Whether you are looking for something by an author whose work is as familiar as an old friend, a chilling thriller to counteract the summer heat or an epic tome you can disappear into for days, there should be something for you this summer.
Without doubt, the literary event of the season will be the publication of Harper Lee's recently discovered first novel Go Set a Watchman.
Set in Alabama in the 1950s, 20-odd years after the action of the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird, it features many of the same characters, revisiting Scout Finch, now a grown woman returned to Maycomb to visit her father Atticus. Written first, but rejected by publishers in favour of a novel written from the point of view of Scout as a child, this sequel is about as eagerly anticipated as novels get. Whether it delights or disappoints is still to be seen, but either way everyone's going to have an opinion about it.
Laura Barnett's expansive multiverse narrative The Version of Us is another that I think has a lot of potential this summer. Combining the conceit of 90s film classic Sliding Doors with the slow unfurling of a romance played out over the course of a lifetime, as in David Nicholls' bestseller One Day, Barnett offers her readers three possible versions of her protagonist Eva's existence, all of which begin with a single life-defining "what if" moment in 1950s Cambridge.
For anyone who eagerly devoured Judy Blume's fiction as a child, her new adult novel In the Unlikely Event will make for perfect summer reading. As with her stories for young adults Blume doesn't shy away from the more cruel realities of life, but there's a good dose of romance and friendship thrown in too.
Between December 1951 and February 1952 the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where Blume was growing up, was the site of three terrible plane crashes.
Fictionalising this experience, In the Unlikely Event examines the effect these tragedies had on the townsfolk, powerfully paying particular attention to the disbelief and fear felt by the teenagers affected, not to mention painting a vivid portrait of 1950s America.
Moving on to period pieces, three to look out for are Benjamin Johncock's The Last Pilot, Paula McLain's Circling the Sun, and Sarah Moss's Signs for Lost Children. Set in 1960s America against the backdrop of the space race, Johncock's debut should go some way to providing a much-needed fix for those suffering from Mad Men withdrawal since the show ended last month.
Meanwhile, McLain, author of The Paris Wife, a fictionalised account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson and the years they spent living together in Paris as part of the "lost generation", stays faithful to this period, only shifting her attention to colonial Kenya in the 20s and the story of another real-life figure: the scandalous and hedonistic Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, east to west.
Moss's elegant new novel is a companion piece to her previous – the Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted Bodies of Light – picking up where it left off, following the lives of newlyweds Dr Ally Moberley (one of the first female physicians) and her architect husband Tom Cavendish as they negotiate the demands of a six-month separation. As Tom travels to Japan to build lighthouses, Ally remains in England, working in a mental asylum in Cornwall in the 1880s.
At over 700 pages, Hanya Yanagihara's tale of love and friendship A Little Life is perhaps a little on the large side for carry-on luggage, but it should be top of your list if you're looking for something meaty and moving. What begins as a recognisable tale of four college students moving to Manhattan to begin their careers, develops into something much more profound as it focuses on the story of one in particular, Jude, and the horrific childhood abuse that's scarred him for life.
If you're searching for a gripping thriller, look no further than Ruth Ware's In a Dark Dark Wood, the tale of a hen party that goes disastrously wrong that's bound to be this summer's most popular page-turner. It's tightly plotted, with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing till the bitter end, but is also both a welcome alternative to all the marriage thrillers that have appeared over the past couple of years and an insightful rendering of just how complicated and unforgiving female friendships can be.
One final title worth mentioning, especially if you're holidaying late this year, is Purity, the new novel from Jonathan Franzen. A multigenerational epic that takes us from East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall via hidden valleys in Bolivia to contemporary America, at its heart it's the story of a young woman named Pip who's searching for her father and with him the truth about her origins – all very Great Expectations. A rich examination of secrets and lies on every level of society and in all human relationships, it's utterly and completely captivating.
Lucy Scholes is a freelance journalist who lives in London.
