From Pakistan to Italy to Berlin, these reads have you booked for your summer travel.
Join our Checked Out Checklist Summer Reading Challenge
and find more Books That Take You Places
Travel to a Fictional Island:
The Wishing Game: A Novel by Meg Shaffer
*A LibraryReads Pick*
Years ago, a reclusive mega-bestselling children’s author quit writing under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly he resurfaces with a brand-new book and a one-of-a-kind competition, offering a prize that will change the winner’s life in this absorbing and whimsical novel.
“Clever and hopeful . . . a love letter to reading and the power that childhood stories have over us long after we’ve grown up.”—V. E. Schwab, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
“Meg Shaffer’s beautiful novel is part Willy Wonka, part magical realism, and wholly moving. It broke my heart and patched it over and reminded me that even as an adult, if you look hard enough, you can find the child still inside you.”—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling co-author of Mad Honey
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt
Click for a Book Club Kit
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook
Watch Our ‘Book Club Picks’ Author Panel Featuring Meg Shaffer
Travel to the Karachi, Pakistan:
Under the Tamarind Tree: A Novel by Nigar Alam
A compellingly heartbreaking debut novel about the echoes of Partition and four friends whose dark secrets lead to a life-changing night that comes back to haunt them decades later.
“A lush compelling drama . . . A reminder of how both sweeping historic events and personal secrets can shape lives and continue to reap consequences across the generations.”—Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake
“Tender and beautifully written . . . Alam explores class, family and passion in rich cultural detail. A captivating read.”—Jean Kwok, author of Girl in Translation and Searching for Sylvie Lee
Available August 15th in Hardcover, eBook, and Audiobook Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt
Click for Audiobook Information
Watch Our ‘Book Club Picks’ Author Panel Featuring Nigar Alam
Travel to Southern California:
California Golden: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin
Two sisters navigate the thrilling, euphoric early days of California surf culture in this dazzling saga of ambition, sacrifice, and the tangled ties between mothers and daughters from the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator’s Wife.
“A shimmering rendering . . . pairs the surf culture of the Beach Boys with the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll of Daisy Jones & The Six.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A gripping story about the power of family ties set in the edgy California surf culture and the glamorous and sometimes dangerous world of Hollywood celebrity, California Golden takes readers on an emotional, page-turning ride.”—Elyssa Friedland, author of The Most Likely Club
Available August 8th in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click for More Information
Click for Audiobook Information
Travel to the City of Berlin:
Berlin: A Novel by Bea Setton
A wickedly insightful, darkly funny novel in which a young woman in the grip of an existential malaise moves to a new city for a fresh start but her attempt at reinvention doesn’t quite go to plan.
“Written in funny, punchy vignettes perfect for consumption between U-Bahn stops, and a few hours in the presence of Daphne Ferber pay generous spiritual dividends.”—The Washington Post
“A compelling, raw, and thrillingly strange outsider tale of loneliness and deception. Setton is a wonderful writer who, with this sharp debut, adds to the great canon of contemporary anti-heroines.”—Mona Awad, author of Bunny
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt
Click for a Discussion Guide
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook
Travel Around the World:
Wanderlust: A Novel by Elle Everhart
People We Meet on Vacation meets The Unhoneymooners in this sparkling debut romantic comedy about two near strangers—and complete opposites—who win a radio contest for a trip around the world.
“From the first page, I was all in for this thoughtful, thrilling, and romantic trip around the world. Everhart’s writing is both light and cinematic, tying the reader’s heartbeat to every moment of Dylan and Jack’s love story.”—Annabel Monaghan, author of Nora Goes Off Script
Available July 4th in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt
Click for Audiobook Information
Travel to the South of France:
The Little Village of Book Lovers: A Novel by Nina George
A young woman with the extraordinary power to bring soulmates together searches for her own true love in this tender, lyrical standalone novel inspired by the “bona fide international hit” (The New York Times Book Review) The Little Paris Bookshop.
In Nina George’s New York Times bestseller The Little Paris Bookshop, beloved literary apothecary Jean Perdu is inspired to create a floating bookstore after reading a seminal pseudonymous novel about a young woman with a remarkable gift. The Little Village of Book Lovers is that novel.
Available July 25th in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook
Travel to an English Seaside Town:
By the Sea: A Novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah
A masterwork by the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, in which two immigrants’ conflicting stories about their common homeland reveal the buried truths that drove them from it.
On a late November afternoon, Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from his native Zanzibar. With him he has a small bag in which lies his most precious possession—a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise, silence his only protection. Meanwhile, Latif Mahmud, a distinguished young professor, lives quietly alone in his London flat. When the two encounter each other in an English seaside town, the narratives each carries of their mutual past begin to unravel—revealing an infinitely more fascinating story of love and betrayal, seduction and possession, and of a people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom of their times.
Available August 22nd in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click for More Information
Click for Audiobook Information
Travel to the Island of Nantucket:
All the Days of Summer: A Novel by Nancy Thayer
A woman’s second act on the island of Nantucket delivers much more than she expected in this captivating novel by New York Times bestselling author Nancy Thayer.
“A beautiful, hope-filled, heartwarming story about new beginnings and second chances.”—RaeAnne Thayne, author of The Cafe at Beach End
Available in Hardcover and eBook Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt
Travel to the Antarctic:
Suddenly: A Novel by Isabelle Autissier
In a gripping story of survival set against the stark backdrop of the Antarctic Ocean, a couple shipwrecked on an island must trust each other with their lives.
“Isabelle Autissier sails through literature the way she sails the ocean: with vigor, precision, and determination . . . The result: a tense and exhilarating read.”—Le Figaro
“An adventure novel somewhere between those of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson.”—Le Parisien
Available August 15th in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click for More Information
Click for Audiobook Information
Travel to Rome, Italy:
The Woman in the Castello: A Novel by Kelsey James
Set in 1960s Italy, this stylish, atmospheric debut spins a bewitching web of ruthless ambition, family secrets, and the consequences of forbidden love, as an ambitious American actress snags the starring role in a mysterious horror movie shooting on location in a crumbling medieval castle outside Rome.
“Like Jess Walters’s Beautiful Ruins, the glamour and heady indulgence of the era take center stage in this captivating, multilayered story that will keep you guessing to the end.”—Susan Wiggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“You’ll get lost in the pages of this lush, entertaining story.”—Ellen Marie Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook
Available July 25th in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt
