The 25 Best New Book Releases This Week: July 9-15, 2024

When you’re a kid, the best days of summer are the middle ones. School seems far in the past (and too far in the future to worry about). Maybe you’ve had a family trip or summer camp or some organized fun. (But not too much organized fun; kids need to be bored sometimes.) Now it’s hot and after some snacks , you are left alone to entertain yourself, to amuse yourself, to stay out of the way of the adults who–unfortunately–know summer as only a hazy memory. You are in summer and summer will never end.

It’s also a great time to read, whether it’s the pile of books you’ve been meaning to get to, a stack of books you’ve checked out of the library or treasure you plundered from a used bookstore or one of the great new releases we’ve got for you below. So let’s get reading. At the head of the Parade are…

The 25 Best New Book Releases This Week: July 9-15, 2024

1. The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
2. Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder by Kerryn Mayne
3. Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Kate Quinn’s new novel The Briar Club focuses on the women at a seen-better-days boarding house in Washington DC during the 1950s McCarthy Era. The widow Grace March is the newest member of this unofficial group. They are a network of women making their way through the post-war years only to discover their roles and options in life are being narrowed or removed entirely, just as if the war and their accomplishments and heroism never happened. Toss in an act of violence and the Red Scare and these women will either come together–thorns and all–or be ripped apart for good.

Check out Parade’s exclusive excerpt from The Briar Club here .

UK author Kerryn Mayne’s debut novel is a quirky charmer with a mournful undertone. Hero hero Lenny Mark is a woman who keeps to herself. Scarred by the childhood trauma of losing both her parents, Lenny takes comfort in routine: the same path home from work, the same meals, the same game of solo Scrabble while watching reruns of Friends. It’s a comforting and stifling and quietly desperate life that needs shaking up. But will Lenny survive any change in the pattern she thinks protects her?

She had me at “Taffy.” But fans of Brodesser-Akner, okay let’s just be on a first-name basis and call her Taffy have high expectations from the author of the fiercely funny Fleishman in Trouble. The early buzz says she delivers with Long Island Compromise, a family saga that begins in 1980 when a wealthy businessman is kidnapped. It picks things up decades later when everyone in his family–and I do mean everyone–is still reeling from the impact of that event and the money that’s proven a shield and burden ever since. Oh, but the money is dwindling folks. Comfort reading for those who haven’t won the lottery (or the lottery of life) and the sort of social satire Tom Wolfe wanted to write.

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn ($28.99; William Morrow) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder by Kerryn Mayne ($28; St. Martin’s Press) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner ($30; Random House) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

4. Fragile Beauty: Photographs From The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection

Worldwide fame has its privileges. When Elton John and his husband David Furnish decide to collect photography as a hobby, they immediately become one of the most influential buyers of this art form in the world. They could easily stock an entire museum with the images they’ve gathered in one place. Fragile Beauty is the next best thing: a coffee table book bursting with beautiful works by some of the most talented artists in the world. John and Furnish didn’t specialize much: you’ll find literally every imaginable type of photography by a who’s who of artists from the last 70s years, from Diane Arbus to (of course) Robert Mapplethorpe to Cindy Sherman and on and on. It’s a head-spinning, gorgeous survey of a still-evolving art form.

Fragile Beauty: Photographs From The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection ($70; V&A Publishing) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: Author Roshani Chokshi’s Favorite Books Updating Fairy Tales

5. Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
6. This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour

Two horror and sci-fi novels to keep you on your toes. Chuck Tingle has the perfect name for an adult film star specializing in fetish. But he’s actually the author of numerous books under various pseudonyms. As Tingle, he burst onto the horror scene with Camp Damascus, a novel set at a gay conversion camp. Now with Bury Your Gays, Tingle ups the horror by setting it in…Hollywood. A screenwriter is at the top of his game thanks to an Oscar nomination and a hit streaming series. But his bosses want the writer to have a killer season finale by offing the gay characters on the show (a move so common in TV circles it’s a cliche fans bemoan online). Oh and the creatures he dreamt up during his B movie horror film days? They've come to life and are stalking him. In other words, Hollywood!

