10 books you should read in July 2024 (2024)

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10 books you should read in July 2024 (1)

An emerging pattern in this month’s new book picks seems to be stories about younger people with mature themes. Marvel is launching its new Marvel Crime book series with a new Jessica Jones mystery by crime fiction author Lisa Jewell, Gravity Falls’ Bill Cipher is back to terrorize readers in The Book Of Bill, and Stephen Graham Jones takes you inside the mind of a killer in I Was A Teenage Slasher. July might also be the best or worst time to read about sharks, depending on your point of view. Either way, Jasmin Graham’s memoir Sharks Don’t Sink is about so much more than the misunderstood predators of the sea. So let’s take a look at those and some other notable releases coming out in print this month.

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Breaking The Dark by Lisa Jewell

Breaking The Dark by Lisa Jewell

10 books you should read in July 2024 (2)

Release date: July 2, 2024

Publisher: Hyperion Avenue

The new Marvel Crime series officially launches with an original Jessica Jones thriller by Lisa Jewell, the bestselling author of None Of This Is True and Then She Was Gone. The idea of this gritty, adult-focused series of novels is to pair fiction writers with Marvel characters and see what comes of it. Jewell’s portrayal of Jessica Jones seems to take as much from the Netflix series as it does from the comics. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The story finds Jessica on a case of changed personalities when a mother comes to her for help, insisting that her twin daughters are not acting like themselves after a trip to visit their father in the U.K. Intrigued, Jessica heads off to investigate the source of the trouble, a small village in the British countryside where dark secrets await.

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God Of The Woods by Liz Moore

God Of The Woods by Liz Moore

10 books you should read in July 2024 (3)

Release date: July 2, 2024

Publisher: Riverhead Books

The author of Long Bright River returns with another thriller packed with dramatic tension. This one is set at an Adirondack summer camp in 1975. When the 13-year-old daughter of the camp’s wealthy owners goes missing, a search begins that could uncover much more than the fate of one girl. Further complicating matters, her brother also disappeared 14 years ago from the same camp under similar circumstances, never to be found. The novel jumps back and forth between the cases, allowing the reader to trace the connections in the parallel timelines as they unfold. Moore has a devoted following among readers thanks to Long Bright River being chosen for Good Morning America’s book club and Barack Obama listing it as one of his favorite books of the year in 2020. If summer suspense is your thing, keep this one in mind.

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Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

10 books you should read in July 2024 (4)

Release date: July 9, 2024

Publisher: Tor Nightfire

Pride Month may be over, but Chuck Tingle is here to remind us that the cause continues all year long. When it comes to the anonymous author of dozens of self-published “Tinglers” with titles like Space Raptor Butt Invasion (which was a finalist for a Hugo), Pounded In The Butt by My Hugo Award Loss, and Angry Man Pounded By The Fear Of His Latent Gayness Over A Dinosaur Transitioning Into A Unicorn, Tingle’s quirks can sometimes overshadow his work. But behind the pink mask lies a fairly brilliant writer, as he proved with his first mainstream novel, Camp Damascus. In Bury Your Gays, his second book for Tor’s horror imprint, Tingle explores the titular trope both literally and figuratively through the character of Misha, a jaded screenwriter. When the producers of Misha’s streaming series pressure him to kill off his gay characters in the upcoming season finale, he faces a hard choice that brings some of his own demons out from hiding. As you might expect from Tingle, it’s all very deliciously meta.

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Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

10 books you should read in July 2024 (5)

Release date: July 9, 2024

Publisher: Random House

If you enjoyed the Hulu miniseries Fleishman Is In Trouble (or the book it was based on), you already know what to expect from Brodesser-Akner’s candid and clever prose. A sharp observer of human behavior, a skill she honed while working as an entertainment journalist, she offers readers another fascinating cast of characters within a wealthy Jewish family from Long Island. Since his kidnapping in 1980, Carl Fletcher and his family’s lives have been defined by that single, nearly tragic event. Although the hefty ransom was paid and Carl returned home safely, the family was never the same afterward. The book tackles big themes, like the power of money to corrupt or redeem and the complicated history of Jewish people in America, but also portrays family dysfunction from an intimate perspective.

