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30 of the best books to sink into this summer

summer reading 2022

Maybe you're the kind of person who doesn't pick their next read based on the weather. But some of us reach for a specific type of book to read in the summer. More than a genre, a summer read is a mood: A book that's breezy and transfixing, able to hold our attention as we enjoy the outdoors.

Speaking to TODAY about beach reads , authors opened up about their own summer reading routines and provided a few recommendations to add to your summer reading list. Lily King, author of Read With Jenna pick “Writers & Lovers ,” said she likes getting her summer reads messy as she brings them to the beach and park. “I want proof of summer on the pages,” King told TODAY.

The only question is: Where to begin? We’re rounding up a few of the 2022 new releases, from novels and memoirs to romances and comedies, that fit the summer mood.

"Every Summer After" by Carley Fortune

Every Summer After

"Every Summer After"

Search #beachread on Instagram, and you’re likely to see this cover. Speaking to TODAY, Carley Fortune said she was inspired by her childhood in Barry’s Bay, a small lakeside town in Canada, while writing this love story that switches perspectives between childhood summers and two adults trying to right their adolescent wrongs. Read an excerpt on TODAY .

"Book Lovers" by Emily Henry

Book Lovers

"Book Lovers"

Emily Henry’s rom-coms know the beach read assignment: They’re frequently set on vacation and involve writers or bookworms. “Book Lovers” follows in the tradition of “Beach Read” and “People We Meet on Vacation,” taking place over book editor Nora Stephens’ month-long trip to a North Carolina town, where she runs into a rival: an equally successful book agent. It doesn’t take long for the transformation from enemies to lovers to occur.

"Neruda on the Park," by Cleyvis Natera

Neruda on the Park

"Neruda on the Park"

"Neruda on the Park" is about a community in New York that is on the verge of gentrification and the residents whose futures, and close-knit connections, are being threatened. Eusebia, an older resident, comes up with the idea to start a crime ring to scare away new residents. Her family responds in their own ways. Natera, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, said the novel was inspired by her own life and childhood in Harlem.

"Meant to Be Mine" by Hannah Orenstein

Meant to Be Mine

"Meant to Be Mine"

Do you believe in fated love? The protagonist of “Meant to Be Mine” does — she’s staked her romantic future on a prophecy that her grandmother laid out for her. When Edie, a fashion stylist, meets singer Theo Larsen she knows she’s met the man her grandmother’s visions. Whether he can actually live up to them remains to be seen.

"Counterfeit" by Kirstin Chen

Counterfeit

"Counterfeit"

Once college roommates, Winnie and Ava lost touch. When they meet again at a coffee store, Winnie has a proposition. "Counterfeit" runs at the pace of a heist movie, as in, once you start reading you won't be able to stop.

"So Happy for You" by Celia Laskey

So Happy for You

"So Happy for You"

If you’re going to multiple weddings this year, “So Happy For You” might speak to you in a visceral way. A fast-paced satirical thriller, “So Happy For You” is set in the near future, where a declining birth rate leads to a government incentive-spurred wedding fever. Best friends since childhood, Ellie and Robin have grown apart in recent years — especially given their disagreements about marriage. The tension grows to a tipping point when Ellie asks Robin to be her maid of honor.

"Tracy Flick Can't Win" by Tom Perrotta

Tracy Flick Can't Win

"Tracy Flick Can't Win"

Tracy Flick is a character first made famous in Tom Perrotta’s 1998 novel “Election” and the movie adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon. Years after for high school student body, Tracy is now a middle-aged mom and assistant principal, revisiting her past while still yearning to be recognized in that old familiar way.

"Hurricane Girl" by Marcy Dermansky

Hurricane Girl

"Hurricane Girl"

Marcy Dermansky’s books are written in sparse but punchy prose, each sentence guaranteed to make you think. “Hurricane Girl” is about a woman on the run from her boring life. But if she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, how will she know when she finds it?

"More Than You'll Ever Know" by Katie Gutierrez

More Than You'll Ever Know

"More Than You'll Ever Know"

As a true crime reporter, Cassie Bowman finds the truth behind the stories that grip people most. She comes across an article about Lore Rivera, a woman who carried out a double life with a family in Mexico and one in the U.S., and thinks she’s found the ultimate career-defining moment. “More Than You’ll Ever Know” is an intertwining story about ambition, motherhood and more.

"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" by Gabrielle Zevin

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"

Sadie and Sam bond over their shared love of video games. And one day, they’ll go on to make one of the world’s most successful ones. But they don’t know that yet. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” is a decade-spanning feat in storytelling, switching perspectives as the story winds through the years.

"Carrie Soto Is Back" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Carrie Soto Is Back

"Carrie Soto Is Back"

The title of “Carrie Soto Is Back” is the story that Carrie Soto, a tennis great, wants to tell the world — and her doubters, of whom there are many. At 37, six years into her retirement, Carrie watches a younger tennis player beat her record. She decides to leave retirement for a year to take back what she feels is hers.

"The Mutual Friend" by Carter Bays

The Mutual Friend

"The Mutual Friend"

This debut novel from the creator of “How I Met Your Mother” follows the intersecting lives of a few New Yorkers. A clever and all-seeing narrator (who is also a character) tells their stories, and it’s worth reading the book just to experience the satisfying ending, with everything fitting together just so.

"These Impossible Things" by Salma El-Wardany

These Impossible Things

"These Impossible Things"

A Read With Jenna pick, “These Impossible Things” tracks the lives of three Muslim-British friends in the U.K., all navigating the pressures of family expectations with the desire to forge their own trails. El-Wardany told TODAY she wrote the book in a span of a month. “I just want to tell a story of (Muslim women’s) lived experience that doesn’t make us the butt of a joke,” she said.

"Our Wives Under the Sea" by Julia Armfield

Our Wives Under the Sea

"Our Wives Under the Sea"

Leah returns from a deep sea mission — and she's forever changed. At first, her wife, Miri, only clocks the small alterations. But as time goes on, Miri now has to learn to reconcile the new version of Leah with the woman she fell in love with. This is a melancholy novel about falling in love and then watching love change; a great option if standard rom-coms aren't appealing to you at the moment.

"Olga Dies Dreaming" by Xochitl Gonzalez

Olga Dies Dreaming

"Olga Dies Dreaming"

Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo are both prominent New Yorkers: Prieto is a politician and Olga is a wedding planner. Behind the scenes, they’re dealing with a family reckoning after their mother returns — 27 years after her disappearance. This is a rom-com that also deals with family and healing — and acknowledges the way all these kinds of love are connected.

"The Latecomer" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Latecomer

"The Latecomer"

Can't resist some juicy sibling drama? You’ll find it here, in droves. “The Latecomer” is narrated by the literal latecomer of her family: Zoe is significantly younger than her triplet older siblings, who do not get along. Born into a wealthy and ruptured family, Phoebe seeks to understand what happened before she was born, and how she can fix it now that she’s here.

"The Force of Such Beauty" by Barbara Bourland

The Force of Such Beauty

"The Force of Such Beauty"

Falling in love with a prince is not a fairy tale, as the protagonist of this engrossing novel discovers. Caroline is a former Olympian-turned-princess of a small European country. Her role becomes more like a trap; her husband, more like a captor. Bourland said she was inspired by real-life royals when writing this novel set in pre-recession Europe.

"The Palace Papers" by Tina Brown

The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor--The Truth and the Turmoil

"The Palace Papers"

Whether you follow news of the royal family or not, Tina Brown's exhaustive account of the last 25 years in the Windsor family history, from Princess Diana to Meghan Markle, is inclined to fascinate. Brown writes in sparkling, relentlessly clever prose, making a history lesson seem more like gossipy party.

"Honey and Spice" by Bolu Babalola

Honey and Spice

"Honey and Spice"

Sexy and emotionally astute, Bolu Babalola, author of “Love and Color," wrote a romance that will stay with you. “Honey and Spice” takes place in the university years, as characters are figuring themselves out through their relationships. Podcast host Kiki Banjo starts a mutually beneficial fake relationship with a playboy.

"Love Marriage" by Monica Ali

Love Marriage

"Love Marriage"

For Yasmin Ghorami, love is the easy part of her relationship. Merging families is not. In the lead-up to the wedding, her family clashes with her fiancé’s. Through just one marriage, Monica Ali’s book gets at so many cultural truths and tensions.

"Kaleidoscope" by Cecily Wong

Kaleidoscope

"Kaleidoscope"

Not all beach reads need to be light and airy. "Kaleidoscope" is a moving story about grief and one prominent family adjusting around a sudden loss. Cecily Wong captures the gradations of loss but also the power of love in the novel, which may be exactly what you need this summer.

"Rough Draft" by Katy Tur

Rough Draft: A Memoir

"Rough Draft"

NBC anchor Katy Tur speaks honestly about her upbringing in this memoir . Tur’s parents were photographers who documented L.A. by helicopter and as a result, she and her brother grew up in the sky. As an adult, Tur’s relationship with her father, who transitioned later in life, became more complicated.

"Normal Family" by Chrysta Bilton

Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings

"Normal Family"

Think of the title of this book as a joke: There are no normal families. Chrysta Bilton unpacks her family origin story, which began when her mother, a single gay woman, made an under-the-table deal with a sperm donor that resulted in two kids. As Bilton got older, she learned she had many more siblings around the country: 35, to be precise.

"Harlem Sunset" by Nekesa Afia

Harlem Sunset

"Harlem Sunset"

Move over Hercule Poirot. Louise Lloyd, the central character of Nekesa Afia's books, will be your new favorite mystery solver. She gets to the bottom of crimes from her vantage point in a speakeasy in 1920s Harlem. Read the first installment in the series to learn Louise's origin story.

"The Last Housewife" by Ashley Winstead

The Last Housewife

"The Last Housewife"

Shay Evans is in a rare category. She's one of the few who got out. "The Last Housewife" is about the ramifications of a cult on the women who escaped the leader's thrall, and the ones who did not.

"Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus

Lessons in Chemistry

"Lessons in Chemistry"

Find this runaway hit where history meets humor. The book follows a chemist in the 1960s who doesn’t get the respect she deserves. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she becomes the host of a famous cooking show. With her platform, she encourages viewers to push the boundaries the same way she did at work.

"The Paris Apartment" by Lucy Foley

The Paris Apartment

"The Paris Apartment"

The author of “The Guest List” returns with another novel written in the vein of Agatha Christie. Jess moves to Paris from London. As she’s settling in, her brother comes to stay — and then promptly disappears, leaving her to learn his whereabouts and the secrets he’s been keeping.

"By the Book," by Jasmine Guillory

"By the Book"

"By the Book"

If your favorite part of the movie "Beauty and the Beast" is the library, then this fairytale redux from Jasmine Guillory is written with you in mind. Working in publishing was always Isabelle's dream job, but the reality of being the company's only Black employee is far from ideal. When she's tapped to travel to an author's mansion to help him hurry along on his book, she gets a break from the office but finds a new web of complications.

"Woman of Light," by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Woman of Light

"Woman of Light"

Kali Fajardo-Anstine's collection "Sabina & Corina" focused on indigenous women in Colorado in the present day; "Woman of Light" travels to the past. Luz "Little Light" Lopez is fending for herself in 1930s Colorado, and dealing with visions about her ancestors and all they had lost not so long ago. Through her psychic connection to them, she has a chance to save their stories.

"One Italian Summer," by Rebecca Serle

One Italian Summer

"One Italian Summer"

Katie and her mom, Carol, were supposed to go on a two week-long mother-daughter trip to Positano. And then, tragically, her mom died. Bereft, Katie can barely make it on the plane. When she arrives in Italy, she's shocked to find her mother, alive and well — and 30 years old. Through a trick of magical realism and a bend in space and time, she has a chance to get to know Carol in a new way before she's gone.

Elena Nicolaou is a senior entertainment editor at Today.com, where she covers the latest in TV, pop culture, movies and all things streaming. Previously, she covered culture at Refinery29 and Oprah Daily. Her superpower is matching people up with the perfect book, which she does on her podcast, Blind Date With a Book.

21 books to read this summer

summer reading 2022

Whether you’re headed to a far-flung beach or a nearby couch, these books are worthy additions to your summer reading list.

Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation

By Maud Newton, Random House

Nonfiction | There’s no shortage of books about shocking family revelations uncovered through research and DNA testing. But few writers can offer a tale as riveting and timely as Newton does here, detailing her discovery of racism, violence and cruelty passed down through multiple generations of her family tree. At its best, “ Ancestor Trouble ” becomes a kind of personal reconciliation project, boosted by lyrical writing and wide-ranging scholarship.

Review: When a family tree is rooted in racism

By Viola Davis, HarperOne

Nonfiction | One of the finest actors of her generation delivers a memoir that’s no breezy Hollywood tell-all. Instead, the Oscar, Emmy and Tony winner delves into growing up “po” — “That’s a level lower than poor,” she clarifies — in an abusive home, and ultimately channeling her pain and trauma into wrenching performances in “Doubt,” “Fences” and other films.

Review: Viola Davis reveals the trauma that shaped her as an actor

Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise

By Jack Parlett, Hanover Square Press

Nonfiction | Parlett offers a sweeping history of Fire Island, from its Native American settlers to its rise as a gay resort destination. Paying special attention to the literary luminaries who spent time there — Frank O’Hara, James Baldwin and Patricia Highsmith among them — the book explores the area’s cultural importance, as well as the tragedies that befell residents during the AIDS epidemic.

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath

By Bill Browder, Simon & Schuster

Nonfiction | This sequel to Browder’s “ Red Notice ” couldn’t be more topical. It documents how Russian companies try to outmaneuver U.S. legislation designed to prevent powerful people from parking their ill-gotten assets in safe havens abroad. With prose that reads like a thriller, Browder walks us through legal strategies and developments that include enough high drama, plot twists and colorful characters for a movie.

Review: How Russia fought a U.S. rights law — and the man who championed it

French Braid

By Anne Tyler, Knopf

Fiction | Everything about Anne Tyler’s 24th novel is immediately recognizable to her fans: the kind but flinty Baltimore family, the quirky occupations, the special foods. There are times when such familiarity might feel tiresome. But more than ever, we need Tyler’s comforting tales, documenting the mingled strains of affection and exasperation that tie a family together, the love that persists somewhere between laughing and sighing.

Review: Anne Tyler’s ‘French Braid’ is entirely familiar, and that’s just perfect

Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals

By Laurie Zaleski, St. Martin’s Press

Nonfiction | After a hardscrabble childhood that sparked her devotion to all creatures, Zaleski started a 25-acre animal sanctuary in New Jersey, where she cares for abandoned animals: dogs, cats, ducks, donkeys, even skunks. In a memoir that’s both uplifting and heartbreaking, Zaleski recounts her father’s violent outbursts, her mother’s attempts to keep her children safe and the adoption of the inaugural member of their furry brood: a German shepherd named Wolf.

Feature: She cares for 24 pigs, 20 goats, 210 cats, a skunk and 345 other rescue animals — and that’s not even her day job

The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach

By Sarah Stodola, Ecco

Nonfiction | Here’s a beach read that will make you think. Stodola explores the fascinating history of how beaches became our dream destinations. The 19th-century notion that saltwater and sea air were panaceas led inexorably toward the creation of decadent resorts in Monte Carlo and beyond. Since then, beach vacation mania has led to overdevelopment, erosion and complications for communities where resorts spring up. Happy swimming!

Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

By Delia Ephron, Little, Brown and Company

Nonfiction | After the deaths of her husband and beloved sister, Nora, Delia Ephron’s life seemed to be turning around with a new romance. Then she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, the same illness that killed her sister. Ephron’s memoir honors the depths of fear, sickness and sorrow, but she also celebrates with humor and awe the great fortune of small thrills.

Review: Delia Ephron writes rom-coms. Then life threw her a serious plot twist.

Lessons in Chemistry

By Bonnie Garmus, Doubleday

Fiction | Garmus, a venerable copywriter and creative director, released her debut novel just shy of her 65th birthday, and the 1960s-set comic novel arrived right on time for readers in need of a laugh. Its indelible protagonist is Elizabeth Zott, a gifted research chemist with a popular cooking show who refuses to bow to convention, even when it gets her in trouble — and it often does.

Review: At age 64, debut novelist Bonnie Garmus makes the case for experience

The Lioness

By Chris Bohjalian, Doubleday

Fiction | It’s 1964, and Hollywood starlet Katie Barstow decides to take her closest friends along on her honeymoon safari in the Serengeti. On this luxury excursion, there’s even a kerosene-powered ice machine to chill the gin and tonics. What could possibly go wrong? Just about everything, starting with a band of ruthless Russian mercenaries, who turn Bohjalian’s 23rd book into a bloody sprint of a read.

Review: Chris Bohjalian’s latest novel, ‘The Lioness,’ takes readers on a posh African safari that turns terrifying

By Susan Straight, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Fiction | A highway patrolman struggles to keep a deadly secret; a woman becomes a single mother overnight; and a traumatized migrant discovers an abandoned baby. The disparate experiences of characters living in Southern California — far from the glitz of Hollywood — gradually interweave to create a celebration of families made all the more poignant by the constant threat of separation, exile or worse.

