I grew up in a very small, very isolated town (we were a test market for Kraft Foods because we were so isolated…). Traveling to a different state was a big to-do. Traveling to a new country was pretty much an impossibility. But that never stopped me. By the time I got my first passport, I had already traveled all over the world, from the highest peaks of the Andes to the most remote Polynesian islands.

Here’s what I believe about books: they let you live in another world for a little while. The right one walks you through a country’s kitchens, its ruins, and its oldest stories. That was my first way of traveling, and it’s still the one I do the most.

Which is why I’m bringing you this new series: A Reader’s Guide to Travel. Every so often, I’ll pick a place and build a reading list to give you a peek into that country, whether you’re prepping for a trip or traveling from the comfort of your couch.

A quick word on how I use this, because the last thing I wanted to build was a curriculum. I’m a magpie. I follow whatever shiny thing catches my interest and find a book about it.

So expect 3000-year-old classics to beach romances to drunken philosophy parties, and everything in between. Please note that I have not read all of these books, and this is as much a reading list for me as it is for you!

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

The Odyssey by Homer (Emily Wilson translation)

If you’re going to start anywhere, it sort of has to be here, right? Wilson’s 2017 translation is the one that made Homer readable again for people who bounced off the versions they were assigned in school. Plain-spoken English with no fuss. The story is a man trying to get home from a war and getting blocked for ten years by monsters, witches, gods, and his own character flaws (of which there are many…)

Reading the Classics as part of our exploration of Greece isn’t homework. It’s like hearing the original recording of a song you’ve only ever heard through cover versions. “Oh,” you think, “So this is where it all came from.”

PS: If you’re an audiobook lover like me, the audiobook version of Wilson’s translation is narrated by Claire Danes. It is an Audible exclusive, however. (book)

Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe gets only a handful of pages in The Odyssey. She’s the witch on the island who turns men into pigs, and not much more is told about her. The story focuses much more on the men who encounter her. In Circle, Miller writes her whole backstory: exile at fourteen, centuries alone on Aiaia, and a son she has to hide from her own family.

This is my favorite of Miller’s myth retellings, and that’s saying a lot because she’s exceptionally good at what she does. I suggest reading it right after The Odyssey while Homer’s version of her is still fresh. It’s also an interesting exercise in letting a woman’s voice shine through in a story we believe we know well. (book / audiobook)

The Symposium by Plato

The Greeks are famous for their philosophers! But I think a lot of us think about Greek philosophy and imagine boring old white guys sitting around pontificating about life in language that’s maybe like Shakespeare? The Symposium is anything but this. Oh no! In this work, a group of friends in ancient Athens (including the illustrious Socrates), get drunk at a dinner party and take turns giving speeches about love.

From the reviews I’ve read, The Symposium is equal parts funny, warm, and strange. Not what you’d expect from a philosophy text, right? Bonus: this is where the idea of searching for one’s “better half” comes from. Swoon. (book / audiobook)

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

I admit, I’ve heard of the term “Zorba the Greek” for years but had no idea where it came from. It comes from this book, one of the most important in modern Greek literature! In Zorba, a bookish, overthinking narrator arrives on the island of Crete to reopen a mine. He hires Zorba, a ravenous, opinionated man who has the habit of dancing at the most inappropriate moments.

A deep dive into a country is incomplete without exploring the literary voices that have shaped it over the past few decades, especially in a country with a history as long as Greece. It is, underneath the plot, a passionate argument about how to actually live, head versus body, caution versus abandon. Read it, and you will understand something essential about the Greek spirit. (book / audiobook)

The American School of Spies by Stephan Talty

I found this new release book completely by accident while browsing the “Greece” tag on Goodreads. It sounds excellent. The American School of Spies tells the story of the OSS’ Greek Desk during WW2. This team of specialized American archaeologists and classicists went undercover during the war to keep Greek antiquities out of the hands of the Nazis, stopping at nothing to keep them safe.

Early reviews rave that this book is written like a heist, despite being non-fiction. Underneath the caper, however, is the Nazi occupation, one of the darkest chapters in modern Greek history. What fascinates me is seeing this period through the fate of the ancient objects that define a culture. (book / audiobook)

The Greeks: A Global History by Roderick Beaton

As an avid history reader, I wanted to find a book to include that examines the full scope of Greek history. This book was the one that kept coming up. Beaton runs from the Bronze Age to the present day, and the whole book keeps circling one question: what has it actually meant to be Greek?

If you’re a history buff, this is required reading! My favorite thing to do after reading a book like this is to pick out the sections that most interested me and find follow-up books to explore those periods deeper. (book / audiobook)

Mythos by Stephen Fry

My sister read this and raved about it. Then my mom listened to it and told me that I really must read it. So I did! It’s excellent, especially considering how central myths and the gods are to understanding Greek culture. Fry really loves these stories, and his enthusiasm shines through on every page.

This is the book that will make the gods feel more like characters on a reality TV show than stuffy archetypes you studied in school. They are the messiest of messy, and this is required reading if you’re interested in exploring more books in the myth retelling genre.

Note: If you are an audiobook person, Fry does a fantastic job narrating this himself. (book / audiobook)

Something Will Happen, You’ll See by Christos Ikonomou

Yes, Zorba is technically modern Greek literature, but it was originally published in 1946. I wanted to include an even more recent literary voice, and Ikonomou was the perfect choice. If you’re a Millennial or older, you probably remember the Greek financial crisis. Something Will Happen, You’ll See is a collection of short stories set in working-class neighborhoods during the worst of this crisis.

This is the Greece that doesn’t make it to Instagram, but that has shaped the lives of the real people living and working in the country. It won Greece’s prestigious Best Short-Story Collection State Award and will tell you more about what that decade actually did to people than any archived news article ever could. (book)

The Parthenon by Mary Beard

Mary Beard is the most readable classicist alive, and this short book is the whole story of the most famous building on earth: how it was built, what it was actually for (not what you think), how it became a mosque and then a gunpowder store that blew up, and the still-raging fight over the marbles Lord Elgin hauled off to London.

It reads like your smartest, funniest friend explaining why the thing you thought you understood is far stranger than you knew. If you want me to recommend more Greek art books, let me know in the comments! (book)

Vacation Wars by Meghan Quinn

We couldn’t complete the list without a book that pays homage to every Greek island fantasy: pure, sun-drenched romance. Tessa arrives in Santorini in the weeks before her sister’s wedding, expecting sandy beaches and zero romantic obligations, until her sister reminds her of a teenage pact to find her soulmate before the big day.

Enter the childhood crush who happens to work at the resort. You know exactly where this is going ;) Read it on the plane, on the beach, or on your back porch pretending the porch is Santorini. (book / audiobook)

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The House of Hidden Letters by Izzy Broom

Another new release, this takes place on the island of Folegandros. A woman wins an abandoned stone cottage on one of the quietest and most romantic of the Cyclades through a one-euro island lottery (which is a real thing happening across rural Greece right now). She then discovers a cache of letters hidden in the fireplace since the Nazi occupation.

Dual timeline, escapist, tender, and guaranteed to send you googling flights to an island you did not know existed an hour ago. (book / audiobook)

Greece: The Cookbook by Vefa Alexiadou

A cookbook? Yes! What better way to transport yourself to the Greek Isles than with a meal? I’ve owned this cookbook for a decade, and it’s one I pick up often. Vefa is essentially the Julia Child of Greek cuisine, the woman who codified regional Greek home cooking for a mass audience.

This is her definitive English-language work in the beautiful Phaidon series. You will be pulling this cookbook down for the next twenty years whenever you need to remember how much lemon goes in the avgolemono. Because it’s Phaidon, it’s also available at many libraries! (book)

Pack Your Bags. It’s Time to Go!

I’m still not getting on a plane this year. But I’ve spent this list in Greek kitchens, ruins, a devastating financial crisis, and one very blue island fantasy. That’s the trick I stumbled into as a kid in a town that barely made the map, and it still works. The entire price of the ticket is a library card.

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So tell me: would you like me to make this a series? If so, which destination would you like to see next?

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Tradwives have gone from fringe curiosity to full-blown cultural phenomenon, and the publishing industry has noticed. There’s now a whole shelf of novels trying to make sense of these women, and I’ve spent the past few months reading many of them, trying to understand what they are trying to say about our culture.

That’s how I came across Elizabeth Richardson’s serialized novel TRAD, published right here on Substack. After reading a few chapters, I was hooked!! So, I did the only thing I could do at that point and DMed her for an ARC. She generously sent me an early copy, and I devoured it.

TRAD is the rare book that manages to seamlessly merge searing commentary and fast-paced, entertaining prose. It’s funny, sharp, and genuinely unsettling (but I don’t want to give any spoilers. Just trust me - Hannah is unhinged in a way that feels like the best, best parts of reality TV).

When I finally surfaced, I asked her the question I couldn’t shake: how much of this is based on your real life? Her answer wasn’t what I expected, and it kicked off a conversation so good I asked if she’d write it down for all of you. So I’m handing the page over to Elizabeth to tell you herself.

Two years ago on Twitter, a woman who went by the name Patriarchy Hannah and claimed to be a submissive, chronically ill stay-at-home-mom with 11 kids was found out to actually be a single woman living in Arkansas. I watched it all unfold in real-time, texting my agent who was similarly following along.

The seeds of inspiration for TRAD were sown. What would motivate someone to do this? How did it start? Did she go into it intending to trick people, or were her intentions good and it all spiraled out of control? These were all things I wanted to explore when I sat down to write. But I didn’t just want it to be a book about a scammer. I wanted to go deeper, to look at both influencer and evangelical culture in tandem.

And I knew I was especially equipped to take it on.

One question that comes up a lot in the comment sections of many chapters of TRAD, as well as in the privacy of my social media DMs, is: how autobiographical is the book?

My book about a broke, single woman in New York City who pretends to be a trad wife online and ends up ruining her life is, without a doubt, a work of fiction.

But shows on the pages, I think, to those who have grown up in fundamentalist or fundamentalist-adjacent religions, that I’ve lived in the world I’m describing on the page. After all, like calls to like. Even after you’ve left it all behind, there are certain words and phrases that will trigger an almost-sleeper cell-like reaction.

I’m not sure if someone who wasn’t raised in evangelicalism can research their way into knowing the hand motions of “Every Move I Make I Make, I Make In You,” or the feeling that lingers in your gut when you remember the purity culture talks you got at youth group.

But when it comes to TRAD and how much of Hannah’s experiences and my own are intertwined, the answer is, probably not as much as you’re imagining. So much of writing is mining your own past and traumas for inspiration, trying to decide what you want to reveal and what you want to keep hidden. It’s pulling out memories that were determined to stay in the recesses of your mind until you yanked them from whatever crevice they were hidden in. It’s examining them, examining your past self with distance, looking at her as one might look at a stranger, but with more empathy and grace than you did even ten years ago, because now you realize everything she was then made you what you are now.

To be clear, I did do that here; I very much did, and that, I think, is what people are responding to.

The evangelical religion I grew up in did leave me with stories that leave my friends who were raised without religion slightly horrified, like the time a youth pastor told a group of us middle school girls that because we thought a singer in the Newsboys (a contemporary Christian rock band, for the unaware) was cute, it was like we’d all had sex with him in God’s eyes. Or how during a youth group trip, one of the chaperones described in detail her experience with demons sitting on her chest.

And there were numerous guilt-trip ridden alter calls at camp, conferences, and the random Wednesday nights where we were bidden, over and over, to search our hearts, to be sure that we were saved, to know without a shadow of doubt that if we died that night, we’d go to heaven. Not quite sure? Better confess every bad thing you’ve done, every unsavory thought you’ve ever had, every time your eye wanders a little too far to one of the in-charge grown-ups (were they all background checked in the early 2000s?), just in case, just to cover all of your bases.

Let’s not forget the time a friend took me to his Pentecostal church, where I witnessed the unique experience of watching people speak in tongues, as shown in the documentary Jesus Camp. Even for someone born and raised in Christianity, it was a completely overwhelming sensory experience, too hot, too loud, too crowded. I left it in tears, not able to make any sense of it.

But in no way did I ever leave a high-control religion and run away without my parents knowing. In fact, I have a really great relationship with my parents and my siblings. I never pretended to be a trad wife online (I hope this, at least, is obvious).

The church I attended was standard Midwestern non-denominational, and it had a mishmash of folks, some more liberal than my family, and some more conservative. I did, however, brush up against families who directly inspired Hannah and the world she grew up in.

Deconstruction was a whole different story, one that I’ve told many times, and continues to evolve even now, especially now that I have kids of my own. My childhood and adolescence feel like a Rorschach test depending on who I’m talking to.

There’s a tension to the explanations I give, due to the position we occupied.

My parents had books written by James Dobson, but they also listened to James Taylor.

I wasn’t allowed to wear a bikini to the pool, but I was allowed to wear pretty much anything else as long as my midriff was covered.

I went on mission trips in high school (including one sponsored by Brio Magazine), but I also went to prom.

When I’m talking to people who were raised more conservatively than me, my upbringing comes off secular, worldly, even wild to some. I feel like I wasn’t “traumatized” enough to be able to write about my experiences in a way that makes me a qualified voice

In the opposite direction, when I’m with people who were raised without religion, or even different religions, it seems oppressive, confusing, and downright alien. Here, I find surer footing; I’m more confident that I won’t be called out for misrepresenting an entire religious system, even though I can only claim my own and rely on research for the rest.

But isn’t that what writing is for all writers? Doing as much research as we can and trusting we’ve gotten as much right as we can? The struggle, the way the imagination of it all strains against the real-life experiences, the memories that fuse with the story we’re trying to get out, hoping someone will read it and resonate with it.

Want To Read More?

You can read Elizabeth’s novel TRAD right here on Substack. She releases new chapters twice weekly!

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If any of this stirred something in you - a memory you’d tucked away, a phrase that still makes your stomach drop, a family you grew up next door to - I want to hear it. Tell us in the comments: what did you recognize?

And if you’ve been reading TRAD, we’d love to know where you landed on the same question everyone keeps asking: how much of it did you believe was real?

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There is exactly one good way through a day like this: go somewhere frozen.

There is nothing like a good Nordic thriller to drop the temperature of a room. While the rest of the world melts, you can be curled up somewhere with a body in the ice, a detective who has not slept in three days, a killer who only strikes under the cover of snow, and a plot that gives you actual chills.

So here are ten of the best Nordic thrillers I can point you to, one from each corner of the map. All of them are certified ice cold.

Note: I’ve also decided to turn on paid subscriptions. Paid subscribers will have access to exclusive posts, reading challenges, printables, and locked portions of paid posts. From now through August 1, you can sign up for 60%, or $1.67 per month (less than the price of a cup of coffee!).

I hope to have you at the smaller table in the back, where we get to know each other a little better.

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A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

The Snowman by Jo Nesbø 🇳🇴

Oslo, the night of the first snow. A boy wakes to find his mother gone and a snowman standing in the garden, facing the house, wearing her scarf.

This is the Harry Hole novel most people start with, and for good reason. It is grim, addictive, and genuinely unsettling. Nesbø is not gentle with his characters, so consider this your heads-up that it earns its darkness. There is a reason this is the first book that comes up when you search for “Nordic Noir.”

(book / audiobook)

Freyja by Margrét Ann Thors 🇮🇸

A single mother in Reykjavík has spent her whole life not thinking about the summer her childhood friend Freyja vanished from a black-sand beach in a remote Icelandic valley. Then the photographs start appearing under her door.

I just finished this one, and I could not put it down. It is atmospheric in the best possible way, and the story literally made my stomach drop and twist multiple times. Margrét Ann Thors just might be one of my new favorite authors!

Note: this is a debut that releases on August 4, so you get to be the friend who found it first.

(book / audiobook)

The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup 🇩🇰

A killer is loose in Copenhagen, leaving a small figure made of chestnuts at every crime scene. When one of them is linked to the year-old disappearance of a politician’s daughter, two mismatched detectives realize the cases are tangled together.

This is by the creator of The Killing, so you already know the atmosphere is going to be immaculate and the plotting airtight. It became a Netflix series, but as always, the book is better.

(book / audiobook)

Hidden in Snow by Viveca Sten 🇸🇪

In the Swedish mountain resort of Åre, a teenage girl vanishes on her way home. A detective who has just fled her own life to hide out up north gets pulled into the search.

Sten built her reputation on the Sandhamn Murders, but this newer series trades the summer archipelago for deep alpine snow. This small-town mystery is deliciously immersive and will have you shivering in no time.

(book / audiobook)

The Witch Hunter by Max Seeck 🇫🇮

A bestselling author’s wife is found dead in their home, frozen in a grotesque smile, posed exactly like a murder from his own occult thriller novels. Then, the killings keep coming, each one staged from his books.

Our Finland pick is dark, cinematic, and impossible to put down, with a genuinely creepy thread of witchcraft running underneath for those of you who can’t wait until October to get your witch lit fix. Seeck is Finland’s biggest crime export at the moment, so this feels like the right time to meet him.

(book / audiobook)

I’m Traveling Alone by Samuel Bjørk 🇳🇴

A 6-year-old girl is found hanging from a tree, dressed for travel, with an airline tag around her neck that reads “I’m traveling alone.” To crack the case, a detective has to coax his brilliant, self-destructing former partner back from the remote island where she went to disappear.

This is the darker, more emotional end of the Nordic spectrum, and is genuinely disturbing. Mia Krüger is one of the great detectives of the genre, and this is where you meet her.

