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What’s on your summer reading list? Maybe you’ve got it all worked out already, but if you don’t, here are 60 possibilities, arranged by the months in which they’ll be published -- the best of this summer’s forthcoming reads.
--
JUNE
And Then
There’s This
How Stories Live and Die
in Viral Culture
By Bill Wasik
Viking
A snapshot of our information age’s frenzied metamorphosis.
The Angel’s Game
A Novel
By Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Doubleday
The author of “The Shadow of the Wind” describes a diabolical deal between a young writer and his mysterious client.
A Bright and
Guilty Place
Murder, Corruption, and L.A.’s Scandalous Coming
of Age
By Richard Rayner
Random House
The City of Angels’ un-angelic, corrupt past, as experienced by a prosecutor and a crime scene investigator.
Conquest of
the Useless
Reflections From
the Making of “Fitzcarraldo”
By Werner Herzog
HarperCollins
The filmmaker’s diaries of the struggles behind the making of his 1982 epic of a would-be rubber baron.
Erased
A Novel
By Jim Krusoe
Tin House
What should you do when you receive a postcard from your dead mother?
Fordlandia
The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City
By Greg Grandin
Metropolitan
Henry Ford’s purchase of a vast plantation in the Amazon led to an experiment (unsuccessful) in exporting America to other lands.
Goat Song
A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and
the Art of Making Cheese
By Brad Kessler
Scribner
How the author fled life in New York City for a farmhouse on a mountain.
I Am Not Sidney Poitier
A Novel
By Percival Everett
Graywolf
Orphaned, wealthy and with an unfortunate name, a black boy known as Not Sidney Poitier throws social hierarchies into chaos.
In the Kitchen
A Novel
By Monica Ali
Scribner
A body in his basement leads a famous chef into an unsettling world of femmes fatales and secret crimes.
Larry’s Kidney
Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant --
and Save His Life
By Daniel Asa Rose
William Morrow
The subtitle says it all.
Let the Great World Spin
A Novel
By Colum McCann
Random House
A portrait of New York City in the transitional 1970s as a cast of characters copes with loss, political upheaval and change.
One Ring Circus
Dispatches From the World of Boxing
By Katherine Dunn
Schaffner Press
An anthology of the pugilist’s art and its many players: the stars, the amateurs, the trainers, even the cut men.
Operation Bite Back
Rod Coronado’s War to Save American Wilderness
By Dean Kuipers
Bloomsbury USA
A Times editor’s look at how an eco-radical’s use of a scorched-earth policy against fur farmers led to the rise of the Animal Liberation Front.
The Scarecrow
A Novel
By Michael Connelly
Little, Brown
L.A. Times reporter Jack McEvoy’s been laid off but is trying to meet one more deadline -- and catch a killer -- before his exit.
Shanghai Girls
A Novel
By Lisa See
Random House
Sisters leave Shanghai behind to forge new lives for themselves in 1930s Los Angeles.
The Signal
A Novel
By Ron Carlson
Viking
An estranged couple’s wilderness trek results in harrowing encounters with strangers, secret missions -- and some unexpected hope.
The Story Sisters
A Novel
By Alice Hoffman
Shaye Areheart Books
The struggles of three sisters from Long Island after one of them retreats from life’s sorrows to live in a fairy tale world all her own.
The Strain
A Novel
By Guillermo Del Toro
and Chuck Hogan
William Morrow
Vampires have been biding their time on Earth, hiding and quietly feeding: Now, they want to take over.
Strangers
A Novel
By Anita Brookner
Random House
A London retiree is surprised to find his bachelorhood unsettled by the attention of three women.
This Wicked World
A Novel
By Richard Lange
Little, Brown
An ex-Marine who’s done prison time (he had good reasons) looks into an immigrant’s death and finds sinister depths beneath L.A. a la Raymond Chandler.
Trouble
A Novel
By Kate Christensen
Doubleday
A coming-of-middle-age novel of three friends -- a trust-funder, a therapist and a rock star -- and their struggles with relationships, rendered with the author’s acerbic wit.
--
JULY
American Adulterer
A Novel
By Jed Mercurio
Simon & Schuster
A fictional portrait of John F. Kennedy as husband, father, leader of the free world -- and all too human.
Best Friends Forever
A Novel
By Jennifer Weiner
Atria
Two old high school best friends overcome a gap of 15 years and their differing social status to help each other in a crisis.
The Book of William
How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World
By Paul Collins
Bloomsbury
On the trail of the 1623 document -- which contains 36 of Shakespeare’s plays -- from its creation until the present day.
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
Stories
By Maile Meloy
Riverhead
Explorations of the battles that ranchers, farmers and other denizens of the American West wage on behalf of love.
Camus, A Romance
By Elizabeth Hawes
Grove Press
A biography of the French philosopher that doubles as a memoir of the author’s own effort to understand him.
Cooperstown Confidential
Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame
By Zev Chafets
Bloomsbury USA
Behind the veil: a history of one of sports’ holiest places.
Crow Planet
Essential Wisdom From
the Urban Wilderness
By Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Little, Brown
An overabundance of the black-plumed bird is an ominous ecological sign as well as a window into the animal kingdom.
Everything Matters!
A Novel
By Ron Currie Jr.
Viking
In rural Maine, a young man struggles with his dysfunctional family, not to mention his prophetic powers, as the world braces for apocalypse.
