The sunshine brings with it many things: barbecues, pub gardens, freckles on your skin. It also brings a hefty reading list, one full of books to chuck into a suitcase on a long-haul flight or fling into a beach bag with a packet of crisps and a towel. Truly, there is no better time to read than when the mercury is high and the days are long. And between the mesmerising memoirs, riveting historical fiction, and delightful debuts this summer, we’re spoilt for choice. Below, we help you whittle down your overflowing reading pile to 20 unmissable titles.
open image in galleryThe Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Oh, Elizabeth Strout, why do you do it to us!? It seems to be obligatory that the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist makes us cry at least three times per book, but although her latest is sometimes desperately sad, it’s also a dazzlingly moving read. This time, she’s left her adored protagonists, Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, to bring us the story of Artie Dam, a 57-year-old history teacher living in Massachusetts, who feels bereft about the direction of his country and increasingly disconnected from his wife. It’s a state-of-the-nation novel told through the intimate lens of one man’s life, and it’s Strout’s best novel in years. Jessie Thompson
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open image in galleryThe Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet
I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with non-fiction. Mostly, I read to escape into other worlds, to get lost in larger-than-life characters and situations. But Lyse Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul offers all the richness and narrative pull of fiction – and then some. A sweeping social history revolving around the Inter-Continental in Kabul, Afghanistan’s first luxury hotel, established in 1969, Doucet’s book tells the story of the city through the eyes of the staff who worked there, who lived through a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise and fall and rise again of the Taliban. Reading it, I’m reminded of something Doucet said on stage when accepting the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction: aren’t all the best stories true? Annabel Nugent
open image in galleryHooked by Asako Yuzuki
A few years back, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a copy of Asako Yuzuki’s chunky crime saga Butter, with its distinctive sunshine yellow cover. Now Hooked, a 2015 novel from Yuzuki’s back catalogue, is available in English, also translated by Polly Barton. It’s far more sunlounger-friendly than Butter, with a writing style that is breezier and less dense, but the subject matter is still pleasingly twisted. The novel tells the story of Eriko, a successful woman in her early thirties who has never been able to form proper friendships – and ends up overcompensating with a parasocial fixation on a lifestyle blogger. Yuzuki has a real knack for creating unsettling but horribly real characters, the sort you can’t look away from despite yourself. Katie Rosseinsky
open image in galleryNatural Disaster by Lisa Owens
If you are going on holiday with small children, you might find Lisa Owen’s novel particularly cathartic. Set across one day, its nameless protagonist – only ever referred to as “mum” – is returning to work tomorrow and wants to have the perfect day with her children before her maternity leave ends. Of course, that does not happen; the first sign of impending disaster is that said day begins at 5am. Owen perfectly captures the banalities of solo parenting and the internalised sense of judgement that mums often feel – especially the fear of being shamed for using your phone at Rhyme Time. JT
open image in galleryRejection by Tony Tulathimutte
When this short story collection was published way back in 2024, it spawned plaudits and think-pieces galore. The only problem for me was that it was hardback-only and thus impossible to fit into an already overstuffed suitcase. Now, finally, it arrives in paperback. Written by the Thai-American Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection deals with those dejected members of society – unpopular, alienated and seeking connection online. One man, a self-professed feminist, is “dragging his virginity like a body bag into his mid-twenties” and wondering why, for all his good politics about women, he keeps getting friend-zoned. Things turn dark from there. Rejection is a hard read, and maybe not the first thing you think to pick up when on a beach in Europe, but it’s propulsive and completely compelling. Tulathimutte is nothing if not a wry guide to the darkest corners of the internet. AN
open image in galleryBrawler by Lauren Groff
I can’t remember the last time I recommended a book with such absolute fervour. These nine stories are so elegantly written, so pulsing with emotion – each one crafted like a mini masterpiece. From a story about a reunion of old girlfriends (one of whom happens to be dying of cancer) to the tale of a marriage where the possibility of a late-life affair lingers in the air, Groff sweeps you up and then pulls the rug from under you. The longest story, What’s the Time Mr Wolf, is like a condensed version of Succession and somehow packs the breadth of several seasons of TV into about 70 pages. Put this collection of short stories at the top of your packing list. JT
