20 new books to read in July

Need some new reads to throw into your beach tote? There are plenty of hot new books hitting the shelves this month: Here are the 20 you need to know about.  

This debut essay collection is arriving stateside with a heap of acclaim and some major awards already behind it. Kiwi-born Young first meditates on her own experiences, particularly relating to aging and community, before expanding to bring alive an eclectic range of historical figures. (June 3)

Moran’s semiautobiographical tale of a young writer finding her way in the mid-’90s London rock scene pops and fizzes with the energy of those Cool Britannia times — but her smart, nervy take on female selfhood and sexuality feels bracingly of now. (July 3)

Think Donna Tartt’s The Secret History meets Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep meets Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. A new student at a prestigious East Coast school deals with the fallout from dalliances with a secret society and the long-ago disappearance of her mother. (July 10)

Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler (Breathing Lessons) is still at it, this time with another thoughtful page-turner. She offers a breezy but sweeping story of one woman’s entire life, as she overcomes setbacks and searches for fulfillment. (July 10)

We’re over a year out from President Obama’s history-making term and the memoirs are still rolling in. In a refreshing twist, From the Corner of the Oval swaps the policy debates for good-old-fashioned workplace drama, following the author (who served as a stenographer) as she navigates a wholly new kind of office politics. (July 10)

Barack Obama and Joe Biden as action heroes? Believe it. The former POTUS and his veep have been carefully transformed in Hope Never Dies, which brings one of the internet’s many bromantic memes to the page. The pair re-teams to unravel a mystery that leads them to the sinister core of the opioid epidemic. (July 10)

Moshfegh, the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Eileen, is back with one of the summer’s most anticipated literary efforts. My Year is cunning and wry, strange and precise, with a whopper of a final act. (July 10)

The award-winning author of historical fiction returns with her latest sweeping story, this one moving between the ’50s and the ’60s as it paints a portrait of the inhabitants living on an island off the New England coast. (July 10)

Gessen’s second novel is set in 2008, and traces one struggling academic’s return to his birthplace of Moscow, Russia. Political relevance aside, A Terrible Country positions complacency against resistance, and questions what “home” really means. (July 10)

This hyped debut, a luminous family saga centered on a wealthy Chinese-American clan, has already been long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. (July 10)

In this sensitive memoir, a man wades through grief by remembering his marriage in intimate, devastating detail after his wife dies suddenly. (July 10)

Stage’s debut has a little We Need to Talk About Kevin here, a little The Omen there. Suzette’s seven-year-old daughter won’t speak to her, and soon begins behaving in indescribably cruel — evil, even — ways. What’s behind this? You might want to cover your eyes when you find out. (July 17)

The former New York Times chief book critic offers a searing indictment of our current cultural climate, honing in particularly on “falsehood in the age of Trump” and proving the political power of strong criticism. (July 17)

No one teases out the nuances of female relationships, desires, and secrets like Abbott (You Will Know Me). In her new novel, she delves into those themes in the world of science, when two former friends find themselves competing, as adults, for the same job. (July 17)

Arthurs’ collection of short stories tackles the immigrant experience, exploring it through the prism of family. One particular story that’s sure to attract buzz: “Shirley From a Small Place,” in which a world-famous pop star — based on Rihanna — retreats to her mother’s new house in her birthplace of Jamaica. (July 24)

Arceneaux has built up a robust following with his wry commentary on everything from race to sexuality to popular culture. His first book expands on what readers have come to love, while also offering a glimpse of his own life story: his development as a proud gay black man, his coming-out story, how artists like Lil’ Kim and Janet Jackson helped him shape his identity. (July 24)

Here’s the long-awaited new entrant in Bracken’s Darkest Minds saga. And for the unfamiliar: Now’s the perfect time to catch up on Bracken’s best-selling dystopian sci-fi series, as the blockbuster film adaptation arrives Aug. 3. (July 31)

This poetic, harrowing first novel from Contreras centers on the friendship between a young girl and a maid in Bogotá, Colombia, whose families face uncertain futures at the height Pablo Escobar’s violent reign. (July 31)

Kwon’s original idea for The Incendiaries was based on her teenage years in California, when she was a devout Christian and then experienced what she describes as a “cataclysmic” loss of faith. Couple those emotions with a deep-seated interest in cults, homegrown terrorists, and North Korean labor camps (where she has distant family roots), and the book was born. The story follows Will and Phoebe, a couple at an exclusive East Coast college, as they simultaneously fall in love and become entangled in an extremist group hell-bent on violently disrupting abortion clinics. (July 31)

The Lunch With a Bigot author’s thought-provoking new novel offers a fragmented, up-close take on the experience of a new immigrant to America. Kailash, a young man newly arrived from India, navigates an unfamiliar social landscape (New York University) in the effort of fitting in. (July 31)