More Than There’s Ever Been: 46 Reads for July

Forty-six books has to be the new record for the largest number of books picked for a staff rec roundup. With this number of bookseller-approved titles, there must be a great new read for just about everyone. Have a look and report back!

FICTIONRecommended by Katie Sandwich: A Novel

By Catherine Newman

This is a book I will place in the hands of every 40-something woman trying to balance raising kiddos and aging parents while attempting to have some semblance of intimacy within their marriage. I had no idea I needed to read this book, and I am so grateful I did. Funny and poignant, I will reread this book on the hard days and remind myself it’s okay to laugh (and cry).

Also loved by Marcia!

Recommended by Lindsay Same As It Ever Was: A Novel

By Claire Lombardo

With her sophomore novel, Same As It Ever Was, Claire Lombardo has proven that she’s one our greatest domestic novelists, able to examine family dynamics and tensions across time and circumstances. Lombardo constructs her characters with such tenderness and empathy, embracing them in all their flawed messiness. I adored this one!

Recommended by Elyse Bear: A Novel

By Julia Phillips

Bear is a hauntingly beautiful novel, set on a remote island off the Northwest Pacific coast where two sisters dream of a better life off the island. When a strange and mysterious bear appears, each of their lives are changed in different ways. This story (and fairy tale and allegory) stays with you long after you’ve read the final page.

Also loved by Cat!

Recommended by Marcia Swan Song

By Elin Hilderbrand

Coco arrives on Nantucket for the summer, working for the couple who just bought the most expensive house on the island. They have over-the-top parties, and lots of them. Everyone jockeys for the hand-delivered invites. As more & more people observe them, they begin to question if these two are for real or if it’s all smoke & mirrors. When Coco goes missing & the house burns down, Chief has one last case to solve.

Also loved by Rae Ann!

Recommended by Chelsea The Midnight Feast: A Novel

By Lucy Foley

I know everything is compared to White Lotus these days, but this truly filled the gap while we wait on season three. Dual timelines and multiple points of view kept me on my toes, and I really enjoyed the ambiguity of the characters. Do I hate them all? Do I love them all? Who am I rooting for? This page turner will keep you entertained until the cataclysmic ending.

Recommended by Ashby Welcome to Glorious Tuga: A Novel

By Francesca Segal

Thrilled to find this is the first book of three! Charlotte goes to Tuga to study tortoises, but everything changes. She starts tending animals…and people tend her. There are sparks between Charlotte and the island’s doctor, but his fiancée is headed to Tuga too. Segal created a world I loved visiting. The characters are so real, and what they deal with is too. I cannot wait to spend more time with Tugans.

Recommended by Maddie A Cage Went in Search of a Bird: Ten Kafkaesque Stories

By Tommy Orange, Ali Smith, Naomi Alderman, Elif Batuman, Helen Oyeyemi

I couldn’t get enough of this collection. These stories are just like the best of Kafka: surreal and chilling and witty and weird.

Recommended by Cheryl All the Colors of the Dark

By Chris Whitaker

This novel starts with the story of two awkward teens who build a fantasy world to cope with being teased in school. Then one is kidnapped and childhood ends. They never give up in their quests to save and find. It is a mystery and a love story.

Also loved by Kathy!

Recommended by Sarah Blessings: A Novel

By Chukwuebuka Ibeh

A heartbreaking and deeply impactful queer coming of age story set in Nigeria. Perfect for fans of Khaled Hosseini and Akwaeke Emezi. I’m eager to see what Ibeh does next!

Recommended by Sydney Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil

By Ananda Lima

This debut is best described as a novel in stories, but it’s more than that. Our protagonist slept with the Devil in 1999, and has since been writing stories for him. These stories are interrupted with chapters to key the reader in on what is actually happening with the writer in her real life, and this juxtaposition is unlike anything else I’ve ever read in any short story collection. Fun, yet uneasy—in a good way.

Also loved by Jenness!

Recommended by Ashby The Rom-Commers: A Novel

By Katherine Center

Emma is a writer. Her hero? Charlie Yates, famous screenwriter. Emma’s career hasn’t taken off because she’s been caring for her father. Given the dream opportunity to help fix his badly written rom-com, Emma heads to LA. Charlie doesn’t want to work with her and doesn’t want to fix his script. Emma has to teach him what rom-coms are and what love is, which might take actual practice for him to understand.

Recommended by Rachel Concerning the Future of Souls

By Joy Williams

99 interconnected works of flash fiction, Concerning the Future of Souls draws from larger than life historical, religious, and philosophical figures ruminating on end-of-life. Joy Williams has the singular talent of causing an existential crisis with ten words or less.