(book / audiobook)

Quicksand by Malin Persson Giolito 🇸🇪

A teenage girl sits in a Stockholm courtroom, on trial after a shooting at her elite prep school. What actually happened, and how a privileged golden life curdled into that morning, unspools slowly and devastatingly across the book.

I read this one and thought about it for weeks afterward. It is less whodunit than how-did-we-get-here, offering sharp insights about class, wealth, and the stories we tell ourselves. It was later turned into a Netflix series, if you finish the book and need more.

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen 🇩🇰

A burned-out Copenhagen detective gets shunted into a basement to run “Department Q,” the office of cold cases nobody wants. His first file: a politician who vanished five years ago and is presumed dead.

This is the launch of the beloved Department Q series and the perfect entry point. It was also loosely adapted into a big Netflix show, so now is a great moment to say you read it before you watched it ;)

(book / audiobook)

The Mermaid by Anki Edvinsson 🇸🇪

Up in the frozen north of Sweden, in Umeå, a woman’s body surfaces in the river, and a young suspect turns up in the town square wearing a bomb vest. Detectives von Klint and Berg have to work out whether the two horrors are connected. This is a gritty, twisty procedural novel with a genuinely jaw-dropping ending.

Note: this is book two in the series, so if you like starting at the beginning, grab Snow Angel first.

(book / audiobook)

The Golden Cage by Camilla Läckberg 🇸🇪

A woman who gave up everything to build her husband’s empire is traded in for a younger model. So she does the only rational thing: plan out cold, meticulous, deeply satisfying revenge.

I am ending on this one because it is the odd one out, and I mean that as a compliment. It is less detective and more ice-cold domestic thriller, a razor-sharp study of a scorned woman with nothing left to lose. This is the perfect palate cleanser after getting to know all those homicide cops.

(book / audiobook)

Stay Cool Out There

Every one of these takes place somewhere dark, frozen, and slightly sinister, which is exactly why they are the perfect antidote to a heat wave. There is nothing like reading about someone trudging through a blizzard toward a crime scene to make you feel almost grateful for the sun.

Almost.

If you build yourself a stack of the best Nordic thrillers this year, I hope a few of these make the cut.

Now I want to hear from you! What is the coldest, creepiest book you have ever read?

If this helped you find something new to read, consider becoming a paid subscriber for exclusive posts, printable reading trackers, and more. Until August 1, you can join for just $1.67 per month or $20/year!

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Not because the Odyssey needs much defending as source material, but because half the pleasure of seeing a film like this is bringing the rest of your reading life into the cinema with you.

Every adaptation is in conversation w…

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This is a slightly longer list than usual because of it. Overall, it was an incredible month of reading, with no less than six 5⭐️ reads. I’ve ranked what I read this month from least favorite to favorite so you can easily find the cream that rose to the top.

Note: I’ve also decided to turn on paid subscriptions. Paid subscribers will have access to exclusive posts, reading challenges, printables, and locked portions of paid posts. From now through August 1, you can sign up for 60%, or $1.67 per month (less than the price of a cup of coffee!).

I hope to have you at the smaller table in the back, where we get to know each other a little better.

Subscribe now

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

19 - Names Have Been Changed by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

After ten years on the run, a fugitive tells the story of her life in a confessional podcast, tracing a decade of false identities and near-misses across Tokyo, London, Colorado, and beyond. It’s pitched as a stylish, fast-paced thriller about immigration and belonging.

I picked it up for the thriller, and it delivered none of that for me. The prose never clicked, and I never engaged with the story enough to care what happened to the protagonist. There’s a real mismatch between how this is marketed and what it actually is, which is slower, more interior literary fiction.

Star Rating: DNF

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18 - Fever Dream by Elsie Silver

A bull rider signs on as the leading man of a reality dating show to save his family farm from bankruptcy, then falls for the one woman he isn’t supposed to want.

The reality-show framing was genuinely fun and what kept me reading, but the dialogue tips into cheesy territory. The chemistry reads as hot but not romantic, and I want a little more emotional swoon in my romance. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★

17 - The Crazies by Amy Gamerman

Nonfiction that follows a real range war in Montana’s Crazy Mountains, where a struggling fifth-generation rancher leases his land for a wind farm and runs straight into the billionaire neighbors who would rather protect their mountain views.

For some nonfiction, the asides make the story. For others, it seems like the author added a bunch of random stuff to hit a certain word count. This is the latter. It’s an interesting story but would have been infinitely better with a more focused scope. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★

16 - The Oracle’s Daughter by Harrison Hill

In 1999, twenty-six-year-old Sarah Green slipped out of a compound in the New Mexico desert and ran, escaping both the paramilitary Christian cult she’d been raised in and its leader, her own mother. Harrison Hill traces the rise and fall of that group alongside a wider history of American cults and the surprisingly porous line between fringe and mainstream belief.

Interesting story about one of the lesser-known American cults. It goes into a lot of backstory about cults and the religious history of the US. It’s a good book, but I ultimately like to feel more like I’m living inside the story than this delivers. (get it here)

Note: there’s very sensitive content in this book, so please check content warnings.

Star Rating: ★★★

15 - Just Like a Dream by Lauren Evans

Olivia loves her small-town life and her job at the World Dream Center, where she designs the dreams that nudge people toward the choices that move the world forward. When an assignment stalls and she’s forced to partner with Connor, her unorthodox high school rival, the sparks between them start to make her question the course she’s been so sure of.

The premise was unlike anything I’d read, and it’s what carried me through. The characters fell flat, though: Olivia’s whole personality is being an eldest daughter, and the love interest reads like a one-dimensional golden retriever boyfriend. I never rooted for them. An interesting premise, hence the three stars, that might have worked better outside the romance frame. (get it here)

Note: This comes out on November 3, 2026.

Star Rating: ★★★

14 - Take Me With You by Steven Rowley

Thirty years into their marriage, Jesse watches his husband Norman step into a strange beam of light in their Joshua Tree backyard and vanish. This event serves as the frame for the year that follows, as Jesse grieves, fields suspicion from neighbors, and works out who he is when he’s no longer one half of a whole.

The premise seems to promise quite a bit of sci-fi, and if that’s what you’re expecting, you’ll be disappointed. This is a story about relationships and growing older inside them. I didn’t find it as hilarious or poignant as the blurb promises. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★½

13 - Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

A bored teenage girl on the French Riviera meddles in her father’s love life, and the careless summer curdles into something with real consequences. Sagan was eighteen when she wrote it.

It reads like a teenager’s musings on a too-long beach trip, until the darkness starts to surface. The best thing I can compare it to is The Great Gatsby on the French Riviera, written by a teenager and with less overt plot. A vibe but not a love. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★½

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12 - People Watching in the Desert by Cali Adeline

Sonny Magee has spent her life on the margins. When she comes into money and lands at a luxury Arizona resort, the distance between the stories she tells herself and the people actually around her starts to close.

The midpoint twist is something I’d never encountered, and without giving anything away, it reframes the whole story. Where it fell short was the emotional connection: it read cool and detached. That distance may be right for its intended reader, so if you like your fiction cerebral and interior, this could land. (get it here)

Note: This comes out on July 14, 2026.

Star Rating: ★★★½

11 - Strangers by Belle Burden

After twenty years of what looked like a happy marriage, Belle Burden’s husband announced with no warning that he was leaving, an affair behind him and the early pandemic closing in. Strangers is her reckoning with that.

As a reading experience, it’s not the best memoir I’ve ever read. It opens at the end so the dread burns off fast, the prose is controlled to a fault, and the privilege can make the stakes feel cushioned. So why four stars? Because I would hand this book to any woman entering a marriage, not for the writing but for the warning. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★

10 - Lovers XXX by Allie Rowbottom

In 1982 Los Angeles, two best friends land in the neon world of the so-called golden age of porn, dancing and then performing as they try to build lives of their own. Told in two parts and stretching across three decades, the novel follows their love, rivalry, and survival.

The beginning of this book is especially bleak and gut-wrenching, and that darkness largely carries through the novel. I wasn’t sure if I could continue after the first few chapters, but I’m glad I did. Beneath the grit is a deep story about bodily autonomy, exploitation, and the relationships that define us. (get it here)

Note: there’s very sensitive content in this book, so please check content warnings.

Star Rating: ★★★★

9 - Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

In Sublimation, crossing a border splits you in two: when you immigrate, one self enters the new country while the other stays trapped back home. Soyoung Rose Kang left Korea at ten and never spoke to her other self again, until her grandfather’s death calls her back for the funeral.

I immediately thought of Severance, but this is more literary, using its high-concept premise to dig into immigration, identity, and the ache of the life you didn’t choose. The conceit could have been a gimmick, but Kim treats it with real emotional seriousness. (get it here)

PS: I’ll be discussing this book live on Substack with Chanel Grant at 1 pm EST on July 10th. Don’t miss it!

Star Rating: ★★★★

8 - When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams

A widowed Lucy returns to her late father’s crumbling New England estate and gets pulled into the pirate-treasure legend that consumed his life. Three timelines weave together: her own teenage summer with Ben, the colonial winter of 1717, and the present-day reckoning with what her father left behind.

I really enjoyed this one. The cover suggests contemporary romance, but it’s so much more. The three timelines are pulled off spectacularly. The modern thread is the standout, fast-paced but still tender, and yes, there are pirates, handled in a way that stays fascinating without ever going cheesy. This is definitely a great “beach read.” (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★

7 - The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander

When Lili Lowe is caught on camera with her married politician boss, she turns to her mother Lydia, a former talent agent. Instead of helping her disappear, Lydia turns the scandal into a fame machine, and Lili and her three sisters learn exactly what public life costs a woman.

I expected a fluffy, scandal-of-the-week read and got something genuinely poignant instead. The premise has all the trappings of a tabloid story, but Alexander is just as interested in the interior lives of these women and the cost their fame creates. The perfect book club pick for summer, especially as a follow-up to Yesteryear. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★

6 - Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

After graduating with a load of student debt, Kate Beaton leaves Cape Breton for the Alberta oil sands, where the money is good, and the work camps are remote, isolating, and overwhelmingly male. This graphic memoir documents what the place does to the people in it and to her.

This was my first graphic novel, and it won’t be the last. A poignant, dread-soaked account of how we treat women, what it costs to leave home for work, and how fast the rules that keep us decent to each other fall away. (get it here)

Note: there’s very sensitive content in this book, so please check content warnings.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

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5 - The Supper Club Saints by

After escaping a cult-like “mommune” where she fell under the spell of a mom influencer, Cass Simon comes home to small-town Wisconsin under a cloud, possibly facing child-endangerment charges. Her return stirs up the women of her family, each wrestling with her own idea of what makes a good mother.

A book hasn’t touched me this much in a long time. The Supper Club Saints has the emotional depth of an Ann Patchett novel paired with a story that feels urgently of this moment. Underneath the premise is something more lasting, a story about family, love, and forgiveness. I can’t stress enough how good this is. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★★

4 - The Grapevine by Craig Robertson &

When her nineteen-year-old daughter vanishes, Lou Gomersall takes the family RV and goes looking for her across California, refusing to accept that the trail has gone cold. A year on, convinced the same predator has taken four other young women, she chases a fresh lead with help from an unlikely network of vanlifers, RVers, and truck-stop regulars.

This is the kind of thriller that doesn’t let you put it down, and I mean that literally: I kept telling myself one more chapter, and then it was suddenly two hours later. Lou is what really makes it land: her determination is relentless enough that you feel every mile of the search with her. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★★

3 - The Shadows Tomorrow by Noëlle Michel

In the near future, a clan of Neanderthals has been recreated from fragments of DNA and released onto a nature reserve, where they unknowingly star as the cast of a hit reality show.

This was incredible and even better than I expected. I went in braced for something fast and plot-driven, which it is, but it’s far more literary than I anticipated. This is not a poppy reality-show romp but a beautiful, unsettling story that makes you think about how we define humanity. Fans of Sea of Tranquility will love it. (get it here)

Note: This comes out on August 4, 2026.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

2 - TRAD by

Hannah, a broke single woman in New York, starts a fake tradwife influencer account, never expecting anyone to take it seriously. Then the account goes viral, the brand deals roll in, and the line between satire and the life she’s only pretending to live starts to disappear.

I loved it. Elizabeth shared the ARC with me after publishing the first few chapters, and I read it in one sitting. It takes the tradwife theme and explores it from a totally unhinged perspective. The writing is impeccable, and I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen to Hannah next. If you’re not already reading this book this summer, you’re missing out.

Read it on Substack here.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

1 - Whistler by Ann Patchett

When Daphne Fuller, an English teacher in her fifties, spots an old man following her and her husband through the Met, he turns out to be the stepfather she hasn’t seen since she was nine. Their brief reunion pulls Daphne back toward a childhood memory and forces that bound the two of them together decades ago.

What can I say that would come close to describing the beauty and perfection that is this book? All I can think to write is that it reminds me, as no book has in years, how marvelous it is to be a reader. If you read one book this summer, this is it. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★

A Month in Review

If you take one book from this list, take Whistler. It’s good enough to deserve a totally made up star rating.

Past that, The Supper Club Saints moved me more than anything has in months, The Grapevine kept me up well past any reasonable hour, and The Shadows Tomorrow really surprised me with what it delivered vs. what it promised.

Even my middle-of-the-pack reads had something to recommend them, which is part of why a sick month on the couch ended up being a genuinely good reading month.

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I’d happily take a less dramatic July, but I’m grateful for the books that kept me company through the worst of it this month.

What did you read this month? I’m always hunting for the next one, so tell me in the comments.

I read most of these from the library, as usual. But if one of them grabbed you and you’d rather own it, here’s a link for 20% off at Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores instead of you-know-who. The complete list of books mentioned in this post is here. Happy reading!

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This year, my word came from a creator named carmscrolls: unoptimized. We’re tired, she said. We don’t want to streamline. We don’t want to do it better, faster, with goals to check off.

There is a particular kind of tired going around right now. Not the kind that a good night of sleep resolves. This exhaustion is the kind that comes from years of treating yourself like a project with a deadline. We have optimized our mornings, our workouts, our grocery runs, and even our sleep. We’ve turned hobbies into side hustles and side hustles into brands.

An unoptimized summer is the opposite of all that.

Here is the part that surprised me. When I heard unoptimized, I did not immediately picture a wellness trend. I pictured being 7 years old. The summers of my childhood had goals, technically. Make a new friend. Don’t get sunburned. Be home by dark. But nobody was tracking anything or asking me to become a better, more productive human. The days were long and shapeless, yet we have spent the years since slowly forgetting that a summer is allowed to be exactly that.

We did not optimize those summers, we just lived them.

Unoptimized does not mean lazy or that you stop caring. It means you stop measuring. There is a difference between a summer you turn into a self-improvement project you complete on the way to something else and a summer you actually live inside of as a real person.

I will admit, I am a little conflicted here because I run a summer reading challenge. A list with a goal can give a shapeless season some spine, and reading challenges encourage me to read outside of my comfort zone. A challenge is one good way to spend a summer. It is just not the only one. Not everyone needs a project, and no one needs one every single year.

This list is for the other kind of summer, the kind with nothing to prove and nowhere to be.

Of course, I can’t not give you a reading list, but this isn’t a 20-book homework assignment. It’s just 9 books that linger and wander and refuse to hand you a finish line. Abandon one on your picnic blanket, and reach for another. Reread the same one all summer if it is the only thing that sounds good. Just please, don’t optimize anything.

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

A shell-shocked veteran spends one golden summer uncovering a medieval mural in a country church. Nothing in particular happens, but the emotion and the vibe are intense. Whenever I need a break from real life, I close my eyes and let my mind wander to Oxgodby. (book / audiobook)

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

A prickly scholar holes up in a freezing village to study the fae, recording it all in field journal entries. This book is cozy, funny, and faintly mysterious. The pleasure lives in disappearing into a world where the line between real and fantasy is precariously thin. (book / audiobook)

To celebrate the launch of my paid tier, you can get a full year of Elle Reads Library books for just $20! That’s $1.67 (less than a cup of coffee!) I’d love to have you join us for exclusive subscriber challenges, access to paid posts, and more.

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The City in Glass by Nghi Vo

A demon haunts the ruins of a city she loved and rebuilds it slowly, across centuries, beside the angel who destroyed it. A story of devotion stretched over time, which is about as unoptimized a premise as it gets. I wish this book got more hype. (book / audiobook)

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

A retired man posts a letter, then keeps walking the length of England in his yachting shoes instead of going home. One of the least efficient journeys in fiction, and all the more moving for it. May this book inspire a few of your own destination-less meanderings. (book / audiobook)

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

A mother tells her grown daughters the story of an important summer in her life while they pick cherries on the family orchard. Tom Lake is slow by design, gorgeous. It’s more about the people than the plot and rewards those who are in no hurry to arrive. The audiobook is read by Meryl Streep and is an experience unto itself. (book / audiobook)

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

A teenage girl idles away a hedonistic summer and ruins everything she touches. Feels like The Great Gatsby on the French Riviera. It’s also compact enough to carry along and read anywhere you go this summer. (book / audiobook)

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

A Wild Man has lived in the deep of the wood for centuries, alone with his cat and his dryads, until a curious folklore scholar buys the hall nearby and starts digging up what should have stayed buried. A slim novella, this one is lush with Green Man myth and old English forest. This is the first in a duology, so if you love it, there’s more to read. (book / audiobook)

Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics by Ina Garten

Hear me out. Nobody has ever made a stronger case for unoptimizing than Ina, whose whole philosophy is that store-bought is fine and the point of dinner is the people at the table, not the performance. Flip through it for the gorgeous photos in the hammock. Make one easy thing for yourself. Have people over without making it a whole to-do. (book)

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley talks his way into a summer on the Italian coast and simply declines to ever work or earn his place again (that not work part is goals…). Think languid sun, crisp linen, and a slow beat of menace underneath. Tom is proof that optimizing your life and improving your character are entirely different things. (book)

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That’s All

The goal this summer is the same one you had when you were 7. Don’t get sunburned, maybe stop for ice cream, and find something nice to read. And I think that’s enough.

