Preview: 28 of Summer’s Top Books (2024)

Grab your beach chair or crank up the air conditioning and dive into a few (or all!) of these 28 fantastic new reads this summer.

HarperCollins, Penguin Random House (2), Alamy Stock Photo

June

Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson: How’s that for big names on the cover? Though the Jurassic Park author passed away in 2008 at the age of 66, his unfinished manuscript has been revived by the also-tremendously bestselling Patterson, 77. The book’s publicist notes in an email that Crichton’s wife, Sherri, played a major role in getting the story to print after she found parts of the unfinished manuscript: “She was pregnant at the time of Michael’s tragic and untimely death, and it took her over a decade to find a coauthor worthy of honoring her husband’s legacy and final passion project.” There’s seismic buzz around the resulting thriller, the story of an imminent massive volcanic eruption on the Big Island of Hawaii that appears to have an unnatural cause. (June 3)

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Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand: Hilderbrand, 54, is known and beloved for her summery fiction set on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, where she lives, but she has said that this appropriately named novel will be her last of these beachy books. “I’m at the top of my game right now, but my readers definitely want the same thing every year and I am just flat-out running out of ideas,” she told us last year. “I don’t want the quality of the books to fail — so I’m doing everybody a favor.” Now she’s exiting on a high note with this dramatic tale featuring a recently arrived ostentatiously wealthy family whose presence sets off some strange happenings, including a possible murder. (June 11)

Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers: NPR music critic Powers, 60, takes a deep, ruminative dive into the musician’s life from a fan’s (as opposed to a traditional biographer’s) perspective, including Mitchell’s childhood polio, jazz influences, folk-music fame and relationships with James Taylor, among others. In the author’s mind, Mitchell is an almost-otherworldly cultural hero; “Coming to love her,” Powers writes, “is akin to achieving enlightenment: a shocking moment of insight that transforms the world.” (June 11)

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager: The bestselling author of tense thrillers, like 2023’s The Only One Left, again offers absorbing suspense in this story of Ethan Marsh, a troubled man who returns to his suburban childhood home on a seemingly peaceful cul-de-sac (tellingly named Hemlock Circle), where 30 years ago his best friend disappeared while they were camping in Ethan’s backyard. Ethan is still — possibly literally — haunted by the incident as he tries to reconstruct what happened that terrible night. (June 18)

How the Light Gets In by Joyce Maynard: This is one of my favorite novels of the year, so far: I’d never read Maynard, 70, author of the bestselling memoir At Home in the World and novels such as To Die For and Labor Day (and also known for her brief relationship with the author J.D. Salinger). This brilliant, moving story is a kind of sequel to Maynard’s 2021 novel Count the Ways, which you don’t need to have read to become absorbed in this one. It’s centered around Eleanor, now in her 50s, who has moved from Boston back to the New Hampshire farm where she and her ex-husband Cam raised their family, to care for the dying Cam and live with her brain-injured adult son, Toby. Over a 15-year span, she wrestles with a baffling estrangement from her oldest daughter, and guilt and resentment over the long-ago accident that injured Toby, while falling into a passionate but unfulfilling affair. And yet, as she ages, we see her begin to appreciate the love and beauty that her life holds despite (or because of) its many disappointments and apparent wrong turns. (June 25)

Also of note

This Is Why You Dream: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life by Rahul Jandial, M.D.: A neuroscientist and neurosurgeon, Jandial takes a scientific, philosophical and psychological look at dreaming, and what its purpose might be. (June 4)

Hip-Hop Is History by Questlove: The 53-year-old producer and six-time Grammy Award-winning musician explores the genre’s creative influences and influencers (including himself). (June 11)

Same as It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo: This often humorous story features 57-year-old Julia Ames, a suburban mother who’s dismayed to encounter a woman from her past; the story later unspools the reasons for their friendship’s end. Lombardo’s the author of 2019’s The Most Fun We Ever Had, the April 2024 Reese’s Book Club pick. (June 18)

Husbands & Lovers by Beatriz Williams: Williams writes beautiful historical fiction; this one takes readers from modern-day New England to 1950s Egypt and focuses on two women, linked by a secret. (June 25)

Shanghai by Joseph Kanon: The Edgar Award-winning author (The Good German, Los Alamos) offers a fast-paced thriller featuring vice, corruption and espionage in Shanghai before the start of World War II when Jewish people fled persecution in Germany. (June 25)