The Best Books to Read on Your Summer Vacation

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The first days of summer are here—time to start planning your summer vacation. Here’s what you need to read by the sea, at the campground, on a whirlwind trip overseas, or on an escape to your own backyard.

Excavations, by Kate Myers

Take one sunstruck Greek island, home to the first Olympics and now a promising archaeological dig. Add four women who can’t stand each other and one nefarious male professor, running the dig to advance his own career. Bury one ancient statue with a secret message about the past. Myers takes these tasty ingredients, whips in a healthy dose of frothy humor, and creates a summer adventure for armchair travelers and airplane travelers alike.

The Three of Us, by Ore Agbaje-Williams

This dark comedy of manners involves a well-to-do British Nigerian couple and the wife’s best friend—but the friend and the husband despise each other. Things come to a head one boozy afternoon in their designer kitchen, where the two women kill several bottles of wine before hubby comes home. Switching points of view among the three, this debut is viciously funny, different than anything you’ve read lately, and at the same time, strangely relatable.

Lucky Dogs, by Helen Schulman

Out of the inferno that was the Harvey Weinstein imbroglio—and the high-wire imagination of Helen Schulman—comes a witty and insightful tale of two women. One is Meredith, a starlet who was raped by a powerful producer in a hotel room and is hiding in Paris to write her memoir. The other is Nina, who rescues Meredith during a nasty encounter at the Berthillon ice cream stand. Unfolding in Los Angeles, Sarajevo, Tel Aviv, and Florida, their tale will take your breath away.

Loot, by Tania James

In an 18th-century Indian kingdom, a gifted 17-year-old boy crafts an automated wooden tiger with his French mentor, a genius clockmaker. The story of the tiger’s theft by colonialist British forces and its recovery by its maker spans 50 years, moving from Mysore to France and England, each evoked in kaleidoscopic period detail. James’s ravishing prose and trademark blend of lyricism and suspense animate this ingenious caper meets politically acute coming-of-age story.

Wine People, by Michelle Wildgen

Like a fine wine with complex tasting notes, this alluring novel has depths to unfold. The first layer—a riveting behind-the-scenes portrait of a high-drama industry, from the chateau to the corner office—opens to reveal the story of a friendship between two strong, brilliant but very different women, which itself is built around an homage to the nearly magical pleasures and dangers of wine. Pour a glass and dive in.

Fireworks Every Night, by Beth Raymer

The Borkoski family are down on their luck when they arrive in South Florida, but soon Dad is selling used cars as fast as they come in and the girls are cavorting in bikinis at the KOA campground pool. It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when things go south; addiction, mental illness, and betrayal all play roles. Raymer balances the sadness of her story with terrific humor, deep compassion, and beautiful writing about the natural world—which makes it perfect for cracking open at the end of a long hike.

Girls and Their Horses, by Eliza Jane Brazier

Big Little Lies goes equestrian in this lacerating, steamy thriller. When Heather relocates her newly rich family to one of the wealthiest enclaves of Southern California, she’s sure that horses will be her daughters’ ticket to acceptance. But in the elite stables, money can buy everything but loyalty—and it’s not just horses that are taken for a ride. Discipline and deception reach lethal heights when a body turns up at a summer show. For extra thrills, read by lantern light.

Time’s Mouth, by Edan Lepucki

This moving portrait of three generations of a California family comes with a twist that literally kicks it into another dimension: Some characters can time-travel to earlier parts of their lives. Slipping these uncanny episodes seamlessly into a vivid portrait of life at a woodland women’s commune in the ’70s, and in a single-parent household in the ’90s, Lepucki traces the consequences of damaged mothering but gifts her characters—and readers—a deeply satisfying emotional finale.

Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, by Paul Rudnick

This love story between two young men who meet at Yale—Nate, a Jewish kid from New Jersey who dreams of becoming a playwright, and Farrell Covington, a handsome It boy from ultra-rich, Midwestern conservatives—will keep you laughing through every rustling sound outside your tent (racoon? bear? teenagers?). Despite the obstacles, which are many, Nate and Farrell end up ruling each other’s hearts for the next five decades, and you will end up with author Paul Rudnick as your outrageously funny and fabulous gay best friend.

The Good Ones, by Polly Stewart

Nearly twenty years after her friend’s disappearance, Nicola returns to Virginia with a fascination for true crime and a lot of questions. But in this close-knit community, pulling on one strand of history risks unraveling everything. Fans of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects will devour Stewart’s unnerving examination of the tangled bonds between teenage girls and the suffocating constraints of womanhood. A hometown mystery with a plot twist that will blow your flip-flops off.

