The Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2019

By Caroline Rogers
May 13, 2019
Nine OK/Getty Images
We’re ready for vacation, how about you? Summertime brings a lengthy list of great new reads—books perfect for sitting on the beach under an umbrella, settling in on the passenger seat of a cross-country road trip, or curling up on the couch at home. No matter where your summer travels take you, you’ll need a page-turning new book. There’s an embarrassment of riches awaiting you at your local bookstore, and we’ve gathered a few of our favorite new releases here to inspire your warm-weather reading. In this roundup are highly anticipated new books by Elizabeth Gilbert, Colson Whitehead, and Rachel Cusk, as well as plenty of exciting debuts, including those by Regina Porter, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and De’Shawn Charles Winslow. Where to begin? Take a spin through our picks and start planning your reading list today. What are you most excited to read this summer? We’re thinking that we’ll need a vacation (or two or three) to make even the smallest dent in our ever-growing to-read piles. Happy reading, and bon voyage!
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The Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2019

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City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

amazon.com

To buy: $28, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This effervescent new novel by Elizabeth Gilbert (The Signature of All Things; Eat, Pray, Love; Big Magic) is a glittering foray into the theater world of 1940s New York City, where nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris is sent to live with her Aunt Peg, the owner of a midtown playhouse. (June 4)

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In West Mills by De’Shawn Charles Winslow

amazon.com

To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

De’Shawn Charles Winslow’s moving debut novel tells the story of Azalea "Knot" Centre, a woman living by her own rules in West Mills, a rural North Carolina community where she and her neighbor, Otis Lee Loving, grapple with family, friendship, and grace. (June 4)

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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

amazon.com

To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Ocean Vuong follows up his lauded 2016 poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds with this luminous debut novel, a letter about love, understanding, and family history written by a son trying to reach his mother. (June 4)

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Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn

amazon.com

To buy: $26.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This poignant new novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn (Here Comes the Sun) tells the story of Patsy, a woman who moves from Jamaica to Brooklyn, New York, in an attempt follow her dreams and put herself first. The journey she craves, however, challenges her in ways she never expected. (June 4)

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Honestly, We Meant Well by Grant Ginder

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To buy: $26.99, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This hilarious and pitch-perfect new novel by Grant Ginder (The People We Hate at the Wedding, This Is How It Starts) is set on a sun-drenched Greek island—the place to which Sue Ellen Wright flees when her previously perfect life begins to crumble. (June 11)

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A Sand Book: Poems by Ariana Reines

amazon.com

To buy: $24.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Ariana Reines arranges her latest poetry collection into nine stunning parts that address topics as varied as hurricanes and weather, mothers and daughters, and social justice. (June 18)

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Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

amazon.com

To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s sharp debut novel is packed with humor and heart. In it, the titular trouble begins when Toby Fleishman realizes that Rachel—his wife of 15 years, from whom he’s now separated—is missing. Where has she gone, and why? This book will have you racing through the pages to find the answers. (June 18)

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The Travelers by Regina Porter

amazon.com

To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Regina Porter’s sweeping debut novel begins in the 1950s and moves through the decades, telling the stories of two families and their experiences in America as the tides of social and political change transform their worlds. (June 18)

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The Gone Dead by Chanelle Benz

amazon.com

To buy: $26.99, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This extraordinary new novel by Chanelle Benz (The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead) is set in the Mississippi Delta, a place to which Billie James returns decades after her father’s death—in doing so, she begins to unravel the mysteries of her own life as well as those that linger in the collective memory of the rural community she encounters there. (June 25)

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Costalegre by Courtney Maum

amazon.com

To buy: $19.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

In this vividly drawn novel of family, sacrifice, and the limits of understanding, surrealist artists escape pre-WWII Europe and flee to Costalegre, a resort in a Mexican jungle, at the invitation of American heiress Leonora Calaway. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Lara, tells the tale. (July 16)

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The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

amazon.com

To buy: $24.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Colson Whitehead follows up 2016’s The Underground Railroad with his powerful new novel The Nickel Boys, a story set in Jim Crow-era Florida, where two boys endure stints in a juvenile reformatory known as Nickel Academy and grow up haunted by their experiences there. (July 16)

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The Vexations by Caitlin Horrocks

amazon.com

To buy: $28, amazon.com, indiebound.org

In The Vexations, Caitlin Horrocks reimagines the life of artist Erik Satie and his siblings, whose journeys through life are marked by the complications of loss and love. (July 30)

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Berta Isla by Javier Marías

amazon.com

To buy: $28.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This is a book about love, espionage, and the ways life can alter the courses we set for ourselves. In it, a couple—Berta Isla and Tomás Nevinson—find their world changed when forces from within and without encroach on the life they attempt to build together. (August 6)

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Inland by Téa Obreht

amazon.com

To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This gorgeously imagined novel is set in 1893 in the American West. It follows the stories of two people—Nora, a frontierswoman awaiting the return of her family, and Lurie, an outlaw on a quest across the Western territories—whose lives intersect against the vast frontier. (August 13)

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Coventry: Essays by Rachel Cusk

amazon.com

To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Rachel Cusk follows her groundbreaking Outline Trilogy with this collection of thought-provoking essays traversing a variety of genres—memoir, criticism, previously published essays—and subjects—including art, literature, and motherhood. (August 20)

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The World Doesn’t Require You: Stories by Rion Amilcar Scott

amazon.com

To buy: $25.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

The stories in Rion Amilcar Scott’s vital new collection are set in fictional Cross River, Maryland, and explore sweeping themes, some magical, others sharply realistic, while weaving characters as indelible as they are wholly original. (August 20)

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By Caroline Rogers