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The Deep Dive

Your Summer Reading List Compiled

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S. Zainab Williams

Executive Director, Content

S. Zainab would like to think she bleeds ink but the very idea makes her feel faint. She writes fantasy and horror, and is currently clutching a manuscript while groping in the dark. Find her on Twitter: @szainabwilliams.

Hey friends! Last week, I asked for your summer reading list recommendations and, y’all, you seriously came through. We’ve got countless compelling and diverse titles to consider adding to our lists. I am overwhelmed in the best of ways. Without further ado, here are all the recs to top off your summer reading plans, starting with 34 of your summer reading recommendations, followed by some staff picks, and great lists I found elsewhere.

Your Summer Reading Recommendations

Book cover of Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi – A 100-year-old coffee shop in Tokyo promises the ability to travel back in time, but only as long as it takes for your cuppa coffee to get cold.

Hild by Nicola Griffith – A sweeping, high-stakes historical novel about Saint Hilda of Whitby, who goes from observant and curious child to the king’s powerful seer.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury – A semi-autobiographical novel about boyhood and summer set in a small town.

View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman – A collection of more than 60 essays on everything from authors to fairy tales to libraries and more from this prolific and imaginative writer.

His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik – Aerial combat meets the Napoleonic Wars in this historical fantasy where battles are lost and won on the backs of dragons.

Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni Book Cover

Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni – A queer, Armenian American rom-com set in San Francisco, featuring a protagonist exploring her roots and a witchy love interest.

Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing by Emily Lynn Paulson – Paulson recounts her experience climbing that MLM pyramid only to recognize the cult-like practices and white supremacy at its heart.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell – Learn about how language plays a part in influencing not just cult members, but all of us, in this juicy nonfic read.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell – A fictional portrait of 16th century duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici whose marriage to a duke transplants her to an unfamiliar and often unwelcoming court.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese – Set in Kerala, South India, a story of three generations of a family that sees one family member from each generation die by drowning.

Book cover of The First Ladies

The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray – Historical fiction about the friendship between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune.

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley – Missing indigenous women, a high profile murder, and a young Anishinaabe woman set on solving the mystery.

Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson – A romance novel about a true crime-obsessed PhD candidate whose neighbor might be a serial killer or a love interest.

Love Buzz by Neely Tubati Alexander – A Seattle woman threatens to upend her perfect life when she goes in search of the mysterious man she met during a New Orleans bachelorette party.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett – Three daughters hear the story of their mother’s romance with a famous actor, and investigate their own lives and passions, during a stay at the family’s orchard.

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