open image in galleryThe Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Oh, this novel is just so lovely. It’s Virginia Evans’s debut, though the American author recently revealed she’d previously written seven novels, all of which failed to find publishers. Boy, did she get it right with this one. The epistolary tale of Syvil, a seventysomething compulsive letter-writer, is the best kind of summer read: full of warmth, impossible to put down, and centred around a protagonist you want to spend hours with. The Correspondent made me want to buy a book of stamps and write to everyone I love (as well as send Evans a note of appreciation). It’s also just won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, where it was definitely my pick of the bunch. JT
open image in galleryLondon Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
This one surely has to be tied with Yesteryear as one of the summer’s most talked-about books – for all the right reasons. The indefatigable journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing about the IRA and Empire of Pain about the Sacklers, turns his investigative eye to London’s glittering underworld and the dirty money that underpins it in his latest work, which started life as a viral New Yorker long-read. London Falling is the story of Zac Brettler, a 19-year-old who fell to his death from a luxury block of flats in 2019; later, it emerged that he’d been leading something of a double life, masquerading as the son of a Russian oligarch. I often feel like taking a non-fiction tome on holiday feels a bit too much like bringing your homework along, but London Falling is truly compulsive. KR
open image in galleryHeart Breaker by Judith O’Reilly
What’s a summer reading list without at least one crime story? And Judith O’Reilly’s Heart Breaker is a doozy. Daphne Monroe wakes up to find her family has been brutally murdered. Three years later, everyone thinks she was the one to wield the weapon – but the real killer is still out there, and he’s back to finish what he started. Not that Daphne is some maiden in distress; instead, taking inspiration from high-stakes revenge thrillers like John Wick, O’Reilly’s protagonist has nothing left to lose as she attempts to find her family’s killer before he finds her. Dun, dun, dun! AN
open image in galleryKin by Tayari Jones
A new release from Tayari Jones, the author of the Women’s Prize-winning An American Marriage, is always a treat; Jones’s writing is so lyrical that reading her books feels a bit like being immersed in a particularly gorgeous piece of music. In this one, Niecy and Annie have been best friends since they were babies, their bond made all the tighter by the fact that neither has grown up with a mother. As they get older, though, they are drawn down very different paths. A sweeping coming-of-age tale, Kin takes its characters from girlhood to grown-up life, lending itself to a reading experience that would benefit hugely from the kind of languid, leisurely freetime that only a beach holiday allows (rather than, say, the stop-start effect of reading on your commute). KR
open image in galleryI Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder
You will be happy reading the debut novel from Jem Calder, which comes highly recommended by Sally Rooney and shares her immensely readable, sparse prose style. It’s exactly the kind of book you can while away a summer afternoon with, built to be devoured in one sitting, telling the story of a thirtysomething copywriter slash wannabe novelist who hooks up with a Gen Z coffee barista slash wannabe poet. Their subsequent relationship is bleakly depressing and often blackly comic, and Calder nails how contemporary life has been reduced to endless app scrolls and add-to-carts. I found the ending ultimately hopeful, though, and have loved talking to other readers about what they took away from it. Jessie Thompson
open image in galleryThe Witch by Marie N’diaye
A mediocre witch stuck in a mediocre marriage forms the premise of this 1996 French novel, which is exacting in its exploration of motherhood and womanhood. That’s not to say that it’s dour or devoid of fun. Rather, Ndiaye is unexpectedly funny in her subtle satire of the world. She writes with an off-kilter detachment that perfectly complements her book’s naturalistic supernatural setting, which is a dreary town in provincial France. I only heard of The Witch after seeing it shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize, but I’m glad that I picked it up. An eerie read to be devoured in one sitting, this book certainly will cast a spell on its readers. AN
open image in galleryAmerican Fantasy by Emma Straub
I’m genuinely unsure whether there has ever been a book premise more precisely calculated to appeal to my personal reading sensibilities than American Fantasy, a novel set on board a Nineties boy band-themed cruise. It’s about a recent divorcée who sets sail on said cruise, a celebration of some fictional Backstreet Boys-esque group, for a bit of fun, and ends up reconnecting with her teenage self (and her teenage crushes) in the process. It feels like this summer’s answer to Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, another tale of civilian-celeb romance – which, I might add, is the highest possible recommendation in my book. KR
open image in galleryLand by Maggie O’Farrell
