The triumphant return of Jennifer Egan’s Goon Squad, two (!) time-travel novels, and more must-read mid-year.
Books are magical. (In fact, one author on this list is a co-owner of a store in Brooklyn who clearly agrees.) But there are also many more than any literature lover can have time for.
Below, EW has narrowed down this year’s offerings so far to an unranked list of 10 great reads, from high-concept novels and collections of intimate essays to a poetic children’s book — and a few extra bonus picks along the way.
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
“When I was a child, I loved the elderly, and I realized that they loved me too.” Thus begins this delightfully transgressive debut, a novel whose opening lines (without mentioning the Nabakovian name in the title) seem to presage a kind of inverted Lolita. In fact, the girl, actually a 58-year-old professor with a stagnant marriage and a blocked writing career, can’t help it: when she meets Vladimir, the new Adonis-like employee on campus, a consuming obsession is born. The lengths to which the unnamed narrator will go to win over the 40-year-old object of his affections actually turn out to be the least interesting in Jonas’s diamond-cut study of academia, aging, and the raging absurdity of being a woman in the world. world. —Leah Greenblatt
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
It makes a strange sense that a book that felt like lightning when it landed would somehow manage to hit twice. Eleven years after A Visit From the Goon Squad, the kaleidoscopic novel in short stories (and also in PowerPoint) that earned Jennifer Egan a Pulitzer Prize and a place on countless shelves, is back with its sensational and mind-blowing sequel. Candy refracts and expands the Goon Squad multiverse of tech lords, rebellious professors, punk-rock kids, and suburban tennis moms, every bit as surreal, fun, and transcendent as the last. —LG
Trust by Hernan Diaz
The trust title may strictly refer to the financial term, but as a verb, it won’t do you any good to believe Diaz’s Rashamon-esque story of a Wall Street tycoon and his troubled, aristocratic girlfriend. Diaz, whose 2017 debut, In the Distance, earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination, explores one man’s ruthless quest for capital in four distinct forms (a novel, a manuscript, a memoir, a diary), though the classic narrative of the Big Man turns out to be a Trojan horse for something far more feminist, subversive, and bizarre. On the same subject : Music for general social fatigue: that’s why Ed Sheeran sells so much. (HBO just announced that Kate Winslet is producing and starring in a limited series adaptation.) —LG
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
A disgraced British blue blood is exiled to the wilds of Canada in 1912; a young widow goes to see an old friend’s songwriting brother in Manhattan circa 2020; a near-future novelist endures the banal horrors of a book tour; and a 25th-century scientist explores the possibility that the whole thing is, in fact, an elaborate simulation. Sea may be seen as something of a sequel to 2020’s The Glass Hotel, but Emily St. See the article : Top 7 Special Female Comedians to Stream on Netflix (VIDEO). John Mandel’s slim metaphysical novel also stands on its own: a tone-poem-like story, staggeringly beautiful and profound. —LG
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
If you could be 16 again, would you? Emma Straub, the queen of summer reading for smart girls, takes that question literally in her latest book about a Manhattanite whose monotonous middle age: a placeholder boyfriend, a sick father, a low-level clerical job at his soul private school. mater—is hardly where she thought she would be on the cusp of 40. This may interest you : Jenny Welbourn on YouTube Vlogging, a sustainable lifestyle and online burnout. When a kind of phantom toll booth allows her high school body to go back in time, the book turns into a light-hearted but surprisingly moving meditation on the romance, regret, and family. (And inevitably, the top fashion trends of the late ’90s.) —LG
Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley
Now working primarily as a writer-director (Talking Women, starring Frances McDormand, is due out later this year), Toronto-born Polley became an unlikely teen star through the TV series Avonlea and movies. like Go and The Sweet Hereafter. Turns out she’s also an excellent digger of her own past, in these six intimate essays that touch on everything from her treacherous time in a deranged Terry Gilliam movie to a high-risk pregnancy and #MeToo calculations. —LG
Out of a Jar by Deborah Marcero
Gorgeous illustrations, poetic prose, and a relatable protagonist make Deborah Marcero’s tale the kind you can return to again and again. Featuring Llewellyn, the same bunny from her 2020 picture book In a Jar, this new story addresses the bunny’s trouble controlling his emotions. As he tries to shove every overwhelming feeling into a jar, his strategy ultimately backfires when the jars are accidentally broken and all those great emotions come out anyway. She finally realizes that only by dealing with her feelings can she break free. Along with vibrant illustrations detailing Llewellyn’s struggles, Marcero handles these complex emotional themes in a way that is easy for children to understand and for parents to enjoy. —Lauren Morgan
A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera
We’re big fans of Adriana Herrera here at EW, but A Caribbean Heiress in Paris is her best and most exuberant work yet. Set in 1889, the novel follows heiress Luz Alana as she travels from her home in Santo Domingo to the Universal Exposition in Paris. Luz has plans to expand her family’s rum business, even if her inheritance is banned until she marries. But when she meets whiskey purveyor James Evanston Sinclair, Earl of Darnick, the two discover that their energetic attraction could also make for the perfect business partnership and marriage of convenience. Herrera excels at pushing the romance genre and its form, and this book is no exception. While Hollywood may still only figure out how to project diverse faces onto white source material, Herrera is crafting dazzling historical romances that aren’t afraid to engage with 19th-century realities while still betting on the happily hard-earned. -dessert. —Maureen Lee Lenker
X-Men Red by Al Ewing and Stefano Caselli
Last year, the X-Men terraformed Mars. A group of Marvel’s most powerful mutants combined their abilities to make the Red Planet produce lush vegetation and rogue lakes. With the first three issues of X-Men Red, Ewing and Caselli have maximized the story potential of that development by showing how familiar characters like Storm and Magneto have been changed by the new Martian landscape, while also introducing new characters to populate. this new mutant society. Each issue manages to be more exciting than the last, and we can’t wait to see where it goes next. —Christian Holub
All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
Growing up in a small (and mean) California desert town, high school seniors and best friends Noor and Salahudin navigate love and loss, all the while wondering if their fading hopes for the future stand a chance. of survival. The first-person prose vibrates with adolescent intensity—of grief, desire, and above all, searing rage—as Tahir’s young heroes grapple with adult decisions they feel ill-prepared to make. But equipped they are: with poetry, music, tradition and their capacity to love. Underneath all that adolescent fury, there is an even more devastating tenderness. —Mary Sollosi
More Recommendations: Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo; Jessamine Chan’s School for Good Mothers; Olga dies dreaming of Xóchitl González; Tracy Flick can’t win from Tom Perotta; Sarai Walker’s The Cherry Thieves; Manifesto of Bernardine Evaristo; In love with Amy Bloom; I Came All This Way To Meet You: Writing Me Home by Jamie Attenberg; What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart; Time is a mother of Ocean Vuong; Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James.
