12 must-read books for summer season 2026: From true crime to improbable fiction

Summer was made for gradual, languid days and tales that linger lengthy after the ultimate web page. We’ve curated a few of the upcoming season’s standout titles, from immersive novels to gripping nonfiction. Yearning for a witty memoir or a lush Costa Rica setting? Maybe a laugh-out-loud political satire? Perhaps you may need to time-travel to Eve Babitz’s glamorous and gritty Los Angeles, or chunk right into a high-octane thriller. Pour your self a chilly drink, listed here are our e book reviewers’ picks to start out planning your sizzling summer season stack.
— Sophia Kercher

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FICTION

Rasputin Swims the Potomac
By Ben Fountain
Flatiron
(June 9)

Fountain’s 2012 hit novel “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” is a masterpiece of satire, and someway, he’s managed to do it once more. His newest e book — which may be very troublesome to condense into a brief merchandise, however let’s strive — tells the story of a U.S. president and actuality present star in search of a 3rd time period in workplace, however whose marketing campaign is threatened by a mysterious sickness sweeping the nation that causes folks to interrupt out weeping. There’s additionally a reporter named Clarence Thomas Jr., an ex-country music star with a White House job, and the titular professional wrestler, who may need paranormal powers. It’s lots, for certain, however Fountain pulls it off along with his gleefully absurd humorousness. — Michael Schaub

It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories
By Sigrid Nunez
Riverhead Books
(July 14)

Years in the past, I as soon as had the pleasure of talking with Nunez over Zoom, and even then, I felt I used to be within the presence of one of many nice writers of our time. It’s simple to admire her work — anybody who has learn her will agree, particularly readers of “The Friend,” which received the National Book Award. After a celebrated profession, she returns with a group of 13 quick tales that discover mortality, thorny relationships and mental curiosity — hallmarks of her writing. Each piece reads like a finely crafted essay, enriched by astute literary references and poignant observations. With exceptional tenderness, Nunez navigates themes of growing older, loss of life and psychological sickness. Reading her work appears like having lunch together with your smartest, wisest, most empathetic pal. — Maddie Connors

Yellow Pine
By Claire Vaye Watkins
Riverhead Books
(July 21)

Rose, the hero of Watkins’ third novel, is torn. How a lot of her life does she dedicate to domesticity, now that she’s reunited along with her ex, Miles? And how a lot does she dedicate to Nothingness Flats, her house within the Mojave Desert that’s being uprooted and flattened for the sake of an enormous photo voltaic array? Watkins’ story thrives in exposing the dilemmas that local weather change has more and more compelled us into, and he or she writes with a knowledge that’s knowledgeable by traditional books about desert life — Edward Abbey, Joy Williams, Ben Ehrenreich and extra all get name-checked — alongside her personal lyrical observations in regards to the advanced desert ecosystem. — Mark Athitakis

Cloudthief
By Nathaniel Rich
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(July 14)

Rich, who’s written two severe, well-researched books about local weather change, assumes a noirish tone for his fourth novel, an ersatz heist story narrated by Tim, a journalist whose profession choices have been withering as badly because the surroundings. While seizing on a narrative about Manhattanites dwelling in storage services, he meets Virginia, with whom he concocts a plan to infiltrate an enormous Oklahoma information heart. “Cloudthief” serves as a vigorous thriller, but it surely’s additionally an knowledgeable indictment of how a lot we sacrifice — environmentally and intellectually — once we casually offload our collective knowledge onto resource-hoovering services which have turn out to be the “nerve ganglia of our society.” — M.A.

Beginning Middle End
By Valeria Luiselli
Knopf
(July 28)

Valeria Luiselli surprised the literary world along with her 2019 novel “Lost Children Archive,” which fantastically explored themes of household and immigration. Her new novel revisits these subjects with the identical intelligence and wit. It follows the narrator and her 12-year-old daughter as they journey to Sicily, visiting the location the place the narrator’s grandmother, an archaeologist, labored years earlier than. Both mom and daughter replicate on the troubles besetting their very own household, because the mom tries to write down a novel. Luiselli’s prose is elegant as ever — she handles troublesome themes with grace, and the 2 primary characters show to be unforgettable. It’s shortly turning into obvious that Luiselli is among the nation’s most gifted novelists. — M.S.

Crocodilopolis
By John Manuel Arias
Bloomsbury
(Aug. 25)

Arias’ follow-up to his 2023 debut novel, “Where There Was Fire,” is a lush, sweeping story about two Costa Rican brothers, Seth and Osario, who’re the troubled inheritors of the nation’s political upheavals in addition to their very own household drama. As Seth seethes about his separation from his house nation (and the household fortune), Arias interweaves a backstory involving assassination, undisclosed parentage and (because the title suggests) the perilous creatures slithering throughout the panorama. Evoking classics of the ‘60s and ’70s Latin American growth, the novel is sensual and darkly comedian, suffused with the sense that, as Arias writes, “fate was a cruel, playful thing.” — M.A.