Exiles in the Garden
A Novel
By Ward Just
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The son of a powerful U.S. senator faces the consequences of turning his back on Washington, D.C., society and living on its margins.
Free
The Future of
a Radical Price
By Chris Anderson
Hyperion
The author argues that businesses gain more benefits by giving away products than by charging for them.
Get Real
A Novel
By Donald E. Westlake
Grand Central Publishing
The late author’s final installment of the hilarious adventures of John Dortmunder and his felonious associates.
Glover’s Mistake
A Novel
By Nick Laird
Viking
A love triangle among artists plays out on the London art scene.
Golden Dreams
California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963
By Kevin Starr
Oxford University Press
The author’s “Americans and the California Dream” series continues with a look at the state in the postwar years.
I’m So Happy for You
A Novel
By Lucinda Rosenfeld
Back Bay Books
When life blooms suddenly for unlucky Daphne, her best friend Wendy is torn between enthusiasm and crippling jealousy.
Jericho’s Fall
A Novel
By Stephen L. Carter
Alfred A. Knopf
A dying former CIA head possesses a secret that foreign powers want and an old flame may be able to uncover before he dies.
A Moveable Feast
The Restored Edition
By Ernest Hemingway
Scribner
The original manuscript version includes a number of unfinished Paris sketches removed before the book’s publication.
Short Girls
A Novel
By Bich Minh Nguyen
Viking
Two siblings find the realities of love as mysterious as their Vietnamese heritage and discover that the best support comes from each other.
“What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?”
Jimmy Carter, America’s “Malaise,” and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country
By Kevin Mattson
Bloomsbury USA
Inside the Carter White House.
Where the Money Went
Stories
By Kevin Canty
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
The author takes on varied themes -- love, egotism, disillusionment -- and renders them with a clear, sympathetic eye.
The Wild Marsh
Four Seasons at Home
in Montana
By Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The author celebrates the distinctive qualities of each month of the year in his beloved Yaak Valley.
--
AUGUST
Await Your Reply
A Novel
By Dan Chaon
Ballantine
A long-lost twin carefully eludes his brother, while a high school graduate has second thoughts about running away to start a new life with her old teacher.
Before the Big Bang
The Prehistory
of Our Universe
By Brian Clegg
St. Martin’s Press
Why we may want to reconsider conventional thinking on the beginnings of the universe.
The Bride’s Farewell
A Novel
By Meg Rosoff
Viking
A poor young woman in 1850s England flees her home and future responsibilities on her wedding day but soon realizes she can’t escape her past.
An Expensive Education
A Novel
By Nick McDonnell
Atlantic Monthly Press
Ivory tower debate on the future of Africa meets real-world troubles in Somalia.
Heart of the Assassin
A Novel
By Robert Ferrigno
Scribner
A relic of Christ’s cross could help to unite an America divided into Muslim and Christian sectors in this post-apocalyptic story.
Imperial
By William T. Vollmann
Viking
Massive and deeply idiosyncratic, Vollmann’s 1,300-plus-page look at the U.S.-Mexico border region is as elusive as the area it evokes.
Inherent Vice
A Novel
By Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Press
Thomas Pynchon goes noir . . . or sort of, in this novel that takes place in late 1960s L.A.
It Feels So Good When I Stop
A Novel
By Joe Pernice
Riverhead
The singer-songwriter pens an adult-beverage tale.
The Magicians
A Novel
By Lev Grossman
Viking
A fantasy-loving student discovers that a magical land he read about as a child really exists -- though it is a darker, more dangerous place than he expected.
A Paradise Built in Hell
The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters
By Rebecca Solnit
Viking
Is disaster good for society? Solnit thinks so, and in this provocative book, she explains why.
Red to Black
A Novel
By Alex Dryden
Ecco
Two agents -- one British, one Russian -- fall in love while spying on each other and join forces upon learning that new Russia’s imperial ambitions look a lot like the communists’.
Self’s Murder
A Gerhard Self Mystery
By Bernhard Schlink
Vintage
The author of “The Reader” returns with a dour, elderly sleuth who is assigned to track down the silent partner in a successful German bank.
Shelf Discovery
The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading
By Lizzie Skurnick
Avon
A reader’s memoir of the long relationships we form with certain books.
The Silent Hour
A Novel
By Michael Koryta
Minotaur
A posh (and creepy) mansion once used as a rehab for paroled murderers contains secrets only P.I. Lincoln Perry can solve.
Silver Lake
A Novel
By Peter Gadol
Bleak House Books
Two architects’ happy life together is shattered by a peculiar yet attractive stranger.
Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens
Frank Oppenheimer
and the World He Made Up
By K.C. Cole
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The former Times science writer chronicles the life of the physicist, brother of Robert, and his revolutionary ideas in art and science.
South of Broad
A Novel
By Pat Conroy
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
A diverse group of teens in Charleston, S.C., forms close bonds amid social upheaval and personal travails.
Strength in What Remains
A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
By Tracy Kidder
Random House
The author follows a young medical student’s escape from ethnic tensions in Burundi and his eventual return to build a clinic for his people.
That Old Cape Magic
A Novel
By Richard Russo
Alfred A. Knopf
Everything changes for Jack and Joy Griffin, but the one constant in their family’s life is the presence of Cape Cod.
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