17 New Books To Read Before Summer Ends

If you’ve been daydreaming about a trip to the waterpark or a backyard BBQ with your largest group of friends, odds are you’re itching for something to keep you busy this summer. Take a break from reality and relax with a great new book.

1. The Wife Who Knew Too Much by Michele Campbell

St. Martin's Press / Via amazon.com

Set in the dazzling and affluent hills of the Hamptons, this blockbuster thriller follows Tabitha Girard and Connor Ford as they are brought together years after a summer fling, and when Connor’s wife Nina takes her own life, he and Tabitha can finally be together. However, when Tabitha uncovers Nina’s diary, she is drawn deeper into a life she is ill-prepared for, and it becomes clear to her that what a wife knows can kill her.

2. The Color of Air by Gail Tsukiyama

HarperVia / Via amazon.com

Daniel Abe, a young doctor in Chicago returns to Hawai'i to reconnect with his homeland and Uncle Koji. As Koji anticipates Daniel’s return, he reflects on family memories and well-kept secrets of Daniel’s mother and father that he knows he must soon share. The novel follows these characters as they navigate and appreciate their Japanese American culture, family roots, and fight to save their community threatened by the awakening of the violent volcano, Mauna Loa.

3. Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

Flatiron Books / Via amazon.com

Beauregard Montage is an honest man with crushing responsibility – a devoted father, the backbone for his aging mother, and a mechanic with an overdue bill on his autobody shop. But before he was known as Beauregard, he was “Bug”, a career criminal who was the best getaway driver from North Carolina to Florida. With a hidden taste of thrill and speed in his veins, he can’t resist one last chance for a ticket out of poverty when he reunites with an old associate. He must choose between his new life and running one final heist.

4. The Lost Girls of Devon by Barbara O'Neal

Lake Union Publishing / Via amazon.com

Old wounds have kept Zoe Fairchild away from her childhood home, a small Devon village in England. That is until she learns that her old friend and grandmother’s caretaker has gone missing. With her fifteen-year-old daughter in tow, she heads home to help search. This mysterious tragedy brings four generations of Fairchild women together, uncovering buried secrets and betrayal. They must look inward to mend themselves and their relationships when another woman suddenly disappears.

5. Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho

G.P. Putnam's Sons / Via amazon.com

The perfect mix of Crazy Rich Asians and Bridget Jones’s Diary, Last Tang Standing follows Andrea Tang a young and successful lawyer with the world in the palm of her hand. She lives a glamourous life, but all she really needs is to find a husband to satisfy her disapproving Chinese-Malaysian family. Soon she must choose between an enchanting entrepreneur, Eric Deng, who “checks all of the boxes” or her office rival Suresh Aditparan who could never get her family’s approval.

6. We Came Here to Shine by Susie Orman Schnall

St. Martin's Griffin / Via amazon.com

Set during the iconic New York World’s Fair in 1939, We Came Here to Shine follows two young women with the drive to make their wildest dreams come true. Vivi Holden wants to be an actress in Hollywood, and Maxine Roth wants to be a successful journalist. Up against a male-dominated world, the two women team up to form an unbreakable friendship and help each other succeed during the most meaningful summer of their lives.

7. Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev

William Morrow Paperbacks / Via amazon.com

Ashna Raje is on the cusp of losing her beloved restaurant and desperately needs to prove to her mother that she isn’t a failed chef. When she’s asked to join the cast of Cooking with the Stars, she knows this is her best chance to put her restaurant back on the map. That’s before she learns that she’ll be paired up with her ex, Rico Silva, FIFA winning soccer star, and the man who ghosted her. Their catastrophic first meeting goes viral but as the competition continues, they rekindle their feelings and confront their troubled past.

8. The Takeaway Men by Meryl Ain

SparkPress / Via amazon.com

Following World War II, twin sisters Bronka and Johanna and their parents arrive in the U.S. from a Displaced Persons Camp. They struggle to adjust to American life while also worrying about the Cold War and the haunting shadow of the Holocaust. Years later, a former Nazi is discovered in their community and the girls begin to dig into their parents’ pasts. What they come to discover is that their painful and treacherous past will be far more difficult to revisit than they could have ever imagined.

