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While I love curling up with a good book in the fall and winter, there’s nothing quite like packing a good book in a beach bag and spending time outside reading.
So, I’m sharing a dozen titles you might like to read this season — some new and some backlist — no matter what kind of books you enjoy.
I’ve been putting together summer reading lists for years, but this years list feels different! Of course, I always share different titles from prior years but this year I really had to dig to find a mix of titles that felt right.
I hope you see at least one book that encourages you to read this season. Let’s get into it:
‘Just One Taste’ by Lizzy Dent
I read one of Lizzy Dent’s previous books, “The Summer Job” and loved it, so when I saw this book, I knew it would be perfect for summer.
“Just One Taste” follows Olive Stone as she deals with her father’s dying wish: to finish writing his cookbook with her nemesis, Leo Ricci. Although Ricci is handsome, he thinks they should keep her father’s failing restaurant, too, while she wants to sell it.
This unlikely duo travels all over Italy testing recipes for the book and trying not to get on each other’s nerves. But maybe their time together proves there’s even more than Olive initially thought. Could saving the restaurant also spark a romance?
‘The God of the Woods’ by Liz Moore
What’s a summer reading list without a camp story? “The God of the Woods” is set in the summer of ’75, when a camp counselor discovers a camper is missing.
This camper, though, is the daughter of the family who owns the summer camp. She’s also not their first child that’s gone missing… Follow a complex web of secrets and second chances.
‘The Hollywood Assistant’ by May Cobb
I read “The Hunting Wives” by May Cobb a few summers ago and WOW, it was so good! As a result, I was thrilled to see she’s got a new title coming out in July, “The Hollywood Assistant.”
The story follows Cassidy Foster as she gets an opportunity to move to Los Angeles and work for the Sterlings. At first, the couple seems perfect and so does the job.
But it’s not long before some attraction grows between Cassidy and Nate Sterling. Then, there’s major trouble in paradise when someone winds up dead.
‘Swan Song’ by Elin Hilderbrand
It’s a personal requirement that I read at least one Elin Hilderbrand book each summer and, although I have much of her catalog left to read, “Swan Song” is her LAST BOOK.
Part of me is sad there won’t be any more books; another part of me is jealous that she’s had such a successful writing career and is able to comfortably retire, and the last bit of me is very happy for her — I swear!
In “Swang Song,” a $22 million home is purchased by a mysterious family and it puts the community in a swirl of drama. The family throws expensive parties and show off their multiple yachts; winning over locals.
So, when the mansion burns down and one of their employees goes missing, all of Nantucket is up in arms. It’s the final goodbye for Hilderbrand, and some of her beloved characters.
‘The Blue Machine’ by Helen Czerski
“The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works,” shares the mechanisms behind the ocean, from its impressive depths and coral reefs to shallow coastal seas and Arctic ice floes.
This book includes stories of history, culture, and animals, and Czerski explains how water temperature, salinity, gravity, and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates all interact in a complex dance, supporting life at the smallest scale―plankton―and the largest―giant sea turtles, whales, humankind.
Most important, however, Czerski reveals that while the ocean engine has sustained us for thousands of years, today it is faced with urgent threats. By understanding how the ocean works, and its essential role in our global system, we can learn how to protect our blue machine.
‘Eyeliner’ by Zahra Hankir
As a makeup junkie, “Eyeliner” sounds like required (but fun) reading! From the distant past to the present, with fingers and felt-tipped pens, metallic powders and gel pots, humans have been drawn to lining their eyes.
Through intimate reporting and conversations—with nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York, and more—Eyeliner embraces the rich history and significance of its namesake, especially among communities of color. What emerges is an unexpectedly moving portrait of a tool that, in various corners of the globe, can signal religious devotion, attract potential partners, ward off evil forces, shield eyes from the sun, transform faces into fantasies, and communicate volumes without saying a word.
‘Rare Gems’ by Howard Megdal
After following the women’s NCAA teams this year, I’m now obsessively watching WNBA games to see Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, and Kamilla Cardoso. I’m learning a lot (and having fun) watching the games, and I want to know even more!
