/screenwriter/novelist Zackheim told me she was writing her very first mystery. Well, not only did she finish it with a bang, but she got a three-book deal for a series. Set against the backdrop of a storied Paris theater, the book is about a recently disgraced journalist who pairs up with a French inspector to find a mysterious killer.
I’ll Be Right There by Amy Bloom: Bloom is always a sure bet for a stunning read, her pages full of characters so real, you can feel their breathing on the page. This one is about the families we’re born into, and more importantly, the families we make as we go along.
Mary Morris (author of The Red House, Gateway to the Moon, The Jazz Palace and more)
Well, clearly my summer reading stack is too ambitious for what’s really going to get read, but then I also prefer to have leftovers than not enough if I’m having guests. And reading can be its own kind of feast, can it not? So, in no particular order, this is what I hope to read before Labor Day:
1) Benjamin Labatu’s The Maniac, because I loved When We Cease to Understand the World and his work is so unique and there is so little of it in English. An incredible writing of fiction involving, well, quantum mechanics and mathematics but somehow it’s accessible and incredibly wild.
2) Susan Choi’s Flashlight because I loved Pachinko and someone said it had a similar story/vibe.
3) The Voynich Manuscript by Dr. Stephen Skinner–a nonfiction book about the mysterious manuscript whose code no one has been able to crack in 250 years.
4) Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness because I love great writing and beautiful sentences.
5) The Doorman by Chris Pavone, which sounds like a great beach read.
6) Willa Cather’s collected stories because I haven’t read every single one.
7) The Essential Pokemon Handbook (research)
8) Patricia Highsmith’s story collection, Eleven, because I was told there are a lot of snails in it (and there are), and my new novel, The Red House, also has a lot of snails. And I can now vouch for the Highsmith. There are a lot of snails.
Jennifer Rosner (author of Once We Were Home and The Yellow Bird Sings)
Here are some of the books tottering on my nightstand. I can’t wait to read these!
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden: I’m late to reading this; it’s now (finally) at the top of my TBR pile! Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it is said to be highly original and to expose aspects of war and the Holocaust that are largely unknown.
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong: I’ll read anything Ocean writes. In a recent interview, he spoke about how writers often portray characters who escape their constraining circumstances, while his interest is in those who can’t or don’t get out but, rather, endure and survive and cope within their confines. I found this deeply intriguing.
The Names by Florence Knapp: The philosopher in me is interested in the premise that a given name could shape a child’s future; the writer in me is drawn to the branching narratives that offer alternate endings. Knapp is a quilter, so I bet her attention to structure and beauty will be spot-on.
This is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer: A novel that features New York’s Central Park as a character in a story of a long-married couple’s journey of life, loss, grief, and epic love? Yes, please.
Dream State by Eric Puchner: I am drawn to this one because Washington Post book critic Ron Charles said it made him miss his subway stop. I doubt that happens often! I’m interested in how the passage of years works in this long-timeline story, and how the relationship triangle does (or doesn’t) resolve.
Sasha Vasilyuk (author of Your Presence is Mandatory)
My list is not particularly summery, as you’ll see, but that’s what I happen to have on my TBR for the next couple of months.
Endling by Maria Reva: Endling is an absurdist story of three women and a truck full of bachelors carousing through Ukraine as Russia launches a full-scale invasion. Reva, a Ukrainian-Canadian writer who debuted in 2020 with a linked short-story collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear, is one of the most stunningly original writers I’ve come across in recent years, so it’s interesting to see her reconciling fiction meant for entertainment with tragic reality that directly affects her and her family.
Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart: As always with Shteyngart, I’m expecting hilarity and voicy, unforgettable characters. But this time, his tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country that’s falling apart (sounds familiar?) is told from the eyes of ten-year-old Vera, and I’m curious to see how he’ll pull it off. It’s out in July.
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker: I met Wecker at a Jewish Book festival in Berkeley and am excited to check out this first book in her trilogy that combines historical fiction and fantasy. The Golem and the Jinni takes place in turn-of-the-century New York, which teems with immigrants and, apparently, supernatural creatures. I hope it will provide me a needed doze of escape from today’s news cycle.
Go On Pretending by Alina Adams: Go On Pretending is Adams’ newest book of historical fiction about three generations of women who battle against tides of history, from segregated 1950s America to the fall of the USSR and the rise of revolutionary Rojava in Syria. Adams, who is an immigrant raising biracial kids in New York, used some of her and her family’s experiences for the book, which always gives fiction a certain personal touch.