Tell me what kind of summer you’re having. Are you a challenge person, or are you opting into a more relaxed season?

While you’re here, give me your most unoptimized book, the one where almost nothing happens, yet you loved every page, so we can all check out your recommendations!

I read most of these from the library, as usual. But if one of them grabbed you and you’d rather own it, here’s a link for 20% off at Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores instead of you-know-who. The complete list of books mentioned in this post is here. Happy reading!

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There is no honest way to fit the whole sto…

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That said, there are some genuine standouts this month, and a lot of solid, interesting books worth making room for.

I’ve sorted everything by genre and flagged the ones I’m most excited about.

To celebrate my new paid tier, I’m offering a crazy deal until Aug 1! You’ll lock in a 60% discount, paying just $1.67/month!! Get access to special paid posts, paid-only printables and challenges, and help me continue creating content like this.

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Table of Contents

• Sci-Fi and Fantasy

• Nonfiction

• Thriller

• Contemporary Fiction

• Historical Fiction

• Literary Fiction

• Horror

• Romance

Sci-Fi and Fantasy

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Habits of the Sea by Shea Ernshaw

There’s an island that won’t stay put. It drifts up the coast from Scotland to Nova Scotia, and the only person on it is a man who hasn’t aged a day in longer than anyone can explain. When a woman finds her way there, what unfolds is a strange, dreamy love story that bends time and folklore around itself.

It’s winter for me, so a book with a foggy and enchanted mood fits my vibe right now.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

Not With a Bang by Temi Oh

The Mintons are exactly as functional as you’d expect a family with a doomsday-prepper dad, a daughter in a UFO cult, and a mom keeping her diagnosis to herself. Then the end of the world actually shows up, right in the middle of the eldest daughter’s wedding.

I really enjoy post-apocalyptic books, and this sounds like it takes on the end of the world from a slightly “lighter” place. I’ve never come across a premise quite so unusual, and I really hope it delivers.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

A Fate Worse Than Drowning by Sarah L. Hawthorn

To save her dying sister, a Nova Scotia lighthouse keeper strikes a bargain she can never take back: she has to lure passing ships onto the rocks. She’s made her uneasy peace with it, until one of the people she’s meant to drown survives and washes up at her door.

Odyssey parallels anyone? The Odyssey has completely taken over my life and interests while I wait for the movie to come out.

Release date: July 21 / (book)

Henry Tudor Must Die by Jillian Laine

On the eve of her execution, Anne Boleyn gets an impossible visitor: Catalina de Aragón, her old rival, with an escape plan and just as much hatred for Henry VIII. The two queens join the Hellebore Sisterhood, a clandestine society of women with a score to settle.

You already know I’m a Tudor nerd. Add genre-blending witchy revenge fantasy on top? Yes, please!

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Nonfiction

How to Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer

A journalist travels the world to report on linguicide, the slow death of roughly half the planet’s 7,000 languages within this century, starting close to home with her own grandmother’s northern Italian dialect.

One of my greatest interests is languages and linguistics. Another is history. This is a literal no-brainer and will be one I put on hold the second it’s ready.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

Sisters of the Midnight Sun: A Murder in Arctic Alaska by Rebecca Wright Stevens

A public defender in Utqiagvik, on Alaska’s Iñupiat North Slope, takes the case of a drifter accused in the still-unsolved 1993 murder of the Ipalook sisters.

Part true crime, part memoir, and a portrait of a community most of us will never have seen up close.

Release date: July 14 / (book)

The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby by Michael Blanding

An investigative look at how the Green family has used the Hobby Lobby fortune to push a Christian-nationalist agenda, fund the Museum of the Bible, and acquire looted antiquities along the way.

I recently read Dark Money by Jane Mayer, and this is the perfect deep dive into the topics discussed in that book, namely money, power, and how billionaires are shaping our culture.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir by Emilee Hackney

An eighth-generation Appalachian from Tazewell, Virginia writes about her Pentecostal upbringing, escaping a controlling and abusive engagement, and the long road that took her to Harvard.

This made me think of Educated meets A Well-Trained Wife, both of which I gave 5 stars. Stories like these are difficult, but are some of the most important for us to read.

Release date: July 28 (book / audiobook)

Honorable Mentions: There are so many fantastic nonfiction books coming out, and I didn’t cover any nonfiction in my roundup last month! Here are a few that I recommend but that didn’t quite make the list above:

• Catch the Devil by Pamela Colloff / July 14

• The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War & Betrayal by Catherine Ostler / July 14

• Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen / July 28

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Thriller

Get Lost by Justin Halpern

The first novel from the guy behind Sh*t My Dad Says. A woman gets roped into finding her missing mother, and her only partner in the search is the deadbeat ex-ballplayer dad she’d happily never see again. Add Russian thugs and a few crooked politicians, and you’ve got a fast-paced ride.

The premise and cover make this book seem light, but reviewers have commented on how deep and emotional the book is. I like thrillers that really make me think.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

The Man by Laura Sims

A 1960s housewife picks up a camera and starts taking self-portraits, and slowly realizes there’s a dark figure standing at the edge of every frame. She becomes convinced it’s a man from her past, the one she’s spent years trying to forget.

This sounds terrifying.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

The Parisian Heist by

This one threads together a broke American art student in 1990s Paris and Jo van Gogh, the real woman who fought to make Vincent’s paintings matter after his death. A lost canvas links them, and the whole thing builds toward a heist inside the Musée d’Orsay. It’s part art history, part family secret, part proper caper, and is overall an incredible ride.

If you read my posts, you’ll know I’ve already read this one. It was easily a 5-star read, so if this appeals to you, reserve/pre-order it without thinking twice. Jo is a master of her craft.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

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The Dahlia Suite by Carinn Jade

A blocked novelist, an actress coming apart at the seams, and a concierge who knows where every body is buried, all circling the same exclusive Caribbean resort as guests start vanishing.

This has that glossy, sun-soaked menace where everyone’s hiding something, plus a faint supernatural shimmer at the edges. That makes it the perfect thing to read in a lounge chair while pretending I’m somewhere with sand and better cocktails.

Release date: July 21 / (book)

Contemporary Fiction

Make Nice by Ryan Effgen

A comedy of manners about the estranged Pickford family, including a snail scientist and a grifter traveling with five pounds of cocaine, all forced together on a ritzy Lake Michigan island.

This is being billed as Sandwich meets The Wedding People, which definitely caught my attention. The Wedding People is one of the novels that most surprised me with its perfect balance of fun and depth, and I’ve been chasing something similar ever since.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

Hustle, Baby by Priya Guns

A story about a family of Sri Lankan Tamil refugee women scraping by on the margins until a swaggering day-trader promises to turn their tiny stake into a fortune. They become his most devoted believers, right up until the markets turn.

The premise has a real bite about how seductive the rags-to-riches promise is for the people it never actually pays out, a topic we discuss often in the Corporate Gossip podcast book club I’m part of.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder

A London debut about an age-gap situationship between a thirty-five-year-old lead copywriter and a twenty-four-year-old barista and poet, and all the small power imbalances modern love papers over.

It’s been compared to Sally Rooney and seems to offer a deeper, darker look into modern love. Seems interesting.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

City of Widows by Nadia Hashimi

Set after the Taliban’s 2021 return to power, City of Widows follows Marjan, a former Afghan army soldier who was raised as a bacha posh, as she fights to protect her daughter in a country that has narrowed sharply around them.

A timely story that shows us just how much our world and our rights can change in an instant.

Release date: July 28 / (book / audiobook)

Historical Fiction

Single Girls by John Searles

A novel built around Helen Gurley Brown in her Cosmopolitan heyday, back when she was rewriting, almost single-handedly, what a single woman was allowed to want. It’s the 1960s, it’s glossy and a little ruthless, and it’s about the woman who told a whole generation they didn’t have to wait around to start living.

Did anyone else watch Minx? I loved that show, and this premise reminded me of it. I hope it’s a similar story!

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

An Infinite Love Story by Chanel Cleeton

At the height of the 1968 space race, an astronaut is lost on a lunar mission. Back on Earth, his wife, a journalist who has spent years being “the astrowife,” starts receiving messages she’s certain are coming from him.

Interstellar is one of my top 5 favorite movies. I generally love space-themed books (but not space operas - important distinction!), and this seems like it packs an emotional punch while also offering a magical twist. Perfect.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

White Elephant by Jeyamohan, translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar

During the Great Indian Famine of 1878, an Irish officer policing colonial Madras starts to see the machinery he serves for what it is: a brutal system of forced labor and caste cruelty propping up the ice trade. Watching him reckon with his own complicity gives the book its slow burn. The Tamil-to-English translation won a PEN/Heim grant.

I don’t know much about this period in history. This also feels like a great one to read after finishing Land by Maggie O’Farrell.

Release date: July 21 / (book)

The Secret Society of Librarians by Kate Thompson

This one moves between the London Blitz and the Łódź ghetto, following the people who kept secret libraries running while the world around them burned. It’s about books as a form of survival, the thing you hold onto when everything else is being taken.

If a story has ever made you believe a library can save a life, like me, this is your kind of book.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Literary Fiction

Should the Waters Take Us by Stephanie Soileau

This debut novel follows one Acadian family across four hundred years, from France to the Louisiana bayou, landing in the present as the Deepwater Horizon spill poisons the water they have always lived on.

It is a big, ambitious book about place, family, and the compromises people make to survive. I generally love a big family saga, so this is right up my alley.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

In Wonderland by Joyce Maynard

One golden Maine summer, a working-class teenager named Frances takes a job as a mother’s helper at a glittering lakeside estate and gets pulled into a world of privilege that is not nearly as charmed as it looks. By Labor Day, someone is dead, and the summer she thought she understood looks very different.

Rich people behaving badly in gorgeous, summery settings is the perfect premise for a summer read.

Release date: July 14 / (book)

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead

The final book in Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy brings furniture-salesman-slash-fence Ray Carney and his dangerous associate Pepper back for three connected heists set across 1980s New York.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this will be one of the biggest books of the summer. If you haven’t read the others in the trilogy, remedy that ASAP. I’ve been obsessively refreshing Libby, waiting for this to come up for hold.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli

A mother and her twelve-year-old daughter take a road trip through Sicily in the wake of a divorce, with a volcano smoking in the background and four generations of women threaded through the story. Luiselli folds in Greek myth and the slipperiness of memory in a way that feels both intimate and enormous.

At the time of writing, Mt. Etna is actively smoking, and The Odyssey will be released later this month. Is it a sign that it’s time to read this book?

Release date: July 28 / (book / audiobook)

Horror

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

A fashion influencer and part-time grave robber in Palm Springs has to survive the night when the dead rockstar she is transporting wakes up. Campy, gory, and weirdly tender, this is being pitched as Drive meets Beetlejuice.

I’m not sure it’s something I’ll pick up myself quite so soon, but I’m including it because so many of my readers have asked about it, and it’s one of the most important horror releases of the year!

Release date: July 7 (book / audiobook)

The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager

A debut about a grad student and a group of academics trapped in a collapsed sea cave while studying a cult devoted to a leviathan, facing trials that demand they atone or die.

I hope this skews darker instead of campy, because the premise sounds like this could be a book that gives you nightmares!

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die by Mallory Arnold

Three women who all dated the same man gather at a snowed-in cabin to plot revenge, the man turns up dead, and then they turn on each other.

This sounds delightfully unhinged and like the perfect thriller to cool off on a long, hot summer night. Also, that cover!

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

Carry Me to My Grave by Christopher Golden

In 1956, a Korean War vet has two days to carry his dead mother’s body home to Shediak, Maine, while an ancient evil hunts them both down the road.

I love a lean, eerie chase novel. As always, ancient evil can run deliciously disturbing or a bit cheesy, but early reviews make it seem like a good bet.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Romance

Yes, Chef by Grace Reilly

A grumpy chef and a sunshine influencer team up to save a failing Florida restaurant, with all the forced proximity and enemies-to-lovers heat you could want.

I love watching shows about food and chefs and am always on the hunt for my next cute romance read, so this is high up on my list. Will report back.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

If Books Could Kill by Kate Eberle

Roxie wishes herself into the heroine’s role in her favorite romance author’s next book, only to discover the next book is a thriller, not a romance. This is a genre-bending comedy for anyone like me who has ever talked back to a novel >.<

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Just a Highland Fling by Naina Kumar

Neelu flies to Scotland for her estranged father’s wedding, accidentally sends the bride running, and ends up road-tripping the Highlands with her dad and the desi bagpiper she had a one-night stand with.

I’m not ok with the end of Outlander. I need something romantic to transport me to the Highlands asap.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Meet Me in Paris by Kristin Harmel

Nine Americans and seven love stories unfold over one week in Paris. I won’t go into each of the stories, but they range from a rockstar to a woman who just discovered her husband is having an affair.

What better way to visit The City of Light this summer than with a romance story? (If you’re looking for another great story set in Paris coming out this summer, check out The Parisian Heist by Jo Piazza in the Thriller section above!)

Release date: July 28 / (book / audiobook)

What I’m Reaching For First

The book I want most this month is Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead. There are books I wait the whole year for, and this is one of them. It’s the end of a trilogy by one of my favorite authors, so I will definitely be buying the book if the wait time is too long.

I also can’t wait for The Secret Society of Librarians by Kate Thompson. Books about libraries have a Fast Pass to my heart, and this one is no different.

My wildcard pick is The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby. I’ve been reading a lot in this general vein lately, and as a kid who spent lots of afternoons following my mom around the store, I can’t wait to dive in.

Did any of these books stand out to you? Share in the comments what you’re most excited to read this month.

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I want to join the inner circle!

Two months ago, I started Elle Reads Library Books with a few dozen readers and a simple hope: that I might find some people who love books the way I do. There are nearly three thousand of you now. Getting to share my reading life with this many people is a dream come true, and is something miserable Elle from a year ago couldn’t have ever imagined.

After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to open memberships on July 1. The free newsletter you already love isn’t going anywhere. The reviews, the wrap-ups, and the themed reading lists will stay free.

Members get access to exclusive, paid-only posts, hidden paid portions of free posts, and extra bonuses like printables and paid-only reading challenges (that we’ll all complete together!).

There’s one more thing membership does, and it matters to me. It helps keep my library open for everyone, including the ones who can’t pay, because members make that possible. The big room stays open to all, always. Membership is the smaller table in the back, where we get to know each other a little better.

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The strawberries, the royal box, the whites, the hush before serve, the aristocratic exhaustion of caring about something while pretending not to. It’s a fortnight built on atmosphere, and atmosphere is what books do best.

I’ve organized this list into four categories because Wimbledon itself is doing so many things at once. There’s the actual sport, the rivalry, the spectacle, and, of course, the English summer itself.

Sixteen books. Read one. Read all of them. Read none and just watch the tennis. I’ll never know.

To celebrate my new paid tier, I’m offering a crazy deal until Aug 1! You’ll lock in a 60% discount, paying just $1.67/month!! Get access to special paid posts, paid-only printables and challenges, and help me continue creating content like this.

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The Court

Simply put: excellent books with tennis itself as a main driving force.

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

A retired tennis champion comes out of retirement at 37 to defend her grand slam record from a younger player about to break it. The story is told across her final season on tour.

This is the rare contemporary novel centered around women’s tennis. Carrie is unlikeable in the ways athletes can often be, and the book respects that. This is one of my all-time favorite books.

Book / Audiobook

Open by Andre Agassi

Agassi’s autobiography opens with an admission that he hates tennis and spends the next 400 pages explaining why a man who hated his sport became one of the best to ever play it.

This is probably the best sports memoir of the last twenty years. It reads like a novel, and the Wimbledon chapters alone are worth the price of admission.

Book / Audiobook

All In by Billie Jean King

The memoir of the woman who won 39 Grand Slam titles, founded the WTA, beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, and dragged women’s tennis into pay equity essentially by force of will. King also writes openly about coming out, her marriage, her eating disorder, and the cost of carrying a movement on her shoulders.

If Open is the great memoir of one player’s relationship to the sport, All In is the great memoir of one player’s relationship to history. You cannot understand modern tennis without her.

Book / Audiobook

String Theory by David Foster Wallace

Five essays on tennis, including “Roger Federer as Religious Experience,” one of the most famous pieces of tennis writing in the last century. Wallace was a junior tennis player himself and writes about the sport from inside its mechanics.

This is your pick if you’re looking for something a bit more literary. Reading the Federer essay during the summer is a tradition for a reason. This book makes the serious argument that tennis is worth thinking about the way you’d think about a poem.