NONFICTION

Trash! A Garbageman’s Story
By Simon Pare-Poupart
Melville House
(June 16)

One man’s trash is one other man’s memoir. At least, in line with Pare-Poupart. What we throw away doesn’t take lengthy to resurface, typically within the type of a witty, sensible and gripping memoir. Translated from French, Pare-Poupart’s must-read memoir follows his journey as a rubbish man in Montreal and the individuals who decide up what we want to depart behind. Who higher to inform the story of the town than the person who has spent years rifling by way of its junk? The memoir serves as a captivating and sensible meditation on trash, consumerism and sophistication. Imagine if Anthony Bourdain had been your rubbish man. Pare-Poupart by no means veers into self-pity; the truth is, he loves his job, and readers will love this e book. — M.C.

Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were)
By Eve Babitz
New York Review Books
(June 23)

Nine months in the past, I wrote a letter to a person who broke my coronary heart and by no means despatched it. I deemed this an act of maturity and self-preservation, positively not cowardice. Besides, no sense in losing good writing on a foul man. Thankfully, Babitz did precisely that — no rambling ideas, petty accusations or amusing missives left unsaid. Finally, bitterness triumphs! For our pleasure, a group of her letters to associates, household and ex-lovers is being revealed. The ensuing e book is scandalous, humorous and scrumptious. It’s Babitz at her finest. She’s the one who acquired away, if solely to return again to present you a bit of her thoughts. Some of the letters are sentimental and shifting. Others are salacious — the sort of letters we would write if we had been braver, bolder, properly, Eve Babitz. — M.C.

American Alt: A True Story of Madness and Friendship in a Fractured Country
By Chris Lockhart
Bloomsbury
(July 7)

How do you start to place again the items of a fractured thoughts? That’s the query Marine veteran Michael Dodd requested after he discovered himself in a psychiatric hospital after plotting to kill Jay Inslee, then-governor of Washington, in 2021. Dodd was later identified with schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and requested his pal Lockhart, a medical anthropologist, to assist him work out what introduced him to his lowest second. Lockhart explores themes of psychological sickness, conspiracy theories and trauma with intelligence and compassion, and his writing is first-rate. This is a sometimes-chilling e book, however — on this significantly fraught second in American historical past — a completely important one. — M.S.

You Won’t Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters
By Rachel Aviv
Knopf
(July 7)

My executioner, my finest pal, my best champion — I’m speaking about my mom, after all. She drives me loopy. And but, not way back, I felt the sudden impulse to tattoo her identify on my arm. I don’t know any girl who doesn’t reside some model of this life, locked in a sentimental, twisted waltz with the troublesome girl who raised her. Mercifully, Aviv has bravely tried to untangle the mother-daughter dynamic and convey it into the sunshine. Drawing on tales she reported for the New Yorker about moms and daughters, Aviv examines their roles and the methods they arrive to outline each other. With prose so heartfelt and insightful, I used to be in tears by the preface. — M.C.

Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
By Pamela Colloff
Knopf
(July 14)

ProPublica reporter and New York Times Magazine employees author Pamela Colloff has earned a well-deserved repute for her considerate writing on the American felony justice system. In her gripping first e book, Colloff considers the case of Paul Skalnik, a fabulist, con man and predator who falsely claimed a person he was in jail with admitted to killing a 14-year-old lady; the person was despatched to loss of life row by prosecutors, and Skalnik gained freedom. It wasn’t the primary time Skalnik lied to get out of jail. Colloff’s reporting is, as traditional, dogged and exhaustive, and the e book reads like a thriller, however by no means sacrifices the humanity of the folks Skalnik damage. It’s a hell of an achievement. — M.S.

Tin Can Coast: A History of Industry, Greed, and Fishing in the Golden State
By Joseph Ogilvy
Bloomsbury
(July 21)

Sardines, tuna and abalone have all sooner or later been ample alongside the California Current, a 1,900-mile stretch of the Pacific that has been ripe for explorers and fishers for hundreds of years. And as Ogilvy, a author and chef, makes clear on this thorough historical past, it’s an space that’s additionally been topic to battle and exploitation, from Spanish and Russian authorities squabbling over otter poaching within the 1800s to the demise of the tuna business within the Nineteen Eighties. Ogilvy’s e book is a examine of the historical past and dangers of overfishing, but it surely’s additionally highly effective nature writing, wealthy along with his personal first-hand observations, together with a vigorous story in regards to the penalties of rapacious capitalism, worldwide disputes and technological innovation. — M.A.