Our Dear Friends in Moscow by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan: This is a nonfiction book by two journalists who left Russia and are asking themselves the question of how so many friends and colleagues of theirs turned from working as members of the relatively free press to working for Putin’s propaganda machine. This feels like an important question to ask now, not just about Russia, but about how a belief system changes in the era of disinformation and political polarization.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold: Sometimes I pick a very popular book that I’ve somehow missed. Every time I do I learn something about the tastes of the American reader. The Lovely Bones, told from the POV of a dead girl, seems like it would make a good audiobook break from the other books on this list.
The Night Sparrow by Shelly Sanders: A young Jewish girl joins an elite Soviet sniper unit and embarks on a mission targeting the highest prize of World War II: Adolph Hitler. Women played a big role in the Soviet resistance against the Nazi invasion (my great aunt was a partisan), and I’m curious to see how Sanders, a Canadian author of historical fiction, treats this subject matter.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe: For something totally different, I’m turning to Margo Millet, a young single mother who starts an OnlyFans account to make ends meet when her estranged father shows up and starts helping her. The book will be turned into a series soon, starring Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman, and I’d like to read it before it hits the screen.
You can buy these and many other books I’ve featured at my Bookshop.org store.
Purchases help fund this blog. https://bookshop.org/shop/openbook
Heather Bell Adams (author of Maranatha Road, The Good Luck Stone, and the forthcoming Starring Marilyn Monroe as Herself)
Three Guesses by Chris McClain Johnson is on my reading list because I love the elegant economy of a novella, and this one, told in epistolary form, is a compelling story of unlikely friendship.
Alone With You by Marisa Silver: I loved Silver’s novel, Mary Coin, and was delighted to learn of her 2011 short story collection, in which her characters confront life’s abrupt changes with fear, courage, and even humor.
World Without End by Martha Park is an essay collection about climate change and faith. I’ve long been frustrated by how many Americans equate Christianity with the MAGA movement when there is, in fact, a meaningful segment of Christianity that is progressive, liberal, and loving; this collection explores these ideas along with so many others.
Company by Shannon Sanders is a linked short story collection about the lives, myths, and secrets of one Black family spanning from Atlantic City to New York to DC from the 1960s to the 2000s. I love discovering the links between the characters and putting the multigenerational puzzle together.
I’m intrigued by the premise of Songs of No Provenance by Lydi Conklin, which tells the story of an indie folk singer who seeks refuge at a writing camp for teenagers in rural Virginia, where she’s forced to question her own toxic relationship to artmaking and her complicated history.
Debra Thomas (author of Luz and Josie and Vic)
Books I just finished and highly recommend for summer reading
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy: My favorite book of the year so far. Water is rising on a remote island near Antarctica where seeds are stored for future global needs. A woman is washed ashore, rescued by a family—a father and his three children—who are caretakers of the island, now charged with protecting and packing these seeds for evacuation in a matter of weeks. A page turner, full of secrets, unforgettable characters, and a love story for all time.
The Wedding People by Alison Espach: A woman, contemplating suicide, crashes a wedding at an upscale resort and ends up changing lives, including her own. Quirky. Like nothing I’ve ever read before.
Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams: Mosaics. Prairie dogs. Rwanda. A meditation and reflection on how brokenness can lead to connection, beauty, and hope.
Books I Hope to Read this Summer
The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey: A few chapters in and I am entranced by the voice of the narrator—Tama, a magpie, rescued as a chick on a farm in New Zealand by a kindhearted woman in need of rescue herself. At times charming, at times dark, I’m completely uncertain where this novel might end—and that, along with Tama’s wisecracking character, keeps me reading.
An Unlikely Prospect by Shelley Blanton-Stroud: Based on a little-known historical event during VJ Day in San Francisco when celebrations took a dark turn with eleven deaths and six rapes. Young widow Sandy Zimmer, now publisher of her deceased husband’s newspaper, not only struggles for respect in a male-dominated industry but also with whether to bring the harsh truth of the Peace Riot to light or give in to those who wish to bury the scandal while San Francisco is being considered as the site for the new United Nations Headquarters.
The Loneliness of Horses by Andrea Thalasinos: Two women, one in 1972 Northern Arizona and the other in 1778 New Scotland, Canada, whose lives share connections to horses and themes of displacement and resilience. It had me at horses and resilient women.
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak: Recommended to me by several friends whose opinions I respect. A fig tree bears witness to the forbidden love between two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot. Decades later, long after war has destroyed much of the island, a ficus tree in London helps a young woman come to terms with her family’s troubled past as she seeks and finds a sense of identity and connection.
