10 books to read in July

Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fabrication and nonfiction, to see for your July speechmaking list.

It’s officially beach-reads season: Whether you bash your speechmaking outdoors oregon wrong successful air-conditioned comfort, July’s blistery caller releases volition assistance you enactment cool. Topics scope from analog memories of Golden Age Hollywood to a maverick pistillate athlete. Happy reading!

FICTION

In Pursuit of Beauty: A Novel
By Gary Baum
Blackstone: 256 pages, $29
(July 1)

Baum, a writer for the Hollywood Reporter, draws connected cognition helium has gleaned astir cosmetic surgery, the assemblage of his protagonist, Dr. Roya Delshad. Dr. Delshad, who is multiracial and erstwhile supposedly plain, remakes herself into a glorious bombshell — but past lands successful prison. She’s agreed to see interviews with a ghostwriter named Wes Easton, who volition soon observe wherefore she’s called “the Robin Hood of Roxbury Drive.”

Typewriter Beach: A Novel
By Meg Waite Clayton
Harper: 320 pages, $30
(July 1)

Like the carriage of a well-oiled Olivetti, this caller moves betwixt Carmel and Hollywood, successful 2 antithetic centuries, with ease. In 1957, histrion Isabella Giori hopes to onshore a career-making relation successful a Hitchcock film; erstwhile her circumstances alteration and she winds up secluded successful a tiny cottage successful Carmel-on-the-Sea, a blacklisted emigre screenwriter named Léon Chazan saves her. In 2018, his screenwriter granddaughter yet learns however and why.

Vera, oregon Faith: A Novel
By Gary Shteyngart
Random House: 256 pages, $28
(July 8)

Vera, the kid narrator of this wry and applicable caller caller from Shteyngart (“Our Country Friends”), brings a half-Korean practice to the Russian-Jewish-WASP Bradford-Shmulkin family. Between Daddy, Anne Mom, and her longing for her chartless bio Mom Mom, Vera has a batch to handle, portion each she truly wants is to assistance her dada and stepmom enactment joined — and to marque a person astatine school. It’s a must-read.

Mendell Station: A Novel
By J. B. Hwang
Bloomsbury: 208 pages, $27
(July 22)

In the aftermath of her champion person Esther’s 2020 decease from COVID-19, Miriam loses religion successful astir everything, including the God that made her occupation teaching Christian scripture astatine a San Francisco backstage schoolhouse bearable. She quits and takes a occupation arsenic a message bearer (as the writer besides did), not lone uncovering moments of grace from vicinity to vicinity but besides penning letters to Esther successful an effort to recognize the puerility difficulties that bonded them.

Necessary Fiction: A Novel
By Eloghosa Osunde
Riverhead: 320 pages, $28
(July 22)

The rubric tells truthful overmuch astir however queer radical indispensable unrecorded successful Nigeria, and truthful does the structure: Osunde (“Vagabonds!”) calls it a novel, though its chapters work much similar abbreviated stories. If it doesn’t bent unneurotic similar a accepted novel, that whitethorn beryllium portion of the point. Characters similar May, struggling with sex identity, oregon Ziz, a cheery antheral successful Lagos, cognize that their identities don’t ever bent unneurotic successful accepted ways — and that’s decidedly the point.

NONFICTION

The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War With Forbidden Literature
By Charlie English
Random House: 384 pages, $35
(July 1)

Decades of Cold War espionage betwixt the United States and the Soviet Union included programs that leveraged taste media. The Central Intelligence Agency’s Manhattan-based “book club” bureau was tally by an emigre from Romania named George Midden, who managed to nonstop 10 cardinal books down the Iron Curtain. Some of them were superior tomes, yes, but determination were Agatha Christie novels, Orwell’s “1984” and creation books too.

The Hiroshima Men: The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb, and the Fateful Decision to Use It
By Iain MacGregor
Scribner: 384 pages, $32
(July 8)

Crucially, MacGregor’s painstakingly researched past of the atomic bombs dropped connected Japan astatine the extremity of World War II includes Japanese perspectives. The historiographer (“Checkpoint Charlie”) treats the atomic weaponry much arsenic a limb of wide execution and little arsenic a technological breakthrough, portion managing to convey the urgency down its improvement for the Allied forces.

On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution successful Women’s Sports
By Christine Brennan
Scribner: 272 pages, $30
(July 8)

Let this descend successful (basketball pun precise overmuch intended): Caitlin Clark has scored much points than immoderate subordinate successful large assemblage hoops history. Not conscionable the pistillate players — the antheral players too. Now that she’s successful the WNBA arsenic a rookie for the Indiana Fever, Clark is attracting the benignant of instrumentality basal erstwhile reserved for antheral hoops stars similar Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Brennan’s longtime sum of Clark’s vocation makes this publication a slam dunk.

Strata: Stories From Deep Time
By Laura Poppick
W. W. Norton & Co.: 288 pages, $30
(July 15)

Each stratum, oregon layer, of our satellite tells a story. Science writer Poppick explains what those millions of strata tin archer america astir 4 instances that changed beingness dramatically, from oxygen entering the ambiance each the mode to the dinosaur era. Ultimately, she argues that these strata amusement america that erstwhile stressed, the world reacts by changing and moving toward stability. It’s a fascinating peek into the globe’s halfway that mightiness connection clues astir sustainability.

The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne
By Chris Sweeney
Avid Reader Press: 320 pages, $30
(July 22)

The once-unassuming Roxie Laybourne became the world’s archetypal forensic ornithologist successful 1960, erstwhile the FAA asked the Smithsonian — wherever Laybourne was an avian taxidermist — to assistance them place shredded feathers from a fatal airplane clang successful Boston. She analyzed specimens that contributed to arrests successful radical attacks, arsenic good arsenic successful catching crippled poachers and preventing deaths of combatant pilots. In her way, Laybourne was a badass.