It’s been an amazingly good summer for bookworms so far. If you’re looking for your next great read, fiction or nonfiction, here are our picks for the best new books of summer 2019 to read right now.
The Best New Books of Summer 2019
OK, we’ll confess. We haven’t been as sociable as we should have been so far this summer. Blame it on our bookshelf. We’ve had our noses buried in so many of the great reads of summer 2019 that we’re at risk for losing our spot on the invitation lists of our friends and family.
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On the other hand, it might be worth paying the price! There are some excellent new reads out there right now. If you’re ready to risk the opprobrium of your spouse, friends, family and co-workers, have a look at our list of the best new books of summer 2019. They may cause you miss a couple of cookouts, though. Dear reader, you’ve been warned.
Best Fiction and Poetry of Summer 2019
Here are 12 outstanding and engaging works of fiction that make our list of the great reads of summer 2019. So as not to play favorites, we’ve listed these in order of publication date.
1.
Mostly Dead Things by Kirsten Arnett is a novel about a family launched into tragicomic dissolution by the suicide of its patriarch. When grief threatens to send the family taxidermy business under, one daughter must rally her eccentric family members to keep it afloat. We loved this debut – it took us to some interesting places, and then brought us safely back. – Publication date: June 4, 2019
2.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. Following his poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, comes a novel centered on the complicated love a son has for his Vietnamese mother. – Publication date: June 4, 2019
3.
The Travelers by Regina Porter. The adventures of two families – one Irish-American, one African-American – unfold and intertwine across continents and generations in this novel. It spans American life from the 1950’s through 2009. – Publication date: June 18, 2019
4.
Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Here’s the set-up: ex-wife drops off kids, and then promptly disappears. Single dad is left to juggle it all. In this satirical take on modern relationships, Toby Fleishman is left to navigate life post-separation. His daunting challenges include dating apps. And the aforementioned kids. – Publication date: June 18, 2019
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5.
Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky. In this comedy of manners, a famous Pakistani writer and professor becomes stuck in the middle of a mother-daughter relationship. Did we mention that the daughter is his student, and that she has a crush on him, while he’s lusting after her mother? This could definitely get messy. – Publication date: July 2, 2019
6.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. The author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning bestseller The Underground Railroad returns with a novel that illuminates another strand of American history. This time, it’s through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. Elwood Curtis unexpectedly finds himself at the Nickel Academy, an abusive reform school. Inspired by the true story of a school in Florida – Publication date: July 16, 2019
7.
Costalegre by Courtney Maum. Drawing inspiration from the real-life relationship between Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter Pegeen, this is the story of the power a mother holds over her daughter. – Publication date: July 16, 2019
8.
The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal. The bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest returns with a novel about three generations of women in a Midwestern family trying to reconcile while producing an award-winning IPA at their family brewery. – Publication date: July 23, 2019
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9.
Doxology by Nell Zink. The author of Mislaid returns with a novel about a Lower East Side punk band facing a shattering loss in the wake of 9/11. As they search for a path forward in a time of confusion, threat, and political division, Zink illuminates hard truths about our political climate while also offering a poignant portrait of human goodness. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
10.
Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton. In this debut novel, a pet crow fights to save humanity from an apocalypse. S.T., the domesticated crow and protagonist, is a bird of simple pleasures. He loves hanging out with his owner Big Jim, trading insults with Seattle’s wild crows (those idiots), and enjoying the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
11.
A Particular Kind of Black Man by Tope Folarin. This debut novel tells the story of Tunde Akinola, a Nigerian-American growing up in Utah. Over the course of the novel, he moves from place to place, including Texas, Morehouse College in Atlanta and eventually Lagos, searching for connection and a sense of himself. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
12.
Everything Inside: Stories by Edwidge Danticat. The American children of immigrants discover that their lives have been shaped by their parents’ Haitian pasts: a New York City high school teacher learns that her absent father is dying; a woman with dementia struggles to impart the lessons of motherhood to her own daughter. In eight stories, Danticat takes readers to locales including the city of her birth, Port-au Prince, Haiti, as well as an unnamed Caribbean island and Miami. – Publication date: August 27, 2019
Best Non-Fiction Books of Summer 2019
Many of the great reads of summer 2019 are non-fiction. Here are a dozen excellent essay collections, memoirs, histories and more. Again, to play fair, we’ve listed them in order of publication date.
1.
Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert MacFarlane. This marvelous book is an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. from the prehistoric art of Norwegian sea caves to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, from Bronze Age funeral chambers to the catacomb labyrinth below Paris, and from the underground fungal networks through which trees communicate to a deep-sunk “hiding place” where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come. Publication date: May 2, 2019
2.
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. Contrary to popular belief, deep specialization is not necessarily a winning formula for success. Instead, a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. In most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are more likely to excel. – Publication date: May 28, 2019
3.
Formation: A Woman’s Memoir of Stepping Out of Line by Ryan Leigh Dostie is a literary memoir of a young Army recruit driven to prove herself in a man’s world. – Publication date: June 4, 2019
4.
The Beautiful No: And Other Tales of Trial, Transcendence, and Transformation by Sheri Salata. After a twenty-year stint at The Oprah Winfrey Show, Harpo Studios and the OWN network, the author realized that she had dedicated decades to her dream job. But she had left the rest of her life gathering dust on the shelf. After years of telling other people’s makeover stories, she decided to “produce” her own life transformation. – Publication date: June 4, 2019
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5.
More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say) by Elaine Welteroth. In this memoir, the charismatic editor who infused social consciousness into the pages of Teen Vogue shares her story and her advice on work and life. – Publication date: June 11, 2019
6.
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell. This provocative work examines gendered language and the way it shapes us. The author shares the history of how numerous innocuous words in the English language morphed over time into harsh female insults. Melding history, science, and popular culture, Montell challenges us to change our words. And change the world. – Publication date: June 4, 2019
7.
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo is one of the most-anticipated and buzzed-about new releases of July 2019. In this work of narrative nonfiction, a New York Magazine contributor profiles three everyday women. The focus is on their hidden desires, and how they are often thwarted in pursuing them. – Publication date: July 9, 2019
8.
Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark by Cecelia Watson. The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care? The author tackles all of these pressing issues and more. – Publication date: July 30, 2019
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9.
The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator Hardcover by Timothy C. Winegard. This well-timed work of narrative nonfiction offers a new perspective on the history of humankind. In it, the author makes the case that the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate through millennia. Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington’s secret weapon during the American Revolution? It appears that the answer to all of these queries is “the mosquito.” – Publication date: August 6, 2019
10.
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino. The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino breaks down big cultural trends through the lens of her own experiences in her debut essay collection. The nine essays cover everything from the horrors of the Internet to Tolentino’s appearance on a reality television show as a teenager. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
11.
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom. It was 1961 when Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought the shotgun house where she would raise her 12 children. Back then, the East New Orleans neighborhood where it was situated was imbued with post-war optimism. This memoir mines her family’s history and their relationship to the titular Yellow House — even after Hurricane Katrina destroys it. – Publication date: August 13, 2019
12.
Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War by Duncan White. During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. This is an account of the great writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain who played the dangerous games of espionage, dissidence and subversion that changed the course of the Cold War. – Publication date: August 27, 2019
the best new books of summer 2019 to read right now
Those are our picks for the great new reads of summer 2019. If you ask us, one of these is what you should read next. What say you? Did we leave out any of your favorites from the season? Happy reading!
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