35 Summer Books to Add to Your 2025 Reading List

Fantasy

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (June 10)

It’s hard to overstate how excited Schwab fans are for the latest from the author of the wildly popular 2020 fantasy The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Her new novel jumps through time, focusing on three young women in different eras — 1532, 1827 and 2019 — with a different theme for each of their stories (hunger, love and rage). Their lives become entwined in a novel that explores passion between women, longing, obsession, grief and pain, with vampires to boot.  

The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar (August 5)

The author of the 1998 YA classic Holes writes about Princess Tullia in the fictional kingdom of Esquaveta. Her father wants her to marry a prince she despises, so he asks the court magician, Anatole, to concoct a potion that will change her mind. Anatole is conflicted: While he wants to redeem himself after having lost respect within the castle, he’s loyal to Princess Tullia — the only person who believes in him. But does he really have a choice?

The Book of Lost Hours by Hayley Gelfuso (August 26)

This mind-bending time-traveling tale by Gelfuso, a poet and debut novelist, features a library full of memories known as the “time-space” and a woman who takes it upon herself to protect it from government agents seeking to alter history by burning memories. A love story and espionage are woven in there, too. The publisher is comparing it to a mix of The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Midnight Library and The Ministry of Time.

Also of note:

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sandu Mandanna (July 15): The author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches tells a heartwarming story about a witch/innkeeper in search of her lost magic. A historian who comes to stay may hold the key to its return.  

Thriller/Mystery/Crime

First Gentleman by James Patterson and Bill Clinton (Available Now)

President Clinton is again collaborating with the stunningly prolific author Patterson to reimagine life in the White House as an action-packed adventure. In their latest stand-alone thriller, the female president’s husband, a former NFL star, is investigated by a pair of journalists and finds himself on trial for murder — while the president is up for reelection, no less. It follows their blockbuster novels The President Is Missing and The President’s Daughter.  

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (June 10)

Cosby’s hotly anticipated Godfather-inspired crime saga is also a family story: Roman Carruthers returns to his home in rural Virginia after his father is injured, only to learn that his brother Dante is in trouble with some local bad guys and sister Neveah is struggling to manage the family’s crematorium business. Roman ends up entangled with the gangsters who want to collect on Dante’s debt. The novel, by the author of Razorblade Tears (2021) and All the Sinners Bleed (2023), has received some high early praise.

Fox by Joyce Carol Oates (June 17)

Oates is a master of her craft, particularly when she turns to the dark side, as she so often does. (See her wonderfully creepy 2023 short-story collection, Zero-Sum). Fox’s evil center is Francis Fox, the charming English teacher who entrances the head of the private academy where he works and, disturbingly, some of the young girls in his classes. After body parts and Francis’s car are discovered in a local nature area, a pair of detectives begin an investigation into this enigmatic man, while the story flashes back to his sinister crimes. Booklist calls it “menacing, mesmerizing, and thoroughly provocative.”

We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter (August 12)

I was transfixed by this gripping thriller, which kicks off a new series by the author of the Will Trent novels (now a TV series). It introduces Officer Emmy Clifton, whose work becomes personal when two teens are murdered, one of them her best friend’s daughter, in their small Georgia town. She settles on a few suspects but will need to uncover some dark secrets — and make some deadly mistakes — before finding the real culprit. It’s a mystery but also a family story: Emmy’s father and son work with her in law enforcement, and a long-estranged relative, an expert on serial killers, returns to town years later when they are faced with the disappearance of another missing girl.

Too Old for This by Samantha Downing (August 12)

This witty crime tale is full of humor, thanks to its unlikely central character: Retired 75-year-old serial killer Lottie Jones, who reluctantly returns to her previous profession after a young woman with a “perky ponytail” and “annoying smile” (in Lottie’s words) comes knocking on her door hoping to do a podcast about Lottie’s possible involvement in some long-cold cases. Guess who soon turns up missing? Let's just say that Lottie knows her way around a chainsaw. Downing is the author of, among others, 2019’s My Lovely Wife.

Also of note:

The Medusa Protocol by Rob Hart (June 24): The sequel to Hart’s 2024 hit Assassins Anonymous brings back Mark, formerly a deadly killer and sponsor to Astrid, who may be in some serious trouble (turns out, she is).

The Woman in Suite 11 by Ruth Ware (July 8): A follow-up to Ware's bestseller The Woman in Cabin 10 (in development for a Netflix film starring Keira Knightley), this thriller brings back journalist Lo Blacklock, who's covering the opening of a luxury Swiss hotel on Lake Geneva. She arranges an interview with the billionaire owner and learns some disturbing details that send her across Europe searching for answers.

An Inside Job by Daniel Silva (July 15): Silva’s latest has spy/art restorer Gabriel Allon in Venice, where he’s been commissioned to restore a painting. His work grows significantly more complicated when he finds a dead woman floating in the Venetian Lagoon.

Coded Justice by Stacey Abrams (July 15): The author of While Justice Sleeps and Rogue Justice (and the former minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives) brings back her star protagonist, Avery Keene, an internal investigator at a prestigious Washington, D.C., law firm. She’s tasked with investigating a secretive tech company, with big money and lives on the line.

You Belong Here by Megan Miranda (July 29): The bestselling thriller writer features Beckett Bowery, who left her old college town after a tragedy. She finds herself back again when her daughter gets a scholarship to study there, and is forced to confront the past.

