Don’t worry if you’ve gotten through your early-summer to-be-read pile: There are plenty more great books coming out in July!
Are you spending more time with your children than you would during the school year? Just be glad they’re not the preschoolers in Chandler Baker’s Cutting Teeth (Flatiron, July 18), who are afflicted with something called “pediatric Renfield’s syndrome”—they crave their mothers’ blood, and they bite. Then their teacher is found dead in the supply closet. “Any parent who has imagined that their young children are draining the life out of them will both get the joke and feel the (piercing) pain,” our starred review says. “Gruesome, funny, jam-packed, sharp as baby teeth.”
If you’d like to get even deeper into an imaginary world, try Chloe Gong’s Immortal Longings (Saga, July 25), the first book in a planned fantasy trilogy centering on a Hunger Games–like competition in which some of the competitors can assume different bodies. Our starred review says, “Gong packs her story with thrilling fight sequences in which each player’s distinct and recognizable pugilist style shines through even when they wear different physical forms.…Spectacular worldbuilding, breathtaking action, and plenty of mischief.”
In Somebody’s Fool (Knopf, July 25), Richard Russo makes his third trip to North Bath, New York, even though Sully, its most notable resident, died in Everybody’s Fool (2016). Here, we check in on Sully’s son, Peter, a college professor, and Peter’s son, Thomas; police chief Douglas Raymer; and more residents after North Bath is annexed to a more affluent neighboring town. A decomposing body found at an abandoned building is also thrown into the mix. Who could it be? “Russo’s version of the good old-fashioned comic novel is the gold standard, full of heart and dexterous storytelling,” according to our starred review.
Khaled Khalifa, a prominent Syrian writer, offers another multigenerational look at a small community in No One Prayed Over Their Graves, translated by Leri Price (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 18), about a town swept away by a flood of the Euphrates River in 1907. Christian Hanna and Muslim Zakariya, friends, are away from home at the time, partaking of the pleasures of the city. Losing their homes and most of their families sets their lives on different trajectories. “A small epic that blends magic realism with grim realities, always memorably,” says our starred review.
If given the choice of Business or Pleasure (Berkley, July 4)—the title of Rachel Lynn Solomon’s latest romance—I know which most readers would choose, and there’s plenty of pleasure here to go around. Chandler is a ghostwriter who fears she’ll never be recognized for her work; Finn is a C-list actor whose memoir she’s hired to write, and he sure recognizes her…as the woman he recently hooked up with. When he learns that their night of pleasure wasn’t so good for her, he convinces her to give him lessons in seduction. Our starred review calls it “a must-read modern romance that emphasizes silliness and sexiness in equal parts. Solomon’s best yet.”
If you’d prefer a historical romance, try Julie Anne Long’s How To Tame a Wild Rogue (Avon, July 25), again set at the delightful boardinghouse known as the Grand Palace on the Thames. When sailor Lorcan St. Leger sees Lady Daphne Worth climbing out a window in London’s docklands—she’s escaping from a lecherous employer—he’s determined to find her a safe place to stay. The Grand Palace, of course, only has one room available, so the pair claim to be married. “The author works alchemy on the familiar tropes of forced proximity, opposites attract, and a fake relationship, with magical results,” according to our starred review.
Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.