I stumbled across “Rare Gems” during one of many Google searches, and it looks like just what I need. It follows the story of the pioneers who shaped the modern infrastructure for women’s basketball.
It is the story of forcing open doors—to ensure teams even existed, to allow those teams to play in conditions resembling those men could take for granted, to ensure that the color of your skin or who you love would not be a barrier to building a life centered around basketball.
Through meticulous research and evocative storytelling, this captivating narrative gives due recognition to the luminaries who ushered in women’s basketball’s modern era.
‘The Little Italian Hotel’ by Phaedra Patrick
A few summers ago, I read “The Messy Lives of Book People” by Phaedra Patrick and really enjoyed it. So, when I saw this book (while browsing a bookstore over the holidays), I knew it would be perfect for the pool.
“The Little Italian Hotel” is the story of Ginny Splinter, acclaimed radio host and advice expert. She planned a trip to Italy to celebrate her 25th wedding anniversary… but when she gifts the trip to her husband, he asks for a divorce.
Ginny decides to take the trip anyway, and she invites four heartbroken listeners to join her and it turns into a healing vacation. So, when Ginny’s now ex-husband starts having second-thoughts about a divorce, Ginny has some serious thinking to do.
‘Capote’s Women’ by Laurence Leamer
Truman Capote is one of my favorite writers of all time, and when I saw “Fued: Capote vs. The Swans” on Hulu, I went searching for a book to match. Well, here it is: “Capote’s Women” is the true story of Barbara “Babe” Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy’s sister).
They were the toast of midcentury New York, and Capote befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and shocking way possible: writing about them.
When he eventually published a few chapters in Esquire, the thinly fictionalized lives (and scandals) of his swans were laid bare for all to see, and he was banished from their high-society world forever. Laurence Leamer recreates the lives of these fascinating women, their friendships with Capote and one another, and the doomed quest to write what could have been one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
‘Dolly’ by Dolly Parton
In 1994, Dolly published her first book, an autobiography titled “Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business,” on the HarperCollins imprint.
The book recounts her childhood growing up poor in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and discusses her music, religion, marriage, and many other aspects of her life, such as her opinions about plastic surgery and her larger-than-life persona.
‘Last True Poets of the Sea’ by Julia Drake
I picked this up a few years ago at a Little Free Library (I dropped off a stack of about 10 books and took this one in exchange), but I still haven’t read it. I’ve got no clue why because it sounds good!
The Larkin family isn’t just lucky—they persevere. At least that’s what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. But wrecks seem to run in the family: Tall, funny, musical Violet can’t stop partying with the wrong people. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life.
Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment, Violet is haunted by her family’s missing piece—the lost shipwreck she and Sam dreamed of discovering when they were children. Desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric, lain hidden in a watery grave for over a century.
She finds a fellow wreck hunter in Liv Stone, an amateur local historian whose sparkling intelligence and guarded gray eyes make Violet ache in an exhilarating new way. Whether or not they find the Lyric, the journey Violet takes—and the bridges she builds along the way—may be the start of something like survival.
‘Out East’ by John Glynn
I read this book many summers ago, but it deserves a place on this list, especially if you’re a fan of Bravo’s “Summer House.”
They call Montauk the end of the world, a spit of land jutting into the Atlantic. The house was a ramshackle split-level set on a hill, and each summer, thirty-one people would sleep between its thin walls and shag carpets. Against the moonlight, the house’s octagonal roof resembled a bee’s nest. It was dubbed The Hive.
In 2013, John Glynn joined the share house. Packing his duffel for that first Memorial Day Weekend, he prayed for clarity. At twenty-seven, he was crippled by an all-encompassing loneliness, a feeling he had carried in his heart for as long as he could remember.
Out East is the portrait of a summer, of The Hive and the people who lived in it, and John’s own reckoning with a half-formed sense of self. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, The Hive was a center of gravity, a port of call, a home. Friendships, conflicts, secrets and epiphanies blossomed within this tightly woven friend group and came to define how they would live out the rest of their twenties and beyond.
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