Alice Adams' 'Invincible Summer' cover and excerpt

Isabella Biedenharn
Updated

This summer, prepare to meet four new friends — Eva, Benedict, Sylvie, and Lucien — who we’ll follow from college through the next two decades of their lives, as they navigate disparate careers and relationships, jetting off to exotic locations far and wide. Alice Adams’ Invincible Summer is due out on June 28, and EW is thrilled to exclusively reveal the cover and a sneak peek at the first chapter, below:

CHAPTER 1

Bristol, Summer 1995

‘Okay, here’s one. If you could know the answer to any question, what would it be?’

Eva was lying on her back and looking up at the sky as she spoke. Summer had finally arrived, late that year, and the feeling of sun on skin combined with the wine and Lucien’s shoulder beneath her head was intoxicating. She had sat the last of her first year exams that morning and would be going home for the summer the next day, but in a couple of months she’d be back here in a life that was as far removed from her old world as she’d dared to hope it would be when she’d set off for university the previous autumn.

The four friends were clustered on a blanket close to the top of Brandon Hill. They hadn’t bothered to enter the stone tower perched at the hill’s brow and climb the spiral staircase to the viewing platform, but in any case their vantage point afforded them an impressive view of the city, out across the treacly river and past the derelict warehouses towards the endless sprawl of streets and houses beyond. In the long grass by their feet were two open wine bottles, the first propped upright in one of a pair of battered lace-up boots, the other lying on the ground spilling its last drops onto the earth.

Sylvie rolled over onto her stomach and brushed a few strands of coppery hair from her eyes. ‘Any question at all?’

‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘Foof.’

‘Huh?’

‘That was the sound of the genie disappearing after you wasted your question.’

Excerpted from INVINCIBLE SUMMER by Alice Adams. Copyright © 2016. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company.