Summer Picks for Adults 2026
Blog · Posted June 26, 2026
What we’ve been reading…
The Book Game by Frances Wise
Immensely readable novel set in the seemingly bucolic world of summertime academia with a group of friends gathered for a week of creativity at the beautiful home of (self-appointed) leader, Laurence and his perfect wife, Claudia.
Cleverly structured throughout, we know from the first page that this won’t end well, the characters arrive in the style of Agatha Christie, each with their backstory, old rivalries, vulnerabilities and simmering anger. There are moments of wonderful waspish wit and clever, satisfying twists. Give yourself the treat of sinking into this gorgeous sun-soaked setting and watch the sparks fly.
The Killer Question by Janice Hallett
Oh I do love a pub quiz. And what could be better than a pub quiz with the Janice Hallett treatment?
Mal and Sue are new landlords of The Case is Altered. They used to be in the police but they don’t like people knowing about that. The weekly quiz is upset by the arrival of a crack team – they only lose 1 or 2 marks every time. Surely they must be cheating…but how?
In true Hallett style, we learn of past misdemeanors and hidden agendas, laughing at every page. To say more would risk spoilers – my lips are sealed.
This is packed full of more twists than I thought were possible. It’s my favourite since The Twyford Code but it might just be her best yet.
The Eights by Joanna Miller
It’s 1920 – the first year that women are allowed to matriculate at Oxford university. Facing strict rules, pranks and downright discrimination, it wasn’t all plain sailing from there.
Dora, Otto, Marianne and Beatrice will become your chums. In many ways they are worlds apart, but they come together on corridor eight at St Hugh’s College to form an enduring friendship. Carrying their own troubles and experiences from the recent war, here there is camaraderie, acceptance and even some romance.
Miller’s debut is vivid, heartwarming and captures a pivotal moment in women’s history. Pick this up for a bit of girl power!
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Believe the hype! Word of mouth recommendations ensured this epistolary novel became one of the biggest sellers of 2025 and quite rightly so…
Sybil Van Antwerp connects with the world through daily correspondence; letters, emails, and text messages to family, friends, writers she admires, even strangers. Through this correspondence you will come to know and love this vital, oft-times blunt, erudite and complex septuagenarian.
Uplifting, heart-wrending, and a joy to read! I want to write to Sybil to tell her how much I appreciated her letters…
The Names by Florence Knapp
Ever wondered if you would still be you if you had been given a different name? What are the implications of carrying an inherited name or the associations of what you are called? Knapp meditates on this idea in her richly imagined, deeply moving and life affirming debut novel.
Three alternate and alternating narratives spanning 35 years explore the enduring and redemptive power of love, family, fate and freewill. Conceptually clever, the story of Cora and her family is set against the backdrop of domestic abuse but is sensitively written and ultimately full of heart and hope. You will weep as your heart is broken and then reflect on the small moments in life and the ripple effects they create.
Read this – it is very special.
The Fathers by John Niven
Jada and Dan become fathers on the same night in the same hospital in Glasgow. Though both live in this city, their lives could not be more different. The men meet and exchange pleasantries but do not yet know that their paths will cross in ways neither could have foreseen.
Undoubtedly gritty in places, there’s an emotional intensity that is impossible to escape. Niven highlights the stark inequalities that exist within a thriving city, but in a way that combines the shock this contrast brings with a dark hilarity.
Neither man is any kind of role model (quite the opposite), but there is a sense of redemption that is tender and irresistible. Niven explores themes of grief, crime and class in a narrative that ramps up the pace to such an extent that I struggled to put this down. At times, I felt physically winded.
Prepare yourself for laughter and heartbreak.
The Original by Nell Stevens
After her parents are taken to an asylum, Grace comes to live with her unwilling aunt and uncle. Often alone, she discovers a talent for copying works of art. Her only friend, cousin Charles, is missing at sea for many years but is purportedly resurrected when the family receives a letter from him. Is it really Charles? Surely they should know… But Grace has face blindness so she’s not the most reliable narrator when it comes to solving this intriguing puzzle…
An inventive tale of deception, identity and secrets. It poses irrepressible questions: what is authentic and what is mere forgery? And more importantly, does it even matter?
I picked this up to find out what all the fuss was about – reader, it was easy to see. Set amid the heady world of clever people in senior year at uni, Jordan falls in with the self-appointed leaders of the pack, Sam and Yash – they might be easy to hate if they weren’t so funny.
King’s narrative pulls you into the vortex of (maybe) first love, and then more… It is a visceral, sweet, painful and true story of love told in real time, and then with the sting of hindsight and what might have been.
