Summer 2025 Publishing Preview
20 new releases to put on your radar from May through August
Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer across the United States. But in my life, with exams finished and law school graduation a few days away, summer is starting a bit early.
Below are 20 of the soon-to-be published books that I am most looking forward to this summer across a spectrum of genres. As always, these are just a handful of books coming out this season and I have not yet read any of them. My excitement comes from positive reviews, anticipatory buzz, or trust in authors I have enjoyed before. In the months to come when I’m not studying for the bar exam, I’m hoping to get to as many of these as possible.
May
Second Life - Amanda Hess - Memoir/Parenting - Release Date: May 6, 2025
Amanda Hess is an internet culture critic for The New York Times. Second Life recounts her increasingly turbulent relationship with the internet in connection with pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood. Looking for answers following an abnormality detected during an ultrasound, Hess finds herself sucked into a world of conspiracies, external judgment, wellness-culture, surveillance, and marketing. The result is a critically-acclaimed memoir describing how the most intimate elements of our lives are being knowingly and unknowingly shaped by technology.
Run For the Hills - Kevin Wilson - Fiction - Release Date: May 13, 2025
Madeline has never known her father. So when a man arrives at her home telling her that he thinks she’s his half-sister and invites her on a road-trip to find their dad, she’s surprised, but ultimately game. Every person they meet has a different story or impression of the man, making their search increasingly zany and elusive. Kevin Wilson is known for quirky literary fiction, including Nothing to See Here and Now is Not the Time to Panic, all of which fit perfectly into the summer reading season.
Things in Nature Merely Grow - Yiyun Li - Memoir - Release Date: May 20, 2025
Things in Nature Merely Grow is a book that Yiyun Li wrote for her son, James, who died by suicide in 2024. James is the second of Yiyun Li’s children to die by suicide, but this book is not a work of grief but rather of understanding and reckoning. An excerpt of this memoir was published in the New Yorker, which I would recommend reading before diving into the whole book if you want a feel for not only the heavy subject matter but also as the way that Li handles it through her beautiful writing.
June
Submersed - Matthew Gavin Frank - Non-Fiction/True Crime - Release Date: June 3, 2025
When Matthew Gavin Frank began this book, he thought he would be writing an investigative account of the deep-sea submersibles industry, the 2023 fatal implosion of the Titan, and the human compulsion for undersea exploration. As his reporting continued, however, he discovered the industry’s disturbing underbelly, including the murder of a journalist reporting on the same topic.
Flashlight - Susan Choi - Fiction - Release Date: June 3, 2025
One night, ten-year-old Louisa and her father go for a walk on the beach in Japan. Later, Louisa is found washed up by the tide alive. Her father is missing. Flashlight is told in alternating perspectives, shifting backward and forward in time to tell the story of the family’s history as ethnic Koreans living in Japan, the story of that night, and the aftermath. Susan Choi received the National Book Award for her 2019 novel Trust Exercise and early reviews of this piece of literary fiction are similarly laudatory.
What Kind of Paradise - Janelle Brown - Fiction - Release Date: June 3, 2025
Jane grew up homeschooled, isolated, and off the grid with just her father in a cabin in Montana. But Jane’s short exposure to the outside world as a teenager reveals a horrific truth about her father and a past crime, causing her to leave home and question everything she thought she knew.
Just Emilia - Jennifer Oko - Speculative Fiction - Release Date: June 10, 2025
Emilia Fletcher is trapped in an elevator in Washington, DC with Em, a suicidal teenager, and Millie, an elderly woman who wants to reconnect with her estranged daughter. As the hours pass and panic sets in it becomes clear that Emilia is alone and trapped with three different versions of herself in this surrealist, time travel tinged novel.
Ordinary Love - Marie Rutkoski - Literary Romance - Release Date: June 10, 2025
On the outside, Emily’s life on the Upper East Side with two kids and a loving husband looks ideal. Internally, however, Emily’s relationships with her loved ones are fraying. When Emily runs into her high school girlfriend, now a famous athlete, the problems in her life become too big to ignore as Emily navigates her current life in comparison to the one that could have been.
Fulfillment - Lee Cole - Fiction - Release Date: June 17, 2025
Fulfillment follows two brothers, one a successful academic with a failing marriage, the other stagnating at a job in a shipping warehouse. The two find themselves back at their family home in Kentucky, plunging the family into a “violent crucible.” I loved Lee Cole’s debut, Groundskeeping, which explored questions of class and privilege in the South and think his sophomore novel has the same potential.
