Summer Preview: 32 of the Season’s Top New Books

Check out upcoming fiction from Liane Moriarty, Ann Patchett and Colson Whitehead, plus fast-paced thrillers, fun mysteries and fascinating nonfiction

Christina Ianzito,

AARP

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Published May 26, 2026

an illustration shows a giant book, upended to look like a camping tent, in a tranquil summer outdoor scene

Agata Nowicka

Grab your beach chair or crank up the air-conditioning, and dive into a few (or all!) of these 32 fantastic new reads this summer.

a collage with the covers of the books when you loved me, daughters of the sun and moon, and land

Agata Nowicka (Penguin Random House, Scribner/Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House)

Fiction

Land by Maggie O’Farrell (June 2)

The author of the 2020 novel Hamnet, the basis for the 2025 movie (winner of the AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Picture), sets her latest story in Ireland in the wake of the potato famine. It’s centered on a struggling family and each member’s trauma and dreams of escape. That includes the patriarch, Tomás, a mapmaker, who experiences a kind of psychotic break while he and his young son, Liam, are working for the British to create detailed maps of the country they’ve dominated (and devastated). Tomás’s children are left to grapple with how to live in or leave their diminished homeland. As in Hamnet, O’Farrell uses evocative, vivid prose to bring the era, atmosphere and characters to life. She’s a master.

The Typing Lady: And Other Fictions by Ruth Ozeki (June 2)

Ozeki is the author of, among other works, two wonderful novels, 2013’s A Tale for the Time Being, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, and 2021’s The Book of Form and Emptiness. This new book of 11 eclectic stories includes the tale of a widow who secretly creates a dating profile for her granddaughter as a way, it seems, to work through her unprocessed grief after her husband’s death. In “The Typing Lady: An Author’s Note,” the narrator becomes fascinated by a woman at the library typing on her laptop, who may or may not be Ozeki herself.

Whistler by Ann Patchett (June 2)

In the absorbing latest from Patchett (Tom Lake, The Dutch House), Daphne, 53, a high school writing teacher in Manhattan, encounters her beloved former stepfather, Eddie, by chance while wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They joyfully reconnect after decades apart, which causes Daphne to revisit the accident from her childhood that tore him from the family and affected her more deeply than she’d ever realized. It’s a thoughtful, tender story about memory, regrets, family and more. I loved it.

The Frenzy by Joyce Carol Oates (June 16)

Yes, Oates’s fiction dwells on the dark side of life — “I’m holding a mirror up to the world we’re in,” she explained to AARP last year — but it’s also brilliant, as evidenced by these engrossing short stories that dive into the minds of characters prone to cruelty or struggling with destructive desires. They include a seriously disturbed middle-aged man preying on a young woman, a family friend who both obsesses and infuriates him. Another focuses on a widow who has a disconcerting visit with her late husband’s former colleague, an older man who’s ill and once harbored a crush for her. As she considers a painting the man had always loved, Pablo Picasso’s Night Fishing at Antibes, she thinks, “We are all fishing in dark waters, at night. Each in our own groping way.” The sentiment struck me as an essential premise of Oates’s fiction, which is preoccupied with how we navigate (or get lost in) those mapless depths.

Also of note:

A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (June 2): The third book cowritten by the authors of The Personal Librarian, is, again, a work of historical fiction based on real people: Eunice Carter, Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, and brothel owner Polly Adler, who join forces to take down mobster Lucky Luciano.

The Children by Melissa Albert (June 2): YA author Albert brings us a grownup fantasy in this story of the adult children — estranged siblings — of a famous fantasy author as they contend with their bizarre childhoods and legacy as characters in her books. Stephen King dubs it “a page-turner … dusted with magic.”

Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See (June 9): See (author of 2019’s The Island of Sea Women) features three Chinese women, Dove, Petal and Moon, making their way in the dusty Wild West of 1870s Los Angeles.

Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer (June 9): In this sunny tale by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less, a young man is hired to assist an eccentric, wealthy Italian widow (Coco) in her art-filled Tuscan villa. His job includes trying to find her long-lost love.

When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams (June 23): A widowed Lucy Cooper returns to her family’s crumbling estate on Winthrop Island (a favorite setting for Williams’ fiction) in New England and faces a mountain of debt while reconnecting with an old flame.

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead (July 21): Whitehead (The Nickel Boys) wraps his Harlem Trilogy with an older Ray Carney, now a successful businessman who gets drawn into more trouble in 1980s New York City.

City of Widows by Nadia Hashimi (July 28): The author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and Sparks Like Stars focuses her new novel on three women in Kabul, Afghanistan, whose lives are turned upside down, their freedoms quashed, by the arrival of the Taliban in 2021.

