The 15 Most Anticipated Books Of The Summer, According To Goodreads

From the bestselling author of A Man Called Ove comes a story about the transcendence of friendship and art.

Eighteen-year-old Louisa finds a new painting in her care, one of a long pier with three tiny figures sitting at the end. It’s a world-famous work of art, but no one has ever seemed to care about the people appearing in it. So she sets off to find out.

Twenty-five years earlier, three teenagers with rough home lives found refuge in each other and spent time together in their rural seaside town. What will Louisa uncover about them, and where they are now, on her journey?

Available now

Critically acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow takes on America’s first big literary celebrity, Mark Twain. Follow him from his early days dreaming of being a steamboat captain to his first newspaper job, which catapulted him into being a famous author known for his wit. Chernow also charts Twain’s downfall: bankruptcy, relocating to Europe, and the deaths of his wife and daughters.

Available May 13

Katie Vaughn can either wait to be laid off from her job as a producer, or fulfill her colleague Cole’s request and profile a Coast Guard rescue swimmer down in the Keys — who happens to be Cole’s brother. But they hate each other. And Katie can’t swim.

As the book description puts it, “swim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes, and stolen kisses ensue — along with chances to tell the truth, to face old fears, and to be truly brave at last.”

Available May 20

Rachel Gillig’s One Dark Window duology is beloved on BookTok, and she has arguably some of the most beautiful prose of any author in the genre. In this new standalone work, we meet Sybil Delling, a foundling girl who traded a decade of service for a place to stay in the great cathedral, where she is a Diviner.

Nobles travel from all over the kingdom to learn their futures from her dreams. One of them is a mysterious, handsome, and frankly, rude knight, Rodrick. He couldn’t care less about Sybil’s divining, but they’ll need to work together to figure out why her fellow Diviners are disappearing.

Available May 20

Taylor Jenkins Reid does her thing in this book, dropping readers right into all the glory of the early ‘80s. Joan Goodwin has always loved space, hence why she became an astronomy professor. So when she comes across an ad seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s shuttle program, she jumps at the chance. She befriends her new fellow astronauts and they prepare for their first flight, but everything changes in an instant during their mission.

Available June 3

The Carruthers family has run their crematorium in rural Virginia for years, but when his father perishes in a car accident, eldest son Roman returns to handle family affairs. His younger brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous criminals, leading Roman to question whether his dad’s death was really an accident at all. So Roman offers his unique financial skills to the mob, hoping to save his brother’s life, while his sister Neveah tries to uncover what really happened to their mother many years prior.

Available June 10

Maria, 1532, from Santo Domingo de la Calzada. Charlotte, 1827, from London. Alice, 2019, from Boston. All three women are buried in the same soil, where their stories of love, betrayal, and rage entangle, “and then they all grow teeth,” as the book’s description says. I’m so in.

Available June 10

What if you could sleep through the heartbreak of an earth-shattering loss? In the remote California desert, a controversial treatment center offers patients a prolonged slumber to heal their grief, but it doesn’t come without its side effects. Follow a book illustrator, an occupational therapist, a fireman, and a free spirit — and one dog — on their journey from the Midwest to The Poppy Fields to finally get some relief from what plagues them.

Available June 17

Every artist in L.A. wants Joni Lark to write their songs, but she can’t write anymore — she’s just... empty. So she heads home to North Carolina, hoping the beaches and outdoor concerts will spark some inspiration. But nothing is perfect back home either. And suddenly, she’s hearing a voice singing in her head. Is she losing it for real?

That’s when a wry musician shows up in Vienna Shores, guarded yet sweet, and the two seem to share a telepathic connection (though he’s much sweeter in her head than in real life). If they can finish the song they both hear, they can sever their connection for good. But will they really want to by the end?

Available June 17

Martha is a florist living with her husband, Alistair, and their baby girl. He’s been traveling for days at a time for work lately, and his explanations always make sense, but Martha can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong.

In a neighboring town, Nina is falling for Nick, who is exactly the type of man she needs in her life following the untimely death of her husband. But Nina’s daughter Ash thinks he’s too good to be true and starts digging into Nick’s life to learn more. And that will put all three women on a collision course.

Available June 24

Maurice and Maralyn Bailey are a British couple who survived 117 days adrift on a raft in the Pacific Ocean after a whale capsized their boat. In her book, award-winning journalist Sophie Elmhirst recounts how awkward Maurice and charismatic Maralyn brought their daydream of sailing around the world to life, and details their unbelievable fight to survive knowing they had so little chance of rescue. It poses a tough question: Who do we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable?

Available July 8

From the author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches comes another tale about a wayward witch finding her way back to her magic and into a new love. Sera Swan was once one of Britain’s most powerful witches, but she lost nearly all of her power when she used it to resurrect her great-aunt Jasmine. Together, they run an enchanted inn in the countryside with the help of a talking fox. That’s when magical historian Luke Larsen passes through, and he may hold the key to restoring Sera’s powers.

Available July 15

Minerva loves her great-grandmother’s stories, which always begin the same way: “Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches.” So as a grad student, Minerva focuses on the history of horror literature and researching the life of author Beatrice Tremblay, who studied at the same college and whose roommate disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The deeper she dives, the more she suspects that the same dark force haunting Beatrice and her Nana Alba is still afoot in 1990s Massachusetts.

Available July 15

Jet Mason knows she’ll die in seven days. On Halloween, she survives a violent attack that leaves her with a catastrophic brain injury. Her doctor warns her that within the week, she will suffer a fatal aneurysm. She makes it her mission to figure out who’s killing her — she never saw her attacker — and she’s looking at everyone. Was it her ex-boyfriend, her sister-in-law... a complete stranger?

Available July 22

All Alice Law wants is to become a thought leader in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed so much time and pretty much her entire personal life just for a chance to work with Professor Jacob Grimes, the greatest magician in the world. That’s when he dies in a magical accident that is potentially her fault.

Grimes is in Hell, and Alice is going in after him, along with her rival Peter Murdoch — they both really need his letter of recommendation, you see. They’ll use the roadmap written by Dante to guide them and a little chalk to draw pentagrams as needed. Will they pull it off?

Available August 26