For the most part, it reads lightly and quickly, but packs a real punch of great writing, hiding its depth in plain sight.
The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
When 76 year old artist Vic Kemp tells his children he’s to marry a 27 year old woman, it’s safe to say the news doesn’t go down well. She’s 6 years younger than his youngest child…what is she planning? Goose, Netta, Iris and Susan don’t get much time to find out as 46 days later, their father is dead.
Set during a heatwave in an idyllic Italian villa, this is a novel about family and what happens when those ties fracture. The Homemade God showcases what Rachel Joyce does best – a deeply empathetic study of relationships, of grief and of pilgrimage.
This author never disappoints. If you take one book on holiday this year, let it be this one.
The Doorman by Chris Pavone
Meet Chicky Diaz, the trusty and reliable doorman at the exclusive Bohemia apartment building in NYC. He is the centre of this laser-sharp, intricately plotted, state-of-the-city thriller : the buffer between the haves (such as Emily, Whit and Julian – some of the wealthy residents) and the have-nots who live in the turbulent real world.
With nuanced writing and spot-on observations this novel accelerates through entitlement and deception towards a twisty, completely satisfying, ending!
The Cut Throat Trial by S J Fleet
A twisty, tense and troublesome courtroom drama from the pen of the Secret Barrister – you’ll be hooked. An absolute pageturner with the weighty question of how justice works ( or doesn’t) hanging over the narrative.
The author’s real life knowledge of legal procedures and insight into the difficulties of the search for the truth shines through the 15 days of the trial that is central to this novel. The narrative, told from the different points of view of crucial characters, twists and turns: who is telling the truth? Will justice prevail?
Intrigued by the accuseds’ backstories and true-to-life voices and gripped by the flawed characters of the prosecution, defense and judge, this debut novel entertained, enlightened and explained! Enjoy!
Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh
It’s John’s last summer on the small island where he grew up. (So small, in fact, that now everyone has seen a leaked nude photo of his mum.) Working at the local hotel and trying to get into the senior football team, he’s waiting for exam results before heading to college.
Fun and Games is unflinching in its honesty and often excruciating, but therein lies its appeal. This is a raw and authentic look at male friendships, the pitfalls of first romance and just the terrible business of growing up. McHugh conveys all this with an easy and tender humour. While you will inevitably cringe at most of John’s decisions, you can’t help but root for him.
A debut that is all-encompassing. If you loved Close to Home and Glorious Exploits, this one’s for you.
Days of Light by Megan Hunter
On Easter Sunday 1938, Ivy and her family are awaiting the arrival of a newcomer – her brother’s girlfriend Frances. It’s an elysian afternoon but as evening comes, tragedy strikes. Ivy endures the consequences of what happens through the days and decades that follow, but in her search for a truth that is unattainable, she will find a love that defies denial.
Megan Hunter captures moments of a life with stunning detail and with writing so beautiful, it feels like a dream. She achieves the seemingly impossible by combining a highly personal and emotive narrative with a sweeping epic that spans through the 20th century.
Days of Light is about family and marriage, love and loss and everything in between. This is one to hold close to your heart.
Sugartown by Caragh Maxwell
Sugartown follows Saoirse as she tries to find her feet back in her Irish hometown after leaving London following a break-up. This is a thoughtful, witty and emotional look at friendship, love and family and what it is like to find yourself feeling displaced somewhere that was once home.
Saoirse feels familiar and foreign all at once, a character that shows you all the flaws and beauty in one human. Maxwell’s writing is urgent and mighty yet tender and warm.
Fair Play by Louise Hegarty
A highly original take on the whodunnit genre. It’s time for Abigail’s annual New Year murder mystery party. It coincides with her brother Benjamin’s birthday and includes their close circle of friends. But events take a terrible turn when Benjamin is found dead the next morning.
Fair Play affectionately parodies crime fiction as well as simultaneously utilising it to demonstrate the overwhelming effect of loss. Its experimental format cleverly and deliberately distracts you from the true and shattering subject: grief.
Revealing itself in an ingenious way, this multi-layered debut introduces a unique voice into the genre.
The Artist by Lucy Steeds
It’s 1920 and Joseph is a young journalist with ambitions to make his name in the art world. He’s astonished and thrilled to receive an invitation to interview the reclusive artist, Edouard Tartuffe, at his home in the south of France.
On his arrival it becomes clear there has been a misunderstanding and an interview is out of the question. All is not lost however, as Tartuffe allows Joseph to stay if he agrees to act as his model for an important new piece. The artist’s niece, Ettie, is a quiet, intense constant in the house, ensuring the great man’s life is managed to his exacting standards.
