Hot New Releases for Your Next Vacation Read
These Page-Turners Are Made for Sunny Days and Starry Nights
Summer is calling, and we’ve answered with a stack of brand-new books that hit every Page & Pairing note—compelling plots, unforgettable characters, and just the right amount of escape. These Q2 releases (April through June) are fresh off the press and already making waves—perfect companions for long flights, lazy afternoons, and that second glass of rosé.
From twisty thrillers to heartfelt fiction and book club-worthy conversation starters, these titles are vacation-ready and reader-approved. Whether you’re packing for a beach trip or planning a staycation with your feet up and a chilled drink in hand, this list is your go-to guide for summer reading with a pairing twist.
April - June Books for Summer
We've got the following genres for you to explore this quarter:
- Family and Friendship
- Historical Fiction
- Literary
- Romance
- Thriller / Mystery
- Cheers!
Family and Friendship
Climbing in Heels
by Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas
"The Devil Wears Prada meets Sex and the City" - PEOPLE Magazine
It's the story of friendship, betrayal, survival, standing up when they pass you by, and saying I won't go when they want you gone. And it's also a story about how some of those women became very much like the monsters who trained them.
Meet Beanie Rosen, the fast-talking and even faster-thinking Valley girl who knows where she wants to go, and doesn't care if she doesn't look the part.
Mercedes Baxter, who learned early on how to leverage the monied friends of her monied friends' parents until she found a foothold in Hollywood.
And Ella Gaddy, a sexy free-spirit anti-debutante from a white-glove Kentucky home who shakes up any room she walks into.
The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen
by Shokoofeh Azar
From International Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist Shokoofeh Azar, comes a stylistically audacious and emotionally powerful novel about one large, complicated family and a love affair lasting decades.
Spanning fifty years in the history of modern Iran, this lush, layered story embraces politics and family, revolution and reconstruction, loss and love as it recounts the colorful destinies of twelve children who get lost one long-ago night inside a mysterious palace.
Mansion Beach
by Meg Mitchell Moore
"If you're looking for THE beach book of summer, here it is: Mansion Beach by Meg Mitchell Moore. It's an engrossing, incredibly clever modern retelling of The Great Gatsby set on Block Island. Meg writes my favorite beach reads, and this is her best yet." --Elin Hilderbrand
From national bestselling author Meg Mitchell Moore comes a sparkling new novel.
It's the beginning of the summer, and Nicola Carr has just arrived on Block Island, RI, eager for a fresh start and some R&R. But her plans for a tranquil summer are derailed as the extravagant parties from the grand home next door pique her curiosity. She soon discovers the home belongs to Juliana George, an enigmatic entrepreneur with a past shrouded in mystery.
Historical Fiction
The Eights
by Joanna Miller
They knew they were changing history.
They didn't know they would change each other.
Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its one-thousand-year history, Oxford University officially admits female students. Burning with dreams of equality, four young women move into neighboring rooms in Corridor 8. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne, and Otto--collectively known as The Eights--come from all walks of life, each driven by their own motives, each holding tight to their secrets, and are thrown into an unlikely, unshakable friendship.
Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Politically-minded Beatrice, daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way - and some friends her own age. Otto was a nurse during the war but is excited to return to her socialite lifestyle in Oxford where she hopes to find distraction from the memories that haunt her.
The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club
by Martha Hall Kelly
Two sisters living on Martha's Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women in this spectacular novel inspired by true events.
2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother's death as she travels to the storied island of Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She's come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter. When Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux's stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there.
The Amalfi Curse: A Bewitching Tale of Sunken Treasure, Forbidden Love, and Ancient Magic on the Amalfi Coast
by Sarah Penner
"This intoxicating story blends old-world magic and modern-day mystery with a delicious dash of amore." --People
Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse...
Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven's arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?
Literary
The Names: A Read with Jenna Pick
by Florence Knapp
READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
The extraordinary novel that asks: Can a name change the course of a life?
In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates…
Notes on Infinity
by Austin Taylor
A Zibby Owens "Summer Read" * A Jordy's Book Club "Most Anticipated Book of 2025" * An Oprah Daily “Best Summer Reads”
A singular, extraordinary debut about Zoe and Jack, Harvard students who find themselves propelled into the intoxicating biotech startup world when they announce they've discovered the cure for aging. A different kind of love story where the thirst for achievement consumes and the stakes are forever.
Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother's shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard. Jack, a boy in Zoe's organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor's lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel antiaging drug.
Where the Rivers Merge
by Mary Alice Monroe
From New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe comes her highly anticipated Where the Rivers Merge, the first of two epic and triumphant novels celebrating one intrepid woman's life across multiple generations in the American South.
1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. A free spirit, she refuses to be confined by societal norms and spends her days exploring the vast property, observing wildlife, and riding horses.
1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She's fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son.
Romance
It's a Love Story
by Annabel Monaghan
"Poignant, funny, and bingeable, Annabel Monaghan writes five star reads." --Abby Jimenez
Love is a lie. Laughter is the only truth.
Jane Jackson spent her adolescence as "Poor Janey Jakes," the barbecue-sauce-in-her-braces punch line on America's fifth-favorite sitcom. Now she's trying to be taken seriously as a Hollywood studio executive by embracing a new mantra: Fake it till you make it.
Atmosphere: A Love Story
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, Taylor Jenkins Reid!
"NASA? Space missions? The '80s? This is a collection of all the things I love."--Andy Weir, author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
Disappoint Me
by Nicola Dinan
You can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time where you can't deny the bones their flesh. A person is no fewer than two things.
Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year's Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.
Max thinks she's found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she'd always dismissed as a foolish fantasy.
Thriller & Mystery
Don't Open Your Eyes
by LIV Constantine
A twisted psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling co-author of the Reese's Book Club pick The Last Mrs. Parrish.
Annabelle Reynolds has everything she's ever wanted. A devoted husband, two wonderful daughters, and a career she loves. She couldn't be happier. So why is she suddenly plagued by disturbing dreams of a future where she hates her husband and her daughters' lives are at risk? At first, she chalks the dreams up to an overactive imagination. But when details from her dreams, details she couldn't possibly have predicted, begin to materialize, she realizes these aren't just dreams but rather premonitions of a terrifying future. They all point to a singular choice, an unknown moment that holds Annabelle's life in the balance.
Fever Beach
by Carl Hiaasen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Another instant classic from Carl Hiaasen--laugh-out-loud funny, tackling the current chaotic and polarized American culture (following in the path of Squeeze Me), with two wonderful Hiaasen heroes
"The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Shores, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he'd take him there after finishing an errand."
Thus begins Fever Beach, with an errand that leads--in pure Hiaasen-style--into the depths of Florida at its most Floridian: a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed, and corruption. Figgo, it turns out, is the only hate-monger ever to be kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too dumb and incompetent. On January 6, 2021 he thought he was defacing a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, but he wound up spreading feces all over a statue of James Zacharia George, a Civil War Confederate war leader.
Murder Takes a Vacation
by Laura Lippman
A New York Times "Best Beach Reads of Summer"
One of Washington Post's "Best Mysteries to Read This Summer"
Mrs. Blossom has a knack for blending into the background, which was an asset during her days assisting private investigator Tess Monaghan. But when she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot, everything changes. She is determined to see the world that she sometimes feels is passing her by.
The Missing Half
by Ashley Flowers - Alex Kiester
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Two women haunted by their sisters' unsolved disappearances band together in this captivating mystery from the author of All Good People Here and host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie.
Nicole "Nic" Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, she's just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she's been working since high school, a job she only has because her boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years--since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace.
On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver's door was open and her purse was untouched in the seat next to it.