Time Travel for Beginners by Jaclyn Moriarty (August 4): Fun fact: Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty (see below) has two sisters who are also novelists, Jaclyn and Nicola. Jaclyn’s latest is about three struggling people who meet at a time-travel agency in Sydney, where they explore the past (literally) and find connection in the present.

Most Popular

a collage with the covers of the books deadly does it, our marriage is murder, and red sheet

Agata Nowicka (Penguin Random House, William Morrow/Harper Collins, Penguin Random House)

Mysteries/thrillers

Red Sheet by James Ellroy (June 9)

The author of LA Confidential plunges us into 1960s Los Angeles, in the politically charged months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the Red Scare at a fever pitch. LAPD investigator Freddy Otash — who’s also a criminal with a drug problem — is tasked by the feds with heading a team focused on rooting out communists. The noirish story, billed by the publisher as “Ellroy’s most crazed kamikaze run and a daring, subversive work of fiction,” includes cameos from Richard Nixon and Hugh Hefner.

Deadly Does It by Abbi Waxman (July 21)

This follow-up to Wasman’s 2025 cozy mystery One Death at a Time brings back the comically cynical duo Natasha Mason and Julia Mann (a grumpy ex-actor), who met at an AA meeting. Here they set out on another madcap adventure after Natasha’s AA sponsor ends up having a series of strange accidents — that may not be accidents at all. The duo careens around California to unravel the mystery. Waxman is also the author of other light-hearted novels that aren’t mysteries, including her popular 2019 romance The Bookish Life of Nina Hill.

The Castle in the Glen by Rhys Bowen (August 4)

It’s 1965, and Australian ghostwriter Emma Callander is hired to complete the final mystery novel of a celebrated Scottish author who is losing her memory. The story is about a murder on the Isle of Skye, where Emma heads for research. When she begins to suspect that the plot isn’t fiction at all, she enlists the help of the author’s handsome lawyer (yes, there’s romance here, too) to investigate. Bowen is known for her popular Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy historical novels.

Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty (August 25)

Australian writer Liane Moriarty’s hotly anticipated sequel to Big Little Lies is likely to make a splash with the streaming success of the star-studded (Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon) HBO series based on that first bestseller. The main characters — now older, with teenage kids and, in Madeline’s case, a bunion — are drawn into the local drama after the school principal receives a severed finger in the mail. The story is set in Australia (the show is set in California). Still, the author made at least one change inspired by the series: She gave Renata more attention than she had in Big Little Lies. Moriarty writes in her author’s note, “because Laura Dern played that role with such magnificence that I had no choice but to give her more prominence.”

The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen (August 25)

A lighter option with humor, this is the third Martini Club mystery starring retired CIA operative Maggie Bird, Ingrid Slocum and friends. They’re all fellow ex-spies wanting a quiet life in Maine, but are drawn into international intrigue when Ingrid’s former lover and colleague resurfaces along with threats from the past. Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles books inspired a TV series of the same name, and Amazon is now planning a TV series based on the Martini Club gang.

Also of Note:

Rules for Aging and Larceny by Julia London (June 30): The publisher describes this as “Ocean’s Eleven meets The Golden Girls.” It features a badass widow in her 70s, at a loss after being kicked off her pickleball team for her fierce competitiveness, who pulls together her old crew of criminals for one last heist.

Our Marriage Is Murder by Carol Goodman (July 21): A married couple, mystery writers, attend a writers’ retreat in Italy where a shocking death occurs.

The Night Hunter by Natalie Moss (July 28): Two estranged sisters return to their family home in a South African game reserve following their mother’s death. To ease the tension, they invite friends on a safari: bad idea. One friend is murdered, and the rest realize that their lives are also in danger in this intense psychological thriller, a debut.

The Unknown by Riley Sager (August 4): An aspiring-but-going-nowhere actress is surprised and thrilled to be hired for a plum role in a big-budget movie. It’s based on a true story about five women who disappeared 100 years ago on an island in the middle of a Vermont lake, where the actress is asked to join the cast for a pre-filming retreat that turns into a nightmare.

Heart of Glass by Jennifer Hillier (August 25): The bestselling Hillier’s latest is centered around a serial killer (the Carnival Killer) who met three teenage girls, best friends, at an amusement park — always a nicely creepy setting for a thriller (because clowns) — and later murdered one. Twenty-five years later, after he recants his confession, the past comes back to haunt the two surviving friends.

a collage with the covers of the books aging out, the yahoo boys, and catch the devil

Agata Nowicka (Flatiron Books/Macmillan, Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan, Penguin Random House)

Nonfiction

A Committee of One: How Faith + Action = A Purposefull Life by Opal Lee (June 2)

Activist Opal Lee, now on the cusp of 100 and known as “the Grandmother of Juneteenth,” was 90 in 2016, when she set out on foot from Texas to Washington, DC, for her Opal Walks 2 DC campaign — calling for the creation of a federally recognized holiday on June 19 to commemorate the abolition of slavery (President Joe Biden made it so on June 17, 2021). “When I started walking for Juneteenth, I didn’t just do it for the holiday,” Lee writes. “I did it for the people who will never have a chance to know freedom the way we do … I walked because I could and because they couldn’t.”