Nicola Kraus (author of The Best We Could Hope For, as well as The Nanny Diaries and several other novels with Emma McLaughlin)
How To Lose Your Mother by Molly Jong-Fast. Having just published a family drama that touches on narcissistic parents, I can’t wait for this memoir about navigating not only her famous mother’s descent into dementia but the realization that she may never have had her mother’s attention to begin with. Anyone who follows Jong-Fast’s political commentary knows she’s whip smart and super funny. This will be brilliant.
This Happened to Me: A Reckoning by Kate Price. OK, yes, since I also write about EMDR and resilience after trauma, I’m also excited for this memoir about childhood sexual abuse because Price was a case study in Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and her memoir chronicles her experience with EMDR therapy and her journey to healing and reclaiming her sense of self. Sure to be unputdownable.
Send Flowers by Emily Buchanan. From the second I heard the premise, I could not wait to get my hands on this UK debut author’s novel about a woman who becomes convinced that her houseplant is the reincarnation of her dead boyfriend. I mean, come on, how genius is that?
So Far Gone by Jess Walter. Beautiful Ruins is one of my favorite books so I cannot wait to be swept away by his latest, which promises to be equally sprawling and yet exquisite in its specificity. So Far Gone follows the cross-country journey of a misanthropic ex-journalist trying to rescue his grandchildren. I will go anywhere Walter wants to take me.
Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian. I love novels set in the claustrophobic world of academia. From Albee and Amis to Russo and Jonas, trapping frustrated adults and barely-adults together is always a recipe for exploding characters’ egos and foibles. This novel, which explores the rippling fallout from infidelity in a long-standing faculty marriage, promises to be another addition to the canon.
Elizabeth Benedict (author of the National Book Award finalist Slow Dancing; Rewriting Illness: A View of My Own; and a classic book on writing, in print for almost 30 years, The Joy of Writing Sex)
Summer can’t come soon enough for all these delicious novels.
Having grown up in Manhattan in the age of the Mad Men, in a ritzier apartment and neighborhood than we had any business living in, I love coming of age stories set here, in every neighborhood, from Franny and Zooey to Go Tell It on the Mountain. Two new novels that fit that description are on top of my list: Playworld by Adam Ross, about a child actor growing up here, and Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin, a new voice exploring race and class in this city obsessed with both.
I heard Jennifer Haigh in conversation recently with Maria Semple (Where’d You Go, Bernadette?), and can’t wait to read her newest novel, Rabbit Moon, set in another great city–Shanghai. It’s about the complicated aftermath of a car accident. A young American woman taking her gap year in China brings her divorced parents together to care for her and face some family secrets.
Mary Morris’s newest novel, The Red House, takes us back in time and to another country–Morris’s favorite places to be. It’s about a missing mother and a daughter who returns to Italy decades later to find out what happened to her.
Before I take on any of these books, I’ll read K-Ming Chang’s tiny novel, Cecilia, about a young woman who works as a cleaner in a chiropractor’s office. I loved Chang’s gorgeous short story collection, Gods of Want, which I used in my fiction workshop last summer, at my regular–and only–teaching gig, at the New York State Summer Writers Institute.
Nicole Bokat (author of Will End in Fire and The Happiness Thief)
Megan Abbott’s El Dorado Drive. I’m a loyal fan, having read her last seven novels. She’s a wonderful writer of literary thrillers and an inspiration to me.
Rachel Cusk’s Parade. As is common knowledge in the book world, Rachel Cusk is a literary master. I’ve read a mixture of her fiction and nonfiction and I’m up for the challenge of her new, most experimental work.
Molly Jong Fast’s How to Lose Your Mother. I read a lot of Erica Jong’s fiction and poetry when I was young, so I feel a mixture of curiosity and sadness about this memoir (knowing Jong has dementia now). I’m prepared for anything but am hoping Molly Jong-Fast didn’t experience the level of trauma other daughters of literary darlings did (for example Ariel Leve in An Abbreviated Life).
Rebecca Romney’s Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend. Even though I have an advanced degree in English Literature, I received little education about these women writers who inspired Austen. It will be delightful to know more about them!
Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird. This novel caught my eye because it was shortlisted for The International Booker Prize in 2025. I’ve loved many contemporary dystopian novels (Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles); Kawakami’s sounds so imaginative!
Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore. This novel has received amazing reviews. It sounds like a masterclass in combining genre: a literary thriller grappling with the ravages of climate change.
You can buy these and many other books I’ve featured at my Bookshop.org store.
Purchases help fund this blog. https://bookshop.org/shop/openbook
This is amazing. So many books added to my list already and I’m happy to see many I’ve already read!!
You, or we, or I, or maybe Ai need to make a grid of the books and authors who chose them. You could color in those you’ve read/reviewed and keep updating all summer.