Book / Audiobook

Honorable Mentions

A couple of books that didn’t quite fit but deserve a nod. The Island Club by Nicola Harrison is a Hamptons-tennis-club summer novel, old money and a marriage quietly coming apart, and it’s the perfect lounger read if you want tennis as atmosphere rather than subject. And with Rafa’s retirement still fresh, The Warrior by Christopher Clarey is the serious Nadal biography for anyone who wants it, even if Rafa was always more of a clay man.

The Rivalry

Two people locked in opposition for years. Federer and Nadal, Borg and McEnroe, Agassi and Sampras, and the way you can be defined by who you play against.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Two girls grow up in a poor neighborhood in 1950s Naples. Lila is brilliant and feral, and Lenù is studious and watchful. The book tracks the friendship that will define both of their lives. The first in a quartet of books.

Lenù is the narrator, but Lila is the subject, and you cannot tell whether either of them would exist without the other. The whole quartet is essentially one long match.

Book / Audiobook

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Thomas Cromwell rises from blacksmith’s son to chief minister of Henry VIII, and the novel tracks his slow, watchful ascent through the court as Henry tries to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. The novel centers around Cromwell’s interactions with his chief rival, Thomas More, the great Catholic conscience of England.

This is the great novel of English political rivalry. Cromwell and More are rivals not just for the king’s favor but for what England should be. They circle each other with total opposition. Mantel’s prose is exquisite.

Book / Audiobook

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Levels of the Game by John McPhee

A book-length account of a single 1968 US Open semifinal between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, told point by point with the players’ biographies woven into the action. Two American men from the same generation, yet completely different worlds, meeting on a tennis court.

This is literally a rivalry rendered in book form. McPhee uses the match as a structural skeleton to argue that you can learn a lot about a person from how they play.

Book / Audiobook

The Open Era by Edward Schmit

A new pro tennis player becomes the first openly gay man to compete in a Grand Slam, and the spotlight pushes his anxiety disorder to a breaking point. Then, he trips at practice in front of the world’s number two, a charming Spaniard he can’t stop thinking about.

A rivals-to-lovers tennis romance that reads like Challengers with a softer heart. Read it next to Levels of the Game, and you can see fifty years of American culture changing across one tennis net.

Book / Audiobook

The Spectacle

Performance, watching, the public self. Wimbledon’s about the millions of people who have paid to look. These books are about what happens to people who are looked at.

The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander

When Lili Lowe is caught having an affair with her married boss, a beloved British politician, the resulting scandal threatens to dismantle her life. She turns to her mother, Lydia, a former talent agent, who doesn’t console her so much as devise a strategy. What follows is a family of sisters expertly transforming a tabloid scandal into a media empire.

This is a book about contemporary spectacle in its current form: scandal as career launchpad, family-as-media-empire, the Kardashianization of being looked at. It’s a funny, sharp, and incisive look at how ambitious women get watched.

Book / Audiobook

Trust by Hernan Diaz

The story of a 1920s Wall Street tycoon and his wife, told four times in four contradictory accounts. Each version revises the last.

This is a book about how public stories get manufactured and who gets to manufacture them. Spectacle is always someone else’s version of you, and Trust is about reclaiming the narration. Bonus points: this is a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of my all-time favorites.

Book / Audiobook

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

June, a white writer, steals her recently deceased Asian American friend’s manuscript, publishes it as her own under a racially ambiguous pen name, and rides it into bestseller status. The novel then tracks her slow online unraveling as people start to suspect her.

This is internet-era spectacle in its purest form.

Book / Audiobook

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Darkening Song by Delphine Seddon

An eighteen-year-old intern at a London record label discovers a sixteen-year-old singer and offers, on instinct, to manage her career. The novel tracks their parallel rise into fame.

A 2026 debut, marketed for fans of Daisy Jones, but with a sharper edge: the dual POV gives you both the watched and the watcher, and the book is honest about how spectacle eats young women.

Book / Audiobook

The English Summer

The weather as a character. These are books where the English summer is doing the heavy lifting, and underneath the beauty, there is always something quietly going wrong.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

On a hot day in 1935 at an English country house, a thirteen-year-old girl misinterprets something she sees and tells a lie that destroys two lives. The novel then follows the consequences across the next sixty years.

The opening section is the platonic English summer novel. In Atonement, beauty is the setup for something terrible.

Book / Audiobook

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley

An old man remembers the year 1900, one that ultimately scarred him. During that fateful summer as a thirteen-year-old, he was a houseguest at a Norfolk estate and was used to carry secret letters between a couple forbidden to love each other.

This book has class, secrecy, and a heatwave that builds and builds across the novel.

Book / Audiobook

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

A young veteran returns from the trenches of the First World War and spends a summer in an English village restoring a medieval mural in a country church. Almost nothing happens externally. Internally, it’s about the specific ache of a season you know is ending.

This is one of my favorite books. It does atmosphere better than almost any other book on this list. The kind of book you finish in an afternoon and think about for years.

Book / Audiobook

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

An aging English butler takes a trip through the West Country in the summer of 1956. As he drives, he reckons with his decades of service to a man who turned out to be more than he seemed and with other relationships he built over time.

Full disclosure: this one didn’t fully land for me. But this is the canonical pick that had to be on the list, and that may absolutely work for you.

Book / Audiobook

The Fortnight, in the End

Here is what I think Wimbledon is, after sixteen books’ worth of thinking about it. It’s the only sporting event that admits, at the level of pageantry, that watching is the point. The all-whites are about the watching. The royal box is about the watching. The match is the smallest thing inside an enormous structure built around watching it.

Read one of these on a Saturday afternoon while the matches are on in the background. Read four of them across the fortnight, one per category. Or read all sixteen and spread that Wimbledon spirit out across the year.

The tournament will be on. The strawberries and cream will be consumed. Someone will win, someone will lose, and the curfew will be enforced. You’ll have a book in your lap.

I read most of these from the library, as usual. But if one of them grabbed you and you’d rather own it, here’s a link for 20% off at Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores instead of you-know-who. The complete list of books mentioned in this post is here. Happy reading!

Any tennis-themed books I missed? Let me know in the comments!

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Like me, you watched all eight episodes of Off Campus in a single weekend. The romcom nostalgia got you. The hockey and amazing friend group got you. Garrett looking at Hannah like she invented oxygen? Yep, that got you, too.

Off Campus was never really about hockey. It was the fake dating, the dorm-room ecosystem, the way a team turns into a family, and a sweet-yet-swoony romance. Season 2 got renewed before season 1 even aired, which sounds like good news until you learn it won’t be out until 2027.

That leaves you with a long wait and a very large Garrett Graham-sized hole in your life. These twelve books are sorted by which part of Off Campus you miss most. Find your symptom, pick your book.

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If What You Miss is the Nostalgic Romcom Vibe

Watching Off Campus reminded me of the incredible romcoms of the early 00s. The uncomplicated rush of a first crush, the kind with low stakes and a guaranteed happy ending. These books bring the same vibe.

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter. Liz has narrated her whole life like a rom-com, so when her childhood crush moves back to town, she ropes in Wes, the neighbor she claims to hate, to help her land him. Wes is, obviously, the actual love story. It has the fake-ish setup and the slow realization that made the show so easy to devour in one sitting. (book / audiobook)

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. Lara Jean writes a secret love letter to every boy she has ever had a crush on. None of them are ever meant to be sent, but, of course, get mailed out by accident. To survive the fallout, she strikes up a fake relationship with Peter Kavinsky. This is the book that taught a whole generation how to feel about a boy in a varsity jacket, and the fake-dating-to-real-feelings pipeline runs straight through it. (book / audiobook)

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. Mia Thermopolis is a mostly invisible ninth grader in Manhattan when she learns her absent father is the ruling prince of a small European country, which makes her the heir. Princess lessons with a grandmother who terrifies her ensue. It is told entirely through Mia’s diary, so it reads fast, funny, and very fifteen. Pure throwback comfort. (book / audiobook)

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If You Need More Campus/Sports Romance

If you do not want a substitute and just want more of the campus, the team, and the athlete who is gruff with everyone but her, start here.

The Off Campus series by Elle Kennedy. This is the source. The show is adapted from these books, beginning with The Deal, where star player Garrett bribes the one girl immune to his charm, Hannah, into tutoring him. The price she names is that he fake date her to make another guy notice her. The arrangement goes exactly where you think. The books carry through the whole Briar University hockey team, one couple per installment, which means you can read ahead of the show and feel delightfully smug about knowing what happens next. (book)

Icebreaker by Hannah Grace. Anastasia is a figure skater whose Olympic shot depends on the rink time she suddenly has to share with the university hockey team. Nate is the team captain who becomes the reason she keeps showing up. It is college and forced proximity with a male hockey player lead who is soft about exactly one person. If the Garrett and Hannah dynamic is the thing you cannot stop replaying, this is the closest match on the list. (book / audiobook)

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. Cath arrives at college as one of the most popular fan fiction writers on the internet and one of the most anxious freshmen on campus. The slow, tender romance with Levi, the impossibly friendly guy always hanging around her dorm, builds underneath all of it. This is the campus-as-terrifying-then-home arc, and it is the one most likely to make you cry in a good way. (book / audiobook)

If What You Miss is the Group

Half of what made the show so good was the friend group and how they show up for each other. These are the books where the group is the whole point.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The four Riva siblings are the children of a famous, mostly absent singer. The novel unfolds over the twenty-four hours leading up to their legendary annual end-of-summer party in 1983 Malibu. Throughout the book, you get the whole history of how these four raised each other. If the part you loved was a found family that closes ranks, this one is for you. (book / audiobook)

Red White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Alex, the son of the first woman president, gets into a very public spat with Prince Henry of England. Their handlers force the two of them to stage a friendship for the cameras, which becomes a real friendship, which becomes something neither of them planned. The banter is the draw, and so is the crew around Alex, the little West Wing found family that has his back. Warm, funny, high stakes, and a romance you root for from page one. (book / audiobook)

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun. Dev is the relentlessly upbeat producer on a Bachelor-style reality dating show, and Charlie is the season’s leading man, a burned-out former tech wunderkind who is anxious, awkward, and terrible at performing romance on cue. The chemistry, of course, is between the two of them, off camera. It is soft and handles mental health with real care. The behind-the-scenes crew gives it that same ensemble warmth that Off Campus has. (book / audiobook)

If You Need a Good Happily Ever After

Sometimes, you just want a sweet romance with a happy ending. These are the guaranteed soft landings, the ones where you already trust the ending.

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne. Lucy and Joshua are executive assistants to the two co-CEOs of a merged publishing house. They sit at facing desks, locked in a daily war of staring contests and petty games they both pretend to hate. Enemies to lovers, executed so cleanly that the book basically wrote the modern blueprint. This is the comfort rewatch of romance novels, and it never misses. (book / audiobook)

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. A sunny journalist named Alice and a brooding Pulitzer winner named Hayden are both summoned to a small Georgia island where they are given one month to audition for the same prize: the right to write the life story of a reclusive heiress from one of the most scandal-drenched families of the last century. The rivalry curdles into something else, the way it always does. This is the newest Emily Henry, which means the swoon comes with real emotional weight underneath it. (book / audiobook)

One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune. Alice is a Toronto photographer who has spent her life behind the lens, letting other people shine. When her grandmother breaks her hip, she brings her to a lake cottage in small-town Ontario for the summer. There she keeps running into Charlie, the charming local she once photographed from a distance years before. The two of them agree to stay just friends, which lasts about as long as you would expect. Lake town, golden light, slow burn, happy ending. (book / audiobook)

We’ll Get Through This

None of these will be Off Campus, because nothing is Off Campus except Off Campus. What they’ll do is hand you back the exact feeling that hooked you in the first place: the swoon, the slow burn, the friends who turn into family.

By the time season 2 finally airs, you’ll have a brand-new stack of comfort reads to your name, which is honestly the best way to spend a wait this long.

I read most of these from the library, as usual. But if one of them grabbed you and you’d rather own it, here’s a link for 20% off at Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores instead of you-know-who. The complete list of books mentioned in this post is here. Happy reading!

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Now I want to hear from you! What did I miss? If there’s a book that filled a Garrett-sized hole for you, leave it in the comments.

It turns out, we have a lot in common. My whole thing is building a rich reading life without having to buy a single book. Hers is building a rich drinking life without a single drop of alcohol. What we have in common is that we are both a little obsessed with the idea that you don’t have to give anything up to have it all. Add in a shared love of travel and a soft spot for America’s national parks, and a post like this was basically inevitable.

Laura here. I’ll admit I’m a bit of an Elle Reads Library Books fangirl right back. This whole collab post came to be because I was so entranced by her book flights, grouping books together by a theme, that I started thinking about drink flights and wondering if there was a way to pair them together.

You probably also know that I’m a BIG travel fan, and you might also know that a few years ago, I went on a cross-country road trip — visiting non-alcoholic bottle shops and national parks along the way. This book/drink/national park flight is inspired by that trip, the gorgeous NA drinks that continue to push the boundaries of innovation, the joy of reading, and the beauty in our own backyards.

Here’s how it works: for each park below, Laura has poured the perfect NA drink, and Elle has packed the perfect book. Find a comfortable seat and come along for the ride!

Acadia National Park (Maine)

Rocky beaches, glaciers, lakes, mountains, islands, and lowbush blueberries. Take a hike and work up an appetite for a lobster roll sandwich. Dessert? Those blueberries, naturally.

Sip: All That Razz by 1820 Brewing

Maine’s own non-alc brewery, 1820 Brewing, delivers on a beautiful fruited/sour brew with All That Razz. Bright raspberry and earthy malts pair beautifully with the captivating panorama that Acadia delivers.

Tasting notes: tart, malty, bubbly, #madeinMaine vibes, raspberries

Read: The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

A Mi’kmaq family travels from Nova Scotia to the Maine blueberry barrens every summer until the youngest daughter vanishes from the edge of a field. It carries the same rugged, coastal melancholy as Acadia: beautiful, haunted, and impossible to shake.

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Everglades National Park (Florida)

The land is all coastal mangroves, sawgrass marshes, and pine flatwoods at Everglades. Stay alert because you might just see a leatherback turtle, Florida panther, or West Indian manatee. But explorers beware — there are gators out there, and they’re hungry.

Sip: St. Ember by Little Saints

Miami-based Little Saints is one of the most mystical functional NA brands out on the market. If you ever see founder Megan Klein out and about, chances are she’s wearing full-on plant and mushroom regalia. St. Ember marries functional mushrooms (lion’s mane, cordyceps) with the spiciness of ginger and cardamom, making for a perfect NA Paloma or Margarita with a side of magical vibes.

Tasting notes: Palo Santo, ginger, cardamom, magic

Read: The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

The true story of a man who stole rare ghost orchids from a Florida swamp, and the obsession that pulled Orlean after him. It’s as lush, strange, and subtropical as the Everglades themselves.

Shenandoah National Park (Virginia)

Shenandoah is the gentlest of the great parks, with the Blue Ridge Mountains rolling soft and blue into the distance, layer after hazy layer. In the summer, the meadows fill with wildflowers, and the whole place hums with life. This is the park that reminds you that beauty doesn’t have to overwhelm you.

Sip: Hoppin’ Orange by Blue Ridge Bucha

Hops and juicy orange shine in this bev from Appalachia’s own kombucha brand, Blue Ridge Bucha. Refreshing after a vigorous hike through the mountains or a lazy bike ride on the winding trails of the park.

Tasting notes: juicy orange, bitter hops, bubbles, bluegrass

Read: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Three love stories unfold across one humid Appalachian summer, threaded through with coyotes, moth pheromones, and the quiet machinery of the natural world. It’s lush, sensual, and teeming with life, just like a Virginia mountainside in bloom.

Congaree National Park (South Carolina)

Congaree is the park people forget exists, and that’s part of its strange magic. It protects the largest stretch of old-growth bottomland forest left in the Southeast, a flooded world of black water where Spanish moss still hangs in the air. It’s the kind of quiet that feels slightly like being watched.

Sip: Lemon Cucumber Serrano by Amethyst NA Spirits

South Carolina’s own Amethyst makes the perfect clear NA spirit to match Congaree — lemon cucumber serrano. The deep, murky forest pairs with the botanical and citrus top notes, and then the serrano jump scares you out of your reverie. Watch out.

Tasting notes: lemony citrus, pepper, refreshing cucumber, ghost stories

Read: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward braids a family’s grief with literal ghosts in a luminous Southern gothic story about what the land remembers. Like Congaree’s ancient bottomland, it’s eerie, deep-rooted, and impossible to walk through without feeling watched.

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Zion National Park (Utah)

It’s no mistake that the name Zion has biblical roots. This truly majestic park is a little slice of heaven on Earth, so expect to be wowed by all the different landforms: canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches.

Sip: N/Alien Church by Tired Hands Brewing

There’s something almost alien about the Utah landscape, and even though Tired Hands is out of Philly, their N/Alien Church (the non-alc version of one of their flagship beers) feels like the perfect fit for Zion National Park. There’s a sweetness to the beauty, just like there’s a sweetness to the beer, but then BAM, oats and experimental yeast tell you you’re not in Kansas anymore. #livelongandprosper

Tasting notes: lemon/lime, peach, pineapple, aliens

Read: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

In a desert monastery in the post-apocalyptic Southwest, monks spend centuries preserving the scraps of human knowledge while civilization slowly rebuilds and destroys itself again. It has Zion’s exact energy: vast, reverent, and humbling - the kind of place that makes you think in millennia.

