If you are after a book to pack on your next holiday, look no further. Here is a novel which will go down as easily as a chilled poolside drink. The book is narrated by a menopausal Rocky on her family’s annual summer trip to Cape Cod. Sandwiched between her nearly-adult children and ageing parents, all of whom have descended on the coastal apartment for the week, her whole life feels as though it is in flux. Sandwich has such poignant things to say about family, marriage and parenting, while also casting a gorgeous light on those golden holiday days (even if you do spend most of the trip dragging sand around or looking for parking). A hilarious tonic of a book.
(Doubleday, £16.99)
Nonfiction pick
Broken Threads by Mishal Husain
In the summer of 1947, millions of lives were affected by the Partition of India. Among them were the grandparents of BBC presenter Mishal Husain, who has turned to letters, diaries and tapes in order to piece together fragments of her family history. On her father’s side were Mumtaz, a Muslim doctor, and Mary, a Catholic from an Anglo-Indian family, who fell in love in Lahore. Her maternal grandparents, Tahirah and Shahid, meanwhile, watched the events leading up to Partition unfold from Delhi. Broken Threads is a triumph of a book: at once a moving family memoir and a clear-eyed interrogation into the legacy of empire.
(4th Estate, £18.99)
Best of the rest
Parade by Rachel Cusk
In the latest experimental novel from the acclaimed, Booker-nominated author of the Outline trilogy, a quartet of stories explore themes of gender and art. Featuring a man who begins to paint upside down and a woman who sculpts black spiders, Parade is a strange, brooding book.
(Faber, £16.99)
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
In 1891 Montana, an Irish poet named Tom pays the bills by composing letters to the prospective brides of men who can’t write. When he falls for one of these women, Polly, a forbidden love affair – and epic journey fleeing on stolen horseback – make up this unforgettable read.
(Canongate, £16,99)
Scripted by Fearne Cotton
In Cotton’s high-concept debut novel, Jade is unnerved to keep finding scripts for conversations which later play out in real life. But what is most confronting is that these scripts reveal just how much she lets everyone in her life walk all over her. Can she finally be inspired to change?
(Michael Joseph, £18.99)
The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley
From the author of bestselling The Hunting Party comes another mystery with an immersive setting, this time in a Dorset woodland manor house during midsummer. Here, the unearthing of a 15-year-old secret among old friends ends in murder.
(HarperCollins, £18.99)
Going Home by Tom Lamont
When his childhood friend dies, Teo finds himself attempting to raise the two-year-old son she left behind – with only his difficult father and unreliable friend Ben to help. Going Home is an affecting debut about fatherhood and male friendship.
(Sceptre, £16.99)
Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal
Charlotte Walker is a zoooligist who has taken up a fellowship on the tiny island of Tuga, ostensibly to study an endangered species of tortoises, but in reality solve a secret mystery of her own. This warm and completely addictive novel is escapism at its finest.
A collaboration between the bestselling thriller author and the creator of Jurassic Park, Eruption is a blockbuster novel about a volcanic eruption which might end the world – and a decades-old military secret which is about to make the situation a lot worse.
(Century, £22)
Godwin by Joseph O’Neill
From the Booker Prize-longlisted author of Netherland, a compelling novel about football, family and migration. It’s an odyssey of two brothers, who travel in search of a prodigy who they are convinced is the next Lionel Messi.
(4th Estate, £16.99)
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
In a world where there is constant rain and buildings are lapsing into flooding water, three sisters are drawn back together when their estranged father dies. Private Rites is a hauntingly good book about family, faith and the climate crisis.
(Fourth Estate, £16.99)
Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin
In 2019, Anna is a psychoanalyst living in Paris who embarks on an affair with the boyfriend of her downstairs neighbour. In the same apartment in 1972, Florence begins an affair with her psychology teacher. Scaffolding is a multi-layered, intelligent novel.
(Chatto & Windus, £16.99)
One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon
Pregnant with their second child, Jasmyn and King decide to move to Liberty, California, where their family can feel at home in a majority-Black environment. But in the world of this taut, simmering read, all is not as it seems.
(Trapeze, £20)
This is Why We Lied by Karin Slaughter
In a luxury lodge perched on a secluded mountain, Mercy had been about to expose secrets when she wound up dead. Investigator Will Trent happens to be there on his honeymoon, and now it’s a race to find the killer before they strike again.
(HarperCollins, £22)
The Suspect by Rob Rinder
The follow up to number-one bestseller The Trail, The Suspect sees a breakfast TV presenter die live on air – and it quickly transpires it wasn’t an accident. All suspicions may have landed on the celebrity chef Sebastian, but junior barrister Adam Green isn’t so sure.
(Century, £20)
The End of Summer by Charlotte Philby
How well do any of us really know the people we love? When journalists turn up on Francesca’s doorstep making awful claims about her mother, she realises that perhaps it is not so well at all. The End of Summer is a literary thriller that is as page-turning as it is elegantly written.
Cora is a young neurodivergent girl growing up on a council estate in 1990s Scotland, hoping for a bright future against all odds. This coming-of-age tale is exquisitely written and comes with endorsem*nts from Michael Sheen and Roddy Doyle.
(Phoenix, £18.99)
The Witness by Alexandra Wilson
When a young black man is arrested for murder, his barrister knows something isn’t right – yet she would never have expected the secret which she stumbles upon while digging around his case. A twisty courtroom thriller that is destined to become a TV drama.