9. Well-Behaved Indian Women by Saumya Dave

Berkley / Via amazon.com

Well-Behaved Indian Women chronicles the lives of three generations of Indian and Indian-American women as they navigate life and struggle to find their sense of self. Simran wants to be a writer, to her mother, Nandini’s disappointment. Nandini is a doctor who’s done everything she can to provide for her family in America. And Mimi, Nandini’s mother, is trying to mend her relationship with Nandini by connecting with Simran. When each woman reflects on her life’s pressures, they realize just how much they have in common.

10. The Yield by Tara June Winch

HarperVia / Via amazon.com

The Yield is a story of hope and preservation that follows a young Australian woman returning home for her beloved grandfather’s burial. Her grief is compounded by the pain, anger, and sadness as she reflects on her troubled childhood plagued by her mother’s incarceration and her sister’s disappearance when they were children. When her family’s house and ancestral land is at risk of repossession, she must look into the words of her grandfather's Wiradjuri tribe to save the land and keep her culture alive.

11. Life and Other Shortcomings by Corie Adjmi

She Writes Press / Via amazon.com

What does it mean to be a woman? In this collection of linked short stories, we follow women from New Orleans to New York City to Madrid, and from 1970 to the present day as they navigate their way through life. Some women choose to work, others don’t; some stay married, some get divorced, and others never marry at all. Each story reveals a different reality on what it really means to be a woman and how different cultures and eras affect a woman’s relationship with herself.

12. Luster by Raven Leilani

Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Via amazon.com

Twenty-something, Edie is fumbling her way through life. As a young black woman living in Bushwick, she’s trying to make a name for herself while also making a series of irresponsible choices. It all comes to a head when she meets Eric, an alluring older white man who has a thirst for domination. Edie loses her job, and Eric’s wife Rebecca welcomes her into their home and into their open marriage…with conditions. Falling deeper into the dark web of their marriage, she reflects on her future as she indirectly becomes the role model for the couple’s adoptive black daughter. This is a young black woman’s journey through desperation, confusion, and ultimately finding purpose and sense of self.

13. The Vanishing Sky by L. Annette Binder

Bloomsbury Publishing / Via amazon.com

As World War II nearly releases its vicious grip in 1945, the Huber family still feels its damaging consequences. Both of Etta’s sons served their country, her oldest on the Eastern front and her youngest at a school for Hitler Youth, where young boys were given a military education. Now they must return home, but the war has left a painful strain on the family. This novel paints a picture of the lasting impact of war and the involuntary compliance of German citizens to a dangerous regime.

14. Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey

Ecco / Via amazon.com

At the age of nineteen, Natasha Trethewey lived through the horrific murder of her mother, at the hands of her stepfather. In this harrowing and insightful memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet explores the way this traumatic event shaped her into the artist she became. Natasha Trethewey uses this pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by fierce love and resilience.

15. All the Right Mistakes by Laura Jamison

She Writes Press / Via amazon.com

Elizabeth, Sara, Martha, Carmen, and Heather have been friends since college. Over the years each has experienced a different hardship including marriage struggles, career turbulence, and infertility despite living privileged lives. When Heather writes a tell-all, best-selling women’s advice book inspired by the “mistakes” of her four friends, the women begin to reevaluate their friendship, lives, and the many lessons learned along the way.

16. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Riverhead Books / Via amazon.com

The Vignes sisters will always be twins but their lives today could not be more different since they ran away from their small, southern black community at sixteen. One sister found her way back to the same town she once tried to escape now living with her daughter, while the other passes as white, and her husband knows nothing of her past. With miles between them, their hearts and identities remain intertwined, but they soon discover what will happen to the next generation when their daughters' lives collide.

17. A Spell for Trouble by Esme Addison

Crooked Lane Books / Via amazon.com

Aleksandra Daniels hasn’t seen her aunt and cousins in over 20 years. After her mother died, her father forbids her from visiting them. But on a whim, Alex finally decides to accept an invite to help her family with their herbal apothecary business in Bellamy Bay, North Carolina. However, when one of her family members is arrested following a local death, gossip and rumors quickly circulate within the small town. Alex sets out on an investigation that uncovers secrets that may be worth killing for.