'Gone Girl,' 'The 500,' and more summer books
Silence your cellphone. Log off Twitter and Facebook. Summer is all about long, lazy days and getting lost in a book. Here are some novels that will make good company at the beach, or anywhere, this season.
GONE GIRL, by Gillian Flynn
Nick and Amy Dunne seem like a golden couple -- until Amy goes missing from their Mississippi McMansion and Nick draws suspicion on himself. And then Amy's diary reveals that the "perfect" marriage was anything but. A new thriller from the author of "Sharp Objects" and "Dark Places." (Crown, June 5)
THE CHAPERONE, by Laura Moriarty
When precocious 15-year-old Louise Brooks -- future silent film star with the signature black bob -- comes to New York for the summer of 1922, she's accompanied by a 36-year-old chaperone, Cora Carlisle, from her hometown of Wichita. Cora may not have an easy time of it. (Riverhead, June 5)
THE 500, by Matthew Quirk
A Harvard Law School grad lands a job at a powerful Washington consulting firm, peddling influence with "the 500" -- the capital's real power players. The son of a petty con man, he finds himself in the middle of a high-stakes con that may turn deadly. Quirk's debut thriller has already been snapped up for the movies by 20th Century Fox. (Little, Brown; June 5)
CAPITAL, by John Lanchester
In 2010, John Lanchester illuminated the financial crisis with his nonfiction book, "I.O.U." Now he tackles the same subject in a novel, set on one South London street in the midst of the crash, where the upwardly mobile residents begin receiving mysterious postcards with an ominous message: "We Want What You Have." (Norton, June 11)
MISSION TO PARIS, by Alan Furst
The Sag Harbor spymaster is back with a new novel set in the City of Light on the eve of World War II. A Hollywood actor making a film for a French studio becomes a pawn in an espionage chess game between Nazi Germany and the United States. (Random House, June 12)
THE RED HOUSE, by Mark Haddon
An estranged family. An English country house. A weeklong vacation. These are the ingredients of the new novel from the author of the bestselling "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time." Expect blowups, stony silences and perhaps a reconciliation or two. (Doubleday, June 12)
THE ORPHANMASTER, by Jean Zimmerman
There are 8 million stories in the Naked City -- but how many took place when it was just a small Dutch colony called New Amsterdam? This debut historical mystery opens in 1663, and when orphans begin to go missing, the settlers fear that a serial killer is at work. Could Peter Stuyvesant himself be responsible? (Viking, June 19)
THE KINGS OF COOL, by Don Winslow
With Oliver Stone bringing a movie adaptation of Winslow's thriller "Savages" to the big screen in July, the author has penned a prequel telling the back story of SoCal buddies Ben and Chon, and the woman they both love, O. (Simon & Schuster, June 19)
THE AGE OF MIRACLES, by Karen Thompson Walker
In this apocalyptic debut novel, a massive earthquake shifts the earth off its axis, causing the planet's rotation to slow and the days to gradually lengthen. The aftereffects, as narrated by an 11-year-old California girl, are nothing short of global disaster. (Random House, June 26)
GOLD, by Chris Cleave
This timely follow-up to "Little Bee," published just weeks before the Summer Games in London, tells the story of three cyclists training for the Olympics, their coach, and an athlete's 8-year-old daughter diagnosed with leukemia. (S&S, July 3)
TRUE BELIEVERS, by Kurt Andersen
The new novel by the multitasking Anderson -- he's the host of radio's Studio 360, a contributor to Vanity Fair and the bestselling author of "Heyday" and "Turn of the Century" -- features a Supreme Court nominee who reveals her secret past as a 1960s radical: "I once set out to commit a spectacular murder, and people died." (Random House, July 10)
THE IMPEACHMENT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Stephen L. Carter
The Yale Law School Professor and novelist ("The Emperor of Ocean Park") imagines an alternate American history in which Lincoln survives the assassination attempt only to face an impeachment trial and charges that he has overstepped his constitutional powers. (Knopf, July 10)
THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS, by M.L. Stedman
A battle-scarred World War I vet and his wife become lighthouse keepers on a remote island off Australia's Western Coast; after two miscarriages and a stillbirth, the couple miraculously discovers a boat washed ashore. In it are a corpse and a living infant. They raise her as their own -- but the child's mother is out there somewhere. (Scribner, July 31)
DARE ME, by Megan Abbott
The publisher is billing this new novel by Edgar Award winner Abbott ("The End of Everything") as "Fight Club" set in the highly competitive, backstabbing world of high school cheerleading, where a charismatic coach faces off against the pep-squad captain in an unpredictable thriller. (Little, Brown; July 31)
THE ORCHARDIST, by Amanda Coplin
In the rural Pacific Northwest of the early 20th-century, a reclusive orchardist takes in two teenage runaways, one of them pregnant, and ushers a frightening frontier violence into his tranquil world. (Harper, Aug. 21)