Biography/Memoir

Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television by Todd S. Purdum (available now)

Arnaz was at a low point in his career when he pitched the concept for a TV show featuring himself and his wife, Lucille Ball. The author notes in this detailed biography that the actor managed to persuade “a reluctant network and skeptical sponsor that the public would accept them — an unconventional, intermarried couple — as an all-American team.” The show, I Love Lucy, would succeed beyond all expectations, of course. The book also dives into Arnaz’s youth, when he and his aristocratic family fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and then his years as an increasingly successful bandleader in Miami and New York, his TV stardom, struggles with alcoholism and more. Purdum explains that Arnaz’s daughter, Lucie, allowed him access to the family’s private papers because she wanted his story told — “believing that, in life and in death, much of the Hollywood ruling class never gave her father the credit he deserved.”

Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant (July 8)

When Grant lost his job as a corporate strategist during the pandemic at age 50, he was also wrestling with a cancer diagnosis and well aware, he writes in this witty memoir, that his family was counting on him “to keep them in the upper middle class.” So what’s a guy to do? He moved with his wife and two teenage daughters back to his hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia, and took a job as a mail carrier for a year, which he describes in this memoir with humor and gratitude: He suggests that the job helped him reconnect with his and America’s roots, and gave him a life-changing sense of purpose. (You can find an excerpt from his book in the June/July issue of AARP The Magazine.)

Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin (August 5)

One of the 20th century's greatest albums is, arguably, by Bruce Springsteen (75): Born to Run — released 50 years ago this August. Music journalist Carlin, author of last year’s The Name of This Band Is R.E.M., describes the album's conception and shaping of each track ("Thunder Road," "Jungleland," "Backstreets," "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"…), offering a window into Springsteen’s obsessive creative process. Writing the title track was particularly torturous, according to the author. Springsteen was determined to make the track flawless, a song that would transform his career at a time when he had a relatively small cult following. He spent hours upon hours honing the lyrics to spectacular effect. Carlin knows his subject: He wrote a 2012 biography of the Boss, Bruce.

Also of note:

Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (June 24): In this unique memoir/essay collection, Jeffers explores the treatment of Black women in America through history, including her own family’s past and her troubled relationship with her mother.

Clint: The Man and the Movies by Shawn Levy (July 1): Levy, a film critic and author of bios of stars including Robert De Niro and Paul Newman, tackles the life and career of another Hollywood icon, actor-director Clint Eastwood, 95.

Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (August 19): This biography of the revered writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) presents him as a restless soul, wrestling with his sexuality as a gay man, masculinity and racism, while producing influential essays, poems and novels — most famously his semi-autobiographical novel about a Harlem teenager, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). 

Other Nonfiction

This Dog Will Change Your Life by Elias Weiss Friedman with Ben Greenman (Available now)

Friedman is known as The Dogist, dubbed so for the thousands of photos and stories of dogs he’s posted online (he has millions of followers across social media platforms, and his 2015 photo book The Dogist: Photographic Encounters with 1,000 Dogs was a New York Times bestseller). His new book describes the special dogs he’s loved through the years, and elaborates on his belief that our relationships with our pups make our lives infinitely better. There’s the mutual love, of course, as well as the life-affirming lessons they teach us: “Dogs know instinctively that yesterday is gone and tomorrow is never promised — that the only time we ever truly have is now," he writes.  

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Carolin Fraser (June 10)

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the 2017 biography Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder was raised in the Pacific Northwest — an area of the country known for (among many other more pleasant things) being fertile ground for serial killers in the 1970s and 80s, including Ted Bundy. Fraser’s unconventional argument is that these murderers’ killer impulses may be related to environmental factors, including the prevalence of arsenic and lead poisoning in the region.

The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life by Mark Nepo (July 15)

Nepo, 74, author of The Book of Awakening, is a beloved poet and philosopher whose admirers of his quiet wisdom include Oprah Winfrey and Melinda French Gates. Here he melds poetry and Zen philosophy to contemplate the beauty and possibility that come with growing older. As he puts it, “The goal in facing aging is to live more fully the closer we get to death, so we can die with no feeling left unfelt, and no voice of life left unheard, and no thing in this world left unloved.” The Fifth Season, he explains, refers to “that moment in late summer when the glare of the sun fades so that we can see clearly the true colors around us.” 

Also of note:

Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson (June 17): Dickinson dug deep into archives to restore the memory of Claire McCardell (1905-1958), one of the most influential clothing designers of the 20^th century — a forgotten star whose innovations in practical, comfortable style still affect how women dress today.

Quickies: One Hundred Little Lessons for Living Sexily Ever After in Midlife by Heather Bartos (June 24): Ob-gyn Bartos offers 100 easily digestible lessons encouraging women to thrive sexually and sensually in their middle years and beyond.

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst (July 8): Elmhirst tells a harrowing true story about a couple who, in 1972, decided to buy a boat and set sail for adventure. When a whale cracks a hole in the ship, they end up adrift for months on a flimsy life raft. The publisher notes, “Their marriage was put to the greatest of tests.”

The AARP Caregiver Answer Book by Barry J. Jacobs, PsyD, and Julia L. Mayer, PsyD (July 9): This guide, written in a question-and-answer format, addresses the most critical issues family caregivers face, including the cost of care, communicating with their loved ones and collaborating with other family members.

Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life’s Second Half by Kerry Burnight, PhD (August 5): Burnight, known as Dr. Kerry or “America’s gerontologist,” is a high-profile expert on aging who argues that while it’s essential to focus on our health span, it’s also crucial to address the quality of our lives. She offers advice on finding contentment, connection, meaning, growth and purpose as grow older.