This Great Hemisphere has the trappings of literary fiction, but don’t let that scare you off. This sci-fi novel has a propulsive plot set in the near future that involves a Dominant Population, with the rest of the folk in America relegated to invisibility. Our hero Sweetmint is “invisible,” but when she discovers her presumed dead brother is alive and the chief suspect in assassinating a major political figure, she takes off on a quest. Sweetmint will track him down amidst a furious election (in which only the DPs vote, of course) while a law enforcement officer is determined to eliminate her for good.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle ($26.99; Tor Nightfire) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour ($29; Dutton) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

7. Wonderland by Nicole Treska
8. The Color of Everything by Cory Richards

Can you resist the photograph? The cover of Wonderland features an arresting photo of Nicole Treska, staring down the camera with Jodie Foster-like confidence. Then you discover that kid who seems so tough is in fact surrounded by criminals: her father was deeply embedded in Boston’s mob wars and would go to federal prison for drug trafficking. Nicole’s mother took her children far, far away from that world but Treska plunges back into it in order to reconnect with her ailing father and the complicated, confounding childhood that shaped her.

The Color of Everything needs more explanation. It’s a memoir by the National Geographic photographer and climber Cory Richards. The thrills here are not the very real challenges he faces when scaling some of the major mountains of the world, complete with devastating avalanches and hair-raising escapes. It’s his lifelong challenge of maintaining mental health amidst a diagnosis of bipolar disorder that truly holds the reader’s attention. From panic attacks on Mt. Everest to childhood trauma, Richards embraces and shares it all.

Wonderland by Nicole Treska ($27.99; Simon & Schuster) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Color of Everything by Cory Richards ($30; Random House) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

9. A Refiner’s Fire by Donna Leon
10. A Death in Cornwall by Daniel Silva
11. Our Kind of Game by Johanna Copeland

Fans of Donna Leon know to rejoice when Commissario Guido Brunetti returns for his 33rd appearance in Venice. A tangled case involving teenage gang members and a “hero” of the Iraq War whose seeming bravery is conveniently brushed aside provide just the sort of complex morality our hero will be determined to untangle.

Daniel Silva is just as acclaimed for his series featuring Gabriel Allon, art restorer and forger (and spy) extraordinaire. Allon’s 24th mystery begins with a stolen Vincent Van Gogh restored to its proper owners. But a murdered art historian soon leads Allon to the case of a missing Picasso valued at $100 million. That intrigues him, so Allon is soon armed with six Impressionist forgeries, a master thief, a world-class violinist and others so Allon can con the con artists.

An ongoing series offers it’s own pleasures, but new faces are always welcome. The debut thriller of Johanna Copeland offers a woman with a happy life in Washington D.C., until a neighbor shows up and insists they know all about her. That leads to flashbacks to some 30 years earlier and enough twists and turns to satisfy veteran readers. Acclaimed writer Karin Slaughter gives it her endorsement and that’s enough for me to plunge in.

A Refiner’s Fire by Donna Leon ($28; Atlantic Monthly Press) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

A Death in Cornwall by Daniel Silva ($32; Harper) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Our Kind of Game by Johanna Copeland ($30; Harper) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

12. F1 Racing Confidential by Giles Richards

Have you watched the trailer yet for Brad Pitt’s action drama set in the world of F1? Maybe you’re obsessed with the Netflix docu-series Formula 1: Drive To Survive? In either case, you need a primer on one of the most popular sports in the world and Giles Richards is ready for you, complete with a breakdown of the team behind each driver and the complex roles they play in producing a winner. You need a great driver, but a great driver is nothing without a great team they can inspire and lead.

F1 Racing Confidential by Giles Richards ($32; Grand Central Publishing) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

13. State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg
14. Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi
15. Toward Eternity by Anton Hur

Three works of science fiction and fantasy to grapple with or escape the realities of the world today.

