Best books to read this summer

1. The Guest by Emma Cline

All is not as it seems in this “deceptively simple” novel by the author of “The Girls”, said The New York Times. Alex, a pretty, troubled 22-year-old call girl, survives by drifting from party to party and man to man in a rich Long Island town, posing as whoever the occasion demands and giving the reader a “shimmering” sense of unease. It’s a pacey read that’s also “cool, subtle, clinical”, said The Observer.

Chatto & Windus

2. The Wager by David Grann

David Grann tells the “relentlessly compelling” true story of an 18th century British shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia “with almost unparalleled skill and subtlety”, said The Observer. “A forensically researched historical yarn that mixes Mutiny on the Bounty with Lord of the Flies”, the book is “a thrilling account of adventure, endurance and the ravages of imperialism”, said The Guardian.

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Simon & Schuster

3. Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang

“This propulsive thriller is set to be the summer’s most visible hit,” said The Times. When a starry Asian-American writer chokes to death on a pancake, her less successful friend June steals her manuscript and passes it off as her own. There are “plenty of savagely funny moments” in this “addictive” satire of publishing, cancel culture and identity politics, said The Independent.

HarperCollins

4. The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan

This “mighty” work traces the environment’s influence on human lives from prehistory to the present, said The Times. Frankopan, a historian, “goes big”, explaining how wet weather in Mongolia helped Genghis Khan to power; “and small”, detailing how the 17th century craze for beaver hats caused ponds to disappear. Researched to an “awesome degree”, it’s still “thumpingly readable”, said The Daily Telegraph.

Bloomsbury

5. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

The Booker Prize-winner’s “elegant” page-turner about a radical environmentalist group’s conflict with a wily American tech tycoon is filled with neat character studies, said The Economist. Catton “skewers anti-capitalist activists with the same relish she exhibits in chewing up the billionaire class”. It has “the pace and bite and glee of a thriller”, said The Guardian, combined with “moral seriousness” and great “intelligence and skill”.

Granta

6. Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

It does what it says on the tin, but this novel about a romance between Sally, a comedy writer, and Noah, a pop star, “feels not only deliciously bingeable, but fresh”, said The Observer. Curtis Sittenfeld “explores the worlds of celebrity, modern dating, lockdown and Covid-19 with wit, humour and often profundity”, said The Independent. “A light-hearted page-turner that’s funny, romantic and heartwarming.”

Doubleday

7. Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

A “compelling and heartbreaking” tale of forbidden love, “Trespasses” has touches of noir and political thriller, but it’s also “side-splittingly funny”, said The Times. In 1970s Belfast, a young Catholic teacher has an affair with an older, married Protestant lawyer. Political turmoil looms threateningly in the background. A “vivid portrait of love and loss”, it’s “passionate, gripping and tense”, said The Independent.

8. Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell

Katherine Rundell, a rollicking children’s writer as well as an Oxford academic, brings all her skills to bear on this life of the 17th century poet John Donne. It features “pirates, plague, numerous executions, doomed love and some of the greatest poetry ever written”, said The Observer. Her “light-on-its-feet, beguiling” biography of “poetry’s greatest charmer” makes for “classy bedtime reading”, said The Times.

Faber

9. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

The veteran novelist’s reboot of David Copperfield in a modern-day rural America ravaged by the opioid epidemic was a “well-deserved” winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, said The Times. This is a “powerful” novel, said The New York Times. “Like Dickens, Kingsolver is unblushingly political and works on a sprawling scale, animating her pages with an abundance of charm.”

Faber