Review: In ‘Mecca,’ Susan Straight unearths the real Southern California

Nuclear Family

By Joseph Han, Counterpoint

Fiction | Han’s inventive novel begins from the perspective of a ghost, desperate to cross the Korean demilitarized zone in search of his long-lost family. His only option is to possess the body of his grandson, Jacob, an American teaching English in Seoul. When video of Jacob’s failed attempt to enter North Korea goes viral, things get complicated for his parents and sister back in Hawaii.

Olga Dies Dreaming

By Xochitl Gonzalez, Flatiron

Fiction | This smart debut about a celebrity wedding planner whose love life is in shambles stretches the seams of the rom-com genre. It lures us in with laughter and keeps us hooked with an engaging satire of consumer excess, an appraisal of business morality and a study of international relations. No wonder a Hulu pilot starring Aubrey Plaza is already in the works.

Review: Say ‘I do’ to Xochitl Gonzalez’s ‘Olga Dies Dreaming’

Ordinary Monsters

By J.M. Miro, Flatiron

Fiction | The first novel in a planned historical fantasy trilogy starts in Victorian England, where two castoff children with extraordinary powers are targeted by a man made of smoke. The ostensible pariahs realize they’re part of a larger community — the Talents — when they end up at a special school alongside other exceptional misfits who are the world’s only defense against an apocalyptic future.

Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original

By Howard Bryant, Mariner

Nonfiction | Bryant, the author of the Hank Aaron biography “ The Last Hero ,” turns his attention to left-fielder Rickey Henderson, who stole more bases and scored more runs during his career than any other Major League Baseball player in history. More than just a portrait of the “Man of Steel,” Bryant’s book considers how Henderson’s Oakland upbringing shaped him and how Henderson, in turn, transformed the culture.

Sea of Tranquility

By Emily St. John Mandel, Knopf

Fiction | St. John Mandel’s latest is a curious thought experiment that borrows from the plague terror she spun in “ Station Eleven ” and the perception-bending tricks she played in “ The Glass Hotel .” The interlocking stories stretch from 1912 to 2401, where a man learns that “moments from different centuries are bleeding into one another.” This is science fiction about loneliness, grief and finding purpose.

Review: Emily St. John Mandel’s ‘Sea of Tranquility’ is a mind-bending novel

By Sara Nović, Random House

Fiction | A boarding school for deaf students is the setting for a novel that presents a kaleidoscope of experiences, including a girl’s meeting a deaf person for the first time and a boy’s struggle with the birth of his hearing sister. Nović is a thoughtful tour guide through her own deaf culture, providing mini history lessons and illustrations of vocabulary words in American Sign Language.

Roundup: 10 books to read in April

Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century

By Stephen Galloway, Grand Central Publishing

Nonfiction | Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier’s pairing was a bad idea from the start, when each abandoned a spouse and child to strike up a turbulent romance. Galloway, the former executive editor of the Hollywood Reporter, lifts himself clear of previous chronicles by weaving in more details of Leigh’s bipolar disorder, which manifested itself variously as violent mood swings, tumultuous affairs and, on occasion, psychotic breaks.

Review: Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier: A tale of love and madness

By Hernan Diaz, Riverhead

Fiction | Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, has created an irresistible puzzle of a novel . Each of the four parts offers a different perspective on the life of an enigmatic Wall Street tycoon who rose to fame and fortune in the early 20th century. Diaz is interested not only in the way wealthy men burnish their image, but also in the way such memorialization involves the diminishment, even the erasure of others.

Review: In Hernan Diaz’s ‘Trust,’ the rich are not like you and me

Watergate: A New History

By Garrett Graff, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Nonfiction | Nearly half a century has passed since five men were arrested inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office building. During that time, scores of books have been published about the scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Do we need another? Yes: This one is a remarkably rich narrative with compelling characters, who range from criminal and flawed to tragic and heroic.

Review: Among Watergate’s heroes and villains, finding ‘a more human story’

Yerba Buena

By Nina LaCour, Flatiron

Fiction | Teenagers Sara and Emilie are immediately drawn to each other when they meet by chance at a Los Angeles restaurant. Their connection might have something to do with their shared histories: Both have weathered tragedies born of drug addiction. But circumstances keep driving them apart over the course of years as each narrates her own coming-of-age story.

  • Entertainment

27 New Books You Need to Read This Summer

summer reading 2022

T here’s plenty to look forward to this summer, including a new crop of books that will transport you far away, regardless of your vacation plans. The best books arriving over the next few months take place in coastal Maine, an isolated part of Alaska, East Africa—and even a post-apocalyptic world, among other riveting destinations.

Some of the season’s greatest hits are by already beloved authors, like Tom Perrotta , Taylor Jenkins Reid , David Yoon , and Mohsin Hamid . Others are satisfying introductions to debut writers such as Joseph Han and Rebecca Rukeyser.

Here, the 27 best books to read this summer.

City of Orange , David Yoon (May 24)

summer reading 2022

David Yoon’s haunting new novel opens with a man lying supine in a desert, clueless as to what happened to him and where he is. The world has ended. The apocalypse has happened. As pieces of his memory slowly return, it becomes evident that he had a wife and daughter who are now lost forever. As the man figures out how to survive in this new barren land, he transitions from isolation to fear to, finally, acceptance. City of Orange is Yoon’s second book for adults, following Version Zero ; he’s also written the young-adult novels Frankly in Love and Super Fake Love Song .

Buy Now: City of Orange on Bookshop | Amazon

Either/Or, Elif Batuman (May 24)

summer reading 2022

In Elif Batuman’s second novel, a piquant sequel to her 2017 Pulitzer Prize-nominated debut novel The Idiot , protagonist Selin Karadag, a relentlessly curious Harvard student, ponders the value of love and lust as she mines her life for her burgeoning, semi-autobiographical creative writing. Drawing its title from Kierkegaard’s seminal work, with which Selin is obsessed, the narrative is a hyper-cerebral romp that is as brainy as it is charming.

Buy Now: Either/Or on Bookshop | Amazon

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty , Akwaeke Emezi (May 24)

summer reading 2022

Akwaeke Emezi delivers a fresh summer romance with their latest novel, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty . After the devastating loss of her partner, artist Feyi Adekola has nearly rebuilt her life, tentatively easing back into the dating scene. While Feyi begins dating a man who checks off every box, an unexpected spark with someone who’s off-limits makes her reconsider everything she thought she knew about love.

Buy Now: You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty on Bookshop | Amazon

Happy-Go-Lucky , David Sedaris (May 31)

summer reading 2022

David Sedaris’ signature wit has always thrived on the macabre, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that his latest collection of essays, Happy-Go-Lucky , written in the wake of the pandemic panic and the social and political unrest of 2020, is some of his darkest—and most astute—writing yet. From the death of his 98-year-old father to mask mandate drama, no topic is out of bounds for Sedaris’ acerbic humor and sharp observations.

Buy Now: Happy-Go-Lucky on Bookshop | Amazon

Yerba Buena , Nina LaCour (May 31)

summer reading 2022

Nina LaCour is well-known for her YA books, including Watch Over Me and We Are Okay . In Yerba Buena, her first adult novel, she introduces two women—Sara and Emilie—who cross paths while trying to figure out who they really are. Both are flawed, with family trauma to sort through, and they’re instantly drawn to each other. Their pasts, however, might interfere with their newfound love in this slow-burn, heartfelt story.

Buy Now: Yerba Buena on Bookshop | Amazon

Counterfeit , Kirstin Chen (June 7)

summer reading 2022

If you appreciate a good caper, you’ll want to pick up Kirstin Chen’s novel about two Asian American women who turn a counterfeit handbag scheme into a big business. The book is written as a confession, which helps readers get to know protagonists Ava and Winnie, and how their lives detoured toward crime. Counterfeit is fast-paced and fun, with smart commentary on the cultural differences between Asia and America.

Buy Now: Counterfeit on Bookshop | Amazon

Cult Classic , Sloane Crosley (June 7)

summer reading 2022

Magical realism meets romance in downtown New York in Sloane Crosley’s witty second novel, Cult Classic . Protagonist Lola is forced to confront her romantic past after she runs into a string of ex-boyfriends, all within the same five-mile radius in Manhattan’s Chinatown. But these occurrences are hardly coincidental, leading Lola on a mysterious and mystical chase to uncover what exactly is happening to her.

Buy Now: Cult Classic on Bookshop | Amazon

Nuclear Family , Joseph Han (June 7)

summer reading 2022

Migration, family secrets, and memory collide in Joseph Han’s gorgeous debut novel, Nuclear Family . For the Chos, a Korean American couple living in Hawaii, life has finally settled into comfort—that is, until their son, Jacob, who’s teaching English in Seoul, goes viral for attempting to cross the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea. Little does his family know that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his late grandfather, who still has unfinished business on earth.

Buy Now: Nuclear Family on Bookshop | Amazon

The Seaplane on Final Approach , Rebecca Rukeyser (June 7)

summer reading 2022

Mira heads to remote Alaska to spend the summer working at a floundering wilderness lodge. While there, she obsesses over her step-cousin and watches as the lodge owners’ dysfunctional marriage implodes. The Seaplane on Final Approach is a snappy character study and a meditation on sleaziness.

Buy Now: The Seaplane on Final Approach on Bookshop | Amazon

Tracy Flick Can’t Win , Tom Perrotta (June 7)

summer reading 2022

Twenty-four years after he published Election, Tom Perrotta revisits his cult classic antiheroine Tracy Flick in Tracy Flick Can’t Win. Picking up decades after Election left off, the ever-ambitious Tracy returns to navigating the turbulent waters of high school politics—but this time, on the other side of the student-faculty divide. As an assistant principal at a suburban New Jersey high school, Tracy is balancing a new relationship, single motherhood, and the demands of her job when an unexpected career opportunity pops up and promises to change life as she knows it.

Buy Now: Tracy Flick Can’t Win on Bookshop | Amazon

Horse , Geraldine Brooks (June 14)

summer reading 2022

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks turns her attention to the true story of a 19th-century racehorse named Lexington, one of the greatest in history. The story jumps between centuries: in Kentucky in 1850, an enslaved man bonds with a foal he vows to ride to victory. In New York City in 1954, a gallery owner becomes fixated on a mysterious oil painting of a horse. And finally, in Washington, D.C., in 2019, an art historian and a scientist make discoveries that lead back to Lexington. Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.

Buy Now: Horse on Bookshop | Amazon

Flying Solo , Linda Holmes (June 14)

summer reading 2022

When Laurie returns home to Maine to clear out her beloved great aunt’s estate, she’s only recently removed from calling off her wedding—and is coming to terms with the idea that a conventional relationship might not be in the cards. When she finds a mysterious wooden duck buried in her aunt’s belongings, she embarks on a wild goose chase to figure out its origins, getting reacquainted with her first love along the way. The novel—which follows Holmes’ 2019 summer hit Evvie Drake Starts Over —is a refreshing reminder that “happily ever after” doesn’t have to look one specific way.

Buy Now: Flying Solo on Bookshop | Amazon

Learning to Talk , Hilary Mantel (June 21)

summer reading 2022

Hilary Mantel is a literary legend: she’s won the Booker Prize twice, and garnered wide acclaim for her Wolf Hall trilogy, which concluded in 2020 and was adapted for television . In Learning to Talk , Mantel dispenses a series of semi-autobiographical short stories. The collection—a re-release from 2003—features a new preface. Many of the stories center on childhood, and Mantel brings England alive, writing with detail and intellect.

Buy Now: Learning to Talk on Bookshop | Amazon

Lapvona , Ottessa Moshfegh (June 21)

summer reading 2022

Ottessa Moshfegh transports readers to a medieval fiefdom in her new novel, which follows 2020’s Death in Her Hands . The book is about Little Marek, who was abused by his father, the village’s shepherd, and never knew his mother. He ends up in a power struggle that exposes the depravity of human nature and juxtaposes the difference between religion and manipulation. Lapvona is violent and provocative, and a departure from Moshfegh’s previous work.

Buy Now: Lapvona on Bookshop | Amazon

Thrust , Lidia Yuknavitch (June 28)

summer reading 2022

The protagonist in Lidia Yuknavitch’s new novel is Laisv, who’s a “carrier”—which means certain objects can help her travel through time to connect with interesting people from eras past. Laisv’s ultimate goal is to save these people, including a dictator’s daughter and an accused murderer. As in her previous work, including The Book of Joan and Dora: A Headcase , Yuknavitch’s writing is moving and incisive.

Buy Now: Thrust on Bookshop | Amazon

Life Ceremony: Stories , Sayaka Murata (July 5)

summer reading 2022

Sayaka Murata —a Japanese writer whose previous novels include Convenience Store Woman —delivers her first collection of short stories translated into English. Life Ceremony consists of 12 engrossing entries that probe intimacy and individuality while turning norms upside down. In one, for example, a curtain in a young girl’s room spirals into jealousy as she watches—and tries to stop—her owner’s first kiss. The stories are strange and bold.

Buy Now: Life Ceremony on Bookshop | Amazon

Crying in the Bathroom , Erika L. Sánchez (July 12)

summer reading 2022

Poet and young-adult novelist Erika L. Sánchez turns to the struggles and triumphs she’s experienced over the years for material for her latest book, the memoir Crying in the Bathroom . Touching on a wide range of topics that run the gamut from the deeply personal, like Sánchez’s bouts of depression, to the political, like immigration policy, each essay feels like a conversation with a good friend, thanks to Sánchez’s warm and vulnerable writing.

Buy Now: Crying in the Bathroom on Bookshop | Amazon

The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Ingrid Rojas Contreras (July 12)

summer reading 2022

Magic is not just a multi-generational occurrence in Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ family—it’s their legacy, something she details with both wonder and care in her memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds . Growing up in Colombia, Rojas Contreras witnessed her mother telling fortunes and her grandfather, a renowned curandero (or healer), predicting the future, healing the sick, and moving clouds. Rojas Contreras was unsure of her place in this world until a head injury caused her to have amnesia—an experience that her family believes may be key to her accessing her own magic.

Buy Now: The Man Who Could Move Clouds on Bookshop | Amazon

Upgrade , Blake Crouch (July 12)

summer reading 2022

Blake Crouch’s inventive new novel, equal parts thriller and sci-fi, examines how far our humanity can stretch. It’s about Logan, a scientist whose genome has been hacked—which alters him in unsettling ways. To stop these so-called upgrades from rolling out to the rest of the world, Logan has to spring into action. Readers who enjoyed Crouch’s previous novels , such as Dark Matter and Recursion , will find Upgrade just as thrilling. Steven Spielberg’s production company Amblin Partners has snapped up the film rights, and Crouch is attached to the project as an executive producer.

Buy Now: Upgrade on Bookshop | Amazon

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional , Isaac Fitzgerald (July 19)

summer reading 2022

Isaac Fitzgerald’s life has zigged and zagged: He used to work at a biker bar, and he’s the author of the children’s book How to Be a Pirate . He’s been an altar boy and a “fat kid.” He’s also had stints as a firefighter and smuggler. In his memoir Dirtbag, Massachusetts , Fitzgerald reflects on his origins—and coming to terms with self-consciousness, anger, and strained family relationships. His writing is gritty yet vulnerable.

Buy Now: Dirtbag, Massachusetts on Bookshop | Amazon

The Last White Man , Mohsin Hamid (Aug. 2)

summer reading 2022

What is the value of whiteness, if it ceases to exist as we know it? That’s the question at the heart of Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man , where Anders, a white man, wakes up one morning to find that his skin has turned dark. As other similar cases occur throughout the land, Hamid poses larger questions about how we really see each other and ourselves.

Buy Now: The Last White Man on Bookshop | Amazon

Mika in Real Life , Emiko Jean (Aug. 2)

summer reading 2022

In Emiko Jean’s Mika in Real Life , Mika Suzuki sees a chance to not only reinvent herself, but also reimagine what her life could look like outside of her dreary reality. At 35, Mika’s situation is bleak: her love life is in ruins, her family is perpetually disappointed in her, and her living arrangement is less than ideal. But after she gets a phone call from the daughter she gave up for adoption, a tiny white lie turns into an opportunity for a second act—as long as her secret doesn’t come to light.

Buy Now: Mika in Real Life on Bookshop | Amazon

Autoportrait , Jesse Ball (Aug. 9)

summer reading 2022

In his first memoir, Jesse Ball—whose previous work includes March Book and The Divers’ Game —helps readers understand who he is and what shaped him. He reveals personal tidbits, like that one of his shoulders stands higher than the other, and that his left hand is quicker but weaker than his right. He also reflects on love and loss. Autoportrait was inspired by the memoir French writer Édouard Levé wrote shortly before dying in 2007.

Buy Now: Autoportrait on Bookshop | Amazon

The Women Could Fly , Megan Giddings (Aug. 9)

summer reading 2022

In Megan Giddings’ dystopian novel, The Women Could Fly , the mystical collides with the familiar when it comes to women’s autonomy. Josephine Thomas lives in a world where women are mandated to be married by 30 or forced to enroll in a registry that monitors them; with her 30th birthday around the corner, Jo finds hope for her freedom in the extraordinary last request of her long-lost mother, rumored to be a witch, who mysteriously disappeared when Jo was a child.