All is not as it seems however in this richly described novel of tyranny, hidden truths and love. The author luxuriates in the heat of the south, from lush descriptions of rotting food to the forcefield that is Tartuffe, as tensions boil inextricably to that rarest of things, a satisfying ending.
Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst
Languid yet intense this extraordinary debut novel will transfix and transport you…
The heat of a Danish summer heightens the tensions between five university friends, now in their thirties, and their partners.
Together at a lakeside summer house in the woods, life has moved on in different directions since university and the friends now find themselves dealing with tensions and attractions through the lens of real adulthood. Love in its many forms is the background constant but the choices and “what if-ery” of desire, ambition, identity and fragile boundaries loosen the ties. Who will be undone by the end?
With language that is lush and fluid, characters perfectly drawn as vulnerable and real, and an idyllic setting, this is a novel to dive into and let wash over you.
Flashlight by Susan Choi
I know I won’t be able to do this novel justice in my review – it’s simply remarkable. This sweeping novel illuminates the realities and uncertainties of life after the Second World War for a Korean/American family through continents and decades: from Japan to the US via both North and South Korea and back again; from the 1940s through to the present day.
This is an immersive yet intimate story of loss and detachment, family and state, resilience and reconciliation. It is a twisty mystery and a political thriller wrapped up in a domestic drama. A plot driven novel that is equally driven by character, Choi’s Flashlight is ambitious and bold and reveals layers of memory and perspective from the shifting viewpoints of the Kang family.
Compelling, beautifully written and un-put-downable – don’t pass this one by!
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie
Alex Lyons is a theatre critic with a fierce reputation. When he and Sophie head to the Edinburgh Fringe for the paper he thinks nothing of giving Hayley Sinclair a scathing one star review. But then he decides to sleep with her without telling her who he is…
When she finds out, Hayley transforms her entire show into The Alex Lyons Experience to call him out on everything he’s ever done. This soon escalates into pure hysteria. What Alex does and says are face-clawingly awful and completely unapologetic, but as it all unfolds you can’t help but read on at a (later) regretful pace.
Runcie covers a multitude: motherhood, grief, revenge, feminism, cancel-culture, privilege and toxic masculinity, all wrapped up in an impossibly funny narrative. It leaves you rethinking how you want to react to the world around you. As our narrator Sophie discovers in her personal life too, it is so easy to forget that there are always two sides to a story.
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
Thirtysomething academic, Nadia has been promoted to a coveted lectureship, secured by her paper on deradicalising ISIS brides. But a fragile relationship with her mother and the end of a love affair sends her fleeing to Baghdad, where she’s been recruited to set up a UN programme based on her ISIS work.
There she encounters Sara (an ISIS bride at 15yrs), and finds an unexpected emotional connection, seeing parallels between their lives and a powerful sense of what might have been.
The subject matter grabbed me immediately, but I wasn’t expecting it to be laugh out loud funny – Nadia has the sweary thing down and the UN office politics are very enjoyable. This is a rollercoaster of a book – bold, brave, hilarious, much like our (sometimes misguided) heroine.
The Adults by Alison Espach
Emily is at the heart of this moving and funny novel about all the sorrow, mess and confusion of being a teenager and the struggles of growing up. The Adult looks at the differences between childhood, adolescence and adulthood and how these lines are sometimes blurred.
American teenager, Emily, finds herself stuck between her parents’ dissolving relationship, morphing teenage friendships and a toxic relationship that is never going to run smoothly. Espach is a master of leading you through these big life events with wit and grit and warmth.
I was right by Emily’s side throughout this novel. I saw her in me and so many people I have known. It is funny, warm, hard hitting and painful – encapsulating just what it feels like growing up.
Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
A powerful collection of short stories looking at rejection from all angles. The characters weave in and out of each other’s lives, showing how far people will go to feel a connection. This novel had me chuckling out loud one minute and then in deep contemplation of what it is like to be totally lonely the next.
Some would say that Rejection is not for the faint of heart, but I think it’s worth pushing yourself out of your comfort zone for these unforgettable tales of sorrow, loneliness and rejection.
Helm by Sarah Hall
It’s tricky to describe this remarkable tour de force of a novel. Beginning in deep time, it’s narrated by the only named wind in the UK, the mischievous Helm of the Eden Valley. We follow Helm’s story through many lives in the landscape from the Neolithic tribe who worship Helm, via the Victorians who seek to control its power, right up to a climate scientist in the 21st century under threat from latent racism as she works in the isolated research station.
It is a riot of a novel, stylistically innovative and brave, the multiple storylines are not for reading last thing at night, but this is a stunning novel that repays the reader’s commitment.