As if Florida wasn’t wacky enough, State of Paradise captures a state of unreality where people go missing and alternate realities are just around the corner in the Sunshine State. Author Laura van den Berg’s novel includes a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author, a missing sister, sinkholes (it’s the water, people; drain the water for your development or your orange groves and you’ll get sinkholes!) and a company named ELECTRA that is giving away virtual reality devices. As if that’s not suspicious in and of itself. Reality is bent in the humid Florida sunshine.

Navola will inevitably be compared to Game of Thrones aka A Song of Ice and Fire. (Take your time, George! We’ll wait.) But this fantasy novel by Paolo Bacigalupi shouldn’t be sold as a rip-roaring tale with dragons. It’s mostly a coming of age story set in an Italian-ish country where backstabbing and shifting alliances and Medici-like power is always balanced on the edge of a knife. Bacigalupi may shift into high gear in the later volumes (there will assuredly be more). But here he admirably takes his time, painting a full portrait of Davico di Regulai, the heir apparent of a family dynasty but a young man who seems ill-suited to the treacherous and subtle world of his father. Davico is just…too honest, too open. It’s a quietly compelling novel as we wonder if Davico will simply be consumed by the world he’s meant to help lead…or is he actually more ruthless than we think? Absolutely no one can be taken at surface level and that dragon’s eye (an ancient artifact) will at some point open, but the entire feel of this novel is more Wolf Hall than Game of Thrones. Know that and you will enjoy it without tapping your toes wondering when the fireworks will start. It’s the revelation of character that casts a spell here, not wizards and magic.

Anton Hur completes this trilogy of well-reviewed sci-fi/fantasy. In Toward Eternity, new tech cures cancer by replacing all your cells with little robot cells that incidentally leave you basically immortal. Then another breakthrough leads to conscious AI. Soon you’ve got humans and nano-humans living forever and androids with AI consciousness and they interbreed and everyone wonders exactly what makes us us and them them and is there a difference and should we care? Like the best sci-fi, Toward Eternity grapples with eternal questions raised by cutting edge science with a fascinating premise.

State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg ($27; Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi ($30; Knopf) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Toward Eternity by Anton Hur ($26.99; HarperVia) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

16. Devil’s Contract by Ed Simon
17. The Secret Lives of Numbers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell

Let’s make a deal. You love to read. I love to recommend books. What if I offered you a free copy of every book I recommended and all you had to do was read them from start to finish? Sweet, right? That’s a Faustian bargain of a sort, a deal that seems to dangle something you love–free books!– with a small requirement that soon proves overwhelming. (I recommend 100 plus books a month and you can’t have a life and read three books a day, even if some of them are picture books. Heck, you can’t even sleep if you have to read three books a day.) Author Ed Simon focuses on deals with the devil, the omnipresent idea of bargaining with dark forces to gain your heart’s desire. From folk tales to myths to fiction and films, Simon charts the history of these pacts and how they reflect our ever-changing attitude towards Beelzebub and humans desire. From a bluesman standing at the crossroads to Faust to a kid with a Ouija board, it’s all here in fascinating fashion.

Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell tell another fascinating story from history. Instead of the literary realm of pacts with the devil, they focus on the history of mathematics. Specifically, they zero in on the many people who pioneered facets of math but were erased by history. So The Secret Lives of Numbers ranges from Hypatia–an Egyptian beloved by pagans and Christians alike–to the Arabic scholars of the legendary “House of Wisdom” to a genius in India who discerned the basic tenets of calculus hundreds of years before Isaac Newton was even born. It’s all engrossing, and you don’t need to make a deal with the devil or understand algebra to enjoy it.

Devil’s Contract by Ed Simon ($28.99; Melville House) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Secret Lives of Numbers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell ($32.99; William Morrow) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

18. Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney
19. The Summer Pact by Emily Giffin

Road trip! Melanie Sweeney’s modest frenemies romance involves two people who bicker over their favorite chair at a local coffee shop. Ash has had a crush on Hazel since she dated his best friend in high school. Now they’re adults and their lives don’t cross, except when one of them beats the other to that chair. They both need to return to their small hometown at the same time and as the Romance gods would have it, they must share a car, fight over music, deal with a B&B with one room and just one bed and other roadblocks on the road to admitting that maybe they kind of dig each other after all?