Summer on Sag Harbor, by Sunny Hostin

Elegant Olivia Jones is a natural fit in the elite Black community of Sag Harbor, where she has inherited a house that happens to come with the world’s hottest next-door neighbor. Can he possibly be about to sell to predatory developers? Not if Olivia and her new crew have any say. If you haven’t yet read Summer on the Bluffs, in which Hostin introduces Olivia’s godparents, godsisters, and their tangled history, start there.

Bad Summer People, by Emma Rosenblum

White Lotus meets Gossip Girl in this sizzling debut. Welcome to Salcombe, the ritzy enclave of New York’s Fire Island, where the sun is hot, the money is old, and the booze and Botox flow freely. But this summer, it’s not just the tennis rivalries that are cutthroat. A body turns up, and everyone has something to hide. Scandal is par for the course on the island, but which misbehaving prepster is capable of murder?

Save What’s Left, by Elizabeth Castellano

In the wake of her shipwrecked marriage, Kathleen buys a seaside cottage, expecting sunrises and solitude. Instead, she gets predawn construction and community board warfare. Joining up with a zany group of outraged neighbors, Kathleen becomes part of a community she never knew she wanted. Irreverent and unexpectedly tender, this story takes neighborhood feuding to new heights and finds beauty and reinvention in unlikely places. A wickedly funny debut.

Bad, Bad Seymour Brown, by Susan Isaacs

Isaacs basically invented a genre—the Jewish woman’s comic thriller—and can be counted on for breezy fun along with the crime scenes and plot twists. With the pandemic moving her extended family into a shared Long Island McMansion, ex-FBI agent Corie Geller and her retired-NYPD dad are closer than ever. When his most frustrating cold case comes out of the freezer, the two are determined to nail it this time.

Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett

Midwestern lakes have their own waterside charms, and this one comes with beautiful young actors and a swimming dock. At the tender age of 24, young, innocent Lara Kenison fell for a fellow cast member during a stint in summer stock theater. Soon-to-be-famous Peter Duke kissed her the day they met…which seems impossibly romantic when a now-middle-aged Lara retells the tale to her three 20-something daughters during the pandemic. A swoony, luminous reminder about the endurance of love and happiness in a broken world.

A Likeable Woman, by May Cobb

Bring on the backyard chardonnay and rich, nasty housewives of East Texas for another thriller from the author of The Hunting Wives. Kira is going home for the first time since the mysterious death of her mother, Sadie—which she and her grandmother both believe was murder. But as Kira reads Sadie’s unfinished memoir, closing in on the truth about this claustrophobic town and her mother’s rebellion against it, her own life is threatened. Gossipy, glamorous, and hair-raising.

Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang

In this satire of social media, Juniper Song (formerly June Hayward) was in the kitchen the night her publishing phenom friend Athena Liu choked to death on her pancakes. From the moment June stuffs her dead friend’s unfinished manuscript into her bag, she is on a voyage of no return. You will be, too—until you turn the last page and fall right out of your hammock.

My Murder, by Katie Williams

Lou, a wife and mother murdered by a serial killer, is returned to her family by way of government-sponsored cloning. She looks the same, feels the same, and remembers everything—except the circumstances of her death. Putting a speculative-fiction twist on the domestic thriller, Williams has created an immersive literary thrill ride. Send your kids to the amusement park, and get on the roller coaster!

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge, by Helen Ellis

Somebody else’s happy marriage sounds like a questionable topic for an essay collection, but, fortunately, no one has told Helen Ellis, since she has now written her third charming volume of them. Whether it’s instructions for the pet sitter, a report on the joys of Viagra, or a deep dive into spousal snoring, Ellis has made herself, her Mr., and their two cats into irresistible characters. Their domestic adventures have a timeless quality that makes them not only funny but somehow soothing—and even more so when read with a background of ticking sprinklers.

Good Fortune, by C.K. Chau

So the trip to the Big Apple didn’t pan out. Pick up the latest Austen update, set in New York’s Chinatown. Hong Kong investor Darcy Wong has purchased a decrepit but beloved community recreation center; his real estate agent is the striving mother of this adaptation’s Elizabeth, a.k.a. LB, one of five sisters Mrs. Chen plans to launch out of meager circumstances. Sparks fly as LB goes to war against Darcy for the future of her neighborhood—and love inevitably ensues.

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