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20 new books to read in June

20 new books to read in June

By David Canfield , Clarissa Cruz and Seija Rankin

June 01, 2019 at 12:18 PM EDT

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Credit: Hogarth; Riverhead Books; Liveright; Atria Books; Ecco

Love Elizabeth Gilbert? In the market for a brilliant debut novel? Interested in an account of the Manson murders that you've never encountered before? Let's help you build that summer to-read pile.

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City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Credit: Riverhead Books

Gilbert’s delicious new novel immerses readers in the bustle of ’40s New York, where 19-year-old Vivian Morris lands after getting kicked out of college. She arrives in the city’s theater scene and meets an endlessly entertaining group of artists. “There’s something about dipping into that world that was so exotic to me,” Gilbert, a New Yorker for 30-plus years, tells EW. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, New York City in the 1940s? I want to write about that!’” (June 4)

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The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

Credit: Sarah Crichton Books

Smith's latest historical novel takes place at the famed Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood, meditating on the joys, traps, and deceptions of the movies as a longtime resident is forced to reflect on his lost cinematic masterpiece. (June 4)

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In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

Credit: Bloomsbury Publishing

Winslow spans decades in his infectious, empathetic portrait of Knot, a woman whose habits include reading, drinking, and bucking societal norms, and the community that grows and changes around her. Says the author: “The questions that I try to answer in the book through fiction are questions about people I knew when I was a child, that I didn’t get to know a lot about.” (June 4)

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Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

Credit: Tor Books

Gailey's inventive debut is part quirky fantasy, part noirish mystery, and part bittersweet family tragedy. Set at the ever-intriguing The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, this one's for anyone looking for a book to really surprise them. (June 4)

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Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett

Credit: Tin House Books

If you’re in the market for a blackly comic and deeply weird Florida story, you’re in luck: This debut finds aimless Jessa-Lynn taking over her father’s taxidermy business after he kills himself in the shop. But no coming-home is complete without family resentments and secrets boiling to the surface. (June 4)

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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Credit: Penguin Press

An award-winning poet, Vuong can already count Marlon James, Celeste Ng, and Emma Straub among the fans of his wrenchingly powerful debut. On Earth is a novel about the power and limits of love, framed around the letter a queer man in his 20s writes to his mother, with whom he emigrated from Vietnam as a child. (June 4)

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Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Credit: Liveright

What does it mean to leave a child behind? Dennis-Benn follows up her acclaimed Jamaica-set debut, Here Comes the Sun, with Patsy, a pained look at the consequences faced by a Jamaican woman who abandons her family — including her young daughter, Tru — for the freedom of New York City, where she can pursue the woman she’s fallen in love with. (June 4)

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This Storm by James Ellroy

Credit: Knopf

Crime writer Ellroy made his reputation with the L.A. Quartet, an epic set of four novels that included the 1990 noir that inspired the 1997 film L.A. Confidential. Now Ellroy is at work on a prequel quartet, taking place during World War II. The second book in the series, which follows up 2014's Perfidia, is another sprawling and satisfyingly hard-boiled historical mystery. "I despise the minimal, I despise the small, the picayune," the author tells EW. "And that's why I write these big books." (June 4)

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Bunny by Mona Awad

Credit: Viking

A misfit MFA student at a thinly veiled New England Ivy (located in “a town named after a godly gesture of gratitude and fate”) is seduced by a group of Heathers-esque classmates — they call one another “Bunny” — whose seeming attempts to foster creativity take a sinister turn. A surreal, darkly funny take on art, power, and female friendships. (June 11)

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The History of Living Forever by Jake Wolff

Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The mystical and the romantic combine for a love story that also confronts the meaning of life. After his chemistry teacher — and secret lover — Sammy Tampari dies, 16-year-old Conrad attempts to see the man’s mission through: by creating a drug that extends the human life span. (June 11)

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Honestly, We Meant Well by Grant Ginder

Credit: Flatiron Books

In Ginder’s fourth novel, classics professor Sue Ellen Wright goes back to the place where she first found love — the Greek island of Aegina — for a lecturing gig and the perfect summer getaway. But her unfaithful husband and secretive son tag along, setting the stage for an uproarious tale of a family in crisis. (June 11)

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Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

Credit: Atria Books

The best-selling author’s latest, her most sprawling and intensely personal novel to date, attempts to answer the question “How should a woman be in the world?” It follows two sisters, Jo and Bethie, from their 1950s childhood to the present day, tackling racism, sexual identity, abuse, and how women are shaped — but not defined — by their choices. (June 11)

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Recursion by Blake Crouch

Credit: Crown

A mind-bending thriller probing the power of memory as reality starts to (literally) crumble, Recursion was acquired in a huge deal last October: Netflix announced that Shonda Rhimes and Matt Reeves would jointly adapt it — as both a movie and a series. “There are single sentences in the book that could be an entire season of television,” Crouch tells EW. “This isn’t a two-hour movie, but it feels bigger than the small screen, too…. Netflix is breaking down the boundaries between film and television, and was sort of made for a book like this.” (June 11)

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Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Credit: Random House

Best known for her award-winning celebrity profiles — among others, she memorably wrote about Gwyneth Paltrow and Bradley Cooper last year — Brodesser-Akner turns to fiction with this stimulating debut. Fleishman follows a father and divorcée who’s forced to face reality, and his past, when his ex-wife disappears. (June 18)

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The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung

Credit: Ecco

Chung (Forgotten Country) traces generations of female geniuses (both fictional and real-life historical figures) in her fascinating portrait of Katherine, a mathematician looking back at the obstacles she’s faced in her career — as a woman of great ambition and intelligence pushing up against societal norms — and in her personal life, as she learns the truth about her mother and where she came from. (June 18)

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The Travelers by Regina Porter

Credit: Hogarth

American history comes to vivid, engaging life in this tale of two interconnected families (one white, one black) that spans from the 1950s to Barack Obama’s first year as president. The backdrop of events may be familiar (the Vietnam War, racial protests in the ’60s), but the complex, beautifully drawn characters are unique and indelible. (June 18)

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Chaos by Tom O'Neill, with Dan Piepenbring

Credit: Little, Brown and Company

What if everything we thought we knew about the Manson murders was wrong? O’Neill spent 20 years wrestling with that question, and Chaos is his final answer. Timed to the 50th anniversary of the Manson murders, it’s a sweeping indictment of the Los Angeles justice system, with cover-ups reaching all the way up to the FBI and CIA. (June 25)

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Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

Credit: Ballantine Books

The NPR correspondent and Pop Culture Happy Hour host’s novel explores the budding connection between a young widow and the washed-up former professional baseball player who rents out the apartment in the back of her house. (June 25)

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I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum

Credit: Random House

The Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker TV critic singularly traces the medium’s evolution from a variety of angles, in a set of essays which collectively argue that “we are what we watch.” (June 25)

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The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

Credit: Doubleday

This sprawling debut could be the big family saga of the summer, unfurling the fallout of a long-buried secret and persisting rivalries between four sisters across 50 transformative years. (June 25)

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20 new books to read in June

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City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

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The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

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In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

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Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

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Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett

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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

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Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn

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This Storm by James Ellroy

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Bunny by Mona Awad

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The History of Living Forever by Jake Wolff

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Honestly, We Meant Well by Grant Ginder

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Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

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Recursion by Blake Crouch

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Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung

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The Travelers by Regina Porter

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Chaos by Tom O'Neill, with Dan Piepenbring

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Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

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I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum

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The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

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