Bestselling author Emily Giffin captures what is for many the most stable relationship in their lives: friends. In The Summer Pact, friends at college pledge to always be there for one another. Ten years later, when one of them is at a loss, they come together and prove that pact wasn’t just an empty promise. What could be more romantic than that?

Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney ($18.99; G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Summer Pact by Emily Giffin ($30; Ballantine Books) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

20. Sunrise Nights by Jeff Zentner and Britney Cavallaro

Okay, no one is pretending Sunrise Nights is anything other than the movie Before Sunrise reimagined with high school students who get together at summer arts camp–and only summer arts camp one night a year. I mean, they call it Sunrise Nights so surely they’re giving a knowing nod to Before Sunrise? Here Jude is an aspiring photographer and Florence is a dancer who discovers her career is probably over before it ever began thanks to a degenerative eye disease. Is a relationship that only takes place one night a year too rarefied to survive the other 364 days of the year and will Jude and Florence be brave enough to find out? It’s written in relay fashion by Jeff Zentner and Britney Cavallaro and we assume the Netflix deal is already in place.

Sunrise Nights by Jeff Zentner and Britney Cavallaro ($19.99; Quill Tree Books) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: 15 Books You Must Read if You’re Obsessed With Taylor Swift’s New Album

21. Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson
22. The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck
23. Goodnight Tokyo Atsuhiro Yoshida

Three debuts that fellow writers are especially excited by, works by what they call a “writer’s writer.” What that really means is they’re good writers but new or not as well known yet as they should be. You can change that.

August Thompson just got his MFA at New York University and now here’s his debut novel. It’s bursting with youthful drama complete with car crashes and confused sexuality and friendship and masculinity and rock and roll and all of it bundled up in a roiling mess of emotions and unspoken desire. With Junot Díaz and Darin Straus and Jonathan Safran Foer, it’s one of the debuts of the year.

Ben Shattuck is already acclaimed for his memoir Six Walks, which recreates journeys taken by Henry David Thoreau. Now comes his debut work of fiction, a collection of 12 stories spanning hundreds of years, linked in one way or another by sound. With universal praise from the trades to a who’s who of major writers adding their applause, it should become that rare collection of short stories to break out to a wider audience.

Finally, Goodnight Tokyo is the English language debut of Japanese writer Atsuhiro Yoshida. This novel takes place in Tokyo in the wee hours of the morning over several nights, creating a cacophony of characters and events and emotions that come together in a portrait of Tokyo, of course, but really humanity. Reviewers reference everything from the films of Jim Jarmusch to Haruki Murakami (of course) to Agatha Christie? Well, to understand that last mysterious reference, you’ll just have to read the book, won’t you?

Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson ($28; Penguin Press) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck ($30; Viking) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida ($17.99; Europa Editions) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

24. I Am La Chiva! by Karol Hernández; illustrated by Lorena Alvarez Gómez
25. Danté Plays His Blues by Allen R. Wells; illustrated by Shamar Knight-Justice

The bus–the chiva–is navigating the Andes mountains, picking up passengers and and pigs and plants and fruit and vegetables along the way. Colorful, beautifully calibrated in text that invites read-aloud fun and hummable words you might even try to sing-aloud, this is a very promising debut for author Karol Hernández.

Danté Plays His Blues. It’s not Danté Plays THE Blues and that makes all the difference. In this picture book, a sad situation–Danté and his mom lose their home and must move in with relatives–becomes heartwarming. Danté misses his friends and his pool and his neighborhood, even if his Uncles and cousin are really welcoming and kind. But learning to play the saxophone gives Danté a challenge to focus on and a way to turn his sadness into something beautiful all his own. His blues. It’s a lovely celebration of the power of art.

I Am La Chiva! by Karol Hernández; illustrated by Lorena Alvarez Gómez ($18.99; Dial Books) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Danté Plays His Blues by Allen R. Wells; illustrated by Shamar Knight-Justice ($19.99 HarperCollins) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: The 23 Best Shark Books of All Time