As the 2025-26 Season comes to a close, and as we ready THE LIST for the 2026-27 Season, please enjoy these Summer Reading recommendations!

How can anyone resist this cover? Based on an iconic Klimt painting, Portrait of a Lady, this riveting story blends fact and fiction, serving up a delectable feast of mystery, intrigue, romance, art, and more! No one knows who the lady is, no one knows who stole the painting, no one knows who returned it–but author Camille de Peretti and translator Hildegarde Serle have conjured a luscious tale to explain all. Some times you really can judge a book by its cover!

How would life on Earth be different today if back in the 1980s, we had received messages from outer space that definitively proved we are not alone in the universe? While that question is at the heart of this new novel, the book is also very much the readable, gripping story of the Girard family and their very human struggles and foibles across multiple generations.

Calling brave souls only! If you can get through the first two pages of this gripping novel, you’ll be able to finish–actually, you’ll find it hard to put down. Based on a true tragic event, the story revolves around a family, their nanny, and a murder. It is about so much more, though! Winner of the prestigious Prix Concourt in 2016.

In 1964 Hollywood, America’s Favorite family, the Newmans, have been watched by millions on live television every week for almost 20 years as they played a fun, perfected – if completely fake – version of themselves. But the cultural shifts of the 60s are upon them and their ratings are swooning just as the members of the family are feeling the need for more freedom. A fun read with more depth and heart than one might expect!

For anyone who doubts the power of controlling the narrative, take note from this riveting memoir. It’s an old tale–married man of twenty years leaves wife and three kids for…what? His young mistress? To slay his demons? In this case the wife doesn’t know why he’s bolting, but as she tries to figure out what has happened to their ‘love story,’ she slowly but surely morphs into (and claims the position of) the main character of her own story. Refusing to be silenced, author Belle Burden tells her tale, and it’s a whopper!

Senior year of high school is bearing down on devoted duo Tamma and Dan, who are obsessed with rock climbing their way out of difficult home lives.  Each comes to face monumental challenges as they try to navigate towards what life as an adult might mean. A propulsive, immersive read that pays tribute to the power of friendship and the resiliency of young adults. 

You may know this author from her other stellar novel A Burning; wow, can she write! This story features two families in a near-future, climate-ravaged Kolkata trying to survive–and at existential odds with each other. An absolute gripping page-turner, this novel is thought-provoking and heartbreaking…yet, is there…hope? Read it and see what you think!

In Lakota, Wisconsin, an 18 lbs. baby is born, his mother dying in the process, leaving him an orphan. He grows up to be a literal gentle giant, able to communicate with animals, unfailingly kind and immensely strong. When his original guardian also dies, he is raised by his devout, Amish grandparents. He struggles to straddle their quiet world with the demands and expectations society sets on someone of his size who is unable to hide away. 

 With one of the most endearing narrators ever, this novel is laugh-out-loud funny but with some seriously thought-provoking undertones. Ten year-old Vera tells us the story of her fracturing family as she tries to simultaneously understand it and save it. Surrounded by political unease and a world increasingly shaped by technology, Vera works through her anxiety with her sharp-eyed observations of the adults around her, relating what she sees in an innocent, tender, and heart-captivating way.

The Flynn family is in crisis with mom wanting an open marriage, dad sleeping in his car because he can’t afford to move out, and three daughters in orbit around them focused on everything from Islamic fundamentalism to a much-older, IBS-afflicted, Special Forces vet boyfriend. And there’s the baby of the family who reads all of her father’s emails, potentially discovering a criminal conspiracy at his workplace, while teaching herself multiple languages to stave off boredom. The novel, and the family at its center, are a bit whacky, but readers cannot help but ultimately root for them. 

Winner of the Nero Prize, this is a gem of a novel! What does a woman do with her desire when that desire conflicts with the social mores of the times in which she is living? A quiet yet riveting read that will provoke emotions!!!

For Pulitzer-prize winning historian Beverley Gage, family vacations growing up meant long drives, often to historical sites throughout the U.S.  They fed her passion for both history and road trips. Inspired by America’s upcoming 250^th birthday, Gage takes us along on her most recent extended travels through 13 places and events significant to the country’s past, uncovering and illuminating contradictions, weirdness, and the complicated reality of U.S. history. What better book to bring along on your summer family road trip?

You’ll have to wait until August 3rd, the publication date for this stellar debut novel, but you can pre-order it now! This multigenerational family story centers on Astra Erickson, who is still trying to come to terms with her mother’s illness years earlier. Moving between past and present, the tale begins with a wedding overshadowed by tragedy and unfolds into a meditation on grief, memory, family secrets, and the lingering influence of the people we lose. Beautiful and moving!

If you like noir, you’ll love this Italian noir! Set in Naples, this page-turner follows Inspector Lojacono as he hunts down and confronts the evil that locals are calling the Crocodile–or as the Italians say, il coccodrillo–and who they think is responsible for the series of murders plaguing the city. More than just a murder mystery, this novel is also an exploration of loneliness and isolation as well as vengeance and retribution. Buona lettura!

This genre-bending novel is one wild ride! Criss-crossing the border between the US and Mexico, with one character more colorful than the next, this story of a notorious outlaw and his descendants subverts the usual cowboy myth and will have you questioning your own assumptions about the American west. Yeehaw!