Melissa Febos, Geoff Dyer, Beyoncé... Here are 25 books out in paperback this June.

Summer is officially here, and as the weather warms and our dreams of escapes to elsewhere begin seeming a bit more possible, I’m here to suggest new books to accompany you into June, whatever your plans may be. (And how surreal it feels, in a year that has felt so long already, that we are only now in June.)

Below, you’ll find a bevy of exciting paperback editions to check out, each coming out this month, from novels and collections to memoirs, new histories, and work that defies genre categorization altogether. The world may be too much, yes, but it’s always a bit more bearable with new things to read—and these fascinating, wide-ranging titles should help with just that, which tackle everything from boxing and the women of pop music to what pleasure means, what it means to take up space as a woman in the world, the reverberations of British imperialism, and much, much more. If you missed them in hardcover, or simply seek the quiet, sempiternal joy of opening up a paperback, you’ll love these.

Stay safe, as always, and add these to your ever-more-towering to-be-read piles!

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Lucas Schaefer, The Slip
(Simon and Schuster)

“A fascinating novel full of so much life. Lucas Schaefer takes a lapidary eye to these characters and Austin, holding them up to the light and tracing stories only he could tell. I can’t think of another writer like this except maybe Márquez, though I think The Slip is bawdier than his work—and thus, a novel he might have loved.”
–Alexander Chee

Lee Cole, Fulfillment
(Vintage)

“Ominous encounters, star-crossed lovers, rifts between red and blue America, flawless prose: Fulfillment expands on themes and technique laid down in Groundskeeping….Is our nation too big to fail, or is it failing because we’re too big, a vastness corralled into social networks? This is the urgent question Cole poses, his brilliant book more than a tale of a small-town adultery and its consequences….Don’t look now, but a colossal literary career is sneaking in under the radar.”
–The Washington Post

Amber Oliver, When the Music Hits
(Ballantine Books)

“Amber Oliver cues up The Devil Wears Prada for the music industry in her incisive debut….Oliver adroitly tackles ethical issues about capitalism and race, and conveys an infectious passion for music….[S]natch this up.”
–Publishers Weekly

Geoff Dyer, Homework: A Memoir
(Picador)

“Dyer is wonderful on the strangeness of remembering itself….Homework records the kinds of memories we all have—first sip of beer, first fight, first sexual encounter—but also the vividly remembered oddities . . . [Dyer] could not yet know that the career his education would make possible meant he would join a branch of British writers running from Thomas Hardy to Zadie Smith, a lineage of outsider autodidacts who revitalized the prim English novel. Dyer’s memoir deftly captures this transformation, one both unlikely and inevitable.”
–The New York Times Book Review

Melissa Febos, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex
(Vintage)

“The Dry Season will be called a book about abstinence, about celibacy, but it’s so much more than that. This is a book about obsession, compulsion, about self and self-lessness, about sex and love and art and faith and the capacity of each to swallow us whole, to obliterate us, make us anew alit with our history instead of engulfed by it….The Dry Season is about reenchanting oneself with the world. It’s the best book yet by one of contemporary non-fiction’s lodestars.”
–Kaveh Akbar

Justin Hocking, A Field Guide to the Subterranean: A Memoir: Reclaiming the Deep Earth and Our Deepest Selves
(Counterpoint)

“A Field Guide to the Subterranean digs deeply down into the earth with powerful questions about who we are and what we’ve made with our time on the planet. Justin Hocking has created a profound geological journey of the soul, unearthing wisdom about masculinity, the colonization of land and people, and the possibility that we might recover our own hearts if we are willing to be in intimate relationship to the non-human world. A geo love song.”
–Lidia Yuknavitch

Jiaming Tang, Cinema Love
(Dutton)

“Lush, romantic, daring, and filled with indelible characters, Cinema Love is not just an extraordinary debut, but a future classic. In this story of forbidden queer love and the cost of secrets, Jiaming Tang gives voice, humanity, and dignity to people so often rendered invisible by society. Here, Chinese laborers, factory workers, seamstresses, nail technicians, and cooks take glorious center stage, their lives and deepest yearnings made epic. I absolutely loved this book.”
–Jessamine Chan

Dennard Dale, How to Dodge a Cannonball
(Holt)

“Here is an author capturing, with clarity, our current moment by flashing us back to the past. Dayle’s deft portrayal of American anti-Blackness, class exploitation and cultural uncertainty feels both accurate to the novel’s nineteenth-century setting and, soberingly, very contemporary​.​…It takes an author of rare and exceptional talent to deliver such a knockout punch. Which is why How to Dodge a Cannonball establishes Dennard Dayle as a new heavyweight in town.”
–Mat Johnson

Irenosen Okojie, Curandera
(Soft Skull Press)

“Irenosen Okojie conjures a mesmerizing, time bending tour de force, full of intoxicating magic and intrigue. I was hooked from the first page.”
–Blitz Bazawule

