Summer Fiction Books
The perfect poolside books are here!
If you’re the “li squad” we think you are, you want to find the perfect seasonal books. Books that are not just giving summer but giving trendy, diverse, inclusion, romance, and more. There’s nothing wrong with wanting it all! From anthology short stories to summer romance, pop open one of these books along side the pool. These summer fiction books are filling that void you didn’t even know you had yet!
You seasonal desires start here. Grab a towel, sunscreen and a new book now!
Let the Games Begin
(Sponsored)
by Rufaro Faith Mazarura
Set against a sizzling-hot Greek summer filled with sunshine and souvlaki, Rufaro Faith Mazarura’s Let the Games Begin is a page-turning debut rom-com about two strangers at the top of their game.
Athens, 2024. Olivia Nkomo has always been ambitious, smart, and an overall go-getter. Now that she’s graduated from university, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to land her dream job at the Summer Games. The first step? Securing her new internship, which will put her in the center of all the action, where she hopes to run into some of her favorite athletes.
Ezekiel “Zeke” Moyo, the heartthrob star runner of Team Great Britain, is more than ready to claim his title as the fastest man in the world, following in the footsteps of the greatest athletes of all time. His future to the finish line is looking bright–despite his recent breakup with celebrated gymnast Valentina Ross-Rodriguez constantly making headlines.
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
by Shane Hawk – Theodore C Van Alst
NATIONAL BESTSELLER – BRAM STOKER AWARD NOMINEE FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN AN ANTHOLOGY
Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear–and even follow you home.
The Glassmaker
by Tracy Chevalier
From the bestselling historical novelist, a rich, transporting story that follows a family of glassmakers from the height of Renaissance-era Italy to the present day.
It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass–but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes.
Tehrangeles
by Porochista Khakpour
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK – MEET THE MILANIS. FAST-FOOD HEIRESSES, L.A. ROYALTY, AND YOUR NEWEST REALITY TV OBSESSION
“Delightfully twisted and heartfelt…Khakpour is a satirist extraordinaire…The antics and agonies of the Milani family had me googling pet psychics and turning the pages gleefully–at turns surprised and horrified, but always charmed and laughing so hard.” –Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians and Lies and Weddings
Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all–a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire, and four spirited daughters. There’s Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically-online overachiever; and the impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll.
Enlightenment
by Sarah Perry
A dazzling new work of literary fiction from the author of The Essex Serpent, a story of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends.
Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits–torn between their commitment to religion and their desire to explore the world beyond their small Baptist community.
It is two romantic relationships that will rend their friendship, and in the wake of this rupture, Thomas develops an obsession with a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and Grace flees Aldleigh entirely for London. Over the course of twenty years, by coincidence and design, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as the mystery of the vanished astronomer unfolds into a devastating tale of love and scientific pursuit.
Happier Life
by Kristy Woodson Harvey
With “her signature warmth and Southern charm” (E! Online), the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer of Songbirds and the Peachtree Bluff series presents a tender and touching novel about a young woman who discovers the family she has always longed for when she spends a life-changing summer in North Carolina.
Present Day: Keaton Smith is desperate for a fresh start. So when her mother needs someone to put her childhood home in Beaufort, North Carolina, on the market–the home that Keaton didn’t know existed until now–she jumps at the chance to head south. But the moment she steps foot inside the abandoned house, she’s confronted with secrets about grandparents who died in a car accident before she was born.
1976: After meeting her adoring husband Townsend, Rebecca “Becks” Saint James abandoned the life she knew and never looked back.
Slow Dance
by Rainbow Rowell
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and Attachments
Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.
They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. Both going to get out of north Omaha–Shiloh would go to go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.
Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.
Little Rot
by Akwaeke Emezi
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY HARPER’S BAZAAR, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BOOKPAGE AND MORE!
“Emezi unspools a web of erotic danger in their entertaining latest…readers in search of a decadent good time will find it here.”–Publishers Weekly
One weekend.
The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city.
A party that goes awry.
A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no one unscathed.
Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
by Rufi Thorpe
A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world–from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.
As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet’s always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor–and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.
Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion–fast.
Honey
by Isabel Banta
A coming-of-age story that follows the meteoric rise of singer Amber Young as she navigates fame in the late-90s and early-2000s era of pop music superstardom
It is 1997, and Amber Young has received a life-changing call. It’s a chance thousands of girls would die for: the opportunity to join girl group Cloud9 in Los Angeles and escape her small town. She quickly finds herself in the orbits of fellow rising stars Gwen Morris, a driven singer-dancer, and Wes Kingston, a member of the biggest boy band in the world, ETA.
