Splashy Summer Reads

When it’s time to cool down, find a patch of shade and dive into one of the season’s best books.

- by SARAH VINCENT

HEART-TUGGING DRAMA

Kin by Tayari Jones

Neicy and Annie are motherless best friends in small-town Louisiana during the Jim Crow era: Neicy's mother was murdered, and Annie's mom abandoned her. While Neicy goes to college and finds increasing wealth and privilege, Annie chases her mother through brothels and bars in this bighearted, sometimes tragic book about longing, queer desire, and chosen family.

IRISH EPIC

Land by Maggie O'Farrell

The author of Hamnet returns with a generational family drama set in the aftermath of the Great Hunger in Ireland. Tomás is a mapmaker determined to show the bloody truth of the starvation written on the land. An encounter with a mysterious spring changes his life in this layered piece of literary fiction that follows the hardships of one family, weaving together folklore, historical trauma, and the struggles of emigration.

BEACH READ

Down With the Shipmans by Meg Mitchell Moore