Joshua Tree National Park (California)

U2 isn’t the only one inspired by Joshua Tree. The tree got its name thanks to the 19th-century Mormon settlers who thought the eponymous tree looked like the prophet Joshua with his arms outstretched. Larger than the state of Rhode Island, the park’s 429,690 acres are filled with desert wilderness and gorgeous sunsets. You’ll find what you’re looking for here.

Sip: Desert Margarita by Parch

Inspired by the botanicals of the southwest Sonoran Desert, this bright orange-y lime margarita from functional darling Parch delivers on keeping you cool in the desert. It’s the perfect thirst quencher to bring with you to take in the gorgeous Joshua trees. Just remember: leave no trace.

Tasting notes: sweet orange, lime, tamarind, desert sunsets

Read: Take Me With You by Steven Rowley

A husband vanishes into the night sky over the desert, and the man he left behind has to reckon with love, loss, and what’s actually real. It’s as surreal and cosmic as a night under Joshua Tree’s stars.

Olympic National Park (Washington)

Mount Olympus is the park’s most towering, otherworldly peak, rising 7,965 feet from the ground, and aptly named after the legendary home of the Greek gods. It’s almost mythical, then, that you should find four vastly different regions in this exquisite park: Pacific coastline, alpine areas, temperate rainforest, and other forests.

Sip: Riverine by AMASS (with Dappled Tonic)

It’s like drinking the Pacific Northwest: juniper, sumac, sorrel, lemon peel, apple, thyme, mint, parsley, and rosemary are just some of the botanical highlights you can expect to smell/taste with AMASS’ Riverine. You’d better balance it out with a bittersweet tonic water, preferably also from the PNW — I’m thinking Dappled Tonic.

Tasting notes: juniper, rosemary, pine trees, rain

Read: Bog Queen by Anna North

A forensic anthropologist is called to a peat bog to examine a body that turns out to be a 2,000-year-old Celtic druid. It’s set an ocean away from Olympic, but the energy is identical: ancient, wet, green, and humming with everything the Earth has quietly held.

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Glacier National Park (Montana)

Going-to-the-Sun Road climbs past hanging valleys and turquoise lakes so vibrant they look lit from below, while impossibly sharp mountain peaks rise on each side. You come around a bend, and the whole valley opens up in front of you, as though you’ve arrived somewhere you didn’t know you were looking for. There’s a reason they call this the crown of the continent.

Sip: Lupujūs ZERO by Imagine Nation Brewing Co.

Montana’s own Imagine Nation is the first brewery in the state to brew a non-alc beer. Ironically, the Lupujūs ZERO is a New England style hazy IPA – but it’s the pine notes here that feel most like Montana’s lush green valleys.

Tasting notes: citrus, pine, hops, mountain peaks

Read: The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan

As WW2 closes in, a family flees across Europe toward a “green valley” the mother has only seen in her dreams, and finally finds it in Montana. It’s a story about believing a place is waiting for you, which is exactly what Glacier feels like: somewhere you recognize before you’ve ever arrived.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Tennessee/North Carolina)

The Smokies earn their name. Morning fog pools in the hollows and drifts up through the trees until the whole range looks like it's breathing. It's the most visited national park in the country, but get out early, before the crowds, and you'll find something older underneath: blue ridgelines fading into haze, the hush of the deepest forest in the East. In the summer, whole hillsides flickering with synchronous fireflies. This is a landscape thick with story, the kind of place where the past never quite lets go.

Sip: Ginger Beer w/Scotch Bonnet Peppers by Devil’s Foot Beverage Co.

Made in Asheville, NC, Devil’s Foot just sounds like it’s busting out the pages of a mysterious book. The Scotch bonnet peppers in this already spicy ginger beer add a level of smokiness that pairs beautifully with the Great Smoky Mountains.

Tasting notes: spicy ginger, lime, smoky pepper, banjos

Read: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

A deserter’s perilous journey home through wartime Appalachia, and the woman holding on at the end of it. As misty, mystic, and mountain-filled as the Smokies themselves.

Big Bend National Park (Texas)

Big Bend is about as far as you can get from anywhere in the Lower 48. Way out where the Rio Grande makes a big, lazy turn and the desert runs straight into Mexico, the park runs across miles of untamed land. The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.

Sip: Carajillo Tejas by Jas

Bring a can of Carajillo Tejas from Houston’s own Jas on your epic journey following the winding Rio Grande into the heart of Mexico. A carajillo is a coffee-based cocktail, and Jas makes a delightful NA version (taking out the booze but adding in lion’s mane mushroom for clarity). Que rico!

Tasting notes: coffee, agave, bubbles, Mèxico

Read: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Two retired Texas Rangers drive a herd of cattle from a dusty town on the Rio Grande to Montana, through some of the most dangerous and beautiful country in America. It begins right in Big Bend’s borderland: remote, sun-blasted, and wild in a way that feels older than the map.

Isle Royale National Park (Michigan)

There are no roads into Isle Royale. You have to arrive by ferry or floatplane, and the moment you do, the rest of the world ceases to exist. A remote island in Lake Superior, this is one of the least-visited national parks in the country. People who come here often come alone, or wish they had. This is the kind of quiet that changes you.

Sip: Phantura by Frinj

This made-in-Michigan botanical elixir is spiced just enough to keep you warm on your solitary trip to Isle Royale. You might just see a moose (or a ghost) as you sip Phantura, a tart cherry and vanilla liquid filled with adaptogens like Lion’s Mane and L-theanine to keep you rooted and calm.

Tasting notes: cherry, vanilla, ginger, moody vibes

Read: The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

Michael Finkel’s quietly profound account of the North Pond hermit asks what it actually means to be alone and what a person finds in the wild when no one is looking. Like Isle Royale, it’s remote, silent, and a little haunting in its emptiness.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (Hawaii)

The Big Island is still being forged. At Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, lava flows where it pleases, new land pushes into the ocean, and the landscape shifts on a timeline that has nothing to do with human plans. Black sand beaches, steam vents, and craters that glow at night are proof that geology can be a live event. You aren’t just visiting history here. You’re watching it be made.

Sip: Lilikoi Guava by Tropink

Mmm. Passionfruit (lilikoi is the Hawaiian name) and guava come together for this CBD-infused seltzer, bursting with juicy, tropical flavor. It’s the perfect accompaniment to see molten lava flowing over sacred land, surrounded by palm trees, and into the ocean. You might want to grab some shades.

Tasting notes: passionfruit, guava, bubbles, chill

Read: Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

Mauna Loa is days from its most violent eruption in a century, and the only thing worse than the lava is what the lava might unleash. Set right on the Big Island, it turns Hawaii Volcanoes’ live-geology danger into a breathless, ground-trembling thriller.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (Colorado)

The Great Sand Dunes shouldn’t exist. Towering dunes, some reaching 750 feet, rise improbably against the backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado. A seasonal creek runs along the base of the dunes in the spring. The whole scene is so unlikely that it feels like a mistake. Or a dream.

Sip: Zero by FABRIC

You’ll need something refreshing after a day at the dunes, and what better way to quench your thirst than Colorado’s own FABRIC, maker of Australian-hopped waters. Whether you choose their non-infused or infused (with THC) seltzers, there’s a hop fizz for everyone.

Tasting notes: hoppy, citrus, bubbles, sand surfing

Read: Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Kent Haruf’s quiet masterpiece unfolds in a small Colorado prairie town, where ordinary people extend each other unexpected kindness. Like the dunes rising improbably against the Sangre de Cristos, it finds something vast and moving in a landscape most people would drive right past

Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming/Montana/Idaho)

The very first national park in the USA, Yellowstone is also believed to be the world’s first designated protected land. Spanning 2,219,789 acres, you’re likely to see not only gorgeous forests and volcanic lakes but also close to 60 species of animals, including wolves, coyotes, cougars, bears, goats, sheep, deer, moose, and, of course, bison. And if you look closely enough, you’ll find Yogi Bear and Boo Boo sharing a picnic lunch.

Sip: The Pathfinder Hemp & Root Spirit

There’s something so mystical, eerie, and transcendent about Yellowstone. The moment I saw those infamous deep blue lagoons bubbling over with seismic activity, I surely thought I was in a Dr. Seuss book. There’s only one beverage that can match this park’s vibes: The Pathfinder Hemp & Root Spirit. This dreamy amaro-like spirit is dark, luxuriously bittersweet, and almost medicinal. It’ll open your third eye.

Tasting notes: wormwood, ginger, orange peel, Ouija boards

Read: American Buffalo by Steven Rinella

Part adventure, part history, Rinella’s hunt for a wild buffalo becomes a meditation on the animal that shaped America and was nearly wiped off the map. Yellowstone is one of the last places bison still roam wild, which makes it the perfect lens for the park’s prehistoric pull. Yes, bison and buffalo are different! But they are similar enough that I feel this recommendation works :)

Let’s Get Roadtripping!

Whether you are planning an actual road trip this summer or just traveling from the couch, we hope this left you with a few new places to dream about, a few new books to check out from the library, and a few new bottles to track down.

There is a whole country worth seeing out there, and you can toast to every mile of it with a clear head and a good story in your bag.

PS: There are so many amazing national parks we couldn’t get to in this article. Make sure to check out for everything parks!

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The best part of any trip is comparing notes when you get home. Which national park have you visited and loved? Tell us in the comments. We are always looking for the next one to add to the list.

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Best of all, they can rescue a doorstopper you would never have finished on the page :D

These are the ten that did exactly that for me. I am not ranking them so much as handing them over, the way I would if you climbed into my car for a long drive. The thing they have in common is that every single one is better heard than read.

To celebrate my new paid tier, I’m offering a crazy deal until Aug 1! You’ll lock in a 60% discount, paying just $1.67/month!! Get access to special paid posts, paid-only printables and challenges, and help me continue creating content like this.

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A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

A lone astronaut wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of who he is or why he’s there, and slowly realizes he is humanity’s last shot at survival.

Why it’s a must-listen: Ray Porter’s narration is the one people cite when they want to convince a skeptic that audiobooks can outdo the page. There is a thread in this story that simply cannot work in print, and the audio production solves it with sound design so clever that it gave me chills. I have both read and listened to this book, and the audiobook wins.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

During the pandemic, a mother tells her three grown daughters about the long-ago summer she spent acting in a small-town play and falling for a man who later became famous.

Why it’s a must-listen: It is narrated by Meryl Streep. If you need more than that, know that this is not a gimmick. Her reading turns an already lovely book into something you will not want to end. Some people complain that Tom Lake is too slow-paced. Streep’s narration helps turn that bug into a feature, making it genuinely feel like your mom sat down to tell you a story about her younger years.

Get the audiobook here.

The Wager by David Grann

The true story of an 18th-century British warship wrecked off Patagonia, the starving castaways who survived, and the explosive court-martial over who told the truth.

Why it’s a must-listen: Dion Graham is a Golden Voice narrator for a reason. His commanding, measured delivery makes the shipwreck feel like it is happening to you, all salt and creaking timber and dread. The Wager is from the same author as Killers of the Flower Moon and is just as gripping.

Get the audiobook here.

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

The actor’s freewheeling memoir, drawn from decades of journals, is about luck, loss, and learning to chase the green lights in life.

Why it’s a must-listen: This shows up on every audiobook list for a reason. McConaughey reads it himself, and the voice is the whole point: his drawl, timing, and easy charisma. This is one of those rare memoirs where listening is so clearly the superior choice that reading the print version feels like watching a concert with the sound off. I wouldn’t dare.

Get the audiobook here.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

A small-town teacher discovers a portal to 1958 and takes on an impossible mission: live in the past long enough to stop the Kennedy assassination.

Why it’s a must-listen: This is thirty hours long, and it flies. Craig Wasson lives inside the character of Jake Epping for the entire run, nailing the period accents and the slow ache of a man building a life he knows he may have to leave behind. King can be quite long-winded, so I personally find his work much nicer to consume in audio format.

Get the audiobook here.

The Ratline by Philippe Sands

A lawyer and historian traces the fate of a high-ranking Nazi fugitive and his postwar escape route, working in part through the man’s own devoted son.

Why it’s a must-listen: Sands narrates his own investigation, and the book grew out of his work in audio, so the documentary intimacy is built right in. Hearing him follow the trail in his own voice gives it the pull of the best true-crime podcast, with far deeper stakes. It feels like a podcast in book form in the best possible way.

Get the audiobook here.

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

A New York bookseller inherits a mysterious book that can turn any door into a portal to anywhere before discovering that she’s not the only one who knows it exists.

Why it’s a must-listen: Miranda Raison, who also narrated Lessons in Chemistry, gives this one a propulsive, atmospheric energy that feels like flying through a Bourne movie. The story races from Venice to Paris to New Orleans, and her performance keeps every thread taut. This is an audiobook that will genuinely have you on the edge of your seat.

Get the audiobook here.

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Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

A young girl stows away on a pirate ship to sail a deadly ocean of spores and rescue the boy she loves from a fearsome sorceress.

Why it’s a must-listen: Think The Princess Bride in fantasy form, complete with a wry, knowing narrator telling you the tale. That voice is the magic of the audio. It’s whimsical, warm, and the perfect escapist audiobook.

Get the audiobook here.

What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

A radio journalist’s memoir of being diagnosed with complex PTSD and her unflinching, often funny search for healing.

Why it’s a must-listen: Foo spent years as a producer at This American Life and Snap Judgment, and you can hear that craft in every beat. She reads her own story with a rawness and control that a stranger never could have matched. This is the one on the list that genuinely stayed with me.

Get the audiobook here.

Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie

A ghost-hunting reality TV crew investigates a derelict mansion with a history of disturbing experiments, told entirely through their tapes, journals, and transcripts.

Why it’s a must-listen: This is found-footage horror, and the audiobook uses a full cast to pull it off. The format that can feel gimmicky on the page becomes genuinely unnerving in your ears, like a documentary slowly going wrong in real time. Save this one for a dark evening when you want to be a little scared.

Get the audiobook here.

Let’s Get Listening!

Whether you are a devoted audiobook lover or just dipping your toes into the water, there’s no denying that a good audiobook has the power to transport you.

June is Audiobook Month, so put one of these on hold, press play, and let a great voice carry you somewhere.

Want to make the switch from Audible to an audiobook platform that actually supports local bookstores? Make sure you check out Libro.fm!

Now I want yours. What is the single best audiobook you have ever heard, the one you force on everyone? Tell me in the comments so I can add it to my list. I have a lot of cooking to do this weekend!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider becoming a paid subscriber! Until August 1, it’s just $20/YEAR (less than $2/month) to join and gain access to exclusive posts and paid benefits.

I want to join the inner circle :)

Read next…

Here is the idea: twelve groups, one book from one country in each group. In short? A reading bracket.

Think of it as a way to explore the countries on the screen through more than their team roster. Instead, this is a way to explore the culture of different countries, one book at a time. Most of these are translations, but a few are written in English originally.

Though I wanted to include a book from every country, I didn’t want to write the world’s longest Substack post. So I chose one country from each group and tried to give you the best possible book to explore a little bit about what life and the people in that country might be like.

Let’s kick off! ⚽️

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Group A: South Korea 🇰🇷

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Kim Jiyoung is an ordinary South Korean woman and a new mother who has left her job. One day, she starts speaking in the voices of other women, her own mother, a friend who died. As her psychiatrist takes down her history, the book stacks up a whole life of sexism: the brother who always ate first, the teachers who looked past her, the career she surrendered without anyone having to ask.

The book became a feminist flashpoint in Korea, a runaway bestseller that men review-bombed and that female celebrities got attacked simply for admitting they had read. Five stars from me, and a book I still bring up in conversation on a regular basis.

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Group B: Bosnia and Herzegovina 🇧🇦

The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić

A single stone bridge spans the river Drina in the Bosnian town of Višegrad, built by the Ottomans in the sixteenth century. The novel parks itself at that bridge for four hundred years and watches the town cross it: Ottoman rule giving way to the Austro-Hungarians, Muslims, Serbs, Croats, and Jews living together and then turning on each other, the wars of the twentieth century arriving at last.

Andrić won the Nobel for it, and it still explains the Balkans without ever feeling like a lesson: all those layered empires and faiths and grudges in a single place.

Group C: Brazil 🇧🇷

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

Macabéa is a young typist who has migrated from the drought-stricken northeast to Rio de Janeiro, where almost no one notices she exists. A writer narrates her story and keeps interrupting himself to wonder why he is even telling it, about a girl the country has decided does not matter.

The distance between the glamorous Rio of the postcards and the millions it overlooks is the most Brazilian thing about this slim, quietly devastating book.

Group D: Türkiye 🇹🇷

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

A murdered woman lies in a trash bin on the edge of Istanbul, and for the ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds after her death, her brain keeps working. She replays her life in tastes and smells, from a strict childhood in eastern Anatolia to the brothels of the city. Each memory pulls in one of the five misfit friends who became her real family.

This is the Istanbul the guidebooks skip, its sex workers and runaways and outcasts, written with far more tenderness than the premise lets you expect.

Group E: Curaçao 🇨🇼

Double Play by Frank Martinus Arion

Four men sit down to a daylong game of dominoes on Curaçao. Across that single afternoon, their rivalries, debts, and marriages all come due. What looks like a game opens out into the whole island: the Black Curaçaoans, the Dutch who still hold the money, and the women keeping everything upright while the men talk.

It is the great Curaçaoan novel and my island-nation pick, taut and tragic and funnier than it sounds. Fair warning, it is a hard-to-find 1998 edition, so plan on an interlibrary loan or a used copy.

