11 books you should read this summer
Looking to fill some spare time over your summer break? Add these to your reading list
By Cayle Reid
SUMMER IS A great time of year to read. There’s an entire corner of the publishing industry dedicated to the promotion of ‘beach reads’, and for good reason. When gifted with a week or so away from our jobs and the general routine of life, we can finally sink our teeth into our swelling to-read lists.
This year has been full of big new releases, from all realms of the literary spectrum: fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, biographies. We’ve seen erotic retellings of Greek myths, arguments for emissions causing the Pacific Northwests’s high prevalence of serial killers, explorations of what happens to a marriage when survival is your priority, vampire stories, a Hunger Games prequel and a nouveau Western.
If you haven’t yet picked up a book, we hope this round up of our 11 favourite reads from 2025 will give you something to while away those lazy summer afternoons with. Scroll on for more, as we handpick the books you’ll want to chew through this summer
The best books to read over summer
A Marriage at Sea, by Sophie Elmhirst
Sophie Elmhirst’s novel is an account of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey’s adventures on the open ocean after a whale sunk their boat in the middle of the Pacific and left them clinging to a tiny raft. Survival was a longshot, but the couple’s struggles also show marriage in extremis. It’s the kind of book that will make you think, what would my partner and I do in that situation?
Flesh, by David Szalay
The winner of the 2025 Booker Prize, Flesh is a collection of intimate moments spread over decades. It chronicles the life of István, a man at odds with himself. As a teenager, István is the new kid in his small Hungarian town. He’s an outsider, alienated from the social rituals that bring his classmates together. An older István moves from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, but his competing desires for intimacy and status threaten to undo him.
Eros, by Zoe Terakes
Eros is a collection of Greek myths retold to ground them in queerness, something that was always present in the stories, but obscured throughout history. There are stories of Zeus, Eurydice, Hermaphroditus, Icarus before he flew into the sun. It’s all seeping with love, lust, passion revenge and sex.
Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy
Dominic Salt, the central character of Wild Dark Shore, and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny subantarctic island somewhere between Tasmania and the icy continent. Shearwater was once a bustling research station, but Salt and his family are now its only inhabitants. That is, until a woman washes ashore during the worst storm the island has ever seen. As the family nurses the woman back to health, it’s clear she’s not being entirely truthful about how she got there. But then again, the Salts aren’t being honest about their secrets either.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones
In Mongrels and The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones took werewolves and ghost stories in exciting new directions. In the Indian Lake trilogy, he subverted our expectations for slasher horror. Now, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (yes, that’s Hunter, Hunter) tackles the vampire mythos from a unique point of view: the lost 1912 diary of a Montana priest that records the life of a Blackfoot man named Good Stab and the trail of blood he left in his wake. Mark my words, there will be a prestige TV adaptation of this someday.
The Bullet Swallower, by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
A breath of fresh air for the Western genre, The Bullet Swallower weaves in and out of two narratives. The first is set in 1895 around the Texas-Mexico border and centres on Antonio Sonoro, the descendant of a deplorable family that was once wealthy but is now nearing destitution. After a train robbery gone wrong, a shootout with Texas Rangers leaves Antonio permanently disfigured after sustaining a bullet to the jaw, earning him the nickname ‘El Tragabalas’ (the bullet swallower). Antonio embarks on a quest for revenge, ultimately leading him to weigh the value of violence against repentance. The second narrative is set in 1964 and follows Antonio’s grandson Jaime, a Mexican movie star who, after discovering a book detailing his family’s history, transforms his grandfather’s story into a film in a bid to redeem the Sonoro name. Linking the two narratives is mystical stranger Remedio, a grim reaper-like figure quested with guiding the Sonoros toward the light.
So Far Gone, by Jess Walter
Jess Walter captures the divisions in our society by exploring family dysfunction, right-wing fundamentalist wackos, gun rights and vigilantism in the Pacific Northwest. All is seen through the lens of Rhys, a washed-up newspaper reporter. After an eventful Thanksgiving dinner with his daughter and her family, Rhys throws away his phone and storms off to live alone in the woods to try to understand it all. A book that says a lot about our times.
Murderland, by Caroline Fraser
Caroline Fraser, a Pulitzer prize winner, is a maestra of the crime genre. Set mainly in the Pacific Northwest, Murderland makes a connection between the emissions from mineral smelters and the excessive rate of serial murders in the region in the late 20th century. It sounds far-fetched, but Fraser is convincing. She examines the Green River killer, Ted Bundy, the I-5 killer, the Hillside Strangler and others, all with meticulous research.
Daikon, by Samuel Hawley
Set in Japan during the final days of World War II, Daikon diverges from our historical timeline in one key way: three atomic bombs were actually delivered to the Pacific instead of two. When one of them falls into the hands of the Japanese, the fate of a couple that has been separated from one another becomes entangled with that of the terrifying new weapon.
Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins
A prequel to the original but a sequel to the most recent entry to the franchise, ‘Sunrise on the Reaping’ reveals the backstory of Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch Abernathy and how he survived the 50th Hunger Games, which included 48 tributes rather than the usual 24. It is a gripping, emotional, page-turning affair that is already being made into a film that will release in November of 2026 – with an Australian in the leading role, to boot.
The Seeker and the Sage, by Brigid Delaney
Brigid Delaney has gone back to her stoic well and drawn from it a lesson in philosophy disguised as a page-turner. The Seeker and the Sage follows a burnt-out journalist who hears whispers of a remote utopia run entirely on stoic principles. Naturally, she does what any self-respecting journo would do: she chases a good story. After a slog of a journey, she arrives in Silver Springs, where the mayor grants her a rare interview to rewire her worldview. The novel splits itself in two. Half is a quest narrative, half is a transcript-style conversation between our protagonist and the mayor about how stoicism can work in practice.
Related:
The cool, neutral linen edit: your only summer essential
