Our pick of July’s new books are an invitation to cross borders, revisit history and sit with the stories that shape who we are. Whether you’re packing a novel for a holiday, escaping the heat with a memoir or looking for a conversation-starting read, these are the books we’re adding to our summer reading lists – and think you should, too.
My Cantopop Nights by Emma-Lee Moss
My Cantopop Nights is singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss’s memoir of growing up in Hong Kong in 1995, when Cantopop icons were on every billboard and spilling from every shop speaker. Both in Hong Kong, and then when she and her family moved to England, Emma-Lee kept her love of the genre a secret to fit in – Cantopop wasn’t always considered to be ’cool’.
Returning to Hong Kong as an adult, she re-encounters Cantopop in the middle of the city’s post-colonial tensions and protests, and she follows its harmonies back to the person she used to be. Hong Kongers will find themselves ambushed by the specificity of it: the way Moss names the feeling of loving something that the world around you doesn’t get. She gives you the nostalgia without saccharine sentimentality, and the rare gift of seeing your own city clearly through someone else’s eyes.
Hello Baby by Kim Eui-kyung, translated by Sora Kim-Russell
Six women meet at an elite Seoul fertility clinic and form a group chat that becomes their lifeline – a place to trade the fears, dark jokes and small hopes that come with IVF. When the oldest among them abruptly quits treatment and disappears, only to resurface a year later with news of a baby, the others are forced to confront what they’re each willing to believe – and endure – on the way to motherhood. Already a feminist sensation in South Korea, it’s candid, sharp and quietly devastating. And at just over 200 pages, you’ll finish it in a sitting and think about it for weeks.
On Witness & Respair by Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward’s collection of creative nonfiction takes its title from the word ’respair’ – the return of hope after despair – and every essay embodies that quiet act of renewal. Across deeply personal reflections on growing up in rural Mississippi, discovering Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler, and mourning her partner’s sudden death before the pandemic, Jesmyn writes with unflinching clarity and grace. The result is an intimate, politically resonant collection that finds resilience without ever diminishing grief.
No God But Us by Bobuq Sayed
Set between inherited expectations and uncertain futures, this tender novel follows two queer Afghan men searching for safety, belonging and the freedom to define themselves. In Istanbul, Delbar and Mansur find community through an NGO supporting LGBTQIA+ refugees, but love alone cannot shield them from the realities of displacement and state repression. Compassionate without veering into sentimentality, the novel explores migration, identity and chosen family with quiet emotional precision, asking what it truly means to build a home from exile.
Lamento by Madame Nielsen, translated by Gaye Kynoch
Danish author Madame Nielsen first published in 1997 under her birth name, Claus Beck-Nielsen. In 2001, she declared Claus dead and even staged her own funeral in 2010. Since 2014, she has written as Madame Nielsen. Lamento is a work of autofiction written from the perspective of a woman addressing her daughter about what it was like to be married to the man she used to be. Intrigued? You should be.
Underdogs by Louise Powell
Underdogs follows ten-year-old George and his unemployed dad Reg. Charismatic ex-miner Bertie runs an underground gambling ring at the local dog track, which offers down-on-their-luck blokes a way to turn their life around. When Bertie gives Reg and George the opportunity to secretly race his beautiful fawn greyhound Goldie at the local flapping track, they take a gamble that could change their lives. Written in musical County Durham dialect from England’s north-east, it’s a love letter to a disappearing community.
The Fallen Trees Are Also The Forest by Alejandra Kamiya, translated by Daniel Hahn
Alejandra Kamiya is already a big deal in Argentina but The Fallen Trees Are Also The Forest is her first book to be translated into English. A collection of 12 eerie and beguiling short stories that draw upon her Japanese-Argentine heritage, conjuring absences, shadows and all that must remain unsaid. One for fans of Claire Keegan, Samanta Schweblin and Yuko Tsushima.
Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
The third and final instalment in Colson Whitehead’s Harlem series reunites readers with Ray Carney, the furniture dealer whose respectable façade continues to collide with New York’s criminal underworld. Set across three defining years of the 1980s, Cool Machine follows one last heist, unlikely alliances and unfinished family business against a city transformed by greed and gentrification. Brimming with Colson’s signature wit and social insight, it’s a propulsive crime novel with a sharp eye on the forces reshaping America.
