Jane Green, author, Summer Secrets (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
I completely loved The Lemon Groveby Helen Walsh. It’s the most illicit, steamy, and other-worldly novel that transports you to Majorca, where you watch a dysfunctional family cope with the daughter’s new boyfriend.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
This summer I can’t wait for Kate Atkinson’s *A God in Ruins.*It has been in my pile on the nightstand for a while, and as I work my way through the easy reads, I find myself looking more and more forward to her latest book.
Karolina Waclawiak, author, The Invaders (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
The Vanishersby Heidi Julavits. I love Heidi's writing. It’s the perfect summer read because it has mystery and the occult running throughout it. And what's more fun than sitting by a pool and reading about psychic attacks?
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
I'm really looking forward to checking out Naomi Jackson's The Star Side of Bird Hilland Kathleen Alcott's Infinite Home. I read excerpts of both online and immediately got excited. Both have a dexterity with their prose and I can already tell their books are going to be shots through my heart.
Christos Tsiolkas, author, Merciless Gods (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
Carson McCuller’s *The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,*Flannery O’Connor’s *Wise Blood,*and Randolph Stow’s The Merry Go Round in the Seawould be my perfect “summer” reads; those books would warm my soul even in midst of the bitterest and harshest of winters.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
I am about to read Larry Kramer’s *The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart.*I am expecting to be swept up in his rage and passion: his is a clean and confronting rage not poisoned by bitterness. I expect it won’t be a comfortable read and that is exactly why I love him.
Dina Nayeri, author, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
Though I read constantly, in summers, when I'm traveling and distracted, I need more tightly crafted plots and trickier conflicts to keep my attention. So, I often reserve literary page-turners (like Emma Donoghue's Room) for summertime. Last summer, the book that most captivated me was Boris Fishman's A Replacement Lifeabout a young man who forges Holocaust restitution claims for survivors who don't quite qualify, but should. Beyond the murky moral dilemma, the character reminded me of everything I had yearned for as a young immigrant. And Boris's writing is crisp and witty.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
My favorite author is Kazuo Ishiguro. I've read almost everything he's written, and I credit him with my desire to become a novelist. In 2006, I read The Remains of the Dayat Harvard Business School for a class on moral dilemmas. I became mesmerized with his mastery of unreliable and flawed narrators, and the way he inhabits a voice completely. Soon after, I decided to try writing myself. Just an hour ago, I finished An Artist of the Floating Worldand I'm craving more Ishiguro. Naturally, my next book will be his latest, The Buried Giant.
Lisa Scottoline, author, Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat? (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
My favorite summer books are anything by Nelson DeMille, like his newest *Radiant Angel.*He's a reliably terrific thriller writer who always helps me understand not only international politics and the threat of terrorism, but married love. And that's a feat. I feel the same way about David Baldacci and his new book *Memory Man,*because it involves not only a compelling crime plot but is also the story of a man shattered after a loss of his family.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
Kristin Hannah's *The Nightingale.*I've been a fan of hers since forever, and it's a compelling dramatic story set in World War II, which fascinates me. Summertime is for reading, which recharges me like nothing else in the world, except chocolate.
Wil Haygood, author, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America (out in September)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
I love reading Ragtimeby E.L. Doctorow during the summer months. There is a seamless old-world beauty to this novel about family love, sacrifice, and racial politics in New York City.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
Mat Johnson's *Loving Day.*Johnson (author of Hunting in Harlem) is an inventive novelist with a wicked sense of humor and a deft writing touch.
Renée Knight, author, Disclaimer (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
I read Lolitaby Vladimir Nabokov for the first time two years ago. I was in a creative writing class and it kept coming up (of course) and I'm not sure, but I suspect, I was the only one in the room not to have read it. Stunning, brave, funny, dark. I hadn't expected the funny.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
A friend recommended Elizabeth Is Missingby Emma Healey and then it came up again in conversation at the Harrogate Crime Festival. A brilliant premise: elderly woman with memory loss knows her best friend is missing but no one believes her. I love books which defy genre.
Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan AKA The Fug Girls, authors, The Royal We (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
J.M.: One of my very favorite summer reads is E.F Benson's *Make Way for Lucia,*a collection of all of his Mapp & Lucia books from the '20s and '30s, which are—individually and otherwise—totally fizzy delights. The best way for me to describe them is simply to say that they're affectionate social satire focused on the upper class Brits of a very small town, and the attendant maneuvering of its two (terrible, and hilarious) middle-aged queen bees to maintain an upper hand, complete with a sprawling cast of eccentrics and several completely disastrous dinner parties.
H.C.: I love tucking into a rich, sweeping, tumultuous wartime saga, of which Penny Vincenzi is the master (start with No Angel). But if I'm being completely honest, sun and sand and umbrellas—both beach and cocktail—say nothing to me so much as these two words: Jackie. Collins.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
J.M.: I'm very much looking forward to Elisabeth Egan's *A Window Opens.*I've always enjoyed Egan's literary picks at *Glamour,*where she is the books editor, so I'm excited to read her debut. It's been compared both to Bridget Jones's Diaryand *Where'd You Go, Bernadette?*and I can't think of a more delicious literary cocktail.
H.C.: Stephanie Clifford's *Everybody Rise.*The cover alone is wonderful, as is the buzz. Set amid the heady New York social whirl of 2006, it's the story of an outsider looking in who becomes an insider afraid to look back out—or down, at the shaky ground between her socially climbing feet.
Stan Parish, author, Down The Shore (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
I re-read Dog Soldiersby Robert Stone every summer. I was 12 the first time I read it, on summer vacation between fifth grade and sixth. When I took it off the bookshelf, my dad said: "You can't read that, it's about a heroin deal and full of sex and violence." What he should have said was: "You can't read that, it won the National Book Award in 1971 and it's full of complex and fascinating characters." I hid the book in my room and finished it inside a week.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
I'm loving Don Winslow's *The Cartel.*Did he orchestrate El Chapo's prison break to publicize the book? We'll never know.
Sabaa Tahir, author, An Ember in the Ashes (out now)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
Hands down, no competition, my all-time favorite summer read is *Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.*Perhaps it was the anticipation and the camaraderie: I went to a midnight launch party at a local bookstore with 1,000 other Potterheads who, like me, had desperately awaited the book for ages. But really, I think it was the book itself: a gloriously heavy volume that took all night to finish, and that was filled with the answers to questions I’d wondered about for years.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
In Young Adult fiction, I can't wait for *Everything, Everything,*by Nicola Yoon—it’s a mixed media story (texts, diary entries, charts, illustrations) about a girl who is allergic to everything, and her search for true love. I’m especially intrigued because it features a mixed-race character, which I don’t feel like we see enough of in YA fiction.
Clare Clark, author, We That Are Left (out in October)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
For me a summer holiday is the perfect time to read those sprawling, immersive novels that are at their best devoured in several enormous gulps. It was her Tudor novels that made her a household name, but Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safetyis an unalloyed joy, capturing the febrile spirit of the French Revolution with all her characteristic humanity and verve.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
Like everyone else heading off for Italy this summer I will be reveling in Elena Ferrante’s utterly absorbing Neapolitan trilogy; having already devoured *My Brilliant Friend,*I can’t wait to get stuck in The Story of a New Nameand Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.
Linda Fairstein, author, Devil’s Bridge (out in August)
What is your all-time favorite summer book?
In the summer of 1961. I was a 14 year old headed for summer camp, excited that one of our trips was a screening of the re-release of *Gone with the Wind.*I decided to read the Margaret Mitchell novel before seeing the epic movie, which remains one of the great summer reads of a lifetime, despite its political incorrectness. I loved the rich storytelling; the range of characters Mitchell brought to life; the sweep of history in the form of popular fiction; and the complicated romance of Scarlett and Rhett—startling to an impressionable teenager enjoying my first flirtations. I stayed up many nights, after the mandatory lights-out hour, turning pages to read the great book with my flashlight, and I have gone back to it many times to capture the excitement of that summer read.
Which new title are you most excited about this summer?
I've just received my copy of Daniel Silva's The English Spyand I know I'm off on a great adventure. I love smart series fiction, and Silva writes one of the best. His protagonist, Gabriel Allon, is a brilliantly drawn spy—also an art restorer—so the novels have taken me from Rome to Moscow to London and around the world, while I enjoy a quiet afternoon at the beach. I look forward to a Silva summer read every year—smart thrillers with a wonderful sense of place—and I'm ready to dive into this one now.