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It is not too early to start picking out your summer reading list because a slew of new releases promise to keep June interesting. Standouts for the perfect summer beach read include a highly anticipated debut of a speculative fiction rising star and several historical-fiction options.
‘Land’ by Maggie O’Farrell
The bestselling author of “Hamnet” and “The Marriage Portrait” returns with a novel about Ireland in the 1860s, during the years before and after the Great Hunger. “Land” follows a man named Tomás and his son Liam as they work on the Ordnance Survey, a project to map the whole of Ireland for the British Crown.
Through its characters, the book “stages an argument about the virtues of various types of maps—those that are measured, those that are recollected, those that are dreamed,” said The New Yorker. In her latest work, “the facts ground the fiction, the fiction enlivens the facts,” and both “work together to suggest that the pursuit of resurrecting the past and the pursuit of telling a good story can, in some cases, be one and the same.” (June 2, $32, Penguin Random House, Amazon)
‘A Resistance History of the United States’ by Tad Stoermer
Historian Tad Stoermer reframes American history by revisiting past resistance movements, such as the Salem Witch Trials and the Underground Railroad. Through these examples, Stoermer “dismantles the mythologies that pass for American history — exposing the curated nostalgia, moral evasions and institutional silences that have long protected abusive power,” said the publisher. (June 2, $20, Penguin Random House, Amazon)
‘Sublimation’ by Isabel J. Kim
Isabel J. Kim has made a name for herself in the genre of speculative fiction. The winner of the Nebula, Locus and Shirley Jackson prizes for her short stories is publishing her debut novel about immigration and doppelgangers this summer.
Across “Sublimation,” immigration is explored through a science-fiction lens in a world where emigrating creates a second “instance” of the person who stays behind in their home country. The story follows Soyoung Rose Kang, a Korean immigrant in America, who comes face to face with her clone when she returns to South Korea for a funeral. Kim’s “pulls in historical, cultural and literary examples of ‘instancing’” before “recasting them all in the brilliant light of her imagination,” said The New York Times. (June 2, $29, Macmillan, Amazon)
‘Daughters of the Sun and Moon’ by Lisa See
Best-selling author Lisa See returns with another historical fiction novel that illuminates a dark era of American history. The story focuses on the real-life “Night of Horrors” massacre of 18 Chinese immigrant men and boys in post-Civil War Los Angeles in 1871.
The novel is told through the shifting narration of three Chinese women whose friendship helps them survive the chaotic time. See offers a “stunning piece of historical fiction based in truth,” said Library Journal. Her book will “touch readers with the characters’ resilience, heroism and devoted friendship.” (June 9, $29, Simon & Schuster, Amazon)
‘Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep’ by Paul Tremblay
Paul Tremblay’s near-future, genre-blending sci-fi horror novel explores timely themes of AI, reality and memory. Julia Flang, a semi-professional gamer, was tasked with chaperoning a man in a vegetative state, who happens to have proprietary AI implanted in his head. What follows is a humorous, surreal and terrifying journey across the country. For fans, it will not “come as a surprise that Tremblay ends it all on a nicely gory note,” said Kirkus Reviews. A “smart and smart-alecky tale of technology put to bad ends by bad people.” (June 30, $30, HarperCollins, Amazon)
Summer reading is heating up