A decade ago, the Massachusetts-based author of Commencement discovered an abandoned seaside Victorian mansion, and its continued decay provided inspiration for this ghost story rooted in history. The novel follows alcoholic Jane Flanagan, a Harvard archivist who moves back home to coastal Maine. There, the new owner of a mysterious house she’s coveted since childhood hires Jane to unravel its secrets. The book reaches back beyond the Pilgrims to consider the area’s Indigenous roots and delves into the gothic and supernatural.

The bestselling Vancouver crime writer (The Party and The Drowning Woman) is back with an exploration of every writer’s nightmare: getting review-bombed from a troll with a vendetta. Camryn Lane, who works as a high school counsellor, is targeted by online trolls after she’s accused of exploiting students as material for her buzzy debut novel Burnt Orchid, which appears in chapters as a novel-within-a-novel here. 

This novel about power, set 500 years from now, is a speculative page-turner. The Brooklyn-based writer of Iranian and Jamaican heritage follows up his acclaimed tech-industry satire debut, Black Buck, by peering into the distant future and seeing more of the social disparity that exists today, including literal second-class citizens (in this case, an invisible woman named Sweetmint.) “It is a call to arms for the unseen,” Askaripour said in a statement, “a rallying cry for those who are tired of being ignored and forgotten.” (July 9)

Between the ongoing First World War in Europe and the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic, court reporter Toby Havenshaw has his hands full while also covering the shocking trial of Elizabeth Frame, who is accused of murdering her husband shortly after their wedding. The drama of murder, love and redemption – set in 1918 Nova Scotia, and based on true events – from the acclaimed American author who sets most of his fiction in the Maritimes, has a mood of paranoia and melancholy that is eerily resonant with our contemporary world. “The art, the flow, the wisdom of this work are unmatched,” says Percival Everett, author of James. (July 9)

This slim gem, about a couple in a foreign city, poring over listings as they search for an apartment and a community where they can put down roots, involves much eating, drinking and socializing, and grew out of a 2021 New Yorker short story, Future Selves. The Paris-based author, who was raised in Turkey, England and Denmark, calls it an ode to daily life and the joy of friendship. (July 9)

A cosmopolitan Palestinian woman has established a new life for herself in New York by teaching English at a school for boys when she’s pulled into an elaborate Ponzi scheme reselling Birkin bags. This debut by the Jerusalem-born journalist (which Publishers Weekly called a tour de force) veers into strange, elegant and hilarious territory with the protagonist’s obsession with hygiene and quest for purity under capitalism: she begins losing her mind and conversing with a coin she swallowed after the death of her parents. With sociopolitical commentary about self-image and forms of cleanliness, Kafka would have loved it. (July 9)

If Yellowstone and Kevin Costner’s Horizon have whet the appetite for the west, this genre-bending journey to 1890s Butte, Mont., featuring a chase through the badlands and a doomed love affair, will satisfy it. Since the closure of Cork copper mines, Irish workers (like drug-addled Tom Rourke, the main character) have descended on the frontier town, spurring both tragedy and farce. The Irish writer – who won the International Dublin Literary Award with City of Bohane in 2011 – blends his native lyricism with hard-boiled realism in this violent and extravagant western. (July 9)

In one of the year’s most anticipated fantasy books (hailed as an astoundingly fresh take on an extremely well-trod legend), the American author of the Magicians trilogy reimagines Arthurian myth for the new millennium. It’s both a reverent and innovative swashbuckling exploration of Camelot, while also probing honour and tensions between pagan tradition and Christianity. The nearly 700-pager, which picks up the story after the devastating battle at Camlann, is told through aspiring medieval knight Collum, and fleshes out the backstories of the few knights (and minor characters from the saga, like transgender man Sir Dinadan and Sir Dagonet the fool) who survived. (July 16)

Fragile art historian Elizabeth heads to a remote island in 1999 to purchase a rare and unusual female sculpture in this sensual debut that’s perfect for Deborah Levy devotees. The setting off the southern coast of Greece is gorgeous, sultry and atmospheric, and the California author’s writing is lyrical and tense. It conveys the disorientation Elizabeth experiences from a combination of jetlag, the oppressive heat and her addiction to prescription pills, while handling culturally complex negotiations and her attraction to the lush island and its inhabitants. (July 23)

When suicidal Phoebe has a chance encounter with bride Lila in the elevator at a fancy Rhode Island country inn, she’s taken for a guest at the extravagant destination wedding. Over the course of week-long celebrations, the mistaken identity changes the course of her life (and of others in attendance). The novel, by a professor in the English department at Providence College, was preemptively optioned by a team including Oscar-nominated screenwriter and indie filmmaker Nicole Holofcener (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), which should give you an idea of the comedic and tender, raw and sweet balancing act that piqued her interest. It’s “funny, painful, cathartic and lasting,” according to its adapters.  (July 30)

After globe-trotting war journalist Mamush, the son of Ethiopian immigrants, returns to the D.C. community where he was raised, the sudden death of his father sets him piecing together family history. Mengestu, a New York-based freelance journalist who has reported from northern Uganda and Darfur, told Publishers Weekly he wanted to capture one person’s rich and complicated life, but also “say something about the long history of migration in American cities across generations.” (July 30)

Who among us has not dreamed of staying in the water a little longer? In this satisfying novella, Kathleen – a former tennis champ turned Delaware housewife to salesman Virgil – refuses to get out of their apartment’s swimming pool in order to confront deficiencies in their relationship. On a fine November day in 1957, as Sputnik 2 orbits Earth, she languishes for hours and the day stretches on, setting a reckoning of the young couple’s married life (and thematically, that of ordinary mid-century couples) into motion. (July 30)