The Best Literary Fiction Books to Read in Summer 2024

A decade ago, Azaan, a rebellious teenager with dreams of becoming an actor, was caught kissing his secret girlfriend. As punishment, he was exiled from Redding, California to a religious academy in Egypt by his imam father. But while letting his family believe he is studying to become a preacher, Azaan ditched school and decided to pursue his true ambition of becoming a movie-star.

 It was all going so well until his beloved grandfather fell ill and wanted to see Azaan as an iman for his dying wish. It's the most challenging role of his life!

Ralph Silverman was a child prodigy who loved foreign films and was the favored target of playground bullies. But a privileged childhood gave way to a troubled adulthood as he found himself unhoused, abused, and alone in South Florida. 

Based on the author's real friendship with a man named Ralph, the novel alternates perspectives between that of Ralph and Waitzkin himself as he charts their diverging paths and how they remain bonded over the decades despite seismic changes.

Phillip Richards lives with the guilt of having watched his sister be sexually abused by their grandfather when they were children. He isolates himself from the world and drinks heavily to numb the pain. When his father dies, his life begins to change. 

Phillip meets Edith, a free-spirited poet, with whom he feels an instant connection, and he discovers a stolen manuscript that chronicles the Civil War relationship between his ancestor, Russell, and Fever, the enslaved woman he later married. Through the trauma of his ancestors’ past, perhaps Phillip can find answers to his own troubles in the present.

Elisabeth Rother has lived an extraordinary life, so it's only right that she put it all down on paper and write her memoirs. She brushes aside her narrow escape with her Jewish husband from the Nazis, and their fleeing Europe to live in New Jersey, to focus on the part of her story that has consumed her life: her daughter, Renate, and her granddaughter, Irene. 

Renate performs autopsies on the bodies of politicians who died while with their mistresses. Irene has dropped out of school to travel the world and find herself sexually. It's all too much for Elisabeth, and something must be done to keep the family together. 

The Roman poet Ovid was considered one of the most important writers of his time. For the final decade of his life, he was exiled from Rome over what he described as a “poem and a mistake,” but his reluctance to disclose more has been one of the great mysteries of Latin history. 

Jane Allison’s novel delves into the possible circumstances of his banishment. He meets a woman who immediately captures his imagination and is inspired to write a tale inspired by Medea. But giving himself over to this strange figure will lead to him making a pact that will destroy them both.

Russell Stone is teaching a creative nonfiction class when he meets Thassadit Amzwar, a young Algerian woman who immediately enthralls him. She is luminous and optimistic despite her troubled life, and he cannot help but want to protect her. Surely there's a scientific explanation for her ebullience? 

Russell's amateur inquiries lead him to college counselor Candace Weld, who also falls under Thassa's spell. Dubbed Miss Generosity by her classmates, Thassa's joyful personality attracts all sorts towards her, including a geneticist who is trying to uncover the genotype for happiness.

In Naccos, a tiny isolated community in the middle of the Peruvian Andes, a series of mysterious disappearances have taken place. Army corporal Lituma and his deputy Tomás are the only policemen in the region and must uncover the culprit. 

They believe that the Shining Path guerrillas are responsible, but the townspeople have other ideas. They claim that mystical forces have claimed the bodies of the missing men. The truth will reveal the deep-seated scars of the entire nation. 

Kate Harding's husband died suddenly from a heart attack one year ago. Now, at the age of 52, she's overwhelmed by grief and at a loss as to how to go on with her life. Living alone in her large Victorian house, she wonders if her life is now over. 

Things change when her sister drops off nine antique hatboxes of papers recovered from Shepton, their grandparents’ home in Connecticut. These family memories reveal childhood memories as well as secrets of her family that have been kept hidden for decades. 

Her formerly perfect life has some dark sides to it. and now she must confront them as well as her own loss. Gregory, an old acquaintance moves back to the area, and through him, Kate wonders if maybe she can get a second chance at love.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, better known as The Pickwick Papers, was the first novel by the legendary Charles Dickens. The book became a publishing phenomenon, published over the course of 20 months, and made Dickens a star. 

In Death and Mr. Pickwick, Stephen Jarvis reimagines the origins of the book that helped to define modern English literature. He focuses on Robert Seymour, the illustrator whose etchings were what initially inspired the stories. He didn't become as famous as Dickens and ended up fighting with the author over the origins of Pickwick, then died by suicide at the age of 37. Death and Mr. Pickwick brings life to an oft-forgotten literary legend. 

Award-winning author Samantha Hunt's work has been prized for its blend of magical realism and contemporary domestic drama. Her 2017 short story collection The Dark Dark brings together tales of characters on the verge, those who are surrounded by strangeness and on the precipice of extreme change. 

These are stories of love, loss, and transformation. An FBI agent falls in love with a robot built for a suicide mission. A young woman unintentionally cheats on her husband when she is transformed, nightly, into a deer. Thirteen pregnant teenagers develop a strange relationship with America's founding fathers. Two lovers become responsible for a dog who has risen from the dead.