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The Bright Sword: A Novel Of King Arthur by Lev Grossman

The Bright Sword: A Novel Of King Arthur by Lev Grossman

10 books you should read in July 2024 (6)

Release date: July 16, 2024

Publisher: Viking

The author of The Magicians takes a stab at the legend of the Knights of the Round Table in his latest novel, The Bright Sword. Grossman has said it took him nearly a decade to write the book, which takes place after the death of the king and finds the land in the midst of upheaval. When a young aspiring knight discovers that his hopes of joining the Round Table died with Arthur, he teams up with a motley crew of surviving knights and adventurers to put the pieces of the broken realm back together. Grossman includes famous characters from legend like Lancelot, Guinevere, and Morgan le Fay, but focuses mostly on lesser-known figures, giving some a modern twist. One knight is transgender, another bipolar, and yet another faces constant racism. They’re all just trying to get by in a post-Arthurian Camelot that no longer makes sense.

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I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

10 books you should read in July 2024 (7)

Release date: July 16, 2024

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Fans of classic horror slasher movies should get a kick out of the premise of this book. As the title suggests, it’s a confessional told from the perspective of 17-year-old Tolly Driver, a good and ordinary kid living in a small Texas town in 1989. Except for the fact that he’s been cursed with a bloodlust for revenge that sometimes causes him to kill his classmates. Tolly leads the reader through his summer of slaying while sharing his most personal thoughts and feelings. Author Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians) not only has an affinity for the slasher genre, but he brings his own experiences growing up in Texas to Tolly’s story, creating a strong sense of place and character. Even if Tolly’s actions are violent and reprehensible, Jones makes him likable and relatable to anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider.

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Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures Of A Rogue Shark Scientist by Jasmin Graham

Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures Of A Rogue Shark Scientist by Jasmin Graham

10 books you should read in July 2024 (8)

Release date: July 16, 2024

Publisher: Pantheon

This month’s prime nonfiction pick isn’t just for those who can’t wait for Shark Week to come around each year, although there are plenty of shark-related anecdotes in it. Sharks Don’t Sink chronicles the difficulties marine biologist and shark expert Jasmin Graham faced in a field dominated by white men. She writes about feeling disillusioned and burned out, almost to the point of leaving her work behind entirely. But like a shark, she kept afloat by moving forward and eventually teamed up with three other women to create Minorities in Shark Sciences, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating space in the industry for underrepresented researchers. It’s a book that stands at the crossroads between science and social justice.

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The Book Of Bill by Alex Hirsch

The Book Of Bill by Alex Hirsch

10 books you should read in July 2024 (9)

Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: Hyperion Avenue

If you’re one of the many adult fans who has been missing Gravity Falls since it wrapped up eight years ago, this book is for you. Written for mature audiences by series creator Alex Hirsch (channeling interdimensional demon Bill Cipher), this “deeply, deeply cursed” tome includes some backstory on the demented Dorito guy and all sorts of other treats for fans, including the kinds of esoteric riddles, puzzles, and hidden codes that made the series so much more than just a silly kid’s cartoon. Not that it isn’t silly. In fact, there’s an entire chapter on Silly Straws. In his celebrity blurb for the book, “Weird Al” Yankovic does a pretty good job of summing it up: “I thought I liked things that were weird, but I was wrong. This book was too weird for me. I feel nauseous just thinking about the horrifying psychosis contained within. I’m legally changing my name to ‘Normal Al’ now and pushing all my Hawaiian shirts out to sea on a barge. Avoid this book at all costs!!”

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Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

10 books you should read in July 2024 (10)

Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: One World

Author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2020 for her debut The Undocumented Americans. For her second book, she’s switched to fiction, but it’s a fiction based on the truth of her own experience. Like the author, the novel’s protagonist, Catalina, is an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador who grew up in Queens and is eventually accepted into Harvard. In her memoir-style narration, Catalina is candid about her insecurities, the way her undocumented status colors every interaction, and her fears about what will happen to her once she graduates. Fans of Elif Batuman’s The Idiot may find similar themes here, but Cornejo Villavicencio’s style is purely her own.

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Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

10 books you should read in July 2024 (11)

Release date: July 30, 2024

Publisher: William Morrow

Since her knockout debut Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell has bounced back and forth between YA and adult romance, with a few detours into comics for good measure. Now she’s back with a new novel that’s unmistakably aimed at grownups. Slow Dance is a decades-spanning love story between two best friends, Shiloh and Cary, who promised each other at the end of high school that they’d always be close. But then life got in the way. After 14 years without any contact, they’re both invited to a mutual friend’s wedding and get a second chance to make things right. It’s about how people and relationships change over time, and how they stay the same. Rowell has always been great at capturing those feelings of longing between two people who can’t just come out and tell each other how they feel, and then knocking the wind out of you when they finally do. So if you plan on picking this one up, brace for impact.

