The Best Books to Read for Summer 2023

The hook for this one is intriguing: How do you solve your own murder? But it’s just as much a meditation on identity as it is a murder mystery. Lou, our main character, is the second iteration of Lou. She’s a clone of the original, the one who was murdered by a now-captured serial killer. The Lou we meet woke up with all of the original Lou’s memories and affections, and she’s thrilled to be a mom and wife, most of the time. The plot follows Lou as she tries to fill in the holes of her last days, but it’s her desperate search for an identity not dictated by her past self or society that really shines through.

Your narrator for this story is one I can guarantee isn’t written about very often: a mountain lion haunting the scraps of wilderness left around the Hollywood Sign. They’re queer, they’re starving, they’re watching over the people who sleep around the area as well as the hikers who visit for the sake of the view and exercise. They’re curious about the people they observe and imagine what it must be like to have the luxury of having an actual conversation. When a fire forces our lead cat into closer contact with humans, they’re forced to meditate on deeper questions of identity, exposure, desire, and wildness.

Elsa’s blue hair is only the latest of her dramatic attempts to change her life and declare freedom from her past. We meet Elsa in Greece, where she’s teaching piano and recovering from a high-stress career as a concert pianist. Her first break with her path was when Elsa stood up mid-concert and simply walked off the stage, never to return. As a piano teacher and sojourner in Greece, Elsa sees pieces of herself in everyone she meets, chasing each slice of identity as far as its meaning will take her. Meditations on identity seems to be the theme for June.

If you’ve ever gasped in delight at learning about the existence of the real-life 19th century Chinese pirate queen Shek Yeung (her various names and titles have been translated into English so many different ways that you may have heard it differently), this novel is for you. Based on the facts of her life, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea opens with the death of her first husband. He was the leader of a feared pirate fleet, and she quickly marries his second in command to keep her position in charge, becoming not only the power behind the throne but also a ruler in her own right. This one promises to be a brutal and joyful celebration of an often-overlooked historical figure.

Keziah Weir’s The Mythmakers is all about a career path Weir knows well. Weir, an editor at Vanity Fair, writes about a freelance writer who doesn’t do quite enough homework. After Sal misses some important details in a profile, she loses her job. And then, after a night of drunken meanness, she maybe also loses her relationship. But then, she reads a posthumously published short story by Martin Keller, an author she met once, and realizes the story is about her. Sal sets off on a quest to tell her own side of the story and ends up digging into a constellation of stories surrounding Martin and his life. The Mythmakers asks how and why we remember the stories we do and who gets to tell them.

Others we’re trying to read in June too: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck; I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore; The Dissident by Paul Goldberg; Banyan Moon by Thao Thai; The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller.

Who doesn’t love a spooky, scary, uncanny Silicon Valley story? In this book, Cassie is slowly dying because of the perfect and impressive job that consumes her whole life. She works for a hot startup, but she hates the fake (though actually coked up) version of herself she’s forced to be when she’s at her job. Cassie also hates the black hole that has haunted her since childhood. It gets smaller when she’s around people and bigger whenever she thinks about how little joy she has in her life. Yes, a real black hole like from outer space follows her around like the metaphorical rain cloud that no one else can see. What does this all mean for our protagonist? Well, you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

Our lady of suspenseful horror, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, is back with another trip into a spooky Mexico City with Silver Nitrate. This novel follows Montserrat, a sound editor whose career could be booming if it wasn’t for the sexism pervading the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. But when her (hot, unattainable) childhood best friend calls with an intriguing offer to help a film director finish his cursed final film, Montserrat sees her opportunity. But then, a movie started by Nazis on volatile silver nitrate film might not be the golden shot at success she thinks it will be.

If you haven’t read the first book in this series, Harlem Shuffle, there’s no time like the present. The sequel, Crook Manifesto, is out in July, and it picks up a decade or so after the events of Harlem Shuffle. Ray Carney is trying to stay on the straight and narrow. His furniture store is doing better than ever, and he doesn’t have a reason to fence stolen goods anymore. At least, not until he promises his daughter he’ll get her Jackson 5 tickets. As Carney takes steps back into his double life, Crook Manifesto traces the new boundaries he sets for himself and the evolution of Harlem in the early 1970s.

Sisterhood can be complicated, and Ruth Madievsky’s All Night Pharmacy leans into that truth through a drug-addled L.A. ride. Our narrator’s older sister, Debbie, was never the best influence as she provided the drugs and hosted raucous parties. When Debbie disappears one night, the unnamed narrator isn’t sure how to define herself anymore. She gets a job and continues on the paths her sister forged, stealing pills from work to sell on the side. But when Sasha, who claims to be a psychic, walks into her life, everything changes. This novel is full of sex, drugs, and a hopeful redemption arc.

If June was the season of books about identity, July is the season of books about Silicon Valley. In this startup story, readers are dropped into a booming hedge fund with an algorithm that is apparently perfect and poised to start making a dazzling amount of money. But after co-founder Herschel Caine ruins a dinner party with a prank, he’s left with almost nothing of his flashy, successful life. But hey, at least there’s the neighborhood dog to hang out with when all of his human friends are suddenly always busy. We won’t spoil anything, but Caine’s unfortunate prank leads him to some lovely realizations about nature, profit, the nature of profit, and his place amongst all of the above.

Also on deck for July: Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery; The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt; Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson; Onlookers by Ann Beattie; After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley; 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee; The Absolutes by Molly Dektar.

Elizabeth Acevedo’s YA novel in verse, Clap When You Land, blew me away, so I’m extremely excited to read her first novel for adults. Acevedo is a master of writing stories about family tension, and it looks like she’s leaning into that theme with her latest, Family Lore. In this novel, four Dominican American sisters are each hiding something from the family. One sister, Flor, has the special ability to predict upcoming deaths down to the day. So, when she calls the whole family together for a “living wake,” everyone is ready for something tragic or dramatic. But this just means the sisters and cousins all have to deal with the secrets they’re hiding, along with their relationships with the family at large.

Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station was a social media darling that also won the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and now we get to dig deeper with Yu’s latest, The End of August. The novel follows a runner training in Japan for the Olympics, much like her grandfather did in Japan-occupied Korea in the 1930s. But our narrator’s grandfather, Lee Woo-cheol, refused to compete under the Japanese flag. When she summons his ghost for guidance, Lee Woo-cheol’s brother and neighbor come along to share their experiences of oppression. The ghosts require her help, so she sets out to uncover their stories and free them.

The description for this one starts with a bang: “What does it mean to take action? To bear witness? What does it cost?” In a world where social media has collapsed the distance between speaking about an issue and taking action, this collection of short stories, all set in contemporary New York City, probes the nature and cost of doing something. Brinkley’s short fiction can be found in just about all of the biggest short story outlets, and his previous collection was nominated for a National Book Award. So, I think it’s safe to say we can expect great things from this one as well.

In another story about the continuing pain caused by Japan’s occupation of Korea, our narrator, Jeonga Cha, is a 105-year-old matriarch, and she dies near the beginning of the novel. But Jeonga still has work to do. In fact, she has to fix an old mistake. The consequences of her meddling in family affairs just might lead to a curse being laid on their whole line, so Jeonga travels to the United States in her ghostly form. As funny as it is thoughtful, The Apology promises to be some solid generational-novel fun.

Because we can’t stop reading: Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue; Medusa’s Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear; Falling Back in Love With Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom; Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto; The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.

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Shelbi Polk is a Durham, North Carolina, based writer who just might read too much. Find her online at @shelbipolk on Twitter.

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