Whether you’re staying put or hitting the road this summer, the WABE Summer Reading List can help you beat the heat and transport you to another literary world. Below is our list of some of the best new reads this summer. And be sure to check out the WABE Staff Picks to see even more summer reading recommendations.
We’ve chosen to link out to bookshop.org for purchases, but explore the Shop Local tab and visit one of Atlanta’s many incredible booksellers!
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
By Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Learn More Buy Book“Spanning two hundred years, it takes an intimate look at race, feminism, love, and family as told by a line of unforgettable Black women from America’s South.”
Denny S. Bryce, NPR
Sea of Tranquility
By Emily St. John Mandel
Learn More Buy Book“‘Sea of Tranquility’ is a tale of retrospects, of foresights, of the same moment layered on top of itself like repeated musical notes and of quotes that echo across time.”
Natalie Zutter, NPR
A Tiny Upward Shove
By Melissa Chadburn
Learn More Buy Book“It’s remarkable, and I’d even go so far as to say it’s not only the best thing I’ve read this year – I don’t know that I’ve read five better things over the last several years.”
Matt Nixon, A Capella Books
This Time Tomorrow
By Emma Straub
Learn More Buy Book“Emma Straub’s fifth novel is an entertaining charmer that unleashes the magic of time travel to sweeten its exploration of potentially heavy themes like mortality, the march of time, and how little decisions can alter your life.”
Heller McAlpin, NPR
Time Is a Mother
By Ocean Vuong
Learn More Buy Book“Aesthetically complex yet emotionally accessible, ‘Time is a Mother’ at once innovates and affirms the existing poetic tradition.”
Thúy Đinh, NPR
Yerba Buena
By Nina LaCour
Learn More Buy Book“A beautiful and messy coming-of-age love story between two women who are trying to deal with their emotional baggage while they’re also trying to find themselves in the process.”
April Adams, The Lesbian Review
The Southernization of America
By Cynthia Tucker and Frye Gaillard
Learn More Buy Book“I would argue that the South has not done as much as it should’ve to teach the nation what is wrong with racism and violent oppression of people of color.”
Cynthia Tucker, on “Closer Look with Rose Scott”
All Her Little Secrets
By Wanda M. Morris
Learn More Buy Book“The fast-paced legal thriller draws on the writer’s background as a corporate attorney, following her main character Ellice Littlejohn through a mystery laced with suspense and intrigue.”
Kim Drobes, “City Lights with Lois Reitzes”
Young Mungo
By Douglas Stuart
Learn More Buy Book“A suspense story wrapped around a novel of acute psychological observation. It’s hard to imagine a more disquieting and powerful work of fiction will be published anytime soon about the perils of being different.”
Maureen Corrigan, NPR
Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop
By Danyel Smith
Learn More Buy Book“Smith crafts a love letter to Black women in pop, capturing the intimate details of who they were, their influence on her, and how their music changed pop forever.”
“It’s Been A Minute”
Memphis
By Tara M. Stringfellow
“‘Memphis’ is a rhapsodic hymn to Black women.”
Kia Corthron, New York Times
Learn More Buy Book“It’s a story that moves back and forth across the decades from World War II to the war in Afghanistan following the struggles of three generations of resilient Black women.”
Ron Charles, Washington Post
The Sweetness of Water
By Nathan Harris
Learn More Buy Book“Evocative and accessible, Nathan Harris’s debut novel ‘The Sweetness of Water’ is a historical page-turner about social friction so powerful it ignites a whole town.”
Carole V. Bell, NPR
Olga Dies Dreaming
By Xochitl Gonzalez
Learn More Buy Book“Gonzalez depicts a striking portrait of Latine family dynamics, along with powerful complexities that are so often hidden beneath the surface, stressing many of the emotional dilemmas that are frequently buried within.”
Tiffany Gonzalez, Latinx in Publishing
Trust
By Hernan Diaz
Learn More Buy Book“‘Trust’ is an ingeniously constructed historical novel with a postmodern point. Throughout, Diaz makes a connection between the realms of fiction and finance.”
Maureen Corrigan, NPR
Book Lovers
By Emily Henry
Learn More Buy Book“‘Book Lovers’ by Emily Henry is both a tribute to and takedown of this cultural form by a star of the summer beach read. Her playful and clever contemporary romance — her third — pokes holes in many of the assumptions that surround small towns in popular culture.”
Carole V. Bell, NPR
Slaves for Peanuts
By Jori Lewis
Learn More Buy Book“With a focus on a discrete period, primarily the latter half of the19th and early 20th centuries, and a discrete geography — Saint Louis, Senegal, south along the West African coast to Freetown, Sierre Leone — ‘Slaves for Peanuts’ weaves a complex story crossing time and oceans.”
Martha Ann Toll, NPR
When Women Were Dragons
By Kelly Barnhill
Learn More Buy Book“‘When Women Were Dragons’ reminds us how difficult it is to put the knowledge of freedom back into the bottle and the cost to a society that tries.”
Trisha Collopy, Star Tribune
Invisible Child
By Andrea Elliott
Learn More Buy Book“The book takes on poverty, homelessness, racism, addiction, hunger, and more as they shape the lives of one remarkable girl and her family.”
Ericka Taylor, NPR
