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!
Fiction
The Vaster Wilds
By Lauren Groff
Penguin Random House
Learn More Buy Book“I love any book where the weather is a main character. In this one, it’s an antagonist to a young servant escaping the Jamestown colony in 1609. This short story about her escape will have a grip on you, I promise! Its themes of colonialism, class struggle, and 17th century-era Christianity come together to tell a truly American story.”
Jasmine Robinson, WABE digital editor
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
By James McBride
Penguin Random House
“A lovely reminder of what community means and the power and strength found in our common bonds. It’s an easy read that delivers so much in terms of history, humanity and humor.”
Sherri Daye Scott, WABE EVP of audience development and engagement
Learn More Buy Book“Both a mystery and a vibrant portrait of a community of Jewish immigrants and African Americans struggling to eke out a place in 20th century America, this novel kept me turning pages from start to finish. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store resonates at a moment when our country is still struggling to more fully live up to its promise of equality and justice for all.”
Sam Gringlas, WABE politics reporter
Rednecks
By Taylor Brown
Macmillan
Learn More Buy Book“Taylor Brown’s Rednecks is a superb historical drama full of violence and larger-than-life characters that chronicles the events of 1920 and 1921 as it explores the people and reasons behind the largest labor uprising in American history.”
Gabino Iglesias, NPR
Good Material
By Dolly Alderton
Penguin Random House
Learn More Buy Book“’Good Material,’ [Alderton’s] second novel and the first she’s written from the perspective of a man, delivers the most delightful aspects of classic romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, humorous meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind the clichéd gender roles and traditional marriage plot.”
Katie J. M. Baker, New York Times
Good Women
By Halle Hill
Hub City Press
Learn More Buy Book“’Good Women dips into the lives of complex Appalachian women who endure tough situations—from sex work to religious oppression to maternal strife—while struggling to forge ahead. Edgy and intimate, Hill’s stories form an unexpectedly cohesive series of vignettes that deliver a stunning proclamation on the modern female experience.”
Leah Tyler, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wellness
By Nathan Hill
Penguin Random House
“An excellent satire of modern relationships, internet fads, and pseudoscientific remedies. Hilariously funny.”
Christopher Alston, WABE producer of “All Things Considered”
Learn More Buy Book“Wellness is a perfect novel for our age, filled with a deep awareness of the Internet-poisoned, marketing-driven engineered emptiness of modern times, but also a compassionate optimism about our ability to find and maintain love nonetheless. It’s a monumental achievement: a masterpiece by an author who has, in the space of two novels, become indispensable.”
Michael Schaub, NPR
Beautyland
By Marie-Helene Bertino
Macmillan
Learn More Buy Book“As a child, Adina learns she herself is an alien, and her mission is to send her observations about humanity to her supervisors via fax machine (it is the ‘80s, after all). With that conceit, Bertino paints a gorgeous tapestry of what it means to be human, filled with poetic descriptions of the utterly mundane. This book is full of love, longing, and curiosity.”
Greta Johnsen & Anna Bauman, WBEZ
The Peach Seed
By Anita Gail Jones
Learn More Buy Book“Imagine you loved someone 50 years ago. This someone turned down your marriage proposal and left town seemingly forever. Life went on. You started a family, became a grandparent. And then, when you’re almost 70 years old, that person suddenly returns. That’s what happens to Fletcher Dukes in Anita Gail Jones’ debut novel. Among the things that connect this couple is a monkey carved from a peach seed.”
Peter Biello, GPB host of “All Things Considered”
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
By Xochitl Gonzalez
Macmillan
Learn More Buy Book“Elegantly written and constructed, Gonzalez’s second novel brilliantly surpasses the promise of her popular debut Olga Dies Dreaming. Where that novel sometimes strained under the weight of its ambitions, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is complex and cohesive, social criticism flowing organically from character and story. The novel is the best, most elusive combination: a thought-provoking and a brilliantly entertaining triumph.”
Carole V. Bell, NPR
Unusually Grand Ideas
By James Davis May
LSU Press
Learn More Buy Book“Perhaps that is the best way to think of James Davis May’s Unusually Grand Ideas: each poem is a tiny dab of the healing glue sealing together the pieces of life that violence, death, and illness so heartlessly break and shatter. A brave collection, its poems dare to traverse emotional territories other collections do not explore. A vulnerable collection, its speaker guides readers on a Theseus-like journey and comforts them along the way, saying It’s okay if you’re not the same after this. None of us truly are.”
Nicole Yurcaba, Southern Review of Books
Daughters of Muscadine
By Monic Ductan
University Press of Kentucky
Learn More Buy Book“The links among these touching stories are subtle but effective, accumulating in our minds as we read. Thanks to Ductan’s detailed command of her setting and the compassionate clarity she brings to her narrators, we easily grow attached to a wide range of Muscadine’s Black daughters and sons.”
Emily Choate, Nashville Scene
Non-Fiction
There’s Always This Year
On Basketball and Ascension
By Hanif Abdurraqib
Penguin Random House
Learn More Buy Book“Hanif Abdurraqib, who earned raves for his books Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest and A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance, puts a new spin on the saying in his latest, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. As in his previous books, Abdurraqib uses one subject as a lens through which he views the culture at large — it’s about hoops, sure, but it’s also about so much more. It’s another remarkable book from one of the country’s smartest cultural critics.”