Buy Now: The Women Could Fly on Bookshop | Amazon

Afterlives , Abdulrazak Gurnah (Aug. 23)

summer reading 2022

Germany’s brutal colonization of East Africa (what is known as Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda today) provides the backdrop to Abdulrazak Gurnah ’s arresting novel, Afterlives . Centering on the intersecting lives of Ilyas, Afiya, and Hamza, three young people who return home after being separated by war and slavery, the novel explores what is gained and what is lost in the name of survival. Gurnah, who won the 2021 Nobel Prize for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism,” employs sensitivity and tenderness in each storyline.

Buy Now: Afterlives on Bookshop | Amazon

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution , R.F. Kuang (Aug. 23)

summer reading 2022

The Poppy War author R. F. Kuang tackles dark academia and imperialism with her latest novel, Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. Centering on a plucky unnamed protagonist—a student at Babel, Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation—and his rag-tag cohort, the book uses magic and agathokakological lessons to make a case for a post-colonial future.

Buy Now: Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution on Bookshop | Amazon

Carrie Soto Is Back , Taylor Jenkins Reid (Aug. 30)

summer reading 2022

Taylor Jenkins Reid has collected a devoted following for her made-for-summer books like Malibu Rising and Daisy Jones & The Six . She returns with a novel about tennis star Carrie Soto, who won 20 Grand Slam titles with her father, Javier, as her coach. Six years into retirement, Carrie’s record is shattered by a player named Nicki—so she leaps back onto the court for one final season to reclaim what’s hers. Don’t worry if you’re not big on sports stories; this is, ultimately, a heart-filled novel about an iconic and persevering father and daughter.

Buy Now: Carrie Soto Is Back on Bookshop | Amazon

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Write to Cady Lang at [email protected]

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summer reading 2022

What’s the Buzz: 40 of the Best Summer Reads for 2022

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Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

View All posts by Liberty Hardy

Believe it or not, it’s time for summer reading again! But what to read??? To paraphrase LFO: “In the summer books come and summer books go, some are worthwhile and some are so-so.” There are so many books coming out in the next few months that it can be hard to choose. That’s why I’m here to highlight 40 of the best summer reads 2022 has to offer, so you get get right down to reading, instead of lying on the floor, wondering where the kids from ALF are now, because you can’t pick a book. (Er, that’s a totally made up example.)

As far as summer releases I am personally excited about (besides the ones in this list), I can’t wait to get my hands on Vera Kelly: Lost and Found by Rosalie Knecht — even though I am sad the series is ending. I’m looking forward to the debut novels Greenland by David Santos Donaldson, On Rotation by Shirlene Obuobi, and The Catch by Alison Fairbrother. I’m delighted Nevada by Imogen Binnie is being reissued by a larger publisher, because it deserves a bigger audience. And I feel it is my duty to let you know that there is a Bunnicula graphic novel coming out in August, and it is adorabl e.

Really, that was just my way of sneaking in even more recommendations to this list of summer reads for 2022. I can’t stop talking about books! These books are all coming out in June, July, and August. I have read many of the buzzy, exciting titles you’ll find below, and I can’t wait for you to read them too! So get your TBR ready and let’s get to it!

cover of Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen; illustration of young Asian woman tipping down sunglasses which are reflecting a red shopping bag

Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen (June 7)

Who doesn’t love a good caper novel? This one is about two Asian American women who decide to go global with their counterfeit handbag operation. Will they succeed or should they — wait for it — knock it off?

Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane (June 7)

Mythology retellings have been so popular the last few years! There have been a ton of great ones, and here’s a new one to add to that list. It’s an epic reimagining of The Illiad , in which Achilles is a trans woman, and the gods are just as fickle and cruel as always.

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley (June 7)

Crosley, author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and The Clasp , returns with one of the most anticipated books of the year. It’s about a young woman named Lola, her past and current boyfriends, and the mysterious events that tie them all to her former boss, a magazine editor turned guru.

cover of Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine; illustration of Indigenous woman in a red dress riding a brown horse in front of a setting sun sky

Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (June 7)

Fajardo-Anstine took the literary world by storm with her first book, the National Book Award finalist, Sabrina & Corina . Now she returns with this multigenerational saga about the Lopez family, an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West.

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han (June 7)

Han was just named one of the 5 Under 35 honorees by the National Book Foundation. This debut novel is about a Korean family living in Hawai’i in the months leading up to the nuclear missile false alarm in 2018.

After the Lights Go Out by John Vercher (June 7)

Vercher’s first novel, Three-Fifths , was a critically acclaimed hit. His second is about a mixed-race MMA fighter suffering the beginnings of pugilistic dementia, who is offered a chance at a last-minute high-profile comeback fight.

Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler (June 7)

In this YA romance, when a young woman replaces the high school football team’s quarterback after he dies, it shakes up the school. Jack’s teammates are angry about playing with a girl, and the cheerleading squad is upset about the change in tradition. Only cheerleader Amber thinks Jack is brave, and it’s possibly the start of something more.

cover of Ordinary Monsters by J. M. Miro; black with castle window cutout in the center with image of a raven flying by

Ordinary Monsters by J. M. Miro (June 7)

The true identity of the author is a mystery, but the book is the first in an epic Dickensian fantasy series. It’s starts with a jaded detective who must get two children with special powers to safety in Victorian London as they are hunted by a man made of smoke.

More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez (June 7)

This family saga is getting so much buzz! It’s about a woman named Lore whose secret second marriage is revealed when one husband murders the other. Will a reporter with secrets of her own get Lore to tell her story decades later?

Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrotta (June 7)

Thirty years later, Tracy Flick of Election is getting a sequel! Life didn’t work out the way the high school overachiever expected. But she’s filled with a renewed purpose when she has a chance to become the principal.

A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables) by Alix E. Harrow (June 14)

In the fantastic fantasy novella, A Spindle Splintered , professional fairytale fixer, Zinnia Gray, helped Sleeping Beauty. This time around, she’s going to have to decide if she’s up for helping Snow White’s Evil Queen get a better ending to her story.

cover of Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky; image of pink and orange polka dots around blue waves, with yellow font

Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky (June 14)

This is a dark comedy about a producer whose life is shattered in more than one way when a hurricane bears down on her home and she must figure out where to turn to for help.

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh (June 21)

The author of the critically acclaimed novels, Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation , returns with a historical fantasy about a motherless shepherd boy and a midwife with powers in a medieval fiefdom.

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager (June 21)

Summer reading isn’t complete without some chills and thrills! Sager’s newest offering is a tale of a widowed actress mourning in seclusion who thinks her neighbor has murdered his wife.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong (June 21)

Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist, Ed Yong, returns with his first book since I Contain Multitudes . It’s a rare glimpse into our immense world as it is viewed by animals.

Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods by Lyndsie Bourgon (June 21)

And this is a true crime book about…tree theft? That’s right, it sounds wild, but as you’ll learn in Bourgon’s book, tree theft is a billion dollar industry.

cover of Invisible Things by Mat Johnson; illustration of a city far in the distance under a bright blue dome

Invisible Things by Mat Johnson (June 28)

Johnson is one of my favorite writers, so I can’t wait for his new novel! It’s an allegory about a hidden human civilization, an upcoming election, and an invisible force.

Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert (June 28)

Albert is back with her first YA novel since the conclusion of her exciting Hazelwood series! This one is a witchy supernatural thriller about a young woman, her mother, and the past.

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe (June 28)

This is the highly anticipated new collection by the award-winning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain , featuring 12 stories about people on both sides of the law.

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay (July 5)

From the author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song comes a new psychological thriller. It’s about a teen boy who makes friends with the coolest girl in school, only to discover she has a real morbid side. And she doesn’t appreciate him sharing her secrets.

cover of Night of the Living Rez: Stories by Morgan Talty, pastel font over illustration of night sky seen from the forest floor

Night of the Living Rez: Stories by Morgan Talty (July 5)

This is one of the most highly anticipated story collections of the year! In 12 incendiary stories set in a Native community in Maine, Talty illustrates what it means to be Native in America in the 21st century.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (July 5)

From the author of the much-beloved The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (soon to be a movie!) comes a tale that takes two childhood friends turned creative partners in the world of video game design through highs and lows from coast to coast.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (July 12)

If you loved the humor-horror blend of Kingfisher’s previous novels, The Hollow Places and The Twisted Ones , then hold on to your butts, because this delivers more of that in a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher — plus fungi!

The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays by CJ Hauser (July 12)

The author of the acclaimed novel, Family of Origin , returns with her first nonfiction collection. It’s a brilliant memoir-in-essays, starting with her time studying whooping cranes in Texas after calling off her wedding.

cover of Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield; peach background with rocky ocean bottom terrain at the bottom

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (July 12)

Sorry other books, but this is my favorite book of the summer! It’s a tender and surreal love story about a woman whose wife goes missing on a submarine expedition, and what happens when she returns.

Harry Sylvester Bird by Chinelo Okparanta (July 12)

This is the long-awaited follow-up to Okparanta’s debut novel, Under the Udala Trees . The title character grows up with racist parents in a small, racist town and dreams that life in New York City will be different. But when he arrives, he will have to confront his roots.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (July 12)

From the author of the highly acclaimed novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree , comes a memoir/biography about the author’s family in Colombia and their otherworldly legacy.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (July 19)

Book Riot favorite, Moreno-Garcia, author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night , returns with a reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set in 19th century Mexico.

cover of Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey; pink with a red house in the middle dripping blood

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey (July 19)

They’ve covered such fun things as outlaw librarians, clones, magic schools, and hippos! Now, Gailey is back with a scary tale of the daughter of a famous serial killer who returns to the home where he committed his crimes to care for her mother.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald (July 19)

Literary champion and writer Fitzgerald shares the many stories of his life — from an unhappy home, to the streets of Boston, to bartending in San Francisco, to smuggling in Burma — as he seeks to find peace within himself.

Twice a Quinceañera by Yamile Saied Méndez (July 26)

The author of the marvelous Reese Witherspoon YA book club pick, Furia , is back with her first romance! When Nadia Palacio breaks up with her cheating fiancé just a month before her wedding, she decides to use her nonrefundable venue hall to throw herself a second quinceañera for her 30th birthday!

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra (August 2)

It has been nine years since Marra’s amazing debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena , but it was worth the wait! This is an incredible tale of a woman at a Hollywood studio as America begins its entry into World War II.

cover of The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast by Kirk Wallace Johnson; photo of fishing boats tinged bright orange

The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast by Kirk Wallace Johnson (August 2)

Fans of The Feather Thief will be delighted to learn the author is back with more nonfiction. This one is the true story of struggling fishermen, racism and xenophobia, and environmental disaster on the Texas Gulf Coast in the 1970s.

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid (August 2)

From the acclaimed author of Exit West (soon to be a movie with Riz Ahmed!), comes a gripping reimagining of Kafka’s classic, The Metamorphosis , about a world where people’s skin begins to change color.

Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis by Beth Macy (August 16)

In Dopesick (recently released as a movie with Michael Keaton!), Macy covered the growing opioid epidemic in America. In her new book, she delves further into the repercussions of the crisis, but also offers stories of hope and justice.

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood (August 23)

From The New York Times best-selling author of the runaway hit, The Love Hypothesis , comes another “STEMinist romcom” in which a scientist is forced to work with her nemesis and hijinks ensue!

cover of Babel by R.F. Kuang; black and white pen illustration of a very high tower in a city with birds flying around it

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang (August 23)

A dark historical fantasy from the author of The Poppy Wars ? About students at Oxford University working in magic and translation? And it’s being compared to The Secret History and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell ? GIMME GIMME GIMME.

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (August 30)

From one of the biggest authors of the last decade — The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo , Malibu Rising , Daisy Jones & The Six — comes a tale of a phenomenal tennis player looking to make a comeback, even though the world has written her off as past her prime.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez (August 30)

Jimenez’s last novel, Vanished Birds , is a Book Riot favorite, so we are eagerly anticipating this new novel! It’s about two warriors and an ancient god who work together to try to bring about the end of a reign of terror from a royal family.

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney (August 30)

And last but not least: From the author of Rock, Paper, Scissors , comes this locked room mystery about a family reunion on an island cut off from civilization for eight hours that ends in murder. I have read this, and here is my one-word review: BANANAPANTS.

Whew! Has your TBR cried uncle yet?? If not, here are more books to add to your reading list in this post of 22 Great New Books To Read in 2022 (which is actually over 40 titles, because can’t stop, won’t stop.) And you can always sign up for the New Books newsletter and get great new release recommendations right in your inbox!

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summer reading 2022

The Ultimate Summer 2022 Reading List

Math + books = .

It’s June. We’re barbecuing. We’re sweating on the subway. We’re building forts in the backyard, and we’re building them out of our massive summer TBR piles (use a tarp). Yep, it’s that time   of   year   again —so let the list of lists commence.

If you’re new here, here’s how it works:

1. I read all of the Most Anticipated and Best Summer Reading lists that flood the internet this time of year (or at least as many as I can find). 2. I count how many times each book is included. 3. I collate them for you in this handy list.

This year, I read through 36 lists, which recommended a grand total of 514 books. As always, I avoided narrowly themed or genre-specific lists (like “thrillers” or “business books” or “Hallmark novels”), though I included those marked either fiction or nonfiction. (The full list of lists is at the end of this post.) I have included those books recommended at least three times below, in descending order of frequency. The recommendations this year are a little more diffuse than usual—I noticed more older books being thrown into the mix, and the top scoring book only got 13 nods (as opposed to 21 for last year’s top scorer). Like everything else, it’s probably because of the pandemic. Or inflation!

Still, if you want to Read the Book That Everyone is Reading (or at least recommending) this summer, or even if you’d just like to Judge Everyone For Their Taste in Books, Please, here’s where you should start:

Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man Tom Perrotta, Tracy Flick Can’t Win

Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic Akwaeke Emezi, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty

counterfeit_kristin chen

Kirstin Chen, Counterfeit

Nuclear Family

Joseph Han, Nuclear Family Morgan Talty, Night of the Living Rez

dirtbag massachusetts

Isaac Fitzgerald, Dirtbag, Massachusetts Abdulrazak Gurnah, Afterlives Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Latecomer Taylor Jenkins Reid, Carrie Soto Is Back

honey & spice bolu

Bolu Babalola, Honey & Spice Marcy Dermansky, Hurricane Girl Hernan Diaz, Trust Werner Herzog, tr. Michael Hofmann, The Twilight World Elin Hilderbrand, The Hotel Nantucket Patrick Radden Keefe, Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks Nina LaCour, Yerba Buena Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Elif Batuman, Either/Or

Elif Batuman, Either/Or Geraldine Brooks, Horse Viola Davis, Finding Me Ada Calhoun, Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me Adrian McKinty, The Island J.M. Miro, Ordinary Monsters Rasheed Newson, My Government Means to Kill Me Jody Rosen, Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle David Sedaris, Happy-Go-Lucky Sarah Stodola,  The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach Kaitlyn Tiffany, Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It Jess Walter, The Angel of Rome and Other Stories Lidia Yuknavitch, Thrust

Nevada_Imogen Binnie

Imogen Binnie, Nevada Howard Byrant,  Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now Lydia Conklin, Rainbow Rainbow Ingrid Rojas Contreras, The Man Who Could Move Clouds Maya Deane, Wrath Goddess Sing Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Woman of Light Jenna Fischer & Angela Kinsey, The Office BFFs: Tales of the Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There Emily Henry, Book Lovers R.F. Kuang, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau Chinelo Okparanta, Harry Sylvester Bird Nicole Pasulka, How You Get Famous Rebecca Rukeyser, The Seaplane on Final Approach Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake Erika L. Sanchez, Crying in the Bathroom Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility Toya Wolfe, Last Summer on State Street David Yoon, City of Orange Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

The list of lists:

The New York Times Book Review’s 88 Books to Bring Your Summer Alive • The New York Times’ What Should I Read This Summer? • The Washington Post’s 21 Books to Read This Summer • The Atlantic’s Summer Reading Guide • Publishers Weekly’s Summer Reads: Staff Picks ; Fiction ; Mystery/Thriller ; Romance ; SF/Fantasy/Horror ; Comics ; Nonfiction • Vulture’s 17 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer • BuzzFeed’s 34 New Summer Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down • Thrillist’s 27 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer • People’s The 20 Best Books to Read This Summer • The Daily Beast’s Best Summer Beach Reads of 2022 • Vogue’s 7 of the Best New Beach Reads to Unwind With This Summer • TIME’s 27 New Books You Need to Read This Summer • The Chicago Tribune’s Books for Summer 2022 • EW’s 16 Novels We’re Excited For This Summer • Mother Jones’ Nine New Books That Will Make You Smarter This Summer • CBS News’ Best Summer Beach Reads for 2022 • Elle’s 21 Must-Read Books To Pick Up This Summer • The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s 45 New Books for Summer Reading in 2022 • Book Riot’s 40 of the Best Summer Reads for 2022 • The Wall Street Journal’s Guide to Summer Books • The Skimm’s 20 Buzzy Books to Read at the Beach (or On Your Couch) This Summer • Fortune’s 10 New Page-Turning Novels You Should Read This Summer • The New York Post’s 27 Novels You’ll Want to Pick Up This Summer • Esquire’s The 20 Best Books of Summer 2022 • Five Books’ Notable Novels of Summer 2022 • The Boston Globe’s Summer Reading 2022 • Town & Country’s 33 Must-Read Books of Summer 2022 • and of course, Literary Hub’s 35 Novels You Need to Read This Summer ; 29 Works of Nonfiction You Need to Read This Summer ; and 9 Short Story Collections You Need to Read This Summer

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If You Want to Read What Your Friends Are Reading

summer reading 2022

By Ottessa Moshfegh

Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest novel takes place in Lapvona, a medieval fiefdom ruled over by a vain and gluttonous lord, Villiam. The story begins with Marek, a masochistic, God-fearing 13-year-old boy who craves pain and punishment because he knows that God loves those who suffer. His father, Jude, cares far more about the lambs he keeps than about his son. The village they live in is full of odd people and cruel tragedy—an old woman who survives a plague as a child and spontaneously starts lactating in her 40s becomes a wet nurse for most of the village’s children; a brutal summer drought overtakes the village while Villiam lavishes by his manor’s reservoir. Lapvona flips all the conventions of familial and parental relations, putting hatred where love should be or a negotiation where grief should be. It is ultimately the story of a boy whose parents really don’t care for him, and the corruption and tragedy that he falls into because of it. Through a mix of witchery, deception, murder, abuse, grand delusion, ludicrous conversations, and cringeworthy moments of bodily disgust, Moshfegh creates a world that you definitely don’t want to live in, but from which you can’t look away. — Maya Chung

The Latecomer

The Latecomer

By jean hanff korelitz.