Bug Hollow - Michelle Huneven - Fiction - Release Date: June 17, 2025
Bug Hollow is a decades-spanning family saga following each member of the Samuelson family following the sudden disappearance and death of their son Ellis. Michelle Huneven’s Search, which relied on an unconventional structure, nuanced social dynamics, and fascinatingly vibrant characters to propel the story forward, was one of my favorite books in 2022. I am thrilled she has a new book coming out that seems to also feature complex personalities and relationships.
The Girls Who Grew Big - Leila Mottley - Fiction - Release Date: June 24, 2025
When Adela Woods becomes pregnant at sixteen, her parents send her from Indiana to live with her grandmother in the panhandle of Florida. There, Adela meets a coterie of teenage mothers trying to find their way. Leila Mottley was the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate and made headlines when her debut novel, Nightcrawling, was published in 2022 when she was just twenty years old. She writes beautifully about young people forced to grow up too fast, which appears to be a central theme of this sophomore novel.
The Homemade God - Rachel Joyce - Fiction/Mystery - Release Date: June 24, 2025
Rachel Joyce is probably best known for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a charming novel about a man’s quest to say goodbye to a lost love. In Joyce’s latest book, The Homemade God, four siblings converge at their family’s lake house to try to track down their recently deceased father’s final painting. The four live together under the same roof for the first time since childhood as they work through their upbringing and the questions they have about their father.
The Compound - Aisling Rawle - Fiction - Release Date: June 24, 2025
The Compound is set in a desert compound serving as the set of a popular reality TV show. To win, contestants must stay the longest, competing in different challenges that dictate their status. As the show progresses, however, the producers raise the stakes, putting the contestants in dangerous situations designed to raise ratings. The prize is astronomical, forcing contestants to ask themselves what they are willing to do to win.
July
Slanting Towards the Sea - Lidija Hilje - Fiction - Release Date: July 8, 2025
Slanting Towards the Sea is set on the coast of Croatia and spans the start of the millennium to the present. Ivona and Vlaho married young while swept up in the hope of a newly democratic Croatia. When the promise died down, so too did their marriage. Now, a decade after their divorce, Ivona reunites with Vlaho, his new wife, and their two kids in the town of their childhood, creating fraught relationships and reckonings about past love.
Bring the House Down - Charlotte Runice - Fiction/Humor - Release Date: July 8, 2025
A critic gives a show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe a one star review and then has a one-night stand with it’s struggling actress. When the actress sees the review the next morning she decides to get revenge by revamping the show into a viral sensation that critiques the critic. In an attempt to reclaim his reputation, the critic tries to convince his colleagues of his side of the story, causing everyone involved to question the lines between reality and performance.
Vera, or Faith - Gary Shteyngart - Fiction - Release Date: July 8, 2025
Vera, or Faith tells the story of the Bradford-Shmulkin family through the eyes of the youngest, Vera, as she navigates her complicated family dynamics amidst the tumultuous modern world. Personally, my favorite work of Shteyngart to date is his article in The Atlantic titled “Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever” that was simultaneously hilarious and insightful. I can only assume the same qualities appear in Vera, or Faith.
Jamaica Road - Lisa Smith - Fiction - Release Date: July 15, 2025
As the only Black girl in her South London class, Daphne prefers to go unnoticed. In 1981, a new kid arrives in her school from Jamaica and a fast friendship forms between the two that will endure for over a decade. This novel, which is Lisa Smith’s debut, is described as an atmospheric and expansive mediation on found-family, race, and class.
An Oral History of Atlantis - Ed Park - Fiction/Short Stories - Release Date: July 29, 2025
Ed Park, the Pulitzer Prize finalist for Same Bed Different Dreams, has written a collection of short stories centered around the transitory nature of our lives and the line between reality and unreality. Fellow Pulitzer finalist Yiyun Li describes Ed Park as a “magician of storytelling,” which seems like praise enough for me.
August
A Dog in Georgia - Lauren Grodstein - Fiction - Release Date: August 5, 2025
Amy Webb is currently in Tblisi, Georgia on a mission to find a lost dog. Does Amy know this dog or have a connection to it other than the Youtube videos she watched before it went missing? No. What Amy does have is a crisis of faith in her marriage, her career, and her self, prompting this comedic story of connection and self-discovery.
Blessings and Disasters - Alexis Okeowo - Memoir/History/Journalism - Release Date: August 5, 2025
New Yorker staff writer Alexis Okeowo grew up in Montgomery, Alabama as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Blessings and Disasters is a genre defying account of her family’s story as well as a complex assessment of modern-day Alabama and its inherent contradictions.
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Want to see past season’s publishing previews? Click the link below to check out any new releases you might have missed along with my most recent reading round-ups.
Thanks for putting so many great titles on my radar. I’m especially excited for Michelle Huneven’s new novel—I love Search!