Over/Under: An Unexpected History of Sports Betting by David Bockino (June 2)

Bockino dives into the modern origins of sports betting, tracing them to baseball gambling in mid-19th-century New York, and takes us to its current status as an entertainment juggernaut. He includes the dark side of the industry, which markets aggressively, while many players develop gaming addictions.

Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers by Carlos Barrágann (June 9)

I cover fraud as well as books at AARP, so was immediately drawn to this eye-opening, behind-the-scenes look at the criminals who perpetrate the devastating romance scams we work so hard to help our readers understand and avoid. After Barragán, a New York Times reporter and researcher based in Spain, saw his mother drawn in by an online suitor who pretended to be a handsome soldier, he set out to find the perpetrator. His quest brought him to the epicenter of romance scams: Lagos, Nigeria, where he spent six months over several years interviewing the young men (“baby-faced teenagers with whispers of mustaches above their lips”) known as Yahoo Boys, who spend hours on their phones catfishing victims around the world, eventually cajoling them into parting with their cash. While Barragán makes it clear that these boys are mired in poverty and have few opportunities for legitimate work, and you do sense a bit of sympathy, he doesn’t make excuses for their crimes. Rather, he explores their motives and details their methods, which can only help in the fight against fraud.

Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America by Lauren Hough (June 16)

An Air Force veteran and author of the memoir in essays Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing, Hough set off on a cross-country journey she likens to the 1962 trip John Steinbeck chronicled in his famous Travels with Charley in Search of America. She describes with humor and empathy her encounters along her route — at random gas stations, restaurants, wherever — and finds that she can relate to nearly everyone she meets, regardless of their political or economic backgrounds. These in-person connections feel refreshingly old-school, Hough finds, and concludes, “I can’t help but wonder who and where we’d be if we all just logged off.”

Dad, Love, Me: A Memoir by Matthew Quick (July 21)

Quick, 52, the author of The Silver Linings Playbook (the basis for the 2012 film), offers a raw, heart-wrenching memoir, written in the second person as “a long overdue letter to my father,” Quick explains. In his telling, his dad was a cruel, angry man who either ignored, screamed at, or belittled his son: “I couldn’t remember you ever once smiling at me,” he writes. This absorbing book is his thoughtful, painful attempt — while caregiving for his dad, who developed dementia — to understand the origins of that dysfunction, and to heal himself from the deep psychological wounds that have ached within him for decades.

A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival by Virginia Eubanks (August 11)

Investigative journalist Eubanks describes caring for her partner (she calls him J. in the book) in the years following a brutal beating, after which he had PTSD, and how she coped after developing her own collateral PTSD. She writes eloquently about how untethered and out of control she felt, forever fearful “that caregiving might make me sick, might kill the equitable and mutual loving relationship J. and I had grown and nurtured for so many years.” Eubanks embraces wilderness survival as a metaphor (literally, she takes outdoor survival classes) for her own emotional self-rescue efforts. Frank and deeply researched, this memoir/call for help brings to mind a book that came out earlier this year, In Sickness and In Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America’s Caregiving Crisis by Laura Mauldin, who also explores the complexities of caregiving for a beloved partner.

Also of note:

Transcendent by Laverne Cox (June 9): The actor and transgender activist relays her life story, from her traumatic childhood to her transition, life-changing role on Orange is the New Black,and beyond.

I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World by Sarah Wilson (June 16): Humanity seems to be at a pretty precarious point in history (climate change, political instability — all the things), which can leave some of us feeling helpless and hopeless. Wilson’s soul-searching book poses hard questions about the future while exploring ways to grapple with uncertainty and find joy despite it all.

Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old by Lucy Schiller (July 14): Schiller investigates how we care for the older members of our community, scrutinizing our health care systems and public safety nets (or lack thereof), drawing on her experience caring for her grandmother, who died during the pandemic.

Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by Pamela Colloff (July 14): Colloff details the story of fraud criminal Paul Skalnik, a lifetime liar who’s taken on various guises, including a fighter pilot, an attorney, a cancer patient and a doting husband (he married nine times, with some of the marriages overlapping).

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