From birth, the Oppenheimer triplets, Harrison, Sally, and Lewyn, operate with an unspoken pact of mutual avoidance. They have it all: a stately house, wealth, nearby grandparents, and a mother, Johanna, who brings and keeps her family together through sheer will. But she can’t stop her husband, Salo, from straying, and she can’t bring her children closer to her or to one another. In adolescence, they act like magnets with the same charge; for example, Sally and Lewyn both attend Cornell, where they claim to everyone that they don’t know each other (which eventually causes them both deep harm). By adulthood, their shared dislike crystallizes into open disdain and anger. But, as the title suggests, they’re not the only Oppenheimers with a stake in the family’s affairs. Though their domestic drama gets more tangled with each passing year’s refusal to address it, someone eventually arrives with the intention of cutting through the knot. Read it now to get ahead of the forthcoming, inevitably star-powered TV version—the last Jean Hanff Korelitz adaptation, The Undoing , had Nicole Kidman as the lead, and Mahershala Ali is attached to an upcoming series based on Korelitz’s The Plot . — Emma Sarappo

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty

By akwaeke emezi.

Akwaeke Emezi is well versed in writing the tender devastation of flesh. Their critically acclaimed debut novel, Freshwater , features a slinky, wounded narrator—a deity’s child, who speaks from the first-person plural—fighting and grieving the restrictions of living in a human body. Their memoir, Dear Senthuran , looked squarely at the author’s own struggles with embodiment. Emezi’s latest offering, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty , is in many ways a classic romance novel; it may at first glance seem like a radical departure for a writer who typically deals in spirituality and mortality. But here, too, Emezi makes mourning their centerpiece, even as sex and seduction form the base of the book. A young widow and an artist named Feyi is tentatively coming to terms with living after losing her lover. Between breathlessly erotic encounters and lavish, tropical escapades, Feyi returns again and again to that stark pain. The novel is somehow a beach read and a psychological portrait, and is likely to spark conversations both sultry and vulnerable. — Nicole Acheampong

Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky

By david sedaris.

David Sedaris is back, doing the thing his readers have come to adore: offering up wry, moving, punchy stories about his oddball family. This batch also touches on some of the more tumultuous moments of our past two years, sometimes pretty irreverently. Reading Sedaris on, say, his pathetic efforts to stockpile food in the early days of the pandemic is sublimely funny—he ends up with an assortment that includes a pint of buttermilk, taco shells, and a pack of hot dogs. These essays also have more darkness and death than his earlier work, building off themes he began exploring in his previous collection, Calypso . The pieces range widely, following the path of Sedaris’s travels and his eccentric mind, but a through line involves his nonagenarian father, who is living in an assisted-care facility and whose eventual death is captured in these pages. This is one of the more complicated relationships of Sedaris’s life, and he is unflinching as he tries to understand who his enigmatic father was, and how living with him altered the shape of his own existence. — Gal Beckerman

If You Want to Better Understand Our World

summer reading 2022

The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times

By lionel barber.

As someone who has always softly identified with the idea of impostor syndrome without ever having had the energy to lean into anything, I found The Powerful and the Damned captivating for its window into completely alien territory: the ferociously ambitious, hyperconfident male mind. The book is Lionel Barber’s account of serving as editor of the Financial Times from 2005 to 2020 — a period during which, we should acknowledge, a thing or two happened geopolitically. His recounting of his front-row seat to the global economy imploding and liberal democracies toppling like sandcastles is almost comically inter–British Establishment: Barber bonds with the governor of the Bank of England over cricket, educates Prime Minister “Dave” Cameron on the political talents of a rising star named Barack Obama, and complains to Rupert Murdoch about how rarely the BBC books him as a guest. During the same period, he also helps set a business model for the FT that insists consumers subscribe for the reporting and insight the paper provides. If Barber’s narrative of tumultuous times is often more gossipy than revelatory, his insight into how power operates and sustains itself is truly intriguing. — Sophie Gilbert

Bad Blood

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

By john carreyrou.

Theranos, the blood-testing company that fabricated both medical devices and facts, was originally named Real-Time Cures. A clerical error made in the start-up’s early, hectic days meant that its employees, for a while, received their paychecks from “Real-Time Curses.” Bad Blood , John Carreyrou’s account of Theranos’s precipitous rise and even more precipitous fall, abounds with delicious details like that. The book is a victory lap of sorts for the reporter who first exposed the fakery of one of Silicon Valley’s flashiest unicorns; it is also, however, a rich and nuanced tale of ambition that became greed, confidence that became hubris, and disruption that became fraud. It celebrates the people who, horrified by the lies Theranos told to patients and the public, exposed them—often at great cost. If you’ve watched The Dropout , Hulu’s study of the Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes (or if you’ve listened to the podcast that the show is based on, or followed the recent trials of the company’s ex-executives), you will likely be as riveted as I was by Carreyrou’s book. Bad Blood understands how easy it can be, in an age of effortless myths, for cures to become curses. — Megan Garber

Stuck Rubber Baby

Stuck Rubber Baby

By howard cruse.

In one memorable panel in Stuck Rubber Baby , hundreds of mourners, assembled for the funeral of Black choir kids murdered by a racist’s bomb in ’60s Alabama, spill across nearly an entire page. “The back of each infinitesimal head is never a mere oval, but always a particular person’s,” the graphic novelist Alison Bechdel points out with wonder in her introduction to the 25th-anniversary edition . That attention to image and story is present in every panel of Howard Cruse’s graphic novel, a fictionalized account of growing up as a white gay man, coming out, and joining the civil-rights movement in the segregated South. His protagonist, Toland, is aware that he’s not much of a hero. He recounts his youth without sanding off his own cowardice or the hurt that he caused others; he’s similarly frank about the racist terrorism and homophobic violence that dominate his hometown. The deeply felt, masterfully rendered comic captures a small but rich slice of how race, gender, and sexuality were experienced and linked in the Jim Crow South—a history whose relevance practically screams from the pages decades later. — E.S.

If You Want to Be Transported to Another Place

summer reading 2022

Under the Glacier

By halldór laxness.

There are rumors circulating about Snæfells Glacier: that dead bodies are left unburied; that the pastor there spends his time shoeing horses instead of preaching; that his wife is gone, and he might be living with another woman. Naturally, the bishop of Iceland sends an emissary to investigate these goings-on. Part comedy of manners, part philosophical inquiry, Halldór Laxness’s audacious novel, translated by Magnus Magnusson, blends soulful ideas with hilarious details. The emissary is just as likely to be musing on the creation of the Earth as he is to be looking for something to eat besides the elaborate cakes his housekeeper keeps making him. As the plot gets stranger—characters, possibly real or merely dreams, proliferate—the glacier only stands out more starkly, and the setting comes to life with a clarifying beauty. (The cries of the nearby kittiwake colony, the emissary notes, sound like “ecstasy on the cliff.”) The question of what exactly is thrumming in the air, water, and soil at and around Snæfells remains mysterious; what’s clear is the cold, vital force at its center. The church might be closed, but, as the pastor puts it, “the glacier stands open.” — Jane Yong Kim

The Narrowboat Summer

The Narrowboat Summer

By anne youngson.

As the pandemic continued into its second year, I began planning more road trips, and as a result, began picking up more road-trip novels. This one caught my eye for its unusual choice of starring vehicle: a narrowboat, a type of vessel made to fit British canals. Anne Youngson’s slow-paced but quick-witted tale, following two women who agree to ferry an elderly stranger’s beloved narrowboat up the waterways and back, is undeniably charming, even though it’s heavy on the technical details (canal life involves so many locks and knots!). Sally and Eve, the protagonists, don’t know each other, but they’ve both ended up in a midlife crisis: Sally’s divorcing her husband, and Eve just lost the job that defined her life for 30 years. As predictable as the story may be—every thought-provoking road trip worth reading about involves encounters with kooky interlopers, unexpected speed bumps, and moments of self-discovery, after all—Youngson’s gentle tone, prose packed with British witticisms, and terrifically realized characters delighted me. I finished the novel quickly, feeling like I’d just spent an afternoon drifting alongside Sally and Eve. And then I immediately opened Google Maps and tried to search for street views of their every stop. — Shirley Li

The Perishing

The Perishing

By natashia deón.

The Perishing is an odyssey through time, Los Angeles, and circuitous, lyrical storytelling. We first meet our narrator as Sarah Shipley, a Black woman on trial in the year 2102. Soon, she is Lou, a teen with no memory who awakens, naked and initially nameless, in an alleyway in 1930. Sometimes he is a man, but always, they are a Black person, and an immortal one at that. In Natashia Deón’s historical-science-fiction tale, reincarnation is a whimsical Trojan horse, inside of which we see how Black people inherit their histories. Deón offers close-up peeks at the City of Angels’s past life—Prohibition, early school integration, the St. Francis Dam collapse—while also imagining its future legacy. The writing is often spiky poetry; Deón’s descriptions of Lou’s surroundings, mirroring her amnesia, are filled with new wonder at an old world, destabilizing objects as ordinary as a pack of gum. “Most people won’t survive everyone who loves them,” the protagonist says, in the voice of Sarah. “Our lives are meant to mimic a passing breeze that won’t return.” Yet in this myth-laden, cross-generational pilgrimage, Black lives move less like wind and more like water: shifting shape but retaining their essence as they cycle through and bear witness to an American city. — N.A.

If You Want a New Take on a Familiar Story

summer reading 2022

Deacon King Kong

By james mcbride.

James McBride clearly had the time of his life writing this novel, which is so propulsive and fun that it’s almost hot to the touch. The plot, to the extent that there is one, takes place in late-1960s Brooklyn and involves Deacon Cuffy Lambkin, a.k.a. Sportcoat, an old-timer at the Causeway Housing Projects and an aficionado of the local hooch (called “King Kong”); seemingly out of nowhere, he shoots a local drug dealer, taking off his ear. The mystery of why Sportcoat (a “wiry, laughing brown-skinned man who had coughed, wheezed, hacked, guffawed, and drank his way through the Cause Houses for a good part of his 71 years,” McBride writes) pulled the trigger moves the reader forward, but the book is so much more than that. McBride creates a chaotic and colorful world of characters: There are Italian mobsters and an Irish policeman who falls in love with a virtuous church lady. There’s hidden treasure. There’s the ghostly presence of Sportcoat’s dead wife, who drowned in the harbor but still has plenty to say to her boozehound husband. There’s so much bubbling energy in this imagined New York that it’s impossible to turn away. — G.B.

Dead Collections

Dead Collections

By isaac fellman.

Sol Katz is a 41-year-old trans archivist in San Francisco. Before that, he was a teenager writing fan fiction and arguing in early-internet forums about his favorite ’90s TV show, Feet of Clay (presented as something like a hybrid of The X-Files and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ). Back then, he was also alive. Sol has a disease, vampirism, which, in addition to the obvious effects (he needs transfusions of blood; the sun will kill him), has basically arrested his physical transition—he’d only just started testosterone before joining the undead. When Elsie, the widow of Feet of Clay ’s creator, comes to his archive to donate her wife’s papers, the novel becomes a classic supernatural romance: vampire and human fall for each other, hard, and the pair must work out how to be together given their unique circumstances. But it doesn’t dwell on those details. Instead, Dead Collections is a wild trip that follows the metamorphoses both characters undergo after they reveal themselves to each other, demonstrating how a relationship can evolve. It’s wildly funny, sexy, and compelling: I couldn’t put it down. — E.S.

Drive Your Plows Over the Bones of the Dead

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

By olga tokarczuk.

I was initially drawn to Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead because of its mouthful of a title (taken from William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”), which almost sounds like a song lyric, if a morbid one. First published in Polish in 2009 and translated in 2018 by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Drive Your Plow is narrated by Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman who lives by Poland’s border with the Czech Republic, as one man after another is murdered in her town. Between translating Blake with her friend and working as a winter caretaker for the summer houses in her remote town, Duszejko investigates the mysterious murders, becoming more and more convinced that the town’s wild animals have committed them as an act of furious revenge against the men who hunt them. Though you can’t help feeling a bit of secondhand embarrassment for her—it’s clear that most of her neighbors see her as a bit of a crackpot, and the police dismiss her outright—her belief is powerful enough that becoming committed to Duszejko’s worldview is easy. — M.C.

If You Want to Feel Wonder About the Universe

summer reading 2022

When We Cease to Understand the World

By benjamín labatut.

In Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World , the rapture of scientific genius butts against the horror of war, fascism, and disease. Through five linked sections, the book tells the stories of some of the 20th century’s most important men of science and their pursuit of knowledge. One is Fritz Haber, who saved countless people from starvation by figuring out how to extract nitrogen out of the air, making plant fertilizer abundant, but who also played an instrumental role in the German army’s chemical-warfare program. Another is Karl Schwarzschild, who was the first to find an exact solution to Einstein’s equations of general relativity, introducing the terrifying concept of the black hole. Labatut’s work is a hybrid of fact and fiction, and though those who aren’t well versed in the figures’ biographies and their historical contexts may not realize what’s true and what’s not, I found it almost didn’t matter. I compulsively look up facts while reading, but here, I was content to engross myself in these stories of mad geniuses. Labatut, via a translation by Adrian Nathan West, captures the breathless excitement of discovery so well that I yearned for that sort of heightened experience; then he juxtaposes it against some of the destruction and insanity the work inspired, making me second-guess that desire. — M.C.

Where the Wild Ladies Are

Where the Wild Ladies Are

By aoko matsuda.

Aoko Matsuda’s softly electrifying story collection is full of ghosts, but reading it, I sometimes forgot that fact. In her tales, translated by Polly Barton, spirits coexist with the living, and we don’t always know who’s dead and who isn’t, an authorial choice that subtly emphasizes the humanity of the haunters. Populating these pages are apparitions who wage war, in various ways, on social norms: a nosy aunt, a couple of persistent saleswomen, a mother’s unseen helper. Some of these women seem to take delight in being sweetly annoying; others truth-tell from beyond the grave. “Your hair is the only wild thing you have left,” the aforementioned aunt reminds her niece, scolding her for obsessing over perms and hair removal. The declaration becomes a challenge to the niece, who changes her relationship to her hair—drastically. Matsuda based her vignettes on classic ghost stories, and her characters are ageless, dangerous, and totally untamed. Read this one slowly, to get a tangy whiff of the afterworld as it tangles with daily life. — J.Y.K.

Strangers Drowning

Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help

By larissa macfarquhar.