(Sphere, £16.99)
Spoilt Creatures by Amy Twigg
Newly single and stuck in a job she hates, it is no wonder that when Iris comes across a women’s commune on a remote Kent farm, she quickly becomes obsessed. But just as she is drawn into this world, a group of men arrive on the farm and the freedom she yearned for is threatened.
(Tinder, £18.99)
The Architecture of Modern Empire by Arundhati Roy
Before she was the Booker Prize winning writer of The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy trained as an architect. In this collection of interviews with American broadcaster David Barsamian, Roy examines the hidden structures of modern empire with her incisive interrogation of nationalism, war, neoliberalism and technology.
(Penguin, £10.99)
We Will Not Be Saved by Nemonte Nenquimo
Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, Nemonte grew up in a culture of foraging, storytelling and shamanism. 20 years later, she has emerged as one of our most important climate activists and indigenous voices. We Will Not Be Saved is her astonishing story.
(Wildfire, £20)
Looked After by Ashley John-Baptise
Growing up in the care system, John-Baptiste’s childhood was spent living with five different families. Now a husband, father, and successful broadcaster, he recounts these tumultuous experiences for the first time in this compelling, important memoir.
(Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99)
Challenger by Adam Higginbotham
On 28 January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger took off from a Florida launchpad; 73 seconds later, it was engulfed in flames, and all seven on board were killed instantly. With scrupulous detail, Higginbotham charts the series of fatal errors that led up to the tragedy.
(Viking, £25)
Under a Rock by Chris Stein
Stein’s memoir of his career in Blondie – and relationship with Debbie Harry – is so evocative that it almost vibrates with music from the era. It is also surprisingly funny and candid, and a tender love letter to his lifelong partner and friend.
(Corsair, £25)
The Secret Public by Jon Savage
This overdue history of the LGBTQ influence on popular culture takes key moments in the music and industry – from Little Richard in the 1950s through to David Bowie – to explore how gay culture went mainstream and altered pop forever.
(Faber, £22)
Off the Beat by Nusrit Mehtab
When Nusrit Mehtab first joined the Metropolitan Police, she encountered racism and misogyny at almost every turn – and as she rose through the ranks, it got worse, not better. This memoir is her startling, no-holds-barred account.
(Torva, £20)
These Foolish Things by Dylan Jones
As the former editor of GQ, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the cast of characters which appear in Dylan Jones’s memoir include everyone from David Bowie to Rihanna. These Foolish Things is the glittering chronicles of his adventures in media, music, politics and fashion.
(Constable, £25)
MILF by Paloma Faith
The Brit Award winning singer deep-dives into motherhood, identity and the expectations still placed on women today. From her experiences with IVF and heartbreak, through to her relationship with her own mum, MILF is raw and readable.
(Ebury Spotlight, £22)
‘Writing helped me put the joy back into my life’
When Kevin Kwan was writing the novel that would eventually change his life, he had a post-it note with the word “joy” on it stuck to his computer screen. “I began writing my first novel Crazy Rich Asians at a particularly sad moment in my life,” he explains. “I had just lost my father, and I was trying to write my way out of grief. The post-it note was there to remind myself why I was writing, and it really worked. Telling those stories helped to channel joy back to my life.”
In turn, this romcom set in the upper echelons of Singapore society brought joy to a vast number of other people. Published in 2013, the novel sold more than five million copies worldwide and since has been translated into over 40 languages. A Broadway musical is in development, while the 2018 film adaptation was the first major Hollywood film since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club to feature a majority Asian cast.
“When I told the director Jon Chu what I did, he too decided to put post-it notes with the word ‘joy’ on every camera while filming,” Kwan says. “He even hid the word throughout the movie—it shows up on taxis, on balloons, in the most unexpected places.”
Whether or not the original post-it note has survived the decade, Kwan has certainly not forgotten to continue to channel the joy into his books. His latest novel, Lies and Weddings, is a gorgeous, funny tale in which Rufus, after running into debt, is heavily encouraged by his former supermodel mother to find a rich woman to marry.
“I took my love for classic novels by the likes of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope, and shows like Bridgerton and Downton Abbey, and gave them a 21st century twist,” he says. “I wanted to take the traditional narrative about how a woman must marry a rich husband and turn it on its head.”
He wrote it in 2021 while staying at a friend’s house in Hawaii. “I had been suffering from writer’s block, but a few days into the visit words started spilling onto the page and I was writing a chapter a day,” he recalls. “It turns out all I needed was a live volcano churning underneath my feet to start the flow of creativity.”
He has learned a lot about writing since publishing his debut, which he says didn’t so much change his life as cause it to “explode”.
“I never thought I could make a career out of writing, and I feel incredibly fortunate that I’m able to,” he says. “But I’ve also learnt that fame and success doesn’t necessarily bring happiness. The joy really comes from the act of creating, and the wonderful unexpected friendships that have come about as a result of my books.”
Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan (Hutchinson Heinemann, £18.99) is published on 20 June
Hobby: Web surfing, Skiing, role-playing games, Sketching, Polo, Sewing, Genealogy
Introduction: My name is Maia Crooks Jr, I am a homely, joyous, shiny, successful, hilarious, thoughtful, joyous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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