The Coin
by Yasmin Zaher
A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman’s unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind
The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start.
In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.
Youthjuice
by E K Sathue
American Psycho meets The Devil Wears Prada outrageous body horror for the goop generation
A 29-year-old copywriter realizes that beauty is possible–at a terrible cost–in this surreal, satirical send-up of NYC It-girl culture.
From Sophia Bannion’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE (hee-bee), a luxury skincare/wellness company based in New York’s trendy SoHo neighborhood and named after the Greek goddess of youth, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty, has plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knockoffs and doesn’t care. Though she leads an outwardly charmed life, she aches for a deeper meaning to her flat existence–and a cure for her brutal nail-biting habit. She finds it all and more at HEBE, and with Tree Whitestone, HEBE’s charismatic founder and CEO.
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
by Maddie Mortimer
Named a Best Book by Time, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal
Longlisted for the Booker Prize – Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize
This lyrical debut novel is at once a passionate coming-of-age story, a meditation on illness and death, and a kaleidoscopic journey through one woman’s life–told in part by the malevolent voice of her disease.
Lia, her husband Harry, and their beloved daughter, Iris, are a precisely balanced family of three. With Iris struggling to navigate the social tightrope of early adolescence, their tender home is a much-needed refuge. But when a sudden diagnosis threatens to derail each of their lives, the secrets of Lia’s past come rushing into the present, and the world around them begins to transform.
On a Woman’s Madness
by Astrid Roemer – Lucy Scott
A FINALIST FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
On a Woman’s Madness tells the story of Noenka, a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her own choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America’s tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society’s expectations.
They Dream in Gold
by Mai Sennaar
When Bonnie and Mansour meet in New York in 1968–his piercing gaze in a downtown jazz club threatening to carry her away–their connection is undeniable. Both from fractured homes, with childhoods spent crossing the Atlantic, they quickly find peace with each other. And as Mansour’s soaring Senegalese melodies continue to break new ground, keeping time with the sound of revolution and taking him and Bonnie from Paris to Rio and Switzerland, it seems as though happiness might finally be around the corner for them both.
Girls with Bad Reputations
by Xio Axelrod
“Hot chemistry, fantastic writing, realistic character flaws, triumphs, and family drama–Xio Axelrod never misses a beat!” —Rebecca Yarros, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
All her life, Kayla heard the same refrain: Don’t be so loud. Don’t act so wild. Don’t take up so much space. Now she’s the beating heart of an up-and-coming rock band…and the whole world is going to know her name.
The pressure to be the perfect daughter nearly broke Kayla Whitman. Desperate to find an outlet away from her controlling mother, she picked up a pair of drumsticks, forever altering the rhythm of her life.
Guncle Abroad
by Steven Rowley
Patrick O’Hara is called to his guncle duties . . . This time for a big family wedding in Italy. Patrick O’Hara is back. It’s been five years since his summer as his niece Maisie and nephew Grant’s caretaker after their mother’s passing. The kids are back in Connecticut with their dad, and Patrick has relocated to New York to remain close by and relaunch his dormant acting career. After the run of his second successful sit-com comes to a close, Patrick feels on top of the world . . . professionally. But some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single again after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has a family to lean on. Until that family needs to again lean on him.
Love and Hot Chicken: A Delicious Southern Novel
by Mary Liza Hartong
The debut of a dynamite new voice from the South, Love and Hot Chicken is a spicy and hilarious Tennessee story about family, friendship, fried chicken, and two girls in love.
The Chickie Shak is something of a historical landmark. Red clapboard walls, thriving wasp population, yard-toilets resplendent with sunflowers. My best friend Lee Ray and I used to come after our softball games and snag a picnic table while our mammas ordered the home team special. Truth is, most people around here order the same thing until the day somebody throws their ashes off a roller coaster at Dollywood. The line snakes around the building as far as you can see, the grimiest bunch of Jessies, Pearls, and Scooters you ever did behold, hobnobbing in the parking lot from noon until night.
Curvy Girl Summer
by Danielle Allen
Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Survival of the Thickest, a smoking-hot, hilarious novel about the perils of online dating.
“It’s the summer fiction book must-read!”
After a one-night stand with her clingy ex, Aaliyah James has an epiphany: this ain’t it. She knows what she wants, and she’s ready to move past casual hookups, flings, and situationships.
If you are realizing these are not the summer fictional books for you. Then guess what? We have a poetry, memoir, and self-care summer books for your vibe right here!