If you happened upon someone drowning in a shallow pond, would you stop to save their life? Your answer, hopefully, is yes. Now what if that stranger was drowning many miles away? What if millions of strangers were drowning—from poverty, disease, war—across the world? Of course, that’s reality, but most of us don’t feel the same urgent responsibility to act on less immediate suffering. Larissa MacFarquhar’s book (whose title refers to a thought experiment raised by the philosopher Peter Singer) profiles individuals who do feel the pain of strangers—acutely, achingly—and dedicate their lives to relieving it. Her subjects include a man who starts a leprosy clinic deep in the jungle; a working-class couple who adopt 20 children; and a pair who survive on a meager budget so that they can donate more than $100,000 each year. But Strangers Drowning isn’t a celebration of these “do-gooders” or a call for readers to emulate them. Instead, MacFarquhar turns the spotlight around, asking why they provoke such discomfort in the rest of us. Years after my first read, I’m still turning over the resulting questions: What exactly do we owe to people we don’t know? And is morality, above all, what makes a good life? — Faith Hill

The Friend

By Sigrid Nunez

The central characters in The Friend are, paradoxically, deeply lonely. The nameless narrator has just lost her closest companion to suicide; he was a writer who felt alone in his field, at odds with what he saw as a diminishing appreciation for truth and art. She shared that contention, but now she’s on her own. Then there is his massive, sorrowful Great Dane, who now belongs to her. She doesn’t want the dog at first, but she begins to see that he shares her grief as he lies listlessly facing the wall. To say that this book is about their emerging friendship might make it sound more conventional and cheery than it really is. The actuality is something sadder and stranger, but hopeful still—a meditation on connection, or at least on company. Sigrid Nunez quotes Rainer Maria Rilke describing love as “two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other.” The Friend is a portrait of this kind of bond—one between two individuals, traveling through life essentially solo, who nevertheless recognize each other’s burdens and carry them next to each other. It’s understated, but it’s profound. — F.H.

If You Want a Deep Dive

summer reading 2022

Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity From Bronze Age to Silver Screen

By greg jenner.

Americans tend to talk about celebrities using the language of the cosmos: as stars that orient us as we gaze at them from the ground. Dead Famous is an exuberant exploration of that tendency. Considering celebrity as a force that endures even as it evolves, the historian Greg Jenner offers a host of reminders that TMZ is part of a long tradition. The 18th-century preacher Henry Sacheverell was a firebrand who was also, more simply, a brand. Rapturous audiences fainted at the sight of the 19th-century child star Master Betty. A century later, trying to manufacture his own form of Bettymania, the producer Florenz Ziegfeld spread the story that his partner, the singer Anna Held, bathed in milk in the manner of Cleopatra—and, to put the rumor on the record, enlisted a dairy farmer to sue him for “unpaid bills.” Jenner expands these vignettes, weaving academic theory and rich analysis into his tales of stardom’s past. The result is not a comprehensive history— Dead Famous focuses largely on the U.K. and the U.S.—but a wonderfully illuminating one: a study of what can happen when humans are, as Chaucer put it, “stellified.” — M.G.

How We Go Home

How We Go Home: Voices From Indigenous North America

Edited by sara sinclair.

At first glance, this collection of 12 oral histories from Indigenous people across North America, supplemented by pages of footnotes offering context, resembles a textbook. But the book’s Cree-Ojibwe editor, Sara Sinclair, uses that scholarly context to demonstrate how injustice and indifference toward Native people for generations led to profoundly similar accounts of tragedy and resilience. Her subjects vary in background, but taken together, they illuminate the shared and acute “soul sickness,” as one put it, of being pushed to reject their identities for the sake of so-called progress at the behest of faceless institutions. For example, the Santa Clara Pueblo activist Marian Naranjo describes how the U.S. government’s installation of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1940s caused damage to sacred sites that she’s still working to reverse. How We Go Home is a rewarding, if tough, read; each narrator details harrowing traumas, and I often needed time to process a finished story before starting the next. But then again, many of the voices made clear that they weren’t sharing their experiences for mere sympathy. “I don’t dwell on how I was harmed,” Geraldine Manson, a Snuneymuxw First Nation elder in residence at Vancouver Island University, told Sinclair, “but I reflect on it.” The collection, compiled for the nonprofit organization Voice of Witness , offers an opportunity to do the same. — S.L.

Black Cool

Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness

Edited by rebecca walker.

Rebecca Walker’s slim anthology gives itself a formidable task: pinning down the elusive definitions of “Black Cool,” an aesthetic and a philosophy that echoes across the African diaspora. The essays assembled by Walker feature contributions from a range of artists and thinkers, including bell hooks, Hank Willis Thomas, and Margo Jefferson, and study Black artifacts such as blues music, Air Jordans, and the studio portraits of Malick Sidibé. The book’s tone shifts as fluidly as its focus does, and many of the writers lace their cultural diagnoses with personal anecdotes and vice versa. Originally released in 2012, the 10th-anniversary reissue provides not just scrutiny into the titular phenomenon but also a kind of time capsule from the recent past. A decade out, some of these essays may reflect somewhat dated preoccupations (the recurrent finger-wagging at baggy jeans feels, ironically for this title, downright corny); but other threads, like Dawoud Bey’s ode to swagger or Michaela angela Davis’s fiery defense of Black-style genius, seem timeless. After all, as Davis puts it, “Black cool is an intelligence of the soul”—and soul is forever. — N.A.

Pictures at a Revolution

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood

By mark harris.

The Oscar race for Best Picture in 1968 brought together an unusual collection of films: Bonnie and Clyde , Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , In the Heat of the Night , The Graduate , and Doctor Dolittle . Grouped together, these films represented a hinge moment in American film history, from the old to the new, from artifice to authenticity, from hiding from issues like race and sexuality to beginning to confront them head-on. You had both Bonnie and Clyde , one of the most stylistically cutting-edge, provocative, and violent films that Hollywood had ever produced, and Doctor Dolittle , a bloated movie musical and a holdover from the studio system’s heyday. Mark Harris takes that Oscar race as his starting point for a surprisingly rollicking narrative about these five movies. He follows them from inception to reception, and covers the convergence of old stars, such as Rex Harrison and Spencer Tracy, and new ones, such as Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. The book also speaks to a shift in American culture, the moment when messy narratives of alienation and rage began to make their way into and shatter the illusions of the technicolor world projected on the screen. — G.B.

Illustrations by Robert Beatty

Illustration by Neil Webb.

Summer reading: the 30 best holiday reads – chosen by authors and critics

From an evocative story set in a Trinidad graveyard to a riveting exposé of the Sacklers… Novelists including Johny Pitts, Monica Ali and Nina Stibbe on their essential holiday books

  • Summer reading: the 50 hottest new books for a great escape
  • Summer reading: authors recommend their favourite recent reads

Authors’ picks…

Jennifer egan.

Run and Hide by Pankaj Mishra (Hutchinson Heinemann )

This novel is a searing, deeply moving account of a young man’s rise from poverty into the hi-tech globalised prosperity of the new India. Opening as the protagonist, Arun, escapes the want and brutality of his childhood home for college, the novel follows him and his equally striving friends into varied and troubled adulthoods that reveal the hidden costs of “success”. Mishra is a superb journalist, and the sensory vitality of his second novel is a reminder that fiction is the ultimate information compressor. Unleashed in the realm of human feeling, Mishra’s keen observational powers are spectacularly alive.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador)

Elizabeth Day

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador )

I first read Patrick Radden Keefe in the New Yorker , then graduated to his debut nonfiction book, Say Nothing : an extraordinary retelling of the Troubles. I grew up in Derry and that book gave me a whole new insight into what I experienced as a child. He has now become one of those authors I will always read, no matter what the subject matter, which is why I gobbled up Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty in spite of only having the vaguest notion of who the Sacklers were. In this book, Radden Keefe not only delves into a riveting (and dysfunctional) family history but also charts the course of the American opioid epidemic. He has this ability to pick out individual incidents that illuminate the whole story, like lighting a match in a cave. Although the subject matter is complex and unwieldy, it never feels like it. A masterclass in compelling narrative nonfiction.

The Queens of Sarmiento Park by Camila Sosa Villada

Torrey Peters

The Queens of Sarmiento Park by Camila Sosa Villada (Virago )

This is a book both ferocious and magical, the story of a boarding house of trans sex workers who discover and raise a baby in Córdoba, Argentina. It’s a trans iteration in a long tradition of Latin American literature: stuffed with marvels, humour, political critique, and storytelling that moves from macro to micro in the course of a paragraph. And yet, for all its specificity of place and culture, it’s one of the books that best illustrates the themes that link together a growing movement of global trans literature, a book that unflinchingly asks, “how do we live?”

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World by Barry Lopez

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World by Barry Lopez (Random House US)

Barry Lopez, one of America’s greatest nature writers, died in 2020. Embrace Fearlessly is a posthumous collection of essays, thus far published only in America, revisiting places and themes familiar to admirers of earlier books such as Crossing Open Ground and Arctic Dreams . Reading him – the steady, unshowy attentiveness to the everyday life of extraordinary places (and vice-versa) – is always a joy but here, at the end of his life, he forces himself to confront one of the reasons for his long-standing sense of the solace offered by the unpeopled world: the devastating experience, as a young boy, of falling prey to a family friend and serial paedophile.

Scary Monsters Michelle de Kretser HARDBACKEBOOK RRP: £14.99 6 January 2022 Published by Allen & Unwin

Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser ( Atlantic )

Scary Monsters is a diptych-novel with a “reversible” format, meaning one half is printed the other way up, so you have to decide which half to read first: the one set in 1980s France, in which Lili, a young Australian, attempts to model herself on Simone de Beauvoir; or the one set in near-future Australia, in which Permanent Fire Zones have been declared as climate catastrophe edges ever closer. Whichever way you read it, this is a novel of luminous intelligence about racism, misogyny and ageism. De Kretser dissects the barely concealed misogyny and racism of then , to awaken our senses to now, unsettling and disturbing our sense of where we are headed, what kind of future we might be sleepwalking towards.

A Killing in November by Simon Mason

Mick Herron

A Killing in November by Simon Mason ( riverrun )

This is a tale of two Wilkinses, Ray and Ryan; both DIs in Oxford, the former an uptight Balliol graduate (is there any other kind?), the latter a working-class single parent with a chip on both shoulders, a hair-trigger temper and unerring instincts when it comes to detective work. The odd couple scenario is familiar enough, but Mason avoids the obvious tropes, and rather movingly focuses on Ryan’s relationship with his young son. Well plotted, too. It’s the first in a series: start now and avoid the rush.

Fight Night by Miriam Toews

Nina Stibbe

Fight Night by Miriam Toews (Faber )

A chaotic, spirited family of three (nearly four) prepare for great change in this touching, funny novel that sits somewhere between Lucy Ellmann and Patricia Lockwood . The narrator, 100-month-old Swiv, commentates on her life with a pregnant mother and grandmother via an ongoing stream-of-consciousness letter to her absent father. There is sharp dialogue, comic, tragic, and gloriously obscure detail (how to dig a grave in winter), beautiful meditations on life (somehow absurd and wise at the same time), world weariness, and the most sublime language but, overall, you’re faced with the immeasurable joy of family love at even the saddest times. Books as wonderful as this don’t come along very often. I adored it.

Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These

Charlotte Mendelson

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber)

I love fiction where tiny pressures build to derailment, for better or worse: a late start, a wrong turn. In this beautiful, fierce, humane nove l, coal-merchant Bill Furlong is a decent man in recession-pressed 1980s Ireland. He wants his daughters to go to the only good local girls’ school, run by the nuns on the hill, who also have a training college (or is it a laundry?), rarely spoken of. But Bill, conscientiously delivering fuel for Christmas, finds something in the convent coal-shed. He should ignore it, for everyone’s sake. But he can’t. And neither should we.

Evie Wyld The Bass Rock

Ross Raisin

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld (Jonathan Cape)

It is no mean feat to create a novel of such subtlety and hope that opens with a body in a suitcase. The Bass Rock sidesteps through time to bring together the lives of three women in three different centuries, treading one another’s invisible paths of desire and persecution, male violence, family and the aspiration for a brighter future. The images of the Bass Rock on the news recently – amid concerns for its bird population – have brought the living spectacle of the rock back to my mind, serving as a poignant reminder of the novel’s themes of generational unity, precariousness, constancy.

Palmares By Gayl Jones (Virago)

Irenosen Okojie

Palmares by Gayl Jones (Virago)

This daring, multifaceted novel set in 17th century Brazil tells a sprawling tale about a community of Africans who escaped slavery. We follow its narrator, Almeyda, from childhood in the 1670s on a Brazilian plantation with her enslaved mother and witch-like, Arabic-speaking grandmother. Almeyda embraces her kaleidoscopic existence with vigour and imagination, mining and observing the movements of the various characters around to make sense of her world. I love the novel for its scope, its singular vision, its playfulness with form as well as the complexity of its female characters. It marks the return of a lesser-known literary giant. Discovered by Toni Morrison no less, Jones withdrew from the publishing world after a few acclaimed novels. I’m thrilled she’s returned with this bold, imaginative feat.

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (Hamish Hamilton)

Johny Pitts

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (Hamish Hamilton)

A book set in a graveyard might not seem like much fun for a summer read, but Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s When We Were Birds juggles many counterintuitive elements, and you want to spend time wherever it takes you. Written in a gentle vernacular, it is a haunting and evocative portrait of the heady streets of Trinidad, and the bardo that connects the everyday with the spiritual world. Because the darkness of the novel is textured and soulful, there is something strangely consoling about its tone, full as it is of murky sunsets, imperfect love affairs and struggling characters you are always rooting for.

The Return of Faraz Ali by Aamina Ahmed (Riverhead)

Kamila Shamsie

The Return of Faraz Ali by Aamina Ahm ad ( Riverhead)

This is a stunning debut novel – a noir-inspired thriller that weaves in politics, family ties, corruption and murder, while also being sharp about different kinds of power, particularly as it relates to women. It starts in Lahore’s Old City with men coming to take a boy away from the world of courtesans into which he’s been born; it leaps forward within just a few pages to the boy grown into a police officer and sent by his powerful father back to the world of courtesans to investigate a murder. Aren’t you gripped already?

Saint X: Alexis Schaitkin Hardcover – 18 Mar. 2021

Maggie Shipstead

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin (Pan Mac millan )

Although it has plenty of suspense, Alexis Schaitkin’s novel Saint X is less about the mysterious death of a beautiful young woman than its consequent, devastating ripple effect. Narrator Claire is seven when her sister Alison disappears on a family vacation to the fictional Caribbean island of the book’s title. Two days later, Alison’s body washes up. Eighteen years later, Claire is living in New York when she encounters one of the men accused of Alison’s murder. I read Saint X in a night, captivated by its mystery but also by the smart, evocative way Schaitkin writes about race, loss and place.

He Held Radical Light by Christian Wiman ( Macmillan)

Miriam Toews

He Held Radical Light by Christian Wiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux US)

This is a book I’ve kept close to me for the past few years by Christian Wiman, an American poet. His exploration of poetry, spirituality and mortality has given me so much solace and inspiration. The book’s subtitle – “the art of faith, the faith of art” – encapsulates it nicely. Poetry is the grace we strive for but fail to embody. Art is the true mediator between earth and sky, not any religious functionary. Faith is essential for any artist. But why do we want to make art? The book came to me from another poet, Matthew Tierney, who also lives in Toronto, and he has a line that is the beginning of an answer: “Freed from the desire to fly, I flew.”

The Saint of Lost Things by Tish Delaney

Alex Wheatle

The Saint of Lost Things by Tish Delaney (Cornerstone)

I was eager to read the follow-up to Tish Delaney’s outstanding debut novel, Before My Actual Heart Breaks . Again, The Saint of Lost Things begins in rural Northern Ireland, and the narrative revolves around the lives, dramas and dark family secrets of an aunt and her niece living in a cottage near a small village. Delaney has an effortless skill to unlock the fabric and nuances of working-class family life. Thoroughly absorbing, it didn’t let me down.

Illustration by Neil Webb.

Critics’ picks…

Rachel cooke.

Real and the Romantic by Frances Spalding

The Real and the Romantic by Frances Spalding (Thames and Hudson)

It isn’t very packable, but I’m hopeful I will somehow manage to secrete in my luggage Frances Spalding’s big new history of English art between the wars. Turning its delectable pages, I know already that the joy and intense interest of this book will come courtesy of the attention given by its scholarly but always readable author to less well-known names, Gerald Brockhurst, Winifred Knights and Algernon Newton duly taking their place alongside the Nash brothers, Barbara Hepworth and Graham Sutherland. What could be better when lying by the pool than to gaze on a brooding etching by the inestimable FL Griggs? A crisp portrait by that master, Meredith Frampton?

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas (Picador)

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas (Picador)

Having grown up on campus novels – I am the child of a funny, frisky academic – I’m always in search of good new ones, even now. For this reason, I read this first novel by Julia May Jonas even before it was published in Britain (I ordered an American edition), and so exciting did I find it, I might just give it a second whirl before the summer is out. A quick summary: female professor whose husband, also a professor, is accused of Bad Things (think #MeToo crimes) does some pretty Bad Things herself as a po-faced and appalled campus looks on. Sexy and satirical and incredibly gripping, this somehow all too believable novel is impossible to put down.

Alison by Lizzy Stewart (Serpent’s Tail)

Alison by Lizzy Stewart (Serpent’s Tail)

Graphic novels don’t usually last long enough to make for perfect holiday reading, but I’m determined to read this imminently forthcoming book while I’m away. I loved Stewart’s last book, a collection of stories called It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be , and I’m hopeful this full-length graphic novel will be as good (Tessa Hadley has already described it as “subtle and deliciously complicated”). Set in the late 70s, it tells the story of newly married Alison, who upends her life after an encounter with an older artist. But will bohemian romance lead to enduring love or only to patchouli-scented disappointment? Stewart is a considerable talent, and I can’t wait to find out what she does with this eternal story.

