23 fiction books you'll want to read -- and share -- this summer - Los Angeles Times
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23 fiction books you’ll want to read -- and share -- this summer

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Short stories, affairs, secrets, Judy Blume for grown-ups and — finally — a sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Short stories, affairs, secrets, Judy Blume for grown-ups and — finally — a sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird."

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Fiction

In the Country

Stories

Mia Alvar

Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95

The nine short stories in this debut collection follow Filipinos living in their native country and abroad, all in search of a place to call home. (June)

Saint Mazie

Jami Attenberg

Grand Central, $25

The author of "The Middlesteins" returns with a novel about Mazie Phillips, the "Queen of the Bowery" who opened her theater to homeless New Yorkers during the Great Depression. (June)

The State We're In

Maine Stories

Ann Beattie

Scribner, $25

The short-story master returns with a collection set mostly in the Pine Tree State and featuring a sarcastic, world-weary teenager named Jocelyn. (August)

In the Unlikely Event

Judy Blume

Alfred A. Knopf, $27.95

Set largely in the 1950s, Blume's novel for adults follows residents of Elizabeth, N.J., whose town is wracked by three airplane crashes in a short space of time. (June)

Enchanted August

Brenda Bowen

Pamela Dorman/Viking, $27.95

A quartet of stressed-out New Yorkers spend a month on an island but find it hard to leave their problems in the city. (June)

Confession of the Lioness

Mia Couto, translated by David Brookshaw

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25

Young women in a small Mozambique village are being killed by what the townspeople believe is a lion, but the truth is much more complicated. (July)

Sofrito

Phillippe Diederich

Cinco Puntos, $16.95 paper

A New York restaurant owner hopes to turn his imperiled eatery around by stealing a chicken recipe that also happens to be a Cuban government secret. (June)

The Sunlit Night

Rebecca Dinerstein

Bloomsbury, $26

A young artist going through a painful breakup and a teenage boy whose father has just died form a friendship on an island north of the Arctic Circle. (June)

Summer Secrets

Jane Green

St. Martin's, $26.99

A journalist in England, struggling with alcoholism, must come to terms with a long-buried family secret and one painful, drunken mistake. (June)

Death and Mr. Pickwick

Stephen Jarvis

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30

This sprawling historical novel follows the creation of "The Pickwick Papers," featuring its author, Charles Dickens, and the artist who may have originated the Mr. Pickwick character. (June)

Loving Day

Mat Johnson

Spiegel & Grau, $26

The comic tale of a biracial man who inherits his late father's haunted mansion in Philadelphia and soon encounters two people at a comic book convention who will change his life. (Out now)

The Festival of Insignificance

Milan Kundera, translated by Linda Asher

Harper, $23.99

Four friends in Paris discuss topics including sex and politics in the Czech-French writer's first novel in more than a decade. (June)

China Rich Girlfriend

Kevin Kwan

Doubleday, $26.95

This sequel to the successful novel "Crazy Rich Asians" follows the trials and tribulations of extremely wealthy, young social climbers in China. (June)

Go Set a Watchman

Harper Lee

Harper, $27.99

Probably the most anticipated American novel in years, this sequel features Scout and Atticus Finch in Maycomb, Ala., 20 years after the events in "To Kill a Mockingbird." (July)

The Rocks

Peter Nichols

Riverhead, $27.95

Told in reverse, this tragic and sprawling novel chronicles three generations of troubled British expatriates living on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. (Out now)

The Beautiful Bureaucrat

Helen Phillips

Henry Holt, $25

A young woman takes a data entry job at a mysterious, windowless facility and starts to get suspicious of her employer after her husband temporarily disappears. (August)

Among the Ten Thousand Things

Julia Pierpont

Random House, $26

A philandering artist's secret life is discovered by his children; the revelation stuns his ex-dancer wife and throws their family into a tailspin. (July)

Kitchens of the Great Midwest

J. Ryan Stradal

Pamela Dorman/Viking, $27.95

This debut by an L.A. writer is the story of a young woman raised by a single father who grows up to become a celebrated chef. (July)

How to Write a Novel

Melanie Sumner

Vintage, $14.95

A precocious 12-year-old Georgia girl thinks she can find a husband for her single mom and money for their family by writing a novel. (August)

A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

Glenn Taylor

Tin House, $15.95

In 1910, a poker shark and his girlfriend, a brothel madam, face the gallows for allegedly murdering a West Virginia mayor. (July)

Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

Jennifer Tseng

Europa Editions, $16

A 41-year-old librarian on a New England island, stuck in an unhappy marriage, is drawn into a passionate affair with a high school boy. (Out now)

The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

Vendela Vida

Ecco, $25.99

After her backpack is stolen, a woman on vacation in Morocco assumes another person's identity and ends up befriending a famous actress shooting a film in Casablanca. (June)

The Dying Grass

A Novel of the Nez Perce War

William T. Vollmann

Viking, $55

The fifth installment in the author's "Seven Dreams" series, this nearly 1,400-page novel chronicles the 1877 war between Native Americans and the U.S. Army in the American northwest. (July)

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