25 summer reads

Blood On Snow by Jo Nesbo 

A contract-killer-with-a-heart in ’70s Oslo starts working for a kingpin, but the more he learns about his boss, the more he realises that he might be on the road to getting fixed himself. 

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Three Moments Of An Explosion by China Miéville

Short stories that range from destroyed oil rigs that are mysteriously reborn, to cadavers with secrets etched on their bones, make this a journey into the weird and fantastic.

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The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford

A psychological thriller about a woman with bipolar disorder who must find out who brutally murdered her best friend when all signs point to her.  

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The First Bad Man by Miranda July

A middle-aged woman has her eccentrically ordered world turned upside down when her boss’ twenty-something daughter comes to stay, and bullies her into reality.

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Baddawi by Leila Abdelrazaq

A tender graphic novel about a Palestinian refugee child and his struggle to forge his own path in the midst of great uncertainty.  

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A Decent Ride by Irvine Welsh 

An ageing pornstar is in search of a missing woman friend in this saga of drifters, drug peddlers and Edinburgh’s underbelly.    

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Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman 

This collection of the author’s strongest short works includes verse, fairy tales and other fabulist stories born of his social media experiments. Plus, a wholly inventive take on Sherlock Holmes.  

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Emma by Alexander McCall Smith

She may text and email now, but the heroine in this modern interpretation of Austen’s beloved classic remains essentially the same. Snobby and sweet, and meddling where she shouldn’t.

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The Blue Between Sky And Water by Susan Abulhawa

Led by a resilient matriarch, a Palestinian family makes a life for itself all over again in a refugee camp in Gaza. Her ardour even brings home a prodigal granddaughter who had fled to America.

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The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour

The fantastical 9/11 novel follows a feral child who comes to personhood in New York and becomes muse to a magician who wants to make the World Trade Center disappear.  

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Finders Keepers by Stephen King

A reclusive writer is murdered by a fanatic reader, who then steals his unpublished work. Just as he finishes serving time, a boy stumbles upon this treasure, and is now being hunted by the deranged criminal.

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We Love Lucy by Lilith Wes

Her gay BFF lets Lucy watch him have sex with his boyfriend for her 30th birthday. Trouble is? Now she wants to do more than that. Keep wet wipes handy.

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In The Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

Blume mines her IRL experience to draw a portrait of 1950s New Jersey, which is still new to airline travel and reeling from a succession of airplanes falling out of the sky.  

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The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes and Jo piazza

Imogen Tate, editor-in-chief of Glossy, finds herself ousted by a former assistant who plans to turn the legendary fashion magazine into an app. 

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A Bad Character by Deepti Kapoor

An alienated, rebellious twenty-something in Delhi begins an affair with a much older stranger that is evocative, exhilarating, but mostly just terrifying.

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The House That BJ Built by Anuja Chauhan

Chauhan’s follow-up to Those Pricey Thakur Girls sees a foul-mouthed heroine in the midst of a property dispute. Romance, though sharp and fun, is firmly on the backburner.

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Killing Monica by Candace Bushnell

A renowned writer fakes her own death in order to reinvent herself in this exploration of  fame, celebrity worship and occasionally, the meaning of life.

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The Devourers by Indra Das

Human-eating shapeshifters prowl this fantasy novel, which spans Mughal India to the present day, and amidst explosive interspecies sex, explores what love is capable of making men — and non-men — do.

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Shopaholic To The Stars by Sophie Kinsella

The series’ star Becky Bloomwood has moved to LA and has dreams of styling the A-lister whose career her husband is managing. But things are complicated when you mix business with love.

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The Serpent Papers by Jessica Cornwel

Barcelona and Mallorca, their cathedrals and cloisters, envelop this thriller about an English academic with near-psychic abilities who helps the police solve a decade-old murder, not knowing she will soon be a victim herself.

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An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

A Haitian woman of privilege is kidnapped for ransom and must endure the torture meted out to her by men who hate everything she stands for.

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The Bard Of Blood by Bilal Siddiqi

In this novel which shuttles between Mumbai, Delhi and war-torn Balochistan, an ex-spy must return to the front to save his country and face his deadliest enemies — Mullah Omar and the ISI.

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Memory Man by David Baldacci

A freak accident on the field ends Amos Decker’s football career but leaves him with the perfect memory. Two decades later, his gift becomes his curse as he investigates (and helplessly relives) the horrific murder of his family.

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An Ember In The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

A slave girl and a soldier in a terrifying, ancient Rome-like world realise that their fates are intertwined and that their choices bear consequences on this martial empire itself.

You may also want to read: Reading list: Man Booker International Prize 2015