The Last Days of Roger Federer by Geoff Dyer 71rIfPKIX6L

The Last Days of Roger Federer by Geoff Dyer (Canongate)

Geoff Dyer is the nearest thing I have to a literary crush; I get overexcited whenever I’m in his presence, book-wise. I gather that some of the reviews for his latest book, an exploration of the achievements of middle age, have been somewhat disobliging, but I honestly couldn’t give a damn. Pearls before swine, and all that. Dyer is a writer who can make anything interesting and funny, and for such singular reasons, too (it’s the sheer Geoff-ness of Geoff that we, his fans, adore). Friedrich Nietzsche, JMW Turner, John Coltrane, Jean Rhys: all appear in this uncommon treatise, though of course it also comes with trademark scenes from Dyer’s own, vastly less celebrated (though not by me) artistic life. An enormous treat in prospect.

Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso very-cold-people

Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso (Picador)

In general, I’m suspicious of what I think of as “shard” books, by which I mean those slight, prickly little novels in which the narrative is broken into pieces, each paragraph floating on the page. But I will make an exception for Sarah Manguso’s first novel , reviews of which have made it sound – to put it mildly – right up my street. Set in Brahmin New England, it is narrated by Ruth, a child who is entirely surrounded, it would appear, by people whose battered, beleaguered hearts long froze hard against the world. From what I can gather, Manguso’s stop-start narrative builds to a gelid climate, which will also do nicely if my holiday should happen to coincide with another heatwave.

Alex Preston

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury)

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury)

Without knowing it, I’d been looking for a book that gave me the same visceral, iconoclastic thrill I got from Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem . Ben Myers’s seventh novel, The Perfect Golden Circle , is it. A study in male friendship and British identity, this fictional retelling of the pranksters who fooled a nation with their crop circles is a warm, rollicking, heart-expanding read. You’ll never forget the time you spend in the company of Calvert and Redbone, the eccentrics at the heart of the novel.

Companion Piece by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

Companion Piece by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

The end of Smith’s seasonal quartet left a void in the literary world. I hadn’t realised how much I’d relied on these visionary, speed-published messages from the present to help shape my view of the political moment. True to form, Smith confounded expectations and has published a fifth book to go with her quartet, a book that thrums with the same rage and artistic energy as its predecessors. Here we have Sandy, an artist, who receives a mid-lockdown call from an old friend that sets off a wild series of events. Taking in Covid and the Black Death, gender identity and violence against women, it’s another superlative novel from one of our very best writers.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw (Pushkin Press)

A wonderful book whose joyful, riotous, interlaced stories combine to paint a picture of a group of women torn between the exigencies of their religion and the urges of their bodies. Philyaw finds beauty in unexpected places, lifting everyday experience into something almost sacred. It’s from an entirely different world, but I was reminded repeatedly of Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway – Philyaw’s great triumph is to permit her characters to inhabit fully their rich and particular interior lives. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies has been a surprise bestseller in the US; it ought to be equally successful this side of the Atlantic.

Fledgling by Hannah Bourne-Taylor (Aurum)

Fledgling by Hannah Bourne-Taylor (Aurum)

When Bourne-Taylor finds herself suddenly transplanted to Ghana – her husband takes a job at a sports academy there – she begins to question her place in the world. She’s alone, dependent and bored. Then something falls, almost literally, into her lap – a baby bird, which she rears and then releases. H Is for Hawk trailed a host of similar narratives behind it in which authors found solace in nature, but few of them are as intelligent, poetic and moving as this one.

This cover image released by Random House shows “Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City” by Andrea Elliott. (Random House via AP)

Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott (Cornerstone)

When Invisible Child won the Pulitzer prize, I punched the air. A work of devastating power , it tells the story of Dasani, a young woman growing up in abject poverty in New York. Dasani is a whirlwind of a young woman, roaring out of the projects that threaten to suck her back in. Elliott spent almost a decade following Dasani and her family and the book is a work of great moral and ethical power – there’s nothing voyeuristic here, just an extraordinary portrait of the human spirit under pressure.

Illustration by Neil Webb.

Kadish Morris

The Love Songs of WEB DuBois Paperback

The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (HarperCollins)

This 800-page book is a sweeping epic that journeys through the history of one African American family across several centuries. It jumps back and forth between eras, from slavery to the antebellum south to present times, and does so in a way that makes it as thrilling as a murder mystery. The book’s main protagonist, Ailey, is clever and perceptive and it’s rewarding watching her grow from an angsty kid to a gifted researcher. The stories of female characters such as Aggie, an enslaved woman intent on toppling the sadistic man who bought her from Africa, create a landscape of formidable women who show how resoluteness can change the course of history.

Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley

Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley (Faber)

This debut poetry collection is abundant with thoughtful storytelling. Each poem is ruminative and distills the intimacies of Black girl/womanhood with fascinating images, compelling observations and a nomadic sense of questioning, while honouring the concept of silence and the ways it plays out in one’s interior life. These delicate poems unpick encounters with loved ones, friends and animals (there’s a beautiful poem about snails) and also focus firmly on the wider world, with poems such as Pandemic vs Black Folk written with the sharpest of tongues.

Be Gone: Stories by John Edgar Wideman

Look for Me and I’ll Be Gone: Stories by John Edgar Wideman (Canongate)

These short stories are the kind that stay with you; Wideman deploys an experimental literary style that forces you to pause with each sentence. With emotional precision and bold storytelling, they largely cover the African American experience. There’s a letter addressed to the narrator’s son, who has been charged with murder. There’s another about two chickens crossing the road, pondering the meaning of captivity. Wideman’s stories are preoccupied with how lives are shaped by incarceration and the criminal justice system and how these experiences can warp time. His tales are not easy reads but they are extremely absorbing, with Wideman’s stream-of-consciousness style evoking raw emotion and empathy.

Out of the Sun: Essays at the Crossroads of Race by Esi Edugyan (Serpent’s Tail)

Out of the Sun: Essays at the Crossroads of Race by Esi Edugyan (Serpent’s Tail)

Edugyan has written a remarkable set of essays unlike anything else . This is a deeply curious book that delves into the representations of Black people in western art, studying the fine details of paintings such as David Martin’s portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and Johann Gottfried Haid’s painting of Viennese courtier Angelo Soliman. Edugyan oscillates between past and present, moving from the atrocities of the slave trade in Canada to recent debates around “transracialism”. She writes from a subjective, personal perspective, too, telling intriguing stories about how her parents met, her travels as a writer and her belief in ghosts.

A Brief History of Black British Art by Rianna Jade Parker (Tate Publishing)

A Brief History of Black British Art by Rianna Jade Parker (Tate Publishing)

This book by the brilliant critic and curator Rianna Jade Parker explores the pivotal contributions that African and Caribbean-descended artists have made to the landscape of art in Britain. Though a quick read, it’s bountiful in the number of artists and histories it discusses, which will be unknown to many. Concise biographies of Frank Bowling , Anthea Hamilton , Denzil Forrester and Maxine Walters offer insight into their lives and practices, and in her introduction, Parker touches on the social and political realities affecting Black cultural production. She also writes of how and why Black British artists “have long been relegated to the niche,” and notes that the under-historicised Caribbean Artists Movement of the 1960s was a genesis point of contemporary Black British art.

To explore all the books in the Guardian and Observer’s summer reading lists visit guardianbookshop.com Delivery charges may apply.

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2022 ALSC Summer Reading Lists

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ALSC's Quicklists Consulting Committee has updated our Summer Reading Lists with new and exciting titles for 2022!

The lists are full of book titles to keep children engaged in reading throughout the summer. Four Summer Reading lists are available for birth-preschool and grades K-2, 3-5 and 6-8. Each list is available here to download for free. Titles on the 2022 Summer Reading Lists were compiled and annotated by members of ALSC’s Quicklists Consulting Committee. ALSC reading lists are created as a resource for children's librarians to share with patrons. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to explore these titles to find resources that may match or spark their child's interest.

summer reading 2022

ALSC Summer Reading List  Birth - Pre-K ( PDF )

ALSC Summer Reading List  Kindergarten - Grade 2 ( PDF )

ALSC Summer Reading List  Grade 3 - Grade 5 ( PDF )

ALSC Summer Reading List  Grade 6 - 8 ( PDF )

45 new books for summer reading in 2022

summer reading 2022

Summertime — and to tweak a line from DuBose Heyward's famous lyric — the readin'  is easy. 

If you'd like to rise up singing during the sunny season, here is a varied selection of 45 new books to choose from, with a hefty helping of Wisconsin writers, and including a subset of choices for children and teens. In each case, I've either read the book already or browsed it, or been impressed by a previous work from the same author, or had the new book recommended by a trusted source of information. 

Thanks to my colleague Chris Foran for contributing some pop-culture and baseball selections.

Speaking of summer reading, the  Milwaukee Public Library  encourages children to join its Super Reader Squad for children 12 and younger, and its Teen Summer Challenge program for youth ages 13 through 18. Check the library's website,  mpl.org, for summer reading program details in the near future. 

If you live in a different community, check with your local library. It probably has a summer reading program, too. 

"All the Queen's Men" (William Morrow), by S.J. Bennett. In unraveling the strange disappearance of a favorite artwork, Queen Elizabeth II and her assistant private secretary, a former Army officer, discover and solve more serious crimes in this amiable mystery novel. 

"Blue Lake" (River Grove Books), by Jeffrey D. Boldt. In this Madison writer's debut, an administrative law judge and a reporter passionate about each other and the environment face dangerous criminals and despoilers in a novel rich with Wisconsin settings.

MORE: 45 new books for holiday gifts in 2021, from a Giannis biography to murder mysteries

MORE: 21 recommended books by Wisconsin writers from the 21st century

“Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema and the Invention of the Twentieth Century” (Atria Books), by Dana Stevens. Stevens, Slate’s film critic, crafts a smart, fun biography of the comedy genius that puts him in the context of his time while showing he was ahead of his time. (Prolific film biographer James Curtis also has a new book on Keaton worth looking for: “Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life.”)

"The Cartographers" (William Morrow), by Peng Shepherd. A brilliant young mapmaker, looking into her estranged father's unexpected death, uncovers a mystery with reality-shaking consequences. A new novel from the author of "The Book of M." 

"Catholica: The Visual Culture of Catholicism" (Thames & Hudson), by Suzanna Ivanič. A profusely illustrated tour of Catholic visual iconography from the fourth century until the present, including Marian imagery, cathedral facades, reliquaries and sacramental representations. 

"Chili Dog MVP: Dick Allen, the '72 White Sox and a Transforming Chicago"  (Eckhartz Press), by John Owens and David J. Fletcher. This book lovingly re-creates the story of the 1972 Chicago White Sox, an unlikely band of players led by misunderstood superstar Dick Allen.

"Danger on the Atlantic" (Kensington), by Erica Ruth Neubauer. In Milwaukee novelist Neubauer's third 1920s mystery, Jane Wunderly and her man Redvers try to solve a disappearance and a murder on ship during a transatlantic crossing.

"Deaf Utopia: A Memoir and a Love Letter to a Way of Life" (William Morrow), by Nyle DiMarco with Robert Siebert. Model and activist DiMarco shares his story of growing up deaf and winning on "America’s Next Top Model" and "Dancing With the Stars"

"A Dog Lover's Guide to Hiking Wisconsin's State Parks" (University of Wisconsin Press), by Danielle St. Louis. One dog owner's detailed note and tips about rambling around state parks with your pooch, from Amnicon Falls to Whitefish Dunes.  

"The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER" (One World), by Thomas Fisher. In this memoir, a Black doctor chronicles a hectic and dangerous year of emergency room work that included treating victims of COVID-19 and gunshot violence. 

"The Evening Hero" (Simon & Schuster), by Marie Myung-Ok Lee. A Korean doctor in small-town Minnesota copes with his unexpected retirement while also processing memories and secrets from his past. Lee's novel also delivers some pointed satire about American corporate health care.

“Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward and 1960s Los Angeles” (Ecco), by Mark Rozzo. Hopper, the movies’ enfant terrible, and Hayward, the taste-making daughter of showbiz royalty, made for one of Hollywood’s more unlikely yet influential power couples during the 1960s. Armed with Hayward’s never-before-published memoirs and scores of in-depth interviews, Rozzo paints a fascinating if dark portrait not just of Hopper and Hayward but the culture they helped reshape.

"The Family Chao: A Novel" (W.W. Norton), by Lan Samantha Chang. In a Wisconsin burg much like Appleton, the grown children of the imperious owner of the local Chinese restaurant come to grips with his murder and the prejudice of their community.  

“Finding Me: A Memoir”  (HarperOne), by Viola Davis. The Oscar-winning actor tells her origin story, and how she got to be one of the most-honored actors of our time, in this raw, no-punches-pulled memoir, from battling racism growing up in Rhode Island to battling racism in Hollywood.

“From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy” (Dey St.), by Scott Meslow. Meslow tells the backstories of 16 influential rom-coms, from “When Harry Met Sally… ” to “Waiting to Exhale” to “Crazy Rich Asians,” with detours to some of the key players in the genre.

"The Geography of Wisconsin" (UW Press), by John A. Cross and Kazimierz J. Zaniewski. An engaging introduction to the physical and climatic features of this state, as well as its settlement and economic patterns, with nearly 250 photographs and maps. 

"The Grief of Stones" (Tor, out June 14), by Katherine Addison. In this sequel to the Madison novelist's gripping fantasy "The Witness for the Dead," a priest-detective who can sense thoughts of the recently deceased investigates more mysterious deaths and faces a shattering crisis. 

"Last Summer on State Street" (William Morrow, out June 14), by Toya Wolfe. In Wolfe's debut novel, girls living in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes circa 1999 experience the challenges of growing up in atmosphere of racism and violence.  

"Magic Season: A Son's Story" (Hanover Square Press), by Wade Rouse. Novelist Rouse turns to memoir in his story of a gay son and his disapproving, dying father, who finally connect over a summer of following the fortunes of their favorite baseball team together.  

“The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act” (Bloomsbury), by Isaac Butler. Butler charts the revolution in “real” acting, inspired by Russian teachings in the late 19th century, that came to dominate American stages and screens from the 1930s through the 1980s.

"The Partition" (Akashic Books), by Don Lee. In these short stories, "Don Lee writes about Asian American experiences with such individuality, depth, and razor-sharply defined details as to dash away any notion of a monolithic 'they,' ” Boswell Books staff member Chris Lee declares. 

“The Real Hank Aaron: An Intimate Look at the Life and Legacy of the Home Run King” (Triumph Books), by Terence Moore. Moore, a longtime sports columnist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, developed such a close relationship with the baseball legend that he dubs himself “the Hank Aaron Whisperer,” the only journalist the home run king would talk to. Moore draws from decades of interviews with Aaron for this portrait, revealing Aaron’s strong, unvarnished takes on baseball, race and his time in Milwaukee as both a Brave and a Brewer — much of it never published before.

"Recitatif" (Knopf), by Toni Morrison. For a high impact short read, turn to this gift edition of Morrison's only short story, with an introduction by Zadie Smith. Two girls who meet in an orphanage encounter each other several more times throughout their lives. Their racial difference is important in their lives, but Morrison never reveals which one is white and which Black.  

"Sea of Tranquility" (Knopf), by Emily St. John Mandel. In an elegant new novel from the author of "Station Eleven," widely different people across several centuries have a similar, disconcerting experience, suggesting that something may be wrong with the fabric of time. 

"Search" (Penguin Press), by Michelle Huneven. A Unitarian Universalist congregational committee spends a year looking for a new minister. If you've ever sat on a hiring committee, you know what can go wrong. Huneven's comic novel also includes recipes! 

"Shelter: A Black Tale of Homeland, Baltimore" (Graywolf), by Lawrence Jackson. In this acclaimed memoir, a scholar who has returned to his hometown probes the history of Black Baltimore and describes his adventures in homeownership.

"Siren Queen" (Tordotcom), by  Nghi Vo. A rising star in speculative fiction who lives in Milwaukee, Vo mixes magic and the Hollywood studio system in this tale about a woman who plays monsters in the movies. 

"Standing Up: Tales of Struggle" (Hard Ball Press), by Ellen Bravo and Larry Miller. Fiction by veteran labor leaders about essential workers and blue collar folks, with Milwaukee frequently the setting. 

"Stumbling Around the Bases: The American League in the Expansion Era" (University of Nebraska Press), by Andy McCue. In one of the best books written about the business of baseball, McCue shows how American League owners dropped the ball from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, including the debacle that led to Milwaukee getting the Brewers.

"This Time Tomorrow" (Riverhead), by Emma Straub. In Straub's time-travel novel, Alice bounces between her 16-year-old and 40-year-old selves, wreaking comic timeline havoc as she copes with romance and a famous father. Oh, 1990s references abound. (Straub will speak in conversation with Noah Weckwerth 7 p.m. May 26 at the Elm Grove Women’s Club, 13885 Watertown Plank Road, Elm Grove. Tickets, at $28, include a copy of the book.)