Recommended by Rae Ann The Cliffs: A Novel

By J. Courtney Sullivan

A century’s worth of secrets hide in a Victorian mansion on a Maine cliff. A woman begins to uncover them as she searches for her true self in this amazing novel.

Recommended by Tara Summer Romance

By Annabel Monaghan

Newly single mom Ali is wrestling with balancing it all post divorce and the loss of her mother. A summer fling is just what she needs to get her back into pants with a zipper and living for herself. Summer Romance is a poignant novel perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Carley Fortune.

Recommended by Jake The Art of Catching Feelings

By Alicia Thompson

Newly divorced and a few drinks in, Daphne heckles a baseball player and accidently makes him cry on live television. DM’ing him to apologize, the two quickly connect…only to realize she never actually identified herself as his heckler. As the season (and their relationship) progresses, she wonders how much longer she can keep it up. Charming and full of electric chemistry, this book is practically a perfect game.

Also loved by Tara!

Recommended by Mac Beautiful Days: Stories

By Zach Williams

This collection felt to me like a clinical study on how to write a short story. The opening story hits hard, and there is no reprieve in quality. Great writing, great stories – I loved it. The short story is so back.

Recommended by Ashby The Glassmaker: A Novel

By Tracy Chevalier

This novel teaches and transports, combining an engrossing plot with fascinating facts. Glassblowing, artisan families, life in Murano. Chevalier depicts Murano: moving from trade to tourism. A woman, Orsola, should not be a glassblower but circumstances make her one, allowing her to save her family. You will be captured by Chevalier’s characters and circumstances, unable to stop reading.

Recommended by Katie A Love Like the Sun

By Riss M. Neilson

There is something about a friends to lovers that gives me butterflies like no other. This is a tender little gem of a book that follows two best friends, Laniah and Isaac, who agree to utilize Isaac’s clout as an artist/model and fake date in order to save Laniah and her mom’s natural hair care business. With beautiful chronic illness rep and an INSANE amount of chemistry, this book is a slice of perfection.

Recommended by RJ The Future Was Color: A Novel

By Patrick Nathan

The Future Was Color is a meditative and melancholy story following a gay Hungarian immigrant through the phases of his life. George struggles to make meaningful art in a world made senseless by war, and struggles to find love in a time when it was criminalized, against the backdrops of New York’s art scene and McCarthy’s Hollywood.

Recommended by Tara Wild Love (Rose Hill)

By Elsie Silver

Elsie Silver could teach a masterclass in how to write yearning. Wild Love follows Rosie as she navigates moving back to her hometown. She begins to work for her brother’s best friend (who happens to be a billionaire) and illicit romance ensues.

Recommended by Sissy Horror Movie: A Novel

By Paul Tremblay

I just so happened to see The Blair Witch Project the night before finishing this novel. What a treat! If you know the history of the making of that movie, you will see parallels, but the story is completely fresh and suspenseful. Tremblay follows young, aspiring filmmakers and amateur actors as they stretch the boundaries of “pretend” while making an experimental film. Terrifying, moving, and hilarious.

Also loved by Jenness!

Recommended by Katie A Shore Thing

By Joanna Lowell

Queer Victorian romance between a botanist and a reformed rake? Yay! A delicious bicycle race through the Cornish Coast? Yay Yay! So much steam while also smashing the patriarchy? YAY! This book is such a delight and I just loved it to pieces.

Recommended by Tara Summertime Punchline: A Novel

By Betty Corrello

Summertime Punchline reads like a love letter to comedy nerds. This will be your new favorite summer romance.

Recommended by Lindsay You Should Be So Lucky: A Novel

By Cat Sebastian

I don’t care very much about baseball, but I do care about a cranky midcentury sweater gay falling for a shortstop with a sunny disposition. Yay sports!

Recommended by Patsy The Sicilian Inheritance: A Novel

By Jo Piazza

This captivating tale of three generations of determined women is a great summer read: family saga, compelling mystery, and the splendor of Sicily. You’ll want to book a plane ticket!

Recommended by Jordan Honey: A Novel

By Isabel Banta

In this coming of age novel, pop star Amber Young navigates the highs and lows of growing up in the spotlight, complete with love, friendship, trauma, and twists. This glorious escape into 90s girl group and music culture will be a great addition to your summer TBR.

Recommended by A.J. Familiaris

By David Wroblewski

An epic spanning the majority of the first half of the 20th Century in Middle America. But—the best part—several of the main characters are dogs. Wroblewski beautifully examines not only interpersonal, but also the unique interspecies relationships we experience with man’s best friend. A long, meandering read that pays dividends. Plus! Oprah pick!