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10 books you should read in July 2024 (2024)

FAQs

What is the most read book in 2024? ›

Top 10 Selling Books – June 2024
RankTitleAuthor
1THE HOUSEMAID IS WATCHINGMCFADDEN, FREIDA
2ERUPTIONCRICHTON, MICHAEL
3SWAN SONGHILDERBRAND, ELIN
4DAD, I WANT TO HEAR YOUR STORYMASON, JEFFREY
6 more rows

What is the top 10 most read book? ›

Share this story:
  • The Bible. ...
  • Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung (Mao Zedong) ...
  • Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. ...
  • The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. ...
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. ...
  • The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. ...
  • The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. ...
  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
Oct 30, 2023

What NPR books should I look forward to in 2024? ›

NPR staffers share their favorite fiction of 2024 so far : NPR. NPR staffers share their favorite fiction of 2024 so far NPR staffers recommend five of this year's new novels for summer reading: "The Ministry of Time," "The Familiar," "Come and Get It," "Memory Place," and "Sex, Lies and Sensibility."

What is one book everyone should read? ›

Most frequent recommendations:
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
  • 1984 by George Orwell.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
  • Animal Farm by George Orwell.
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
  • The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
Mar 24, 2023

What is the book of the year for 2024? ›

SEATTLE—June 14, 2024—Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that the Amazon Books Editors have revealed the Best Books of the Year So Far, naming Percival Everett's novel, James, as the top choice.

What is the No. 1 best selling book? ›

The 24 Best-Selling Books of All Time
  • The Bible (5 billion)
  • The Quran (3 billion)
  • The Little Red Book: Quotations from Chairman Mao (900 million)
  • Don Quixote (500 million)
  • Selected Articles of Chairman Mao (450 million)
  • A Tale of Two Cities (200 million)
  • The Lord of the Rings (150 million)

What are people reading this summer? ›

What to Read This Summer
  • Don Quixote. by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by John Rutherford (Penguin Classics) ...
  • The Phantom Tollbooth. by Norton Juster (Random House) ...
  • In the Freud Archives. by Janet Malcolm (New York Review Books) ...
  • Suttree. ...
  • Lonesome Dove. ...
  • My Life as a Body. ...
  • Landscape for a Good Woman. ...
  • The Puttermesser Papers.

How many books should I aim to read this year? ›

Generally, a reasonable book goal for the year would be 12-15 books if you have a full-time job and other commitments. However, if you have more free time and are comfortable with the level of difficulty and length of the books you plan on reading, you could aim for a higher number.

What age group listens to NPR? ›

The largest portion of listeners skews 35+, reaching an audience of established listeners and viewers who are leaders in their personal and professional networks. Over half are between 25 and 54 years old. The median age of NPR listeners is 48.4. (SOURCE: 2022 NPR Audience Profile.)

What is the most life-changing book to read? ›

37 Books That Will Change Your Life
  • Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind by Barbara Becker.
  • The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found by Frank Bruni.
  • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
  • Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.

What are the top 5 books of all time? ›

The Complete 500
RankTitleAuthor
1.Don QuixoteMiguel de Cervantes
2.Alice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll
3.The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMark Twain
4.The Adventures of Tom SawyerMark Twain
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Which book no one can read? ›

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as Voynichese. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438).

Who is the best selling author in 2024? ›

Maas Is The Year's Top Author As Fantasy And Romance Dominate March Bestseller List. Mary Roeloffs is a Forbes breaking news reporter covering pop culture.

What happens if you read 100 books a year? ›

Reading 100 books in a year is an accomplishment. For most people, it will stretch their horizons and stretch their brain to its limit. But it won't make you smarter unless what you read actually starts to impact the way that you live. Knowledge on its own puffs up.

What's on the New York Times bestseller list right now? ›

FICTION
  • The Women by Kristin Hannah. ...
  • The Wedding People by Alison Espach. ...
  • Hard to Kill by James Patterson; Mike Lupica. ...
  • The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. ...
  • Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. ...
  • Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. ...
  • Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand. ...
  • All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker.
Aug 8, 2024

What is the most popular fiction book right now? ›

Hardcover Fiction
  • 27 weeks on the list. THE WOMEN. by Kristin Hannah. ...
  • New this week. THE COVEN. by Harper L. ...
  • New this week. SHADOW OF DOUBT. by Brad Thor. ...
  • 66 weeks on the list. FOURTH WING. by Rebecca Yarros. ...
  • 2 weeks on the list. HARD TO KILL. by James Patterson and Mike Lupica.

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