"Though the Earth Gives Way" (Bancroft Press), by Mark S. Johnson. Pulitzer Prize-winning Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter's debut novel imagines disparate humans trying to start over again after extreme weather events and climate change have wrecked our world. 

"Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle" (Crown), by Jody Rosen. From the development of rubber tires through the COVID-19 boom in cycling, Rosen takes readers on a fascinating ride. 

"Verissmus: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius" (St. Martin's Press, out June 14), by Donald J. Robertson, illustrated by Zé Nuno Fraga. A graphic-novel biography of the Roman emperor-philosopher, which relates how he adopted stoicism to manage his anger and other unruly emotions. 

"Wash Day Diaries" (Chronicle, out July 5), written by  Jamila Rowser and illustrated by Robyn Smith. Young Black women bond together in a Bronx salon and through their hair rituals in this graphic novel. 

"When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East" (Pantheon), by Quan Barry. In the Madison writer's new novel, twin brothers who don't get along, but have a psychic bond, travel across Mongolia seeking the new incarnation of a great lama. 

"Winter Stars: An Elderly Mother, an Aging Son, and Life’s Final Journey" (Light Messages), by Dave Iverson. Former Wisconsin Public Television journalist Iverson writes about his in-home care of his mother during her last decade of life, while coping with his own Parkinson's disease. 

For children and teens

"Caring All Around Me" (Orange Hat), written and illustrated by Tia Richardson . A girl named Mara explores her neighborhood on foot. Hearing birds and looking at butterflies and flowers, she realizes she can choose to take in positive messages. Milwaukee artist Richardson illustrates this tale with imagery similar to her familiar community murals around the city.  

"Does a Bulldozer Have a Butt?" (Chronicle), written by Derick Wilder, illustrated by K-Fai Steele. The title alone sells this picture book, especially to parents of children who like to ask questions. For readers 3 to 5 years old.  

"The Legend of Gravity: A Tall Basketball Tale" (FSG), written and illustrated by Charly Palmer. A loving tribute to streetball, set in Milwaukee by an artist who grew up here. For readers 4 to 8 years old. 

"Listen: How Evelyn Glennie, a Deaf Girl, Changed Percussion" (Puffin), by Shannon Stocker, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth. In spite of her childhood hearing loss, Glennie became a world-famous percussionist, feeling vibrations with her body (which is why she performed barefoot). For readers 4 to 8 years old. 

"The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza" (Katherine Tegen / HarperCollins), written by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Shawn Harris. Can the First Cat and a toenail-clipping robot keep rats from chewing up the Moon? For readers 8 to 11 years old. 

"Miss Quinces" (Graphix), written and illustrated by Kat Fajardo. Fifteen-year-old Suyapa would rather read and wear black than pink, but nonetheless, her family is headed to Honduras for her quinceañera. Available in both English and Spanish versions. For readers 8 to 12 years old. 

"And We Rise: The Civil Rights Movement in Poems" (Viking), by Erica Martin. Short, powerful poems tell the story from Brown vs. Board of Education to the present. For readers 12 to 17 years old.

"Reclaim the Stars: 17 Tales Across Realms & Space" (Wednesday Books), edited by  Zoraida Córdova. Science fiction and fantasy stories starring Latinx characters; writers include Daniel José Older and  Lilliam Rivera. For readers 12 to 18 years old. 

"Love Radio" (Simon & Schuster, out May 31), by Ebony LaDelle. In this novel with strong musical elements, a Black teen DJ and his crush, who have both experienced some real-world suffering, give romance a chance. For readers 14 to 18 years old.  

Contact Jim Higgins at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter at @jhiggy.

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Bill Gates has 5 book recommendations for your 2022 summer reading list: ‘Compelling without sacrificing any complexity’

Bill Gates isn't particularly interested in breezy beach reads this summer.

The billionaire bibliophile and Microsoft co-founder is back with his latest list of reading recommendations – this time, with five new titles for the summer season. And, as Gates admits in a post on his Gates Notes blog published Monday, this year's list comes across as "pretty heavy for vacation reading."

"There are books here about gender equality, political polarization, climate change, and the hard truth that life never goes the way young people think it will," Gates, 66, writes. "It does not exactly sound like the stuff of beach reads."

But that doesn't mean they're hard to read, he notes. From New York Times columnist Ezra Klein to science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, Gates writes that the authors of his latest picks are all "able to take a meaty subject and make it compelling without sacrificing any complexity."

Here's his list of five "great books for the summer": 

'The Power'

By Naomi Alderman

Gates writes that " The Power ," a 2016 sci-fi work from British novelist Naomi Alderman, was originally recommended to him by his oldest daughter, Jennifer.

The novel's premise imagines a scenario where women around the world suddenly develop the ability to emit deadly electric shocks from their hands – which results in women becoming the dominant sex and forming a matriarchy. The book, which tackles themes of gender equality and gender roles, gained critical acclaim when it was released, including from The New York Times and former president Barack Obama .

"Reading 'The Power,' I gained a stronger and more visceral sense of the abuse and injustice many women experience today," Gates writes. "And I expanded my appreciation for the people who work on these issues in the U.S. and around the world."

How a 31-year-old built a $4.2 billion aerospace start-up

'Why We're Polarized'

By Ezra Klein

Gates tries to remain "generally optimistic" about the future, he writes, but political polarization in the U.S. is the "one thing that dampens my outlook." That very topic is the subject of " Why We're Polarized ," written by Klein, a political analyst and co-founder of Vox.

Klein's book approaches America's political divisions from a psychological perspective, arguing that the groups people self-identify with – including political parties – play an outsized role in how they make decisions and view the world.

"If you want to understand what's going on with politics in the United States right now, this is the book to pick up," Gates writes.

'The Lincoln Highway: A Novel' 

By Amor Towles

American novelist Amor Towles is quickly becoming a staple on Gates' reading lists: The billionaire included Towles' bestselling "A Gentleman in Moscow" on his 2019 summer list, and now writes that he enjoyed " The Lincoln Highway " almost as much.

Published last year, Towles' latest work is an adventure novel set in 1954. It's the story of a teenager's cross-country journey with his younger brother, which is thrown off course by a pair of tag-alongs from the protagonist's history on a work farm for juvenile offenders.

"Towles takes inspiration from famous hero's journeys and seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope," Gates writes.

'The Ministry for the Future'

By Kim Stanley Robinson

" The Ministry for the Future " is a sci-fi – or cli-fi, short for "climate fiction" – novel published in 2020. It is set in the near future, and follows a fictional global organization that spearheads various efforts to combat climate change.

Gates himself is an outspoken climate change activist who wrote his own book putting forth potential solutions to climate change last year. Notably, he writes that Robinson's novel offers "a lot of intriguing ideas" while effectively explaining the science behind climate change and working toward "a surprisingly hopeful ending."

'How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going'

By Vaclac Smil

Gates doesn't hold back his praise for " How the World Really Works ," calling it "another masterpiece from one of my favorite authors."

The book is the latest work from Vaclav Smil, a Czech-Canadian professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Manitoba. In 2017, Gates wrote that he'd read all of Smil's then-37 published books, on topics ranging from clean energy to manufacturing and agriculture. Gates intended to "wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie," he wrote.

Today, Gates writes that most of Smil's books read like textbooks – but "this one is written for a general audience and gives an overview of the main areas of his expertise." It covers how energy has shaped the history of civilization, from agricultural societies to our modern, industrial age.

Smil "has crunched all of the numbers" to deliver "a brief but thorough education in numeric thinking about many of the fundamental forces that shape human life," Gates writes.

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Want to change the world? Bill Gates says you should 'read a lot' and 'find a skill you enjoy'

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Summer Reading 2022

Paige Stampatori for The Boston Globe

W hether your summer plans include beaches or backyards, exploration or relaxation, you’ll need something juicy and absorbing to read. We asked some of our favorite critics to recommend the best summer reads, a blend of old and new books that you can bring along with you — and that just might transport you when you do.

Young adult

summer reading 2022

Gabino Iglesias is a literary critic, creative writing professor, and the author of “Zero Saints,” “Coyote Songs,” and “The Devil Takes You Home.”

Walton Muyumba is a writer and critic.

Matt Pepin is the Boston Globe’s sports editor

Adriana E. Ramírez is an award-winning writer based in Pittsburgh

Renata Sancken is a teen services librarian at Memorial Hall Library in Andover and a co-host of the Worst Bestsellers readers advisory podcast.

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe sports columnist and author. His latest book is "Wish It Lasted Forever: Life With the Larry Bird Celtics.''

Daneet Steffens Book critic and journalist, loves a good mystery. Find her on Twitter @daneetsteffens

Kate Tuttle is a critic and editor

Illustrations: Paige Stampatori for The Boston Globe

Graphics: Interactive content by Flourish

Design: Ryan Huddle and Brittany Bowker

Project management: Christina Prignano

The Boston Globe may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers.

© 2022 Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC

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Everyday Reading

2022 Summer Reading Guide

HELLO SUMMER READING GUIDE!!

This is one of my favorite days of the entire year – I spend basically 365 days of the year thinking about the next Summer Reading Guide and I’m so happy with how this year’s guide came together.

It’s time to whip out your library card or load up your Kindle or order a few physical books for summer. Whatever your preferred way of getting your hands on these titles is, these are all great books to read this summer.

As in past years, I try to make sure it’s a healthy mix of both new releases and older titles because as a heavy library user myself, I know how deeply frustrating it is when I go to my library to request books from a summer reading list and every. single. book. has a request line 100 people long. It’s so annoying!

This is the eighth annual Summer Reading Guide and whether you want something to read on your own or aloud to your kids, to listen to or read on paper, fiction or non-fiction, I hope you’ll find exactly the right titles to make your summer reading extra enjoyable.

summer reading guide

This year, the summer reading guide includes five categories with five books per category.

For each book, I’m sharing a short description of the book so you can quickly decide whether it’s something you’ll love or one you can skip.

And, like the last couple of years, I’ve included a printable version that you can get sent directly to your email. Not only does it have all the books in one handy place, but there are bonus book recommendations, extra categories with new and old titles, and lots of tips about reading with your kids or taking advantage of library resources.

Plus, it has all the titles on a single page if you want to print it out and take it to the library with you!

I hope it makes it easier than ever to have your best summer of reading. Just pop your email in the form below and it’ll come right to your inbox:

And now . . .without further ado, the 2022 Summer Reading Guide!

The 2022 SUMMER READING GUIDE

Absorbing audiobooks, fantastic non-fiction, books for the whole family, page-turning novels.

summer reads

Reader Interactions

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May 19, 2022 at 6:07 am

I LOVE your summer reading guides. I don’t know how you manage to always find new, fantastic titles—I’m excited for this list every year. Huge thank you for all the time compiling—I can’t wait to start reading!

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May 19, 2022 at 6:11 am

Thanks so much for this!

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May 19, 2022 at 6:45 am

YAY! It’s like Christmas!

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May 19, 2022 at 8:02 am

I have been waiting all week for this to come out!

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May 19, 2022 at 6:30 pm

I agree that the History Smashers series is amazing! I really loved the one on Womens Right to Vote.

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May 20, 2022 at 6:27 am

Fantastic summer reading guide!! Thanks SO MUCH for doing this!

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May 20, 2022 at 6:20 pm

Thank you! I love your recommendations!

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May 27, 2022 at 6:49 am

Oh my goodness! YEAH!!! Thank you so much, I love this and always look forward to it. Your recommendations are always so good!

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One Summer, 73 Books

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Book Review

One summer, 73 books. No matter what you like — thrillers, audiobooks, cookbooks, historical fiction, music books, sci-fi, romance, horror, true crime, sports books, Hollywood tell-alls — we have recommendations for the perfect literary escape.

summer reading 2022

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

In Lucy Sante’s new memoir, “I Heard Her Call My Name,” the author reflects on her life and embarking on a gender transition  in her late 60s.

For people of all ages in Pasadena, Calif., Vroman’s Bookstore, founded in 1894, has been a mainstay in a world of rapid change. Now, its longtime owner says he’s ready to turn over the reins .

The graphic novel series “Aya” explores the pains and pleasures of everyday life in a working-class neighborhood  in West Africa with a modern African woman hero.

Like many Nigerians, the novelist Stephen Buoro has been deeply influenced by the exquisite bedlam of Lagos, a megacity of extremes. Here, he defines the books that make sense of the chaos .

Do you want to be a better reader?   Here’s some helpful advice to show you how to get the most out of your literary endeavor .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, summer reading 2022.

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All summer long, we at Bookreporter.com have been sharing some great summer book picks with our Summer Reading Feature. While our series of 24-hour contests have ended, we encourage you to take a look at our featured titles for some sizzling summer reading ideas.

» Click here to see the winners of this year's Summer Reading contests.

summer reading 2022

Summer Reading on Home Base

Welcome to Summer Reading on Home Base!

May 4 - September 7, 2023

summer reading 2022

The Scholastic Summer Reading program offers kids an exciting, free, and safe summer reading experience, while helping to provide books to kids with limited or no access over the summer, keeping every child reading.

A Fun, Free Program for Kids!

From May 9 through August 19, kids can visit the summer zone in Scholastic Home Base, a completely free digital destination which offers stories, characters, games, and a community of readers. Home Base is moderated for safety 24/7.

Visit Home Base

By creating an account on  Home Base ,  kids can join a community of readers and will be able to read books and stories;  attend weekly author events ; interact with their favorite characters; play book-based games and activities; join dance parties; and more!

Sign up for Home Base and visit the Summer Reading zone to start your reading streaks today!

Keep a Reading Streak

Kids will be able to track their summer reading by reading every day and maintaining a Reading Streak in Home Base.

The longer a child extends their reading streak, the more digital experiences they earn! Kids can read any book of their choice and download and print a report of their reading progress at any time.

Help Donate Books

By keeping reading streaks in Home Base, kids will help unlock a donation of 100,000 books from Scholastic to Save the Children. The books will go to kids in rural America with limited or no access to books.

From May 4 through September 7th, kids can visit the summer zone in Scholastic Home Base, a completely free digital destination which offers stories, characters, games, and a community of readers. Home Base is moderated for safety 24/7.

Home Base App Icon

By creating an account on  Home Base ,  kids can join a community of readers and will be able to read books and stories; attend author events; interact with their favorite characters; play book-based games and activities; join dance parties; and more!

Sign up for Home Base and visit the Summer Reading zone to start your Reading Streak™ today!

Keep a Reading Streak™

Kids will be able to track their summer reading by reading every day and maintaining a Reading Streak™ in Home Base.

The longer a child extends their Reading Streak™, the more digital experiences they earn! Kids can read any book of their choice and download and print a report of their reading progress at any time.

Reading Streak

By keeping Reading Streaks™ in Home Base, kids will help unlock a donation of 25,000 books from Scholastic to Save the Children. The books will go to kids in rural America with limited or no access to books.

Home Base App Icon

Vistit Home Base

Sign up for Home Base and visit the Summer Reading zone to start your Reading Streaks™ today!

Reading Streak

By keeping Reading Streaks™ in Home Base, kids will help unlock a donation of 100,000 books from Scholastic to Save the Children. The books will go to kids in rural America with limited or no access to books.

Join Home Base and Start your Reading Streak™!

Download home base today to participate in summer reading.

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Download the Summer Reading Activity Booklet!

summer reading 2022

Includes 8 activities featuring favorite characters!

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Parents, Teachers, and Librarians:

Learn more about home base educational and safety features.

Home Base employs multiple safeguards to protect children online. Find out more by visiting our Parents and Educators page. 

The Ultimate Summer Reading Guide for Parents

Get book recommendations and reading tips for kids of all ages. Help your child continue to read and learn this summer!

summer reading 2022

Need Help Getting Started?

Head to the Home Base help page to learn how to create an account, login, and start exploring!

We also have video tutorials that walk you through Home Base, from the basics to the full features.

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Every Child Deserves the Opportunity to Learn

Working across rural America, Save the Children's education experts help children get ready for kindergarten and achieve critical reading milestones.

Join Home Base!

Start your reading streak™ now.

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Get Ready for Summer Reading on Home Base!

From may 9 through august 19 , kids can visit the summer zone in scholastic home base, a free digital destination which offers stories, characters, games, and a community of readers. home base is moderated for safety 24/7.   .

Home Base App Icon

  Join Home Base

By creating an account on home base, kids can join a community of readers and will be able to read books and stories; attend author events; interact with their favorite characters; play book-based games and activities; join dance parties; and more.

Reading Streak

  Keep a Reading Streak™

Kids will be able to track their summer reading by maintaining a reading streak in home base. the longer a child extends their reading streak, the more digital experiences they earn  kids can read any book of their choice and download and print a report of their reading progress at any time..

Donate Books

By keeping reading streaks in Home Base, kids will unlock a donation of 100,000 books from Scholastic to Save the Children for kids in rural America with limited or no access to books.

How to join, to participate you must download or play the home base app which is available on these platforms:.

