Summer Reads 2026 from Publishers Weekly - Top 10 : Publishers Weekly

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Canon

Paige Lewis (Viking)

Classical allusions and snarky asides come rapid-fire in this epic tale of two heroes: Yara, best left alone with their embroidery and OCD, and Adrena, a prophet determined to win back the favor of God—who’s kind of peevish, if we’re being honest. They set out separately to kill Dominic, cutthroat leader of the Bad Guys, encountering a cast of characters that includes sinister mall kiosk workers and an enthusiastic whale. It’s bonkers and beautiful. —Carolyn Juris, features editor

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Cool Machine

Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

Last month, I took four books with me for a weeklong beach trip, and I only read this one—slowly. I’m a big fan of Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy, and I think this closing volume is the best of the bunch. As I effused to my colleagues upon my return to the office, it contains some of my favorite writing on the pull of New York City and the ways it shapes the people who call it home. —David Varno, reviews editor

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The Danger to Be Sane: Creativity and the Eccentric Mind

Rosa Montero, trans. from the Spanish by Lindsey Ford (Europa)

This wholly original exploration of the creative impulse had me gripped from start to finish. Montero unpacks the psychological forces that drive writers to write, analyzing the lives of literary icons like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Joseph Conrad. She punctuates her intriguing theories with a thrilling narrative of an imposter who posed as her for many years when she was a young journalist in Madrid. —Marisa Charpentier, reviews editor

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Daughters of the Sun and Moon

Lisa See (Scribner)

I’ve been a huge fan of See ever since I ripped through Snow Flower and the Secret Fan 20 years ago. She brilliantly mashes up history and fiction into character-driven page-turners that bring to life ordinary women doing extraordinary things to survive in a harsh and oppressive world that underestimates them. I’m intrigued that this novel about three Chinese women who are immigrants to late-19th-century Los Angeles is based on See’s own family lore. —Claire Kirch, Midwest and bookselling correspondent

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The End of the Arab of the Future: A Youth in the Middle East, 1992-94

Riad Sattouf, trans. from the French by Sam Taylor (Fantagraphics)

When Sattouf’s Arab of the Future series lost its original American publisher, I despaired—how quickly could I relearn (but better this time) the French I’d given up after high school? So I’m grateful that Fantagraphics picked up this two-volume conclusion, which opens with Riad entering his teen years in Paris against the backdrop of his mother’s increasingly frantic attempts to reclaim his brother, who’s been abducted by Riad’s father back to Syria. Riad discovers alt-comics, grunge music, and girls, all while tortured with fears for his brother and the weight of his mother’s grief. —Meg Lemke, reviews editor

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Etna

Paul Yoon (Scribner)

Quirky, cozy novels featuring cats may be mega-popular, but I have a deeper appreciation for books told through the consciousness of dogs. They strike me as more, well, human, and have—be it Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain or André Alexis’s Fifteen Dogs—also offered engaging philosophical and social commentary. I expect Yoon’s novel, about a military dog finding its way home in the aftermath of a war, to be much the same. He’s a talented author and I’m eager to explore the world through his canine’s eyes. —Ed Nawotka, senior news and international editor

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Honey

Imani Thompson (Random House)

What’s sweeter than a summer revenge novel? Thompson’s debut traces the undoing of Cambridge PhD student Yrsa, who has grown disillusioned with the life she imagined for herself. But when she witnesses a man who recently wronged a friend die in a sudden accident and she doesn’t intervene to help, Yrsa gains a new lease on life. What follows is a revenge killing spree of problematic men by an unraveling woman that’s impossible not to enjoy (and maybe even root for). —Iyana Jones, assistant editor, children’s books

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How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World That Demands Answers

Simone Stolzoff (Norton)

As the world becomes weirder and more unpredictable, humans have grown increasingly obsessed with knowing all the answers—a pursuit that stunts growth and robs life of much of its texture, Stolzoff shows in this energetic study. At a moment when reading the news sometimes feels like playing Russian roulette, this makes for a fascinating, surprisingly uplifting look at the biases that make us want to predict the future and the unexpected benefits of surrendering control. —Miriam Grossman, reviews editor