Michael Schaub, NPR
Thank You Please Come Again
How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South
By Kate Medley
Courtesy of Kate Medley
Learn More Buy Book“Photojournalist Kate Medley took a road trip across 11 states in the South, documenting the culture of convenience stores and gas stations that serve hot, delicious food. Her new book, Thank You Please Come Again, captures how these establishments serve as important community meeting points across class, ethnic and racial divides.”
Debbie Elliot, NPR
The Mango Tree
A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony
By Annabelle Tometich
Learn More Buy Book“This family memoir begins with a courtroom scene like no other. After a night in jail, Annabelle Tometich’s mom is charged with firing at a man who, she says, was stealing mangoes from the tree in her front yard. Tometich then hits rewind, taking readers back through her Fort Myers, Fla., childhood — with her Filipino American mom and white dad, a couple whose personality differences do not make them stronger together. The writing is both jewel-like and effortless, and Tometich’s memories — some mundane, some extraordinary — are mesmerizing.
Shannon Rhoades, NPR senior editor of “Weekend Edition”
Atlanta Record Stores
An Oral History
By Chad Radford
Arcadia Publishing
Learn More Buy Book“Atlanta-based music journalist Chad Radford has spent decades collecting vinyl from the city’s independent record stores. During this time, he’s gotten to know the people behind the counters and the stories behind the stores. His new book is a collection of first-person accounts exploring how vinyl has survived new technology from 8 tracks to CDs to streaming and why the industry continues to thrive.”
Kim Drobes, WABE senior producer for “City Lights with Lois Reitzes”
Keeping the Chattahoochee:
Reviving and Defending a Great Southern River
By Sally Sierer Bethea
UGA Press
Learn More Buy Book“Sally Bethea was the first Chattahoochee Riverkeeper when the organization was founded in 1994. Each chapter opens with a walk in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area — Bethea made a habit of visiting the same spot in the East Palisades unit of the park near where a creek flows into the Chattahoochee.”
Molly Samuel, WABE deputy managing editor
The Exvangelicals
Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church
By Sarah McCammon
Macmillan
Learn More Buy Book“McCammon, an NPR reporter (formerly on the Georgia airwaves!) explores the folks who have left the white Evangelical movement in the U.S. Discussing her own personal history as well as the conflicts and communities that have arisen from departure, she characterizes a major shift underway in U.S. religion.”
Marisa Mecke, WABE environment reporter
Hello, Friends!
Stories of Dating, Destiny, and Day Jobs
By Dulcé Sloan
Penguin Random House
Learn More Buy Book“‘Comedian Dulcé Sloan, one of Atlanta’s proudest exports, has been called ‘the New Queen of Comedy,’ a title well-earned after her correspondence on the ‘Daily Show’ since 2017, as well as her hit stand-up sets on ‘Comedy Central Presents’ and ‘Verified Stand-Up.’ In peak form, Sloan took the time to write [this] memoir. Daily Show host Trevor Noah called it a ‘heartfelt story of joy, sorrow and unbelievable resilience.’”
Lois Reitzes, WABE host of “City Lights”
Master Slave Husband Wife
An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
By Ilyon Woo
Simon & Schuster
Learn More Buy Book“This non-fiction work won the Pulitzer prize for biography in 2024, telling the incredible and daring story of an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia and fled North to freedom. They hid in plain sight, taking advantage of established racial and social stereotypes to evade bounty hunters and become famous abolitionists. It’s a personal story – up to now, virtually unheard of- that also offers us great insight about the CIvil war and the Reconstruction era. ”
Alison Hashimoto, WABE SVP of video
Cookbooks
Bethlehem
A Celebration of Palestinian Food
By Fadi Kattan
Hardie Grant
Learn More Buy Book“Chef Fadi Kattan is well aware that it might not be the right time to release a cookbook about Palestinian food – not when people in Gaza are starving.
‘But you know my publisher is of Jewish faith,’ he told ‘Morning Edition’ host Leila Fadel. ‘She said, now the book even has more significance.’
That’s because his book is dedicated to preserving part of a culture that’s been torn apart by decades of displacement and war. It’s a love letter through food to his childhood home in the West Bank.”
Leila Fadel, NPR host of “Morning Edition”
Koreaworld
By Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard
Penguin Random House
Learn More Buy Book“A collaboration by San Francisco-based chef and restaurateur Deuki Hong and journalist Matt Rodbard, the book explores Korean cuisine both traditional, modern and fusion, from the kitchens of Koreans and Korean immigrants worldwide. ”
Lois Reitzes, WABE host of “City Lights”
Kugels and Collards
Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina
By Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey
University of South Carolina Press
Learn More Buy Book“Explore the rich culinary heritage of the Jewish South that dates back to the 17th century in South Carolina. Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey, founding members of the Historic Columbia Jewish Heritage Initiative and the ‘Kugels & Collards’ blog, collected stories, recipes, and original and archival photos from Jewish families who have made the Palmetto State their home. Authors and contributors also acknowledge the significant labor and creativity of the people of West African descent on Southern Jewish food. This edible history includes recipes for Jewish staples like latkes and challah, interspersed with modified Southern classics like pork-free collard greens, Shabbat dinner fried chicken, and modern fusions like grits and lox casserole.”
Alison Law, The Bitter Southerner
More is More
Get Loose In the Kitchen
By Molly Baz
Learn More Buy Book“’More Is More’ is the follow-up to Baz’s best-selling 2021 debut, ‘Cook This Book.’ It coalesces the brash, herbaceous, acidic, salt-loving ethos that she’s been building over the past decade into a collection of recipes that, she believes, fully embraces the grandiosity of the book’s title.”
Amy McCarthy, Eater