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Group F: Sweden 🇸🇪

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

A spectacularly bad bank robber botches the job, flees into an apartment open house, and ends up holding a roomful of strangers hostage. What begins as pure farce slowly becomes the story of eight anxious people quietly coming apart over money, divorce, and loneliness.

It is the most Swedish book imaginable, all that polite conflict-avoidance with an ocean of feeling dammed up behind it, funny on the surface and devastating underneath.

Group G: Iran 🇮🇷

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar

Narrated by the ghost of a thirteen-year-old girl, the novel follows a cultured, book-loving family who flee Tehran for a remote forest after the 1979 revolution. The losses come so fast that the story simply lets the supernatural in.

Under the magic is a clear-eyed account of what the revolution did to Iran’s intellectual class: the executions, the disappearances, and the books burned in the street. Azar wrote it after fleeing Iran herself, and it was shortlisted for the International Booker.

Group H: Spain 🇪🇸

The Time in Between by María Dueñas

A young Madrid seamstress is left broke and abandoned in Spanish Morocco, rebuilds her life stitch by stitch, and is eventually recruited to sew coded intelligence into her clients’ hemlines. The clients are the wives of Nazi sympathizers, and Europe is sliding toward war.

The history underneath is real: Franco’s rise, the Spanish protectorate in Tetouan (a country wrecked by civil war), and quietly choosing a side. Glamour, grit, and airtight plotting, this is a doorstopper to pack for a long flight.

Group I: Senegal 🇸🇳

At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop

Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese soldier, one of the tirailleurs France shipped in from its colonies to fight in the trenches of 1914. After his closest friend is gutted in front of him, something in Alfa comes loose, and he turns into the thing both armies come to fear.

The history here is the kind most of us were never taught: how France fed tens of thousands of West African men into its war and called it loyalty. It won the International Booker and runs under two hundred pages.

Group J: Argentina 🇦🇷

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez

A grieving father drives across Argentina with his young son, trying to keep the boy out of the hands of a wealthy occult order that wants to use the child as a doorway to the dead. The dread builds over six hundred pages and never once loosens its grip.

Enríquez ties the supernatural to the real horror of Argentina’s dictatorship, the torture and the thousands of disappeared, until you genuinely cannot tell the two apart. If you take one swing at horror this year, take it here.

Group K: Uzbekistan 🇺🇿

The Devils’ Dance by Hamid Ismailov

In a Tashkent prison in 1937, the real Uzbek writer Abdulla Qodiriy mentally composes the masterpiece that Stalin’s police will execute him before he can ever write it down. Woven through it is the story he is dreaming up, a lush nineteenth-century world of Central Asian khans and a poet-queen married to three of them.

You get both Uzbekistans at once, the Soviet machine erasing its artists and the older Silk Road culture it was trying to erase. Billed as the first major Uzbek novel translated straight into English, it is one the best of the whole list. Like the Curaçao pick, it is small-press, so reach for Kindle or your library’s loan system.

Group L: Ghana 🇬🇭

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Two half-sisters in eighteenth-century Ghana never meet. One is married off to a British officer inside Cape Coast Castle. The other is captured and shipped out through the slave dungeon directly beneath it. Gyasi follows both bloodlines down three hundred years, a new descendant in every chapter.

This is the other English-language pick, blessedly easy to find, and each chapter reads like its own perfect short story.

Let the Games Begin

Thirty-nine days, twelve groups, one book each, and nobody checking your bracket but you. Keep a game on in the background and let these carry you from the opener all the way to the final!

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Tell me in the comments where you are headed first. I will be traveling right alongside you, all tournament long.

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I was also approved to read Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), which was the exciting fulfillment of a lifetime goal. This won’t change the fact that I’m a library-first reader. What it will do is allow me to bring you 2-3 recommendations per month so you can get early holds set up for the books I think are going to wow you!

Because I had more time on my hands to read, May was a busy month. There were 18 books in all, including the buzziest book of the year, a shocking memoir, and 2 DNFs.

Read on to find out what I think is worth your time!

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Yesteryear has a premise built for the cultural moment: a tradwife influencer wakes up in 1855 and confronts the reality behind the fantasy.

This could have been a scathing, high-concept critique of social media tradwives. Instead, it’s a lukewarm thriller without the teeth for real satire.

The first 200 pages flew by, and there were some genuinely good lines (hence the 3.5 stars). The historical sections should have been the heart of the book. Instead, they lack intrigue, and the twist didn’t land for me. Wait for the library hold.

PS: I’m working on a project to read and review multiple tradwife-themed books. Watch out for the article later this year!

Star Rating: ★★★½

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A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings

There are a lot of books about tradwives on the shelves right now. This is the most important one.

Levings writes a raw, unflinching portrait of what white Christian patriarchy actually costs the women and children living inside of it.

Strip back the social media glamour, the homemade bubblegum, the likes, and the views, and what remains is a system that strips away agency and identity in the name of godliness and submission. Levings exposes that system from the inside.

This might be the most important book you read this year.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle

The first half delivered exactly what the premise promised: quiet, meditative, deeply interior. The second half becomes repetitive in a way that may be the point, but it doesn’t earn what it costs for me.

I kept waiting for a real reckoning with what it means to live outside of shared time, and it never quite came.

Star Rating: ★★

Darkening Song by Delphine Seddon

Dual storylines tracing a young star’s rise and the cost of fame, written in prose I kept stopping to highlight. Call it “sad girl lit” if you must, but that label may cheapen what is actually a layered, heartbreaking story.

Bonus: the audiobook includes original songs.

Star Rating: ★★★★½

Go Gentle by Maria Semple

A complete identity crisis of a book that careens between stoicism, #MeToo, art theft, and romance without ever committing to any of them. Additionally, the “coven of middle-aged women” premise that drew me in turns out to be little more than marketing window dressing.

I know a lot of my bookfriends on Substack enjoyed this one, though, so if the premise appeals to you, it might be worth a try. It just wasn’t my cup of tea!

Star Rating: ★★

The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson

A frothy-looking beach read that turns out to have real emotional depth, following an outsider who falls for a man in a tight-knit friend group and watches the delicate balance unravel.

Reading it kind of feels like watching your high school friends grow up if everyone had stayed in your small town, with a meditative, interior quality that reminded me of Tom Lake.

Star Rating: ★★★★½

Homebound by Portia Elan

This didn’t land at all. The multiple timelines are confusing and messy, and jumping between them was jarring. The world building was underdeveloped, which only made the structural problem worse. The characters felt equally thin, and I never felt anything for anyone on the page.

I wish I’d skipped this one.

Star Rating: ★★

Bog Queen by Anna North

I was expecting something more focused and investigative. What I got instead was a beautiful meditation on the connection between past and present, mediated by chapters told from the moss’s perspective. It’s slow, but gorgeously written, and well worth a careful read.

This was supposed to be a June read, but my hold came in early, and I flew through it!

Star Rating: ★★★★½

American Fantasy by Emma Straub

A 90s-nostalgia cruise with a fictional boy band should have been the perfect palate cleanser between heavier reads, but the characters and story never developed depth (I was still flipping back to figure out which band member was which halfway through).

The whole thing felt flat, and I quit around 50%. A skip unless you fit a very particular niche.

Star Rating: DNF

The Parisian Heist by Jo Piazza

A dual timeline mystery that braids together the story of Jo van Gogh fighting to prove Vincent’s genius in the late 1800s, with a struggling American art student pulled into the ruthless world of high-end art dealing in 1990s Paris.

With intrigue, art, history, and even a little romance, both timelines work beautifully, making this a perfect pick, even if books about art aren’t your typical pick.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown

A bit like oil and water: two timelines that really should have been two separate books.

The modern academic mystery had great pacing and just the right level of intrigue. However, every cut back to the historical timeline felt like an interruption rather than a deepening. This would have worked beautifully as a single-timeline novel.

Star Rating: ★★★

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

I go into most celebrity memoirs braced for the worst. So many are poorly written, vague, and feel like fluff. This is not that.

The prose is sharp and controlled, the structure does real work, and she trusts her reader to sit with the discomfort instead of rushing to package it into a lesson. The result is genuinely devastating, especially the chapters where she’s still loving her mother even as she’s laying out exactly what was done to her.

It’s the rare memoir where the title isn’t a provocation; it’s a thesis. By the end, I agreed with it. I’m glad her mom died, too.

Star Rating: ★★★★

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

A scatological fever dream.

The opening intrigued me, but the further I got, the more it felt like Moshfegh was just trying to outdo her last shock. Body horror may not be my genre (Tender Is the Flesh didn’t land either), so take this with a grain of salt, but I don’t think the grossness is doing as much thematic work here as she thinks it is.

By the end, the disgust felt like the point rather than a vehicle for one.

Star Rating: ★★

The Spin by Faith Gardner

A retro-set psychological thriller about a 1950s housewife. A 1950s housewife is institutionalized after a breakdown, and her advertising-exec husband slowly comes to suspect was no accident. The book has a hooky setup and sharp early pacing that ultimately sags in the middle and lands on a quieter resolution than I wanted. A quick, easy read, but a bit of a disappointment by the end.

Note: This is out on June 16th!

Star Rating: ★★★

One Day by David Nicholls

I went in expecting to be wrecked. People talk about One Day like it’s going to leave a mark, and I was ready for the longing, the joy, and the gut-punch. What I got instead was a book I quietly liked but never really connected with.

It’s a perfectly fine novel that wasn’t the emotional event I was promised.

Star Rating: ★★★½

Trad Wife by Sarah Langan

A trad wife influencer with a 300-acre farm, seven perfect children, and a journalist arriving to expose her. What starts as a tidy media takedown spirals into something genuinely sinister, with Langan’s slow-burn dread accumulating until you can’t look away. Delicious, atmospheric horror with a fantastic resolution. A must-read for anyone craving a darker angle on the tradwife trend.

Note: This one comes out September 29th, so make sure you set up a notification in Libby!

Star Rating: ★★★★★

The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown

The Book of Doors is one of my favorite books of all time. I was expecting more of that breakneck pace and whimsical magic. But this book did not deliver. It took them forever to explain the mechanisms of the magic in the story, and none of the characters were particularly memorable. I only finished this because I loved Doors so much. I’d suggest you pass.

Star Rating: ★★½

Perfection by Vincenzo Latrionico

To me, the book reads like an inventory, not a story. Twelve pages describing an apartment, the plants, the natural wine, and the carefully curated everything.

I can see what he’s doing, and I think some readers will appreciate the slow indictment of a generation that substituted aesthetics for a life. For me, it just didn’t hook me enough to keep going.

Star Rating: DNF

The Month in Review

Eighteen books, and the prevailing theme was tradwives. If you have not seen me mention it yet, I am releasing a larger piece on “tradwife lit” later this year, and this was the month the reading really began. I’m really looking forward to bringing that post to you.

Note: I’ve been reading Elizabeth Richardson’s serialized novel TRAD right here on Substack. If you want to read along with me, you can start here!

The other accidental pattern was dual timelines. I lost count of how many books split their story across two eras, and I came away with strong opinions about when that structure earns its keep and when it just gets in the way. The Parisian Heist is the case for it. The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton is the case against. (Seriously, put a “notify me” out for The Parisian Heist if you like historical fiction!)

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The best book I read was A Well-Trained Wife, and the worst was Homebound.

I read most of these from the library, as usual. But if one of them grabbed you and you’d rather own it, here’s a link for 20% off at Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores instead of you-know-who. The complete list of books mentioned in this post is here. Happy reading!

What were the best and worst books you read in May? Let me know in the comments!

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Here’s what to read next…

This month’s theme is Fractured Families, hosted by Simi Sidhu Writes. If you want to find more participants, head to her post and scroll through the comments.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy wrote that line in 1878, and almost 150 years later, it remains the single best argument for why we keep reading and writing novels about families that don’t quite work.

The happy ones, whatever that means, blur together. The unhappy ones are unique. The shape of the fracture is the whole story.

I’ve lived enough years and known enough people to be sure of one thing: families fracture for entirely different reasons.

Sometimes the cause is external. Sometimes it’s biology. Sometimes it’s a single person’s choice. Sometimes it’s grief.

The five books below represent five different types of fractures. There is no single story of how a family breaks and no single story of how the people inside one survive. There is only this family, that family, and the one down the road.

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

A modern retelling of David Copperfield, transplanted from Dickensian England to the Appalachian mountains of southern Virginia during the opioid epidemic.

The narrator is born to a teenage mother on the floor of a single-wide trailer and proceeds to survive every cruelty the American foster system, rural poverty, and Big Pharma can hand a child.

The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023 and shared the Women’s Prize that same year.

The fracture: systemic collapse. The family doesn’t break because of who they are. Instead, they break because poverty, addiction, and a predatory pharmaceutical industry dismantle it from the outside.

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The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Cyril Avery was born in 1945 to an unwed teenage mother in rural Ireland, given up at birth, and adopted by a wealthy and eccentric Dublin couple who never let him forget he is “not a real Avery.”

The novel follows Cyril every seven years across the next seven decades, through Catholic Ireland’s cruelty toward gay men, exile in Amsterdam and New York, and a long, painful path back to the country and the mother who never got to keep him.

The fracture: cultural rejection. A mother is cast out by her community. The fracture is the violence a culture does to people who don’t fit its rules.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Identical twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes grow up in Mallard, Louisiana, a tiny town that prides itself on the lightness of its Black residents’ skin.

At sixteen, they run away together. Years later, Desiree returns home with a dark-skinned daughter, while Stella has disappeared into a white life in California, married to a man who has no idea who she really is.

The novel spans four decades and two generations of daughters who inherit a history much larger than themselves.

The fracture: erasure. One twin chooses to pass as white and erases her family to do it. This is fracture as a deliberate act.

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

The true story of Don and Mimi Galvin, a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Their family became one of the first studied by the National Institute of Mental Health, and samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research into the disease. Kolker alternates between the Galvins’ story, told largely through the two youngest daughters who survived and watched everything, and the parallel history of how science has tried, and repeatedly failed, to understand schizophrenia.

It was an Oprah’s Book Club pick and a #1 New York Times bestseller. Though it’s nonfiction, it reads like the most heartbreaking page-turner you’ve ever picked up.

The fracture: illness. The story of mental illness and the way it ripples outward across siblings, parents, and generations. Nobody chose this, and nobody caused it, but it shapes every relationship in the house.

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The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin

The four Skinner siblings lose their father suddenly when they are young. Their mother retreats into a years-long depression they later call “the Pause,” and the children essentially raise each other in a state of half-feral freedom.

The novel follows them into adulthood, told mostly through the lens of Fiona, the youngest. This is the story of how absence shapes every relationship the four siblings will ever have, especially the one that defines and ultimately breaks them.

The fracture: grief and parental absence. A father dies, a mother checks out, and four children raise themselves. The fracture is what happens when the adults disappear.

Five Fractures, One Shelf

I wouldn’t recommend reading these five back-to-back unless you are particularly emotionally well-resourced. However, reading them as a group allows the Tolstoy line to begin to feel like a thesis. Five families, five fractures, none of them interchangeable.

Which is, I think, exactly the point. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Tolstoy knew it 150 years ago, and we are still working it out, one family at a time.

What’s a book about a fractured family that has stayed with you?

Tell me in the comments. I’m always looking for my next 5-star read, and I try to read everything you send me.

(And make sure to check out Simi’s post for other 5 on 5 lists for this month!)

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But they don’t tell the full story of what ends up in my beach bag.

Here is my actual definition of a beach read: a book I cannot put down. That is the entire test. A beach read is any book so good that I will sit in direct sun past the point of sunburn rather than go inside and lose my place.

After all, it was reading a 900-page English history book on a beach in the Brazilian northeast that pulled me out of a 2-year reading slump.

This list reflects all of that. It holds the books I have genuinely packed for a beach vacation or want to throw into my pool bag this summer. I’ve also included your recommendations!

Summer reading should be fun and enjoyable. Here are the books I hope check those boxes for you.

To celebrate my new paid tier, I’m offering a crazy deal until Aug 1! You’ll lock in a 60% discount, paying just $1.67/month!! Get access to special paid posts, paid-only printables and challenges, and help me continue creating content like this.

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My Top Picks

Twenty books I have read and am personally vouching for. These are all books I’ve brought to a beach/pool/river/park and loved.

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

A Kansas farmhouse, four members of one family shot dead in a single night, two drifters, and almost no motive anyone could name. Capote spent six years reporting it, got disturbingly close to the killers, and more or less invented true crime in the process.

It is built like a novel and reads like one, except the dread never lifts because you know it actually happened. I read this the summer I was 17 and have loved true crime ever since.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Four famous siblings throw their massive annual party in Malibu in 1983. Over one day and one increasingly out-of-control night, every secret they have been carrying catches fire, some of it literally.

Sun, surf, fame, family, and the exact ache TJR does better than anyone alive. If you somehow have not read this yet, this is your summer.

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The most decorated champion in tennis history, retired and thirty-seven, watches a vicious younger rival close in on her record and decides to come out of retirement to defend it. Her father, the only coach she has ever fully trusted, comes back with her.

Read it right after Malibu Rising, where Carrie turns up at the party. I love tennis-themed books, and this is one of my favorites by TJR.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

A sorority house, a charming young man who turns out to be a killer, and the chapter president who got one clear look at his face on the worst night of her life. It is loosely built on Ted Bundy’s final murders, told entirely from the side we almost never hear.