How do you follow Hamnet, a luminous meditation of grief that became both a bestseller and an Oscar-winning film? If Maggie O’Farrell felt any apprehension about approaching another book after the success of her mega-hit, it certainly doesn’t show. Land is a sweeping work of historical fiction, a multigenerational epic and her most ambitious book to date. Inspired by O’Farrell’s great-great-grandfather, who made maps in the wake of the Great Hunger in the 19th century, it follows mapmaker Tomás and his son Liam, who are surveying a windswept peninsula in the west of Ireland in 1865. It’s moving and magnificent, as is O’Farrell’s MO. AN
open image in galleryOn Earth as It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia
I read Brazilian author Ana Paula Maia’s novel, translated by Padma Viswanathan, in a single evening. Almost; I snuck in the final pages as I was stirring my daughter’s porridge the next morning. This doesn’t happen very often when you have a toddler, but few books I’ve read recently have been so original and propulsive. It’s set in a penal colony that’s slated for closure by the state. The number of prisoners, most of whom have committed murders for money, is dwindling because the guard has gone mad and is hunting them for sport each night. It’s a blood-soaked mix of Breaking Bad and Kafka, full of questions about what a human being has the capacity to absorb. JT
open image in galleryA British Childhood: How our Children Live Now by Frank Cottrell Boyce
This is the National Year of Reading, with a major government-backed campaign launching at the start of 2026 to get us all embracing books again. But it’s hard not to feel despondent when we’re facing an ocean of AI slop and phone addiction. So I’m turning to this new book from outgoing children’s laureate Frank Cottrell Boyce for guidance and inspiration, particularly as I want to instill my own love of reading in my daughter. Sharing what he’s learned from his tenure touring schools and libraries, Cottrell Boyce offers his observations about how childhood has changed and why storytelling plays a vital role that must be preserved. I’ll be taking lots of notes. JT
open image in galleryYesteryear by Cairo Burke
I can confidently predict that you will 100 per cent spot this one on the plane or by the pool this summer. Caro Claire Burke’s debut is utterly ubiquitous, but I reckon it’s worth the hype. Yesteryear takes an internet talking point – the rise of the trad-wife influencer – and pushes it to the extreme: what would happen if a homesteading Instagram queen was forced to actually live out the pioneer life that she espouses on social media? Burke’s writing is sharp and pacy, and she’s very good at pulling the (handloomed) rug from under our feet. KR
open image in galleryWhat We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Is it really 25 years since Briony messed everything up for Cecilia and Robbie in Atonement? I’m afraid so, but the good news for fans of Ian McEwan’s greatest novel is that his latest is one of the best he’s written in years. Newly released in paperback, What We Can Know is a mix of dystopian yarn and literary mystery, set in the recent past and distant(ish) future as a scholar searches for a lost poem to teach him about what humans used to get up to before a major climate crisis. JT
open image in galleryFamesick by Lena Dunham
For a certain kind of person coming of age at a certain moment in time, Lena Dunham was the go-to oracle of millennial life. The creator of Girls turns her gaze inward in her second memoir, offering up a twisted tale of celebrity and illness that’s as self-lacerating as it is open-hearted. There are juicy nuggets of industry gossip – such as the time when her co-star Adam Driver allegedly threw a chair across the room mid-rehearsal – but Dunham is at her best when interrogating fame’s Faustian bargain: being at once scrutinised and complicit in that scrutiny. As ever, her prose is conversational and intimate – the perfect companion to bring on summer vacation. AN
open image in galleryMy Death by Lisa Tuttle
A feminist gothic novella from the early Noughties, gorgeously republished by Penguin earlier this year? Yes please. Scottish author Lisa Tuttle co-wrote one of her first books with none other than Game of Thrones master George RR Martin, but My Death is a whole other kettle of dragons. In it, a writer looking for the subject of her latest book hits upon a neglected female artist. Things get strange when she begins to uncover a series of similarities with her own life. JT
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open image in galleryLost Lambs by Madeline Cash
Admittedly, I am the sort of reader who falls prey to hype, and there were few books this year as hyped as Madeline Cash’s debut novel. Thankfully, in her case, the buzz and superlatives were deserved. Lost Lambs follows the disgruntled Flynn family of middle America, at the centre of it is a marriage coming apart at the seams and a trio of girls running amok. In that sense, Lost Lambs is a family saga. In another sense, it is a different kind of book altogether, folding in government conspiracy theories, terrorist groups, and vampire-like tech CEOs. Cash is morbidly funny in her writing, which takes inspiration from Jonathan Franzen, Raymond Chandler and Don DeLillo. The action all moves rather quickly, too, so none of it feels like a chore. AN