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Kingdoms Trembling

M. Stern (DMR Books)

Brisk, bloody, and powered by wild ideas, Stern’s first two stories of Ulx, an exiled prince and swordmaster, thrilled sword-and-sorcery fans in DMR Books’ Die by the Sword anthologies. Now with this debut collection, Stern—author of smart, surprising, and pointedly weird pulp SF, horror, and fantasy—digs deeper into the alien-ravaged kingdoms of those vigorous tales. Stern exemplifies the S&S revival by matching love for the subgenre’s traditions with a refusal to be limited by them. —Alan Scherstuhl, BookLife reviews editor
*Not the final cover

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Lovers XXX

Allie Rowbottom (Soho Press)

Rowbottom’s debut novel, 2022’s Aesthetica, took a shrewd look at plastic surgery with a heroine who decides to undergo a risky operation to get rid of her past work. That hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly deranged story makes Rowbottom’s sophomore novel one of my most anticipated beachside reads. Jude is looking for her best friend Winnie, who has reinvented herself at a Sunset Strip club amid the porn world of 1980s Los Angeles, where the friends try to make it and build a home while facing many obstacles. Rowbottom’s singular viewpoint promises to give a brand-new take on the porn industry and its complicated intricacies of agency, power, consent, and women’s sexuality within a male power structure. —Kerensa Cadenas, news director

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Rasputin Swims the Potomac

Ben Fountain (Flatiron)

If you, like me, remember busting a gut and cringing in horror (sometimes within the span of the same sentence) while reading Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Fountain’s astute satire of George W. Bush–era jingoism, then you’ll know how ready I am for his latest, in which a truth-averse U.S. president seeks a third term with the help of a mystical pro wrestler named Rasputin. If anyone can capture the stupefying stupidity of today’s politics, Fountain can. —David Adams, reviews director

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Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood

Joseph Osmundson (Bloomsbury)

As a queer man who dreams of having a family, I was immediately drawn to Spawning Season’s premise. But it was Osmundson’s spellbinding prose that truly captured my interests. Poetic musings blend an emotional journey with science, using the mating rituals of salmon as a metaphor for human experience. It’s an unexpected mash-up that proves to be a captivating way to explore questions of parenting anxiety and building nontraditional family units. —TreVaughn Malik Roach-Carter, digital editorial coordinator

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A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies

David Thomson (S&S)

I’m a lifelong film lover who loves film criticism at least as much, so I’m extremely intrigued by this forthcoming dispatch from the great critic Thomson—a social history of the movies that argues they might have been detrimental to our collective well-being. —Conner Reed, reviews editor

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The Tuxedo Society

Paul Rudnick (Atria)

As a gay man of a certain age, I’ve long delighted in Rudnick’s humor, from his plays to his “Shouts and Murmurs” essays in the New Yorker. So I anticipate any new book from him like a box of chocolates. Though his latest delivers little on its high-concept plot, hysterical bons mots and cultural critiques abound—which works fine for poolside reading. Plus there’s a cameo by Libby Gelman-Waxner, so who can resist? —Carl Pritzkat, COO

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The Unicorn Hunters

Katherine Arden (Del Rey)

I recently read Arden’s 2024 novel The Warm Hands of Ghosts and was captivated by how the supernatural story elements were combined with the apocalyptic World War I setting. I’m now excited to see Arden bring that same immersive magic to another era with The Unicorn Hunters. The novel centers on a young duchess in France and promises court politics, secret alliances, mystical creatures, and an enchanted forest.—Monica Manzo, digital advertising assistant

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We Hexed the Moon

Mollyhall Seeley (Saga)

The wonderfully weird premise of this quirky speculative coming-of-age tale—in which a group of high school seniors do indeed hex the moon, which then leaves the night sky to crash their sleepover—had me instantly intrigued. Add in delightfully idiosyncratic prose, a cast of beautifully flawed teen girls, and a moving exploration of female friendship, and I was hooked. —Phoebe Cramer, reviews editor

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The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers

Carlos Barragán (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

This down-the-rabbit-hole deep dive into the world of Nigerian scammers who use fake profiles and online seduction to get Western men and women to send them gifts and money is an eye-popping window onto the strange new connections blossoming in our fully globalized, too-online world. The story begins with the author’s own mother getting romance-scammed and his journey to Nigeria to locate and interview the scammer, and it only gets wilder from there. —Dana Snitzky, reviews editor

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