Knoll is furious about the way we turn men like this into folk legends, and she writes the women back into the center of their own story. If you have ever rolled your eyes at the glorification of serial killers, this is the antidote.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Krakauer reached the summit of Everest in May 1996 and descended straight into the deadliest storm the mountain had ever seen. His firsthand account of who lived, who did not, and why is the most white-knuckle book I own. The chapter where the weather turns is one of the most genuinely tense things I have ever read.

You will look up hours later, sunburned and dehydrated, having completely forgotten where you were. My husband read this in one sitting on a beach in Mexico, so I’m counting this!

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The Wedding People by Alison Espach

A woman checks into a grand old Rhode Island hotel completely alone, at the lowest and most desperate point of her life, only to discover the entire place has been booked out for a lavish wedding she has nothing to do with.

It is much funnier and much sadder than that setup suggests, often on the very same page. This book is far funnier and deeper than I expected. One of my favorite reads in recent times.

Lyrebird by Cecelia Ahern

A documentary crew filming deep in the remote Irish mountains stumbles on a woman living completely alone, and slowly realizes she can perfectly mimic any sound she has ever heard. They bring her back to the city to make her a star, which goes about as well as you would expect.

Nobody talks about this book, but they should be. It is gentle and strange and quietly romantic. Underneath, it is asking what we do to rare, unspoiled people the second we get our hands on them. You might cry a little on the beach.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

August 1975: a girl vanishes from her bunk at her family’s exclusive Adirondack summer camp, the same camp her older brother disappeared from years before. A literary mystery thick with pine, old money, and the resentments of the people paid to serve it. I kept deciding I had it figured out, and I did not.

This is the kind of book that makes you quietly cancel your evening plans and read long into the night.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

A glossy destination wedding on a tiny, windswept island off the coast of Ireland. A guest list quietly stuffed with old grudges. A storm that cuts the island off from the mainland, and a body before the night is over.

The Guest List is narrated by a rotating cast who each have something to hide, so the suspicion keeps sliding around the room. It’s like watching a gossipy murder mystery unfold. Delicious.

The Once and Future Queen by Paula Lafferty

A modern woman slips back into Arthur’s Britain and slowly realizes she is meant to live out the legend of Guinevere. Sword fights, court politics, and a love triangle ensue.

This is Outlander crossed with The Princess Bride, and it has no right to be this fun or this moving. Lafferty does something genuinely fresh with a legend everyone assumes they already know.

It’s in the running for my Book of the Year.

The Parisian Heist by Jo Piazza

Two women a century apart: the real-life widow who fought to make Van Gogh famous after his death and a broke American art student scrubbing floors in 1990s Paris. Both of them circle the same painting.

This book is the best kind of armchair travel, wrapped around an art-world caper and two women who refuse to be erased from the story. Read it on a lounge chair and let it take you somewhere far away.

Note: This one comes out on July 14th, so already tag it in Libby to make sure you can put it on hold as soon as it’s available! I read an early copy, and it’s a good one!

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

A grieving young woman inherits her beloved aunt’s Manhattan apartment, which comes with one small catch: every so often, it slips seven years into the past, where a charming stranger is currently living his life.

It sounds like a gimmick, yet it completely earns itself. This book is a darling on BookTok, but it lived up to the hype for me!

Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

Before the Barefoot Contessa empire, Ina Garten was a nuclear-policy analyst in Washington who impulsively bought a tiny specialty-food shop in the Hamptons with no experience whatsoever. This is the whole story of how she built a life precisely to her own specifications.

It is cozy and candid and secretly a quiet pep talk about betting on yourself when it makes no sense on paper. It will also give you unbearable cravings for coconut cake.

You might not think that a memoir belongs in your beach bag, but this one does. Bonus: it was one of my top 5 books of 2025 :)

Künstlers in Paradise by Cathleen Schine

A floundering young man gets stranded by lockdown in his grandmother’s Venice Beach bungalow and falls into her stories of escaping 1939 Vienna for the strange paradise of Los Angeles.

Schine is so funny, it takes a beat to notice she is breaking your heart. I read this years ago, and the story still stays with me.

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The Devil at His Elbow by Valerie Bauerlein

A South Carolina dynasty, a boat crash, two murders, brazen financial fraud, and lots of drugs. Bauerlein covered the case for the Wall Street Journal and writes it like Southern Gothic.

The actual crime being documented in this true crime book keeps shifting, as the family can’t stop getting themselves into hot water. It’s no surprise Netflix turned this into a miniseries.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

A summer in a Michigan cherry orchard, three grown daughters, and the mother who finally tells them about the famous actor she loved one summer long before they existed. Get the audiobook if you can: Meryl Streep narrates, and it is a treat.

Bonus: Patchett’s new novel Whistler is out this month, too!

The Lady of the Loch by Elena Collins

Two sisters take a caretaking job at a remote, half-abandoned castle in the Scottish Highlands and start to feel a deep, specific grief leaking out of the old tower. Centuries earlier, in 1307, a kitchen maid lived a story there that was never allowed to end the way it should have.

It is a timeslip novel with real ghosts, romance, Highland mist, and an ending that genuinely got me. If you loved the eerier, more haunted corners of Outlander, this one is built for you.

The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson

A WASPy little New England beach town, a tight circle of old-money friends who have summered together for decades, and the newcomer whose arrival quietly cracks open every fault line they have spent years papering over. Old grudges, newer money, and nobody behaving especially well. Nonetheless, the book offers a surprisingly poignant look at friendship and what it means to grow up.

This is exactly the kind of smart, gossipy book a pool chair was invented for.

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

A shy, kind New York bookseller is handed a mysterious book by a dying regular and discovers it can turn any door into a door to anywhere on earth. There are other magic books out there, and the people who collect them will do genuinely terrible things to add this one to the pile.

It is high-concept and pure, galloping momentum. This is the kind of book that makes a long travel day simply vanish. Bring it on the plane and watch the hours melt away.

Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd

Ten thousand years of English history, all of it rooted in one patch of ground around Stonehenge and carried by five families whose bloodlines braid in and out across the centuries.

I know. It is 800+ pages, and it sounds like assigned reading. Here is the thing: I was two years into a brutal reading slump, took this doorstopper to the beach so I’d have something to last the week, and it broke the spell completely.

If you have ever loved a sweeping family saga, start here and clear your schedule.

What’s on My Holds List

Here are the books I’m planning to read this summer, as soon as my hold comes in. One won’t be released until late this summer, but I call that delayed gratification.

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

Mallory and Jake meet on Nantucket over a Labor Day weekend in 1993, fall hard, then make a quietly devastating pact: they will spend that one weekend together every single year, no matter what their real, separate lives become. Their lives become a great deal, including a presidential campaign.

A secret love stretched thin across twenty-eight summers set on Nantucket? Exactly my kind of bait.

The Island Club by Nicola Harrison

Balboa Island, 1956. Three very different women whose polished, enviable lives are quietly falling apart find one another through the island’s exclusive club and its tennis courts, and hold on for dear life.

Tennis for me has similarly been a lifeline, so this book called to me. I just hope my hold comes in before summer is over, or I might have to buy this one.

People Watching in the Desert by Cali Adeline

A young woman who has spent her entire life observing other people from the safe edges of the room comes into an unexpected windfall and checks into a luxury desert resort, where, almost against her will, she finally gets pulled into the middle of other people’s lives.

My own life changed directions thanks to a trip to a desert hotel, so this definitely piqued my interest.

The Unknown by Riley Sager

In 1926, five women vanished overnight from an island commune of spiritualists on a remote Vermont lake. A hundred years later, a struggling actress arrives on that same island to film a movie about the disappearances, and they begin again.

Note: This doesn’t come out until August 4, which is exactly why I am telling you now: tag this book with “Notify Me” right now in Libby. Sager does creepy-séance-on-an-island better than anyone, and I want to be first in line.

Beach Read by Emily Henry

A romance writer who has lost all faith in happy endings and the brooding literary-fiction golden boy in the beach house next door spend a summer daring each other to write in the other’s genre. She has to attempt Serious Literature, and he has to try for joy. I’m guessing they fall for each other ♥️

This is more or less the book that kicked off the entire modern beach-read wave, and somehow, I have never read it. I am closing it this summer, ideally with a margarita in hand.

The Au Pair by Teddy Wayne

A washed-up literary novelist in Brooklyn, his marriage to a high-powered wife crumbling, becomes infatuated with the beautiful young Norwegian au pair who happens to revere his forgotten books. What starts as a private obsession spirals into a national scandal and a tabloid trial.

Who says a sleek thriller can’t be a beach read?

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Two aging former Texas Rangers leave their dusty border town to drive a cattle herd across a frontier that is staggeringly beautiful and trying to kill them at every turn. It is widely, seriously called the great American novel.

It is 945 pages, and I am taking it to the beach anyway, because this is finally the summer I sit down to read this. I have been circling it for years, but it’s been recommended to me too many times to put off another season.

Member of the Family by Dianne Lake

Dianne Lake was handed over to the Manson Family by her own parents at fourteen, lived inside it through the murders, and eventually became a key witness against Charles Manson himself. This is the cult from the deep inside, told by its youngest member.

True crime memoirs almost never come from this far inside the story, and I have wanted to read this one for ages. Exactly the kind of dark, what-happened-to-this-person book I cannot put down.

Starkweather by Harry N. MacLean

Nebraska, 1957. A teenage couple goes on a killing spree across the plains that terrifies the entire country and goes on to seed everything from Badlands to Springsteen’s Nebraska.

MacLean spent decades on the murders that taught America to fear the open road. If In Cold Blood is the gold standard for this kind of thing, this belongs on the shelf right beside it. Reading true crime during the summer just works for me.

What Subscribers Are Bringing to the Beach Club

I asked my subscribers for their beach read suggestions, and wow did they deliver! You all made this list meaningfully more unhinged than it already was, which I mean as a sincere compliment.

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

A broke, single-mom suspense novelist is overheard at a Panera describing the plot of her next book. The woman at the next table over assumes she is a contract killer for hire. Rather than correct the misunderstanding, Finlay sort of takes the job. It only escalates from there.

Recommended by: Rich Kacy

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Ten strangers, each hiding a guilty secret, are lured to a cut-off island mansion and then murdered one by one. Each death eerily matches a line of an old nursery rhyme. It is the best-selling mystery novel ever written and will keep you turning pages long after sunset.

Recommended by: Jamie

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Jim Hawkins discovers a map leading to the buried fortune of the notorious Captain Flint. Jim joins a perilous sea voyage, only to uncover a mutinous plot led by the cunning cook, Long John Silver. Nothing is more summer than pirates.

Recommended by: Charles Moritz

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

On the glittering French Riviera in the 1920s, a charismatic American psychiatrist and his beautiful, fragile wife dazzle everyone around them while their marriage quietly rots from the inside. It is Fitzgerald’s most personal novel, and the one many say is his best.

Recommended by: Tarik O.

June Baby by Shannon Garvey

Sent to Block Island the summer she turned seventeen, in the raw aftermath of losing her mother, a young woman has one season that changes everything, then comes back years later to face all of it again. Salt air, grief, first love, and the places that make us who we are.

Recommended by: Anne DeGumbia

The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club by Martha Hall Kelly

A dual-timeline historical fiction novel about two sisters keeping their family farm afloat during World War II, while simultaneously dealing with German U-boats, a Nazi spy on the island, and the mystery of their descendants decades later. Dual timeline and Martha’s Vineyard? Perfect for summer.

Recommended by: Sarah Fowler Wolfe

The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

This one follows a contented couple living in an affluent Atlanta suburb. Their peaceful lives are shattered when a sinister, ultra-contemporary house is built next door. Over time, they realize the house is malevolent and is driving its occupants to tragedy and madness. Stephen King called it one of the finest and most original haunted house stories ever written. The perfect way to give yourself chills on a hot summer day.

Recommended by: Alexandra Sokoloff

Man Overboard by Kathleen Rooney

A man goes over the railing of a cruise ship in the dark, and the entire novel happens in the water as he treads and waits, confronting her life and memories, not even sure anyone has noticed he is gone. Recommending a book about possibly drowning as a beach read may be the most unhinged thing on this whole list.

Note: This book will be released on July 7, 2026.

Recommended by: Zoe Zolbrod

The Love Haters by Katherine Center

A documentary producer flies to Miami for a job that forces her into close quarters with the one person she has been dreading. All that proximity turns dread into something far more complicated and a lot more fun. Sunny and swoony, with a cover practically engineered for a beach bag.

Recommended by: Maryanne

To a Summer of Excellent Reading

Whatever you pull off this list, I hope your summer is full of the kind of reading that makes you almost forget to reapply sunscreen.

If you want a little structure with your chaos, come join my summer reading challenge. It is low-pressure, genuinely fun, and built for exactly this kind of mixed, unhinged, anything-goes reading life. Plus, there’s a surprise at the end for those who complete it!

One last thing before you close the tab. If I missed a book that you’re putting in your beach bag this summer, leave it in the comments! So many readers have told me how many amazing books they’ve found through your recommendations in the comments :)

If you enjoyed this post, please consider becoming a paid subscriber! Until August 1, it’s just $20/YEAR (less than $2/month) to join and gain access to exclusive posts and paid benefits.

I want to join the inner circle!

Like this post? Here’s more to read…

If you grew up in the 80s or 90s and you’re reading my Substack, it’s got to be one of your core memories. There was no better feeling on earth than walking into Pizza Hut with a little paper certificate and walking out with a personal. pan. pizza.

It was simple, and it was FUN.

I recently came across Sabrina Molu’s note, where she said that she wished we could bring it back for adults, and honestly? Same. So I’m doing it.

Welcome to Read it & Eat: The Summer 2026 Reading Challenge. 9 fun and easy prompts, a community of readers doing it alongside you, and yes, a prize when you finish.

I’ll be doing the challenge right alongside you. Consider this your standing invitation.

Here’s how it works:

The Challenge

The challenge runs from June 1 through August 31. All you need to do to participate in the challenge is read one book for each of the eight prompts on the card, plus one wildcard book of your choosing.

There’s no pressure to read fast or read a lot. There’s no ranking. There’s no right answer for any prompt. The whole point is to genuinely have fun and share our love of reading with each other.

The Prompts

Here are the 9 prompts. Complete them in any order, with any book or audiobook.

Sharing our Reads

This is where it gets fun. Our subscriber chat is open to all subscribers, and that’s where the challenge lives all summer.

Post when you finish a square. Share what you’re reading for each prompt. Ask for recommendations when you’re stuck.

Reading can sometimes feel solitary. This is the version where it gets to feel like a big pizza party we’re all invited to.

The Prize

When you complete all nine squares, post your finished card in the chat. Every subscriber who finishes gets a surprise reward from me. I think you’re going to like it!

Oh, and get yourself a pizza. You earned that!

Track it on Storygraph

I’ve set up an official Read It & Eat challenge on StoryGraph so you can log your progress and see what other readers are picking for each prompt. It’s free to join here.

A Themed Reading List to Get You Started

Stuck on where to begin? Here are some books I’d reach for -- I’ll be sharing my own picks for each square in the chat once we kick off.

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

A book set in a place you want to travel

• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

• The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie

• Death in Sardinia by Marco Vichi

A book under 250 pages

• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

• Birthday Girl by Haruki Murakami - This is VERY short. More of a novella? I’m counting it because I love it. It comes as its own book, but it’s hard to find. More commonly found in a collection of short stories called Manga Stories.

• Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

A book released in 2026

• The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez

• Love by the Book by Jessica George

• The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

Check out my post on June 2026 new releases for a longer list!

A book set in summer

• The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

• The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

A book by an author you’ve never read before

These are books recommended by subscribers that I’d never heard of before!

• Eager by Ben Goldfarb

• River of the Gods by Candice Millard

• Auē by Becky Manawatu

A book whose cover you love

• Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi

• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

• Take Me With You by Stephen Rowley

A book in a genre you don’t typically read

According to the internet, the least popular genres are: Westerns, Drama/Literary Fiction (outside of academic or award circles), and niche non-fiction topics. Here’s one of each.

• True Grit by Charles Portis

• Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

• The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson

A library book

Anything works here! Here are a few books I love recommending to anyone :)

• 11/22/63 by Stephen King

• Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

• The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

What Are You Waiting For? Let’s Get Reading!

The challenge starts on June 1st. Drop a comment below to say you’re in and share your recommendations. If you’re not already subscribed, this is a very good summer to start.

If you want something a bit more structured this summer, Sasha Brown-Worsham is running an Adult Book It program over at . Think Pizza Hut Book It, grown up: subscribers vote on what the group reads next, two books per round all summer, with digital stickers and real prizes at the end. If you like a little more shape to your reading, go say hi and cast a vote.

See you in the chat 🍕

Leave a comment

But that doesn’t mean we’re getting fluff this month. Far from it! We’ve got Pulitzer winners circling back with their next titles, beloved romance authors dropping the books their readers have been waiting for, and debut novelists arriving with the kind of premises that make you say, “Wait, what?” out loud.

So get your library card ready and check out everything this month has in store! (The thriller shelf this month was so packed I could not, in good conscience, narrow it down to four!)

Table of Contents

• Thriller

• Contemporary Fiction

• Historical Fiction

• Literary Fiction

• Nonfiction

• Horror

• Romance

• Sci-fi/Fantasy

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

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Thriller

The People Next Door by Carla Kovach

When Gemma inherits her late aunt’s house on Clover Lane, she reluctantly moves her family back to the street where her childhood best friend vanished decades ago, only to find a series of disturbing letters circulating through the neighborhood.

