Whether you’re relaxing on a beach, travelling abroad or enjoying quiet evenings at home, the right book can make summer even more memorable. The Booker Prize has unveiled a reader-curated list of 20 outstanding novels nominated for the prestigious literary award, featuring everything from moving historical fiction to gripping page-turners and epic family sagas.
Here are some of the standout titles worth packing in your suitcase this summer.
Yesteryear – Caro Claire Burke
Natalie has built an image of the perfect traditional life, complete with a charming farmhouse, cowboy husband and happy family, attracting millions of followers online. But when she suddenly wakes up in a different version of her life, where modern comforts have disappeared and her reality feels unfamiliar, she must uncover what happened. A darkly humorous and unsettling journey, the novel explores fame, faith, tradition and the pressures of performing the ideal life.
The Summer Without Men – Siri Hustvedt
Mia Fredrickson’s life is turned upside down when her husband of 30 years asks for a “pause” in their marriage, leading to a mental health crisis. After leaving hospital, she returns to her childhood hometown, where she reconnects with her ageing mother, old friends and new neighbours. As Mia becomes involved in their lives, she begins to heal while reflecting on love, loss and identity.
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
Iris Chase – married at 18 to a politically prominent industrialist, but now 82 and poor – is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by her once-prosperous family. While bewailing her unreliable body and deriding those who try to help her, Iris reflects on her far-from-exemplary life and perilous times, particularly on the events surrounding her sister Laura’s mysterious early death – a death which confirmed her iconic status as the author of a scandalous novel. Margaret Atwood’s 2000 Booker winner is a multilayered drama that weaves its narrative threads across past and present, fiction and reality.
The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton
It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.
Lost Lambs – Madeline Cash
The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud’s open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone—or something—is monitoring the town’s citizens.
Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy—one that may just bring them closer together.
My Friends – Fredrik Backman
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.
The God of the Woods – Liz Moore
Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.
The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller
Achilles, “the best of all the Greeks,” son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods’ wrath.
They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.
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