Home Base App Icon

How do readers create an account for/log in to home base?

  go to scholastic.com/homebase or download “home base by scholastic” from the app store or google play.  click the play now button. click play. on this page, kids can sign in with an existing scholastic kids site account, or create a new one. if they sign in , they'll be taken directly to home base to create a new account : click the register now button fill out step 1 to create a username, then click next. enter an email address, create a password, then click register they'll get a confirmation email at the email address they provided, and they will be taken to home base  , need more information, head to our faq area to learn how to create an account, login, and start exploring, summer reading event schedule, author events, may event authors & date tdb   june event authors & date tdb   july event authors & date tdb   august event authors & date tdb    , weekly events,   monday: summer book promos [newsfeed ] newsfeed post dedicated to one book on our retail summer promotions list a week. offers 5-6 pages of excerpt using the 3-panel comic format.   tuesday: wings of fire meetups with admin becky weekly fan meetups for 30 minutes. event activities include trivia, fun facts, and more.   wednesday: writing rpg events with admin gavin weekly storytelling rpg. what will happen next   thursday: trivia event with admin becky weekly themed trivia examples: dog man trivia, the bad guys trivia, historical i survived-themed trivia   friday: fanart feature friday [newsfeed] five featured pieces of art from the newsfeed shared and pinned in one post at the top of the feed.      , what is home base, scholastic home base is a safe, free 3d interactive world dedicated to keeping kids engaged with favorite stories through book-based games, live author events, and a large community of readers.  , in home base, kids can: explore beloved stories, interact with favorite characters, and discover their next must-reads  play games inspired by popular books reinforce skills like geography, astronomy, physics, spelling, writing, and more meet scholastic authors in live digital events express creativity through writing stories and creating comics connect with other readers via filtered chat  , is home base safe, yes home base employs multiple safeguards to protect children online, including 24/7 human moderation and a sophisticated automated filter to ensure content safety. additionally, the home base admins model and encourage positive digital engagement, providing a great introduction for kids to internet safety.  .

12 New Summer Books to Add to Your 2023 Reading List

Your favorite beach read is right here.

best summer books

We've been independently researching and testing products for over 120 years. If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more about our review process.

There's just nothing like a good summer reading experience. Call them "beach reads," "summer flings," or just "great books that come out between May and September," the best summer books of 2023 will make you feel like you're relaxing in the sun no matter what the weather's like.

Some of your favorite authors have fabulous new titles dropping just in time for summer break ( hello , Emily Henry and Riley Sager!), and plenty of debut authors and under-the-radar hits are also ready to blow your socks off. No matter what your summer reading style, you're bound to find something to love on this list. Pick up a stack of these to carry with you wherever the sun takes you — and when you're done, dive into the Good Housekeeping Book Club for even more feel-good fare.

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Harriet and Wyn’s friend group has vacationed at the same Maine house for a decade, so when it goes up for sale, they’re determined to soak up one last week of fun. There’s just one problem: Harriet and Wyn haven’t told their crew they’re no longer engaged, so they’re stuck sharing a room to keep up the ruse. But is it all really just for show, or are sparks flying?

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal

Grab yourself a cold one from the garage fridge while you get to know the lovably flawed characters surrounding the Lakeside Supper Club, a quintessentially Midwestern restaurant that has been both the albatross and salvation of proprietress Mariel's family for generations. When a devastating tragedy strikes, Mariel and her husband Ned (himself a restaurant heir of a different kind), they've got tough choices to make — and you'll feel their struggle like it's your own.

The Guest by Emma Cline

The Guest by Emma Cline

Head to the Hamptons if only in your mind with this expertly painted observation on power and access. The beautiful and manipulative Alex has charmed her way into her older (and richer) boyfriend's life in the elite enclave. But when he unceremoniously dumps her a week before his big Labor Day bash, she's determined to somehow hide out on Long Island until confront him at the end-of-summer blowout. Come for the real estate envy, stay for the ~drama~.

Quietly Hostile: Essays by Samantha Irby

Quietly Hostile: Essays by Samantha Irby

Pro-tip: Don't even try to drink anything while working your way through this gut-busting essay collection by the TV writer and essayist who gets real about everything from her QVC habit to her maladjusted pandemic puppy. Life can get messy, and Irby is all for getting down and dirty about it and in that, we all win.

Late Bloomers by Deepa Varadarajan

Late Bloomers by Deepa Varadarajan

Recently divorced Suresh and Lata are trying to find love again after a 36-year marriage. Suresh keeps striking out on the apps, while Lata relishes her independence until a handsome academic comes calling. Meanwhile, their children have their own romantic struggles that they’d rather keep hidden from their parents. But the truth will out, and when it does, a hilarious comedy of errors ensues.

The God of Good Looks by Breanne Mc Ivor

The God of Good Looks by Breanne Mc Ivor

Former model Bianca Bridge has always wanted to be a writer, so when the notoriously tyrannical Obadiah Cortland hires her to run his makeup magazine, she jumps at the chance. But when a powerful ex-lover threatens everything she’s made of herself, she finds support where she least expects it.

Girls and Their Horses by Eliza Jane Brazier

Girls and Their Horses by Eliza Jane Brazier

Calling all former horse girls: This is the thriller you've been waiting for. Heather Parker signs her daughters up for show jumping lessons at the tony Rancho Santa Fe Equestrian, where a borderline-abusive head trainer and his broodingly handsome star rider rule over a cast of cliquey teens and their hovering Barn Moms. But there's something darker going on than perfecting their form, and pretty soon, the Parkers find themselves involved in a lot more than competitions.

Save What's Left by Elizabeth Castellano

Save What's Left by Elizabeth Castellano

This beach read will make sure you never want to buy a beach house. When Kathleen Deane's husband Tom decides to leave their 30-year marriage and safe-but-drab Kansas life to find himself, Kathleen does him one better and buys a little beachfront cottage in Whidbey, an artsy seaside community. But when she gets there, she discovers a monstrosity of a McMansion going up next door, and goes on the offensive against its many code violations (and eyesores) with her busybody neighbor Rosemary. In this hilarious farce, we realize that paradise really is anything but when you actually live there.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager

The Only One Left by Riley Sager

If parents want their kids to stay away from steep cliffs, just hand them this summer's Sager blockbuster. It's 1983 and in-home caregiver Kit gets assigned to care for the notorious Lenora Hope, who massacred her entire family one bloody night in 1929, as the lore goes. But they were never able to prove it, so Lenora has been cloistered in her cliffside mansion ever since. Rendered mute by a series of strokes, she can only communicate to Kit by painstakingly typing on a typewriter. But when Lenora starts to trust Kit enough to tell her what really happened that night, things take a dark turn toward one of Sager's signature gasp-inducing twists.

Excavations by Kate Myers

Excavations by Kate Myers

Elise, Kara, Z and Patty are four women all working on the same remote archaeological dig site in Greece, but that's about all they have in common. Kara’s a put-together conservator about to call off her wedding, while Patty would do about anything to find love. Z ends up on the dig after getting dumped and fired, and Elise, the best excavator on site, has got no more rhymes-with-ducks left to give. So when they uncover something at the site that could change history forever, they've got to decide whether they can put their differences aside to make a real difference.

Goodbye Earl: A Revenge Novel. by Leesa Cross-Smith

Goodbye Earl: A Revenge Novel. by Leesa Cross-Smith

You don't have to know The Chicks' song of the same name to love this deliciously devilish tale. It follows best friends Rosemarie, Ada, Caroline, and Kasey from the halcyon high school days of ruling their idyllic small town of Goldie, to a wedding weekend over a decade later when they all reunite to find little has changed — and everything has. This novel is as sweet as Southern tea, and you might find it carries poison just as well.

The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships by Ali Bryan

The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships by Ali Bryan

The residents of Crow Valley take karaoke so seriously that even an escaped murderer on the loose can't derail the championship competition. And no one loved it more than the late Dale, prison guard, firefighter and wizard at the mic. A year after his death, five residents get caught up in more drama than flubbed lyrics and wardrobe malfunctions in a madcap romp that will have you laughing all the way to the last page.

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Collaborative Summer Library Program

CSLP firmly stands against all racist practices, violence and continued oppression of our African American community as well as Indigenous and People of Color. We stand in solidarity with those advocating justice and equal opportunity for everyone. We support those protesting against systemic racism and government corruption.

CSLP is committed to empower libraries to foster community free from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, or any other status. We do not condone hate, racism and intolerance of any kind.

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Preparing children for success by developing early language skills.

Helping young children build reading and language skills.

Motivating teens to read and discuss literature.

Encouraging adults to experience the joy of reading.

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CSLP offices will be closed for President’s Day Monday, February 19th.

There will be no customer service during this time.  Orders can still be placed in our shop.

The Best Amazon Presidents' Day Deals on Kindle E-Readers: Save On the Kindle Paperwhite, Scribe and More

Amazon Kindle Deals

Amazon has the best Presidents' Day deals on e-readers from the Kindle Paperwhite Signature to Kindle for kids.

Book lovers looking for a portable and comfortable reading experience can save on a new Kindle e-reader with Amazon Presidents' Day deals . Whether you enjoy reading outside or just reading under the covers, Kindle e-readers offer a convenience that's hard to beat. 

Right now, Amazon is offering deals on a number of its Kindle devices for up to 24% off. You can get the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition Bundle, regular Paperwhite bundle, and Kindle for kids at a discount for access to a ton of books no matter where you are. 

Thanks to their flush-front design and glare-free display, Kindle Paperwhites read like real paper, even in bright sunlight. The adjustable color temperature makes nighttime reading just as simple. You can store thousands of titles and take all the books  with you without worrying about battery life since a single charge last weeks, not hours. With Kindle Unlimited, you'll get unlimited access to over 2 million titles, thousands of audiobooks , and more.

With its 6.8-inch display lit from the sides and adjustable lighting, the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite helps minimize eye strain and it’s also waterproof. Shop all the best Amazon Presidents' Day Kindle deals, below. 

Best Amazon Presidents' Day Deals on Kindle Devices & Bundles

Kindle paperwhite kids.

Kindle Paperwhite Kids

The Kindle Paperwhite Kids has a larger black & white 6.8” glare-free display and up to 10 weeks of battery life to help establish healthy reading habits. 

$170   $130

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition Essentials Bundle - Cork Cover

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition Essentials Bundle - Cork Cover

The Kindle Paperwhite is still one of the best ways to read an ebook. Plus, when on vacation it will make traveling with more than one book super convenient.

$273   $253

Kindle Scribe Essentials Bundle

Kindle Scribe Essentials Bundle

Read and write as naturally as you do on paper. The latest Kindle Scribe features the world’s first 10.2” glare-free Paperwhite display and included Basic Pen.

$500   $440

Kindle Essentials Bundle including Kindle (2022 release)

Kindle Essentials Bundle including Kindle (2022 release)

Get a great value on this 2022 release Kindle Paperwhite bundle. The fabric Kindle cover is also available in blue, pink, and black as well. 

$150   $135

Kindle Paperwhite Essentials Bundle

Kindle Paperwhite Essentials Bundle

The Kindle Paperwhite has up to 10 weeks of battery life making sure your reading time is rarely interrupted. The glare-free display and waterproof capacity allow you to enjoy your book in endless outdoor settings. This Essentials Bundle includes a Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon Fabric Cover, and Power Adapter. 

$195   $175

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition Essentials Bundle

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition Essentials Bundle

Get more with the Kindle Signature Edition: this has everything the Kindle Paperwhite does, plus wireless charging, auto-adjusting front light, 32 GB storage, wifi, without ads, & comes with an Amazon Leather Cover.

$265   $245

For more deals happening around Presidents’ Day weekend, shop our picks for the  best 2024 Presidents' Day Sales .

Sign up for More Deals Here!

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2024 summer reading skills programs.

Submitted by Amber Shultice on February 8, 2024

children reading

2024 Summer Reading Skills Programs   

Programs Offered in Jackson 

This summer, help your child become a confident, enthusiastic reader. Summer Reading Skills Programs are offered by Mississippi State University, Center for Continuing Education, and designed and taught by instructors from the Institute of Reading Development.  

Strengthen Skills, Build Confidence, Enjoy Reading   

These single-grade programs teach key reading skills, from phonics and sight words for younger children to comprehension, reading speed, and textbook strategies for older kids, and everything in between.   

Guided by a knowledgeable and supportive teacher, students in these programs experience success with reading again and again, developing their skills and building confidence in outstanding books at the right level of challenge for each age.   

Your child will avoid the many challenges of summer learning loss and become an avid reader who enjoys reading for school and for pleasure.  

How the Programs Work  

Your child will attend weekly classes that build skills and provide great experiences with terrific books – books that are filled with interesting characters, exciting storylines, and engaging themes. Between classes, your child will practice reading and complete fun, interactive lessons that develop core skills and build confidence.   

An Institute of Reading Development teacher will provide all the support and instruction your child needs to grow as a reader and student. Your child will get a jumpstart on the next school year and be ready to make it a big success!   

Let’s Discuss Your Child’s Reading Development.  

Call to speak with a reading program advisor.  

1-800-964-8888  

Learn more about the reading programs and view schedules.   

Secure Your Child’s Spot Today! Class Size is Limited.   

New College Opens at MSU

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La Liga

Kylian Mbappe’s camp has doubts over Real Madrid offer, PSG also waiting

Paris Saint-Germain's French forward #07 Kylian Mbappe is seen during the French Cup last sixteen football match between Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Brest (Stade Brestois 29) at the Parc des princes stadium in Paris, on February 7, 2024. (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP) (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP via Getty Images)

Kylian Mbappe is yet to communicate a decision over whether he will stay at Paris Saint-Germain or join Real Madrid on a free transfer this summer.

According to several sources familiar with the situation, Mbappe was leaning towards joining Madrid but influential members of his entourage have been left unconvinced by the Spanish club’s offer, which is delaying the process. Sources consulted for this article cover a range of voices across each of the three parties involved in the case — and they all requested anonymity to protect their positions.

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As The Athletic previously reported, Mbappe has known since early January the conditions Madrid are willing to offer him. With the Frenchman’s PSG contract set to expire after June 30, they have been free to discuss terms as he is into the final six months of his deal in France.

Madrid’s proposal was lower than what was made available to him during the club’s previous negotiations over a transfer from PSG in May 2022, but it would still make Mbappe the best-paid player in Madrid’s squad.

According to sources familiar with those talks two years ago, Mbappe was offered a €130million (£110m; $140m at current rates) signing bonus and a salary of €26m per year in 2022.

PSG, meanwhile, several months ago presented the 25-year-old with a wide range of options to stay, with contracts ranging in length from short-term to long-term, which remain active and would see Mbappe remain around his current salary at the French club — sources say this is €75million after tax, before any bonuses.

summer reading 2022

Madrid’s president Florentino Perez has been in direct contact with Mbappe and has been the main driving force behind the Spanish club’s latest move for a player who turned them down two years ago, despite at one point them feeling sure he had agreed to move.

go-deeper

Breaking down the brilliance of Mbappe, the man who can score any type of goal

Madrid are not able to match PSG’s offer, but sources with knowledge of the case say Perez feels that he has once again done everything possible to sign Mbappe and still hopes and believes he will accept. The Madrid president has attempted to convince Mbappe that signing for Madrid would take his profile to another sporting and marketing level. One source said that Perez has been “unusually closely” involved in the negotiations. In this case, however, there can be no guarantees — and such efforts proved fruitless in the past.

As talks progressed in early January, Madrid communicated to Mbappe’s representatives that they wanted to resolve this latest chapter of what has been a long-running transfer saga by mid-January. They have always been to avoid a repeat of what happened in May 2022.

But this ‘deadline’ was not welcomed by the player’s entourage, as they felt they needed more time. At the Santiago Bernabeu, sources are still waiting for a definitive answer that they expect will arrive “soon”.

Initially, Mbappe gave positive indications to Madrid, and the mood over a deal finally being reached had been positive in recent weeks. The optimism was such that it was conveyed to Carlo Ancelotti that everything pointed to the Frenchman being at his disposal from next summer.

However, sources consulted say that the player’s entourage is divided on how to proceed. According to them, important voices among Mbappe’s camp point out that Madrid’s offer is below what Mbappe earns at PSG, or could earn from another potential suitor.

However, key figures at the Parc des Princes have in recent weeks felt more pessimistic about securing Mbappe’s renewal. Sources at the club recalled that the player last summer decided against taking up an option to stay for an extra year, and they are aware that he has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Real Madrid.

Sources at PSG say the club feels relaxed about the situation. They feel protected economically by the fact Mbappe passed up the opportunity to collect a bonus that was due to him last summer, to the value of at least €80million. On a sporting level, the club insists it is committed to building a balanced project that does not depend on individuals but has the collective in mind first of all.

(Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images)

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Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. Try a week on us.

Mario Cortegana

Mario Cortegana Santos is a Football Writer for The Athletic covering Real Madrid. He has followed Los Blancos since 2019 at Diario AS, Goal.com and MARCA. He usually appears on Gol TV and is a main collaborator in the YouTube show The Four Amigos Podcast. He has covered the EURO 2020 and Qatar 2022. Follow Mario on Twitter @ MarioCortegana

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