A haunted house thriller in June? Fantastic to mix up my summer reading slate.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Rich Little Liars by AJ Carter

This is the first of AJ Carter’s new line of glossy psychological thrillers for Boldwood, all set among the affluent and the morally compromised. In Rich Little Liars, a single discovery threatens to unravel the carefully constructed lives of an enviable inner circle.

I’ve been on a kick lately for books that lean into the wealth-and-secrets angle (think glittering surfaces, rotten cores).

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 5

Restless Bones by Gillian French

Maine fingerprint analyst Shaw Connolly is pulled into a fresh case when a missing woman’s body is found in a submerged car, all as her sister’s killer continues to haunt her from prison while awaiting trial.

I love a good cat and mouse thriller. The description reminds me of the dynamic in The Silence of the Lambs!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

Someone Else’s Husband by Kimberly McCreight

A Park Avenue wife’s seemingly charmed life unravels after her husband returns from a Kilimanjaro expedition with one fewer person in the group than when he left, setting two women on a collision course over a deadly love triangle.

Love triangles? Lives of the rich and famous? Thriller pacing? This sounds like the perfect poolside read.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

Two Missing Girls by Kerry Wilkinson

Seven-year-old Cassie vanishes from her bedroom without a trace, and years later, when her grieving mother is finally finding solace in her best friend’s young daughter, history repeats itself with surgical precision.

I love a missing-child thriller that focuses on the long, hollow aftermath rather than the immediate frenzy. The “history repeats itself” hook is the kind of premise that’s almost impossible to put down.

Release date: June 17

Names Have Been Changed by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

A Singaporean woman who has spent a decade on the run from a long-ago crime begins recording a confessional podcast that follows her across Tokyo hostess bars, London noodle houses, and a snowbound Colorado town.

The premise alone (Catch Me If You Can meets a true crime podcast, narrated by a globe-trotting Singaporean ex-con) is the most original thriller pitch I’ve heard all season, and I’m itching to see if the debut delivers.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Montecito by Michael Cox

A struggling family who moved to California’s wealthiest enclave to give their kids a better shot finds itself drawn into the orbit of a newly arrived ultra-wealthy family whose job offer comes with very dangerous strings.

Cox lives in Montecito and spent years on Wall Street, so I trust the insider detail. The wealth-and-corruption setup feels right for this particular cultural moment.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

The Au Pair by Teddy Wayne

A once-acclaimed Brooklyn novelist whose career and marriage are crumbling finds dangerous solace in his family’s young Norwegian au pair, setting off a scandal that turns into a headline-grabbing trial.

Wayne’s particular brand of literary thriller (sly, knowing, faintly autobiographical) lands more sharply for me than many of the genre.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

Contemporary Fiction

Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi

A teenage girl and her actress mother, displaced into the glass pool house of their own Hollywood property after the death of the mother’s secret lover, find themselves pulled back into the picture-perfect lie of the main house.

Choi’s first adult novel after years of writing YA. I think this might be one of the most talked-about books this summer. And just look at that cover…

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander

After a young woman is caught having an affair with her married politician boss, her former talent agent mother turns the scandal into a media empire that reshapes the lives of all four Lowe sisters.

Pitched for fans of Blue Sisters and Margo’s Got Money Troubles, I love the idea of a book based on exploiting your own scandal for fame. I’m reading the ARC right now, so check my June round up for my thoughts! You can always find me on Goodreads if you want to read my reviews in real time.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

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Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn

Tracing the on-and-off love story between two women from a 2005 indie rock concert through post-COVID Los Angeles, this novel captures the ache of first love and the slow shaping of a life across two decades.

I loved her first novel, and the nostalgia of this time period calls to me.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson

A young writer arrives at a New England beach town for an eighteen-month residency and quickly inserts herself into the tight-knit social circle of a charismatic local, with consequences that ripple through every long-held secret in the town.

Elin Hilderbrand is already calling it a summer must-read. The newcomer-disrupts-the-friend-group setup is one of my favorite structures.

I’m reading the ARC right now, so check my June round up for my thoughts!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

Historical Fiction

Land by Maggie O’Farrell

In 1865, a father and his ten-year-old son set out to map a windswept Irish peninsula still scarred by the Great Hunger, until a strange encounter in the woods changes them both.

O’Farrell, after Hamnet, is an automatic yes for me. I’ve had my eye on this book for months.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

What Came West by Josh Weil

Just before the Gold Rush ignites, an outsider who has never belonged anywhere but the wilderness flees west into the Sierra Nevada, where a single act of violence sets a manhunt in motion.

Pitched as Cormac McCarthy in lush mode. I’m interested in reading more Westerns, so this appealed to me!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain

Set in a small Devon village in the early 1960s, this debut reconstructs the final year of Sylvia Plath’s life through the eyes of the locals who watched her marriage to Ted Hughes unravel.

Plath is endlessly compelling, and telling her story through the village GP, the dress shop assistant, the church bellringer could make for an unforgettable book.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

Ghost Eye by Amitav Ghosh

A three-year-old girl in 1960s Calcutta who begins to recall a previous life as a fisherwoman becomes the heart of a story that stretches forward to a present-day Brooklyn antiquarian investigating a family mystery.

I have to admit, I’m a little on the fence about this one. The past life angle appeals to me, but the fisherwoman part? Not as much.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

Literary Fiction

Whistler by Ann Patchett

A fifty-three-year-old Manhattan teacher runs into the former stepfather she has not seen in forty-four years and is pulled back into the orbit of a man she loved deeply as a child but barely knew as an adult.

Another one I’ve had my eye on for months. I just adore Ann Patchett.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Sourland by Ariel Delgado Dixon

After the matriarch of a Northern California weed farm disappears under suspicious circumstances, her two former lovers and rival successors fight for control of the next harvest and the very different futures they each imagine for themselves.

I have never seen a mystery book with a plot even remotely like this. Interest piqued.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Close Relationships with Strangers by Krista Diamond

A Las Vegas wildlife photographer turned LA paparazzo becomes consumed by his pursuit of one elusive A-list star, losing his morals and his grip on reality along the way.

Another for the celebrity/rich-and-famous category. The obsession angle, however, is what really drew me in.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Tangled Roots by Maria Turtschaninoff

A retired seventeenth-century soldier carves a homestead out of the magical Finnish forest, and across four hundred years, his descendants live, love, and quietly tangle with the forest folk who never quite leave the land alone.

I love family sagas that span centuries. The Finnish mythical folklore angle really drew me in, since it’s something I’ve never read about before.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

Nonfiction

The Wreck of the Mentor by Eric Jay Dolin

The true story of the 1822 wreck of the British merchant ship Mentor on the coast of what is now Libya, and the crew’s eighteen-month captivity in the Saharan interior, told by one of America’s finest maritime historians.

I love ship and shipwreck non-fiction, so this was a no-brainer.

Quick teaser: I’ll be doing a roundup of my favorite ship and shipwreck-themed books later this year, so keep an eye out!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Decoding the Devil by Sarah Valentine

The untold story of the segregated unit of Black women cryptologists who broke Soviet codes in the early Cold War, working in degrading conditions for a country still denying them civil rights at home.

I also love books about codes and code-breaking, especially when it involves a group of women whose story was previously untold!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

A Resistance History of the United States By Tad Stoermer

A reframing of American history through the lens of resistance, from Bacon’s Rebellion and the Salem Witch Trials through the Underground Railroad and beyond, arguing that resistance has shaped this country more than its founding documents.

I really enjoy history, especially when explored through new lenses. The range covered in this book made it instantly appealing.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

The Secret History of the Universe by Mark Booth

A sweeping, character-driven history of mysticism’s influence on modern science, tracing how figures from Marie Curie to Alan Turing walked the line between rigor and the metaphysical.

The exploration between science and magic is an ever-evolving topic, and I’m here for it. Magic today. Science tomorrow.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Honorable Mentions: There are so many fantastic nonfiction books coming out, and I didn’t cover any nonfiction in my roundup last month! Here are a few that I recommend but that didn’t quite make the list above:

• Centennial by Fergus M. Bordewich / June 2

• Lightning Beneath the Sea by James M. Tabor / June 9

• The Yahoo Boys by Carlos Barragán / June 9

• By the River’s Edge by Gregg Olsen / June 23

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Horror

Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller

In 1987, sixteen-year-old Ursula falls in with a group of squatters at a sinister house called the Underwood and carries out a dare that will haunt her for decades.

I’m a big fan of the slow-creeping kind of horror, rather than the jump-scare kind. I like to read horror year-round to mix things up!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer

After her acquittal for performing the last legal abortion in North Dakota, Doctor Liz is kidnapped by a fundamentalist cult that desperately needs an OB-GYN, and the longer she’s held at the compound, the more she begins to understand just how terrifying the place really is.

Pitched as Gilead meets Waco. I’m a big fan of books related to cults, and of speculative fiction, so I’ve already got this one on hold.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus

Aboard a living spaceship woven from biomatter, a brain-modified nine-year-old cultist named Sisilla has been sent to investigate a plague-riddled planet that has gone rogue, with a crew that includes a faceless assassin, a peyote-addicted medic, and a non-modded captain who wants her dead.

This is one of the weirdest book descriptions I’ve seen in a while. Color me intrigued.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay

A semi-professional gamer is hired by her estranged tech-CFO mother to remote-control a man in a vegetative state (with proprietary AI implanted in his head) across the country, while inside his mind, he wakes into a shifting nightmare with no memory of who he is.

Another book I think we’re going to see everywhere this summer. AI/Tech horror is here to stay, and I’m here for it.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

Romance

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame

It’s the fall of 2024, and a twenty-four-year-old MFA student in an open relationship with her college boyfriend finds herself drawn to his best friend and then to his best friend’s girlfriend, all while she tries to write her way to a happy ending.

We haven’t really had a truly standout polyamorous romance novel hit the scene. Will this be the one? The title is also very, very clever.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2, 2026

The Missed Connection by Tia Williams

After a sparks-flying flight to Paris with a stranger ends without contact information exchanged, a casting agent accidentally emails the entire global staff of her company asking for help finding him, and ends up hiring a smolderingly familiar detective to track him down.

I keep seeing this one everywhere. It sounds cute and like a great armchair travel read, since I’m not jetting off anywhere anytime soon.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

Leave and Come Back by Lavanya Lakshmi

After avoiding her family for seven years, a young Tamil woman returns home for her cousin’s two-week wedding extravaganza with her new white boyfriend in tow, and they hatch an elaborate scheme to win over her judgmental aunt.

A Bollywood-inflected debut rom-com with a big-fat-wedding setup!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams

A young widow returns to her late father’s debt-ridden New England estate to grieve, only to be drawn into his obsession with a legendary pirate’s buried treasure and back into the orbit of the football star who broke her heart thirteen summers ago.

Williams weaves 1717 and the present together with treasure, second chances, and Winthrop Island atmosphere. Exactly the kind of dual-timeline I love sinking into.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Sci-Fi and Fantasy

The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden

The young Duchess Anne of Brittany, facing forced marriage to the King of France, stages a unicorn hunt in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande as cover for a secret betrothal, only to find that the magic she meant to use as theater is very real.

The medieval period is my favorite to read about. Mixing history and fantasy in this way sounds divine. The library wait for this one is going to be excruciating.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

In a world where immigrating across a border literally splits you into two instances of yourself, a Korean American woman who has not spoken to her left-behind self since she was ten is forced to reckon with the other life she might have lived.

I loved Severance, and this is giving off the same vibe.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

The Zen Time Traveler by Stephen Billias

A modern-day Massachusetts Zen student finds his consciousness flung into the body of a thirteenth-century Japanese monk traveling through Song Dynasty China, where the koans he has been studying become matters of life and death.

An unexpected blend of mindfulness, Song Dynasty China, and time travel from an author who is also a longtime Zen practitioner. Sometimes the wildest premises produce the most interesting books.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 21

The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher

Briar Jones spent their entire childhood dreaming of admission to the elite Temple School of Thaumaturgy, and seven years after they were rejected and their best friend Seb was accepted, Briar finally arrives at Temple as a summer temp sorting through the attics, only to discover that Seb has become the school’s most feared villain and that Temple’s secrets reach far beyond its gilded walls.

Pitched as Casey McQuiston meets The Secret History. I love a dark academia premise where the magic is the least sinister thing happening.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

What I’m Reaching For First

JUNE HAS SO MANY GOOD NEW RELEASES!

The book I want most this month is Maggie O’Farrell’s Land. After Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, there is no question, no debate, no hesitation. I placed a hold the minute it became available.

On the fantasy side, I’m reaching for The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden. It’s been a while since I read a good book set in the medieval period, and I’ve been longing for one.

And my wildcard pick is Isabel J. Kim’s Sublimation. A world where immigrating across a border literally splits you into two versions of yourself, one of whom you may never see again. As an immigrant myself, I’m curious to see how Kim explores this.

Did any of these books stand out to you? Share in the comments what you’re most excited to read this month.

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The truth is that non-fiction has a branding problem. People hear the word and picture something improving, something they should read, something that will be good for them in the way bran flakes are good for them.

The twelve books on this list are not that. They are addictive and stranger than many novels I’ve read. Several of them sound, in summary, like things someone made up. But all of them are true!

I’d put these in front of anyone who tells me they only read fiction. I dare you to read at least one of these and tell me non-fiction is boring.

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Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Twenty-eight men, one ship crushed by Antarctic ice in 1915, and a captain who decides his only job is to get every single one of them home. Lansing wrote this with access to the survivors’ journals.

I literally read this cover to cover in one sitting. I was so gripped by the story and the number of times I thought, “there’s no way they get out of this alive,” was mind-boggling.

I will never shut up about how much I love this book. If you only read one from this list, make it this one.

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston

I’ve read a lot of true crime, and this one still stands out.

It tracks an Italian serial killer active across decades, an investigation so corrupted by conspiracy theories, and Italian magistrate politics (Preston himself got hauled in for questioning while researching it).

It’s little surprise this became a Netflix series, though I haven’t watched it yet. The book was too good.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

The story of the 1996 Everest disaster, written by a journalist who was on the mountain when it happened. The chapter where the storm comes in is one of the most viscerally tense things I’ve ever read. You know it’s coming, and yet, the story of how the disaster unfolds is endlessly gripping.

My husband, who was just getting into reading at the time, spent the day reading this instead of swimming with me in Mexico. That’s how crazy the story is.

Blitzed by Norman Ohler

Literally, the Third Reich on meth.

Pervitin was handed out to Wehrmacht soldiers by the millions of pills, Hitler’s personal physician was injecting him with cocktails of God knows what, and Ohler has the archival receipts. This reframes the entire war and reads like a fever dream.

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation became some of the wealthiest people per capita in the world because of the oil under their land, and then they started dying. Grann uncovers a murder conspiracy so wide that the FBI was essentially invented to investigate it.

Scorsese made the film, but the book goes places the film doesn’t.

The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown

The Donner Party story, told from the perspective of one young bride, Sarah Graves.

You think you know this story, but you don’t. The level of visceral detail and the depth of storytelling blew me away. I read this cover to cover on an international flight.

A Taste for Poison by Neil Bradbury

Eleven chapters, eleven molecules, and the eleven killers who used them.

A cardiac physiologist walks you through exactly what each poison does to the human body and then tells you the story of someone who weaponized that knowledge. It sounds clinical, but it isn’t.

The Wager by David Grann

A British warship runs aground off Patagonia in 1741. The survivors split into factions, some of them eat each other, and the ones who make it back to England give wildly different accounts of what happened.

I’ve recommended this book to so many people, and all of them have said it instantly became one of their favorites.

Maybe I should rebrand this Substack to “Elle Won’t Shut Up About Ship Books.”

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

McNamara spent years obsessively tracking the Golden State Killer, decades after the case had gone cold. She died before it was solved, but her work fed into the eventual identification.

The book is about the investigation and is a portrait of what it costs to look at the darkest things for a living. It’s the model for how true crime should be done.

The Devil at His Elbow by Valerie Bauerlein

A South Carolina dynasty, a boat crash, two murders, brazen financial fraud, and lots of drugs. Bauerlein covered the case for the Wall Street Journal and writes it like Southern Gothic.

The actual crime being documented in this true crime book keeps shifting, as the family can’t stop getting themselves into hot water. It’s no surprise Netflix turned this into a miniseries.

A Furious Sky by Eric Jay Dolin

Five hundred years of hurricanes along the American coast, told as the chronicle of a country that keeps building in the same dangerous places and forgetting what happened the last time.

A book about weather might sound boring, but Dolin writes with the same heavy tension of an incoming mega storm.

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

This book covers the search for a lost civilization deep in the Honduran jungle, found via lidar in 2012.

There are venomous snakes, flesh-eating parasites, an actual lost city, and a follow-up section about the disease most of the team brought home with them. Adventure non-fiction at its absolute purest.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

The phrase gets thrown around so often that it’s almost lost its meaning. These twelve books are the reason it exists.

No novelist would dare invent a Reich running on amphetamines, or a serial killer who gets his investigator hauled in for questioning, or twenty-eight men surviving two years on the ice because their captain refused to lose a single one. An editor would send it back with the note: too much.

The advantage non-fiction has over the novel is that it doesn’t have to be plausible. It only has to be true.

What’s the wildest true story you’ve ever read?

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