Recommended by Raegyn Five Broken Blades (Deluxe Limited Edition)

By Mai Corland

Five liars and a ruthless king enter a room. Who comes out? To these liars, seduction, betrayal, and revenge come as easy as sweat on skin, and they will stop at nothing to kill the unkillable King Joon. But can they trust each other to finish the job? Five Broken Blades is the wine to satiate our thirsts after Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows with its delicious tension, high stakes, and unforgettable characters.

Recommended by Jenness Kittentits

By Holly Wilson

Molly is a motherless, foul-mouthed 10-year old living in her dad’s Quaker halfway house in the outskirts of Chicago. When her new best friend/ex-con Jeanie fakes her death, Molly runs away to the World’s Fair on a slightly bonkers, totally engrossing adventure culminating in her attempt to raise the dead on Near Year’s Eve 1992. Full of childlike wonder and hope.

Recommended by Kathy Malas: A Novel

By Marcela Fuentes

I’m a fan of fiction focused on Mexican Americans, and this one is especially captivating. Set in a small Texas border town, two women across generations strike up an unusual friendship. What do a 15 year old and a grandmother have in common? Secrets, secrets and more secrets drive the plot of this compelling book.

Recommended by Maddie Hey, Zoey

By Sarah Crossan

Dolores’s life is thrown completely off course when she discovers her husband has been hiding Zoey — not a mistress, but an AI sex doll he’s been keeping in their garage for months. Seriously, what is she supposed to do with this information? When Dolores brings Zoey into the house, she’s forced to confront all kinds of ideas about herself, her marriage, and what it means to be a woman or even a person in the world.

NONFICTION & POETRYRecommended by Ashby Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses 

By David Scheel, Laurel “Yoyo” Scheel (Illustrator)

Watching My Octopus Teacher then reading Remarkably Bright Creatures made me curious. This book helped me understand octopuses. I was mesmerized by Scheel’s stories and facts. His first description, swimming with an octopus missing an eye and limb, made both author and reader want to know the story. His 25 years of studying them provide individual stories and the larger context of their survival methods.

Recommended by Lauren Consent: A Memoir

By Jill Ciment

Thought-provoking, loving, and tragic all at the same. Jill Ciment reflects on her marriage post-MeToo movement, posing the question – can she still say her marriage was blissful and loving if it started with her art teacher, thirty years older than her, preying on her when she was sixteen?

Recommended by Chelsea Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America

By Joy-Ann Reid

This biography uses the love between Medgar and Myrlie as a springboard to examine both of their lives and legacies. Reid deftly handles the the balance between historical and intimate details, truly bringing to life Medgar and Myrlie. I picked this up as I continue to fill the gaps in my USA history knowledge, and this would be the perfect book for anyone looking to do the same.

Recommended by Rachel Gay Girl Prayers

By Emily Austin

A reimagining of biblical texts to celebrate queer joy. I was so enraptured by the humor and wit in these poems! Such a clever reclamation of religious spaces.

Recommended by AshbyYou Make the World Better 

By Jennifer Pletsch, M. H. Clark, Jessica Phoenix (Illustrator)

This is the perfect book to let someone know they do indeed make the world a better place. Specifically, the person has made YOUR world better. The perfect way to let someone know how much he or she means to you and how much meaning the person has brought to your life. Plan to have copies on hand to celebrate people who make each day better.

Recommended by Katie I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

By Glynnis MacNicol

At its surface, MacNicol’s newest memoir is an ode to physical touch, intimacy and joy post-pandemic, as well as a beautiful travelogue through Paris. But all of that is just a smokescreen for a book that reflects on and celebrates women who choose to unapologetically live outside the conventions of marriage and children. This is my favorite kind of book and I soaked up all of the wisdom in its pages.

CLASSICS & BACKLISTRecommended by Tara Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe #1)

By Jessa Hastings

If you’ve been waiting for your sign to pick up the Magnolia Parks series- this is it! Perfect for the fashion obsessed, Magnolia Parks centers around London’s elite friend group which is precarious due to the on again/off again relationship between BJ and Magnolia. You will laugh, cry, and save outfit inspo to your Pinterest board.

Recommended by Ester Spells for Forgetting: A Novel

By Adrienne Young

August Salt never meant to return to Saoirse Island, but after 14 years he has no choice but to confront his haunted past. While Saoirse is seemingly idyllic, this close-knit town is quick to point fingers– one of those fingers pointed at August, the alleged murderer of beloved Lily Morgan. Set in the Pacific Northwest, Spells for Forgetting is tale of ancestral magic, tea shoppes, and love.

