I believe that summer reading should be free-flowing and unplanned. Pick up, set down, lose, or leave distorted by humidity or crusted with sand.
Much of this content is scheduled for publication in the upcoming six weeks. Some that were first released in the spring but are now better suited for the summer.
Crime writer S.A. Cosby, at the height of his abilities, subtly references The Godfather in King of Ashes (June 10), albeit it can occasionally be more ambitious: When the domineering son of a small-town Southern cremation owner returns to the family business after his wife vanished years earlier, he discovers that it is in debt to a different family of murderers. Steven Spielberg and the Obamas are adapting it for a Netflix series, and it’s exciting and queasy.
The ethereal, cultural testing ground for a student who believes his panic attacks are connected to Greek myth and a vaguely ominous clubhouse called the Barn is suburban Chicago upbringing, according to Michael Clune’s Pan (July 22), the author of the terrifying 2013 book about heroin addiction, White Out.
Fans of James Baldwin will enjoy the final days of summer with Baldwin: A Love Story (released on August 19). It’s the first substantial biography in decades, and Nicholas Boggs’ method—which is both inspiring and annoying at times—tells the author’s life via Baldwin’s connections with collaborators and lovers.
Mark Twain, the greatest hits, with a focus on unpublished works, Twain the shady businessman, Twain the fame junkie, and Twain the unknown Zelig, comes back with Ron Chernow, the modern king of doorstop biographies (Hamilton, Washington).
Take a moment to appreciate the titles: Clam Down by Anelise Chen and The Girls Who Grew Big (June 24) by Leila Mottley. Inside is also good: After her viral smash, Nightcrawling, Mottley discovers a new outlet for stories about coming-of-age, sketches of young mothers, and heartbreaks and resistance.
Claiming to be a memoir, Clam Down plays with form so deftly that I kept forgetting it wasn’t fiction. The author takes her mother’s misspelled emails seriously after a divorce: She will, in fact, calm down and use the lowly crab as a role model for her future, drawing within. A story about a breakup, natural history, and family. Completely unique.
In its own way, Charlottesville’s account of August 2017 and the admirable individuals on both sides who came together over a Civil War statue evokes a simmering uneasiness reminiscent of High Noon. Journalist Deborah Baker finds decades of context and an era-defining immediacy to a momentous event that is sometimes reduced to tiki torches, even though it happened ten years ago.
This summer, are you looking for an entertaining read? Astute? But classic, too? One of my favorite small publishers, Valancourt Books, has reprinted six of Robert Bloch’s books. Bloch later wrote Psycho, the movie’s inspiration. In addition, he was among the 20th century’s most significant terrifying authors. Let’s start with short stories: 15 pulpy stories about witches, devils, and carnivorous houses are collected in Pleasant Dreams, published in 1960. With a hint of Chandler angst, Picador has began a three-year reprint of 70 of Georges Simenon’s novels, whose Inspector Maigret became renowned as the French Sherlock Holmes. Start with The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (1931), where Maigret’s guilty conscience is the main issue.
True Grit by Big Lebowski, rippling in 2025 disgust, is released on June 10. Thus, it’s both desperate and humorous. Former journalist Rhys Kinnick is a lasting outcast, sculpted by the usually underappreciated Jess Walter (Beautiful Ruins). He throws his mobile phone away, punches his MAGA son-in-law, and hides in a cabin until a militia takes his grandchildren. It’s both a sharp stick in the eye and a retreat for a summer reader.
It is humorous to read That’s How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor. The Daily Show’s Roy Wood Jr. discusses the Apollo bombing. A discussion about toilets in West Virginia. Grandmothers who say: I dislike having others watch me while I work. Take your time reading and enjoy it.
Ten years of stories by New Yorker writer Evan Osnos on the grotesquely wealthy are collected in The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich. Mark Zuckerberg’s profile. How to get a pop star to perform at a birthday celebration. Disgraced investor bros can find support groups. Though gently, you will toss this book across the room.
Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel is merely a work of hazy fiction. It narrates the tale of Alison Bechdel, a cartoonist and pygmy goat farmer from Vermont, whose memoir—like the real Bechdel’s Fun Home—becomes a bestseller and transforms her relationship with her family and neighbors. Additionally, it is a humorous critique of cultural pretense on both the left and the right, with the left being the most scathing.
Good, binge-worthy books are always available from Rich Cohen. The Jennifer Dulos Story: Murder in the Dollhouse is nothing more than tabloid fare. The ugliest of deaths result from a color guard of red flags above a Connecticut hamlet in a fractured marriage amid American nobility.
Martha Bayne’s passion project, Nothing Compares to You: What Sinead O Connor Means to Us (July 22), is a long-overdue collection (by Megan Stielstra, Neko Case, and others) that touches on protest, resilience, and how O Connor’s career, in Stielstra’s words, survives in the body. Analyzing a legend without compromising a mystery is the challenging part.
Bruce historian Peter Ames Carlin’s Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run (Aug. 5) demonstrates the unreserved admiration that is characteristic of Boss adulation, but his painstaking portrayal of a struggling artist creating his own mythology is particularly compelling.
Similar to this, there is no addendum to The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership That Rocked the World (Aug. 5). While Peter Guralnick’s well-known two-part biography of Presley was authoritative, a superb writer uses a wealth of unpublished letters to confound long-standing charges of exploitation directed against Parker.
What better way to capture the essence of summer than a book about friendships breaking down over vacation? Akin to John Updike’s, Hal Ebbott’s Among Friends (June 24) illustrates how class anxiety and excessive familiarity can destroy the ties that bind two families together in a rural house. In keeping with his underappreciated thriller The Stolen Coast, Dwyer Murphy’s The House on Buzzards Bay (June 24) infuses a David Lynchian dreaminess into a whodunit concerning a close-knit group of college pals getting back together on Cape Cod. After a disappearance, there comes an intrusion.
Publishing refers to Laura Lippman’s most recent book, Murder Takes a Vacation (published on June 25), as cozy—that is, cuddly. In Paris, a grandma who works as Lippman’s Tess Monaghan P.I.’s assistant draws an unexpected lover. Like Megan Abbott or Stephen King, Lippman has such a confident voice that you don’t mind the similarity. Abbott is fortunately back with El Dorado Drive (June 24), which tells the story of a pyramid scam that entices multiple ladies into a risky relationship.
Tribune News Service, Chicago
