The former political journalist from England, author of the novel behind the Netflix hit series Anatomy of a Scandal starring Sienna Miller, returns with another propulsive legal drama about a woman caught in the crosshairs of public opinion as she balances career ambition and family loyalties. After the conscientious MP and single parent, a champion of feminist issues, becomes the target of sustained online harassment and stalking, a tabloid journalist is found dead on her property. (July 5)

A well-to-do Miami family is upended by a major hurricane that destroys their home and disrupts their pampered lifestyle in this eerily plausible novel of impending environmental disaster. The sudden and total loss of comfort and privilege crescendos into mounting desperation as they live at a Federal Emergency Management Agency shelter with thousands of other evacuees from the American south, and contend with the country’s inequality from the inside. (July 5)

This Gen X coming-of-age story by the Los Angeles-based writer (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry) will do for video games what Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay did for comics. It’s about Sadie and Sam, who meet as children and reconnect years later and become video-game design partners. Fans of Super Mario or Final Fantasy will revel in the milieu, but you don’t have to be a game enthusiast to love a novel about the satisfaction and heartbreak of creative collaboration – the history, business and especially the philosophy of the industry was immersive and fascinating to this non-gamer. Now there’s even an ’80s-style game, a real-life version of the fictional one created by one of Zevin’s characters in the novel. (July 5)

A woman with Alzheimer’s seeks absolution for a past wrong from her grandson, whom she mistakes for her dead brother. It’s just one of a dozen linked stories by a single narrator, all set in a Native community in Maine, that evokes the landscape of Indigenous identity in the 21st century. By all accounts, Talty, a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, more than delivers on one of the most highly anticipated story collections of the year. (July 5)

Mina’s 2019 bestseller Conviction examined the ethics of true crime podcasts, and the fallout for both makers and fans, and went on to become a Reese Witherspoon book club pick and the New York Times best crime novel of the year. In this entertaining sequel, the Scottish writer brings back podcasters Anna and Fin (and her trademark wit), and takes them on adventure around Europe. As they document their latest podcast series, they’re guided by social media clues on the trail of Lisa Lee, a young urban explorer and YouTube vlogger who’s gone missing. (July 5)

This bitter satire is for readers who felt The White Lotus finale didn’t take it far enough (i.e. me). To illustrate the obscenity of capitalism and fame, almost every character is (intentionally) awful – including the husband of a newlywed couple, who unwittingly check into the legendary “pink palace” – a.k.a. The Beverly Hills Hotel – on the eve of a heat wave, wildfires and, eventually, blackouts and riots. Yet the grotesquely entertaining devolution of society (and civility, such as it was) around them never feels like a polemic. Not to overhype it, but, in a crowded playing field, this commentary on greed is probably my novel of the summer. (July 19)

This vibrant novel unfolds over the course of the day leading up to a Hollywood mogul’s big charity gala. As it chronicles the alternating points of view of three women – the studio boss’s assistant planning the party, his wife hosting it, and a filmmaker looking for a second chance – revelations are peeled back. It’s all very much in the wake of #MeToo, and concerns an ecosystem that caters to every urgent want and need of the rich and famous. (The North Carolina-based author was a former assistant to a billionaire, so the details ring true.) Consider it the gripping fictional companion to a reading sandwich of She Said, about how Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey uncovered and reported on the groundbreaking story of Harvey Weinstein’s years of sexual harassment, and Hollywood Ending, New Yorker writer Ken Auletta’s look at the industry systems that enabled the film producer. (July 22)

Every summer there’s at least one novel written in the long shadow cast by the late American author Patricia Highsmith, and this is it. But the flavour of psychological suspense from French-British national Wynne (who wrote the throwback Gothic hit Madam) should also come with a content warning, given that it borrows from recent trauma fiction like the Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn. Hedonist parents behaving badly, predatory men and vulnerable young girls populate the summer of 1985 as several posh British families summer together at a château on the Côte d’Azur and it doesn’t euphemize the childhood sexual abuse set among the well to do. (July 5)

An ocean liner voyage from London to New York is glamorous, especially to chanteuse Lena, a hopeful on her way to light up Broadway. This glitzy historical locked-room mystery, set on board the RMS Queen Mary, may seem reminiscent of Agatha Christie, but think again: The Black British author Hare uses flashbacks to delve into why the mixed-race jazz entertainer (who had been passing as white in 1936 London) fled her Soho nightclub gig, and the historical context about the divides of class and race. (July 5) 

This novel, set during the last days of the Second World War, follows the entwined fates of two Canadians in England, Kate and Claire. It’s a rare historical fiction that considers the wider community effects of PTSD, written by the Austrian-born Canadian bestselling author of The Piano Maker. (July 26)