Recommended by Rae Ann The Wartime Sisters: A Novel

By Lynda Cohen Loigman

The Wartime Sisters is the story of two estranged sisters who reunite at the Springfield Armory in the early days of war. They each have a secret that will explode with the arrival of someone from their past. This is an intriguing novel of family on the home front during WWII.

Recommended by Elizabeth Talking at Night: A Novel

By Claire Daverley

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you are free to judge this book by its cover. In the same way that young love often feels like a blazing sunrise obscured by morning fog, so Will and Rosie’s relationship spans the most glorious and perplexing moments of adolescence. If you enjoyed Normal People, but wished (like me) for a different ending, this book is for you.

Recommended by Katie The Girls

By John Bowen

At the recommendation of a customer, I picked up this weird little novel and to my utter delight I loved every single second of it. A darkly funny and deeply macabre story about two cottage core lesbians who end up brutally murdering a visitor/former lover/father of their child and the town that seems completely unbothered by the crime.

Recommended by Rachel Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America

By Dahlia Lithwick

A necessary read in the current political climate, Lady Justice expertly tells the story of heroic female lawyers who had been unknowingly preparing all their lives to fight legal battles in a post-Trump America.

Recommended by Naomi Anxious People: A Novel

By Fredrik Backman

An apartment open house quickly becomes the world’s most confusing hostage situation when a misguided bank robber accidentally barges into the building. However, nobody is who they seem to be, and they begin to wonder who the hostage truly is…

Recommended by Patsy Stories from the Attic

By William Gay

Gay’s posthumous volume places him squarely in the world of Southern Gothic fiction, echoing Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy. His gritty short stories of characters from the far side of the tracks had me turning the pages with a bit of trepidation, but I couldn’t stop reading. Longtime fans will appreciate the sections of memoirs included. I loved it so much the publisher even put this blurb on the back cover.

First Editions Club: July Selection Bear: A Novel

By Julia Phillips

I’ve always loved fairytales, in part because I like believing that magic can intercede into life’s dreariness and that, for better or worse, fate can change. Sam and Elena are sisters, working class and poor, living on an island in the Pacific Northwest. They’re also Snow White and Rose Red. They struggle through their dead end jobs while taking care of their mother. She’s young but bedridden, having developed a debilitating lung disease after spending her life as a nail tech. The family is exhausted, in debt, and crushed by the hopeless grind of their days. It’s impossible to imagine how their circumstances could change, until one day Sam, who works in the snack bar of a ferry, sees a bear swimming alongside the boat.

A bear, swimming in the Puget Sound.

It’s thrilling, and later, when the sisters see the bear walking in the forest, it’s terrifying. But in a strange way the terror feels good. Isn’t it better to be scared of a bear than it is to be scared that your life is never going to change? The bear is a point of gossip and disbelief in their small community. The bear, if such a thing were possible, seems interested in the sisters, or maybe he’s just interested in Elena. Danger has been to their house before, and those memories start to return as the bear gets closer.

In this book, Julia Phillips has set down an indelible tale. Bear is going to stay with me for a long time, the way fairytales will.

Enjoy.

Ann Patchett

More about our First Editions Club: Every member receives a first edition of the selected book of the month, signed by the author. Books are carefully chosen by our staff of readers, and our picks have gone on to earn major recognition including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Plus, there’s no membership fee or premium charge for these books. Build a treasured library of signed first editions and always have something great to read! Makes a FABULOUS gift, too.

Love, Parnassus: July Selection The Next Best Fling (Librarians in Love)

By Gabriella Gamez

We are turning the heat all the way up this July for our Love, Parnassus pick and we couldn’t be more excited. The Next Best Fling by Gabriella Gamez follows two broken hearts, Marcella and Theo, after they decide that the best way to get over their first loves is with a no-strings-attached relationship with each other. It’s an perfectly spicy spin on the fake-dating trope we love so much, and it’s one of our favorites of 2024.

“Sweet and funny, with just the right amount of spice, Gabriella Gamez’s delightful debut is everything you can want in a romance.”—Farrah Rochon, New York Times bestselling author of Pardon My Frenchie”

“The Next Best Fling is my favorite kind of romance—heartfelt, humorous, and pitch-perfect hot. I fell head over heels for Gamez’s portrayal of deep personal growth, of love that supports and celebrates every step of that healing journey.”—Chloe Liese, USA Today bestselling author of Only and Forever

The Love, Parnassus box is a monthly subscription box for romance readers curated by the experts at Parnassus Books. Each month you will receive a first edition book (which is sometimes signed), a letter from the author, a custom sticker, and a bookmark to track your reading. The Love, Parnassus selection will focus on debut and new-to-you romance authors. Set up a subscription for yourself or buy a gift membership for your favorite romance reader for 3, 6, or 12 months.