Nora Princiotti, Hit Girls: Britney, Taylor, Beyonce, and the Women Who Built Pop’s Shiniest Decade
(Ballantine Books)

“Throughout Hit Girls, Nora Princiotti writes with the deep knowledge of a modern pop expert, the passion of a superfan who you dream of sitting next to at an arena show, and the personal touch of a writer unafraid to reveal pieces of herself within a cultural exploration. This book combines thoughtful analysis with a sharp ear and an open heart. Pop fans who grew up in the 2000s, rejoice—we’ve got a defining text.”
–Jason Lipshutz

Catherine Lacey, The Möbius Book
(Picador)

“Much like the mystifying topological form that graces its cover, The Möbius Book is a narrative forged by tying two different ends of looking at something with a twist….There’s really no wrong way to go here. Come for the novelty of its format, and stay for a compelling hybrid of memoir and novel with no real end.”
–Kat Chen

Susan San, Big Girls Don’t Cry: A Memoir About Taking Up Space
(Beacon Press)

“Speaking as a fellow oddball, I think that this is the best book about coming to terms with your differences from the norm (especially for women), that I’ve read. It’s insightful, honest, and adept. Definitely, one of a kind.”
–Jane Smiley

André Aciman, Room on the Sea: Three Novellas
(Picador)

“A triptych of novellas rooted in the same sweetly painful intimacies. The three stories collected in Room on the Sea all concern the kinds of quiet, complex love that refuse to fit neatly on a greeting card.”
–NPR

Lydi Conklin, Songs of No Provenance
(Catapult)

“Thrilling and utterly engrossing, this is an extraordinary debut from a writer endlessly astute about shame, harm, the possibility of repair, and the complexities of ambition. Reading Songs of No Provenance, I thought of D.W. Winnicott saying, ‘It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found.’ Conklin’s novel helps light paths to lead readers out of hiding.”
–R.O. Kwon

Vaishnavi Patel, Ten Incarnations of Rebellion
(Ballantine Books)

“An epic and frighteningly plausible work of historical fiction….Patel’s novel is a truly top-tier story of a people’s rebellion built from the ground up. The author closely examines the path to India’s independence and the anguish caused by British colonialism, the effects of which are still felt today, and she doesn’t hold back.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?
(Norton)

“A rich and visionary work of immense beauty. Rarely does a book hold such power, passion, and poetry in its exploration of nature. Read this to feel inspired, moved and, ultimately, alive with the world.”
–Elif Shafak

Sara Kehaulani Goo, Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai’i
(Flatiron Books)

“In her riveting memoir, Kuleana, journalist Sara Kehaulani Goo tells us more about the difficult past of one of the most beautiful places on earth than any history book can conjure. In it, a Native Hawaiian family struggles to reclaim the ancestral lands that colonization, tourism, and rampant development threaten to overrun. A veteran reporter, Sara plumbs every aspect of this story, spooling an engrossing narrative that informs as much as it engages…chilling and inspirational.”
–Marie Arana

Mary Annette Pember, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools
(Vintage)

“Elegantly weaving together her mother’s stories, those of other boarding school students, and concise accounts of federal assimilationist policies and common institutional practices, [Pember] provides an informed and unsettling perspective on the schools’ individual and collective impact….A gripping, often harrowing account of the personal and communal toll of cultural genocide.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Peter Mendelsund, Weepers
(Picador)

“Mendelsund suffuses his meditation on performative grief with inspired stylistic flourishes, evoking the cadences of Donald Antrim and the baroque drama of Flannery O’Connor. As the story builds toward a violent showdown between the mourners and the town, the reader will be entranced by its surreal language and bizarre logic. This is astonishing.”
–Publishers Weekly

Fran Littlewood, The Accidental Favorite
(Holt)

“Fran writes like a wilder, more breathless Claire Lombardo….A huge talent. Set over the course of a family reunion that goes very wrong, The Accidental Favorite is a layered, textured story about the reverberations of the past and secrets in a family, and a psychologically astute look at love and relationships. It’s wonderful and very funny. You’re in for such a treat.”
–Georgina Moore

Adam Roberts, Food Person
(Vintage)

“Food Person is a debut that’s about as perfect as they come. Roberts takes everything you think you know about the food world and turns it on its head, whipping up a hilarious and slyly moving novel about ambition, friendship, and soufflés gone awry. Get ready for a riotous, delicious romp.”
–Grant Ginder

Perry Anderson, Disputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War
(Verso)

“Perry Anderson is one of Britain’s most brilliant historians, a penetrating political analyst and a vigorous intellectual combatant. Hence, it’s no surprise that Disputing Disaster, his discussion of the history wars over the origins of World War I, is a lively and fascinating read.”
–Arts Fuse

Caroline Fraser, Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
(Penguin)

“[Fraser] is such a gifted writer. Reading her prose can be like skiing powder snow on a perfect day….Fraser’s book works best as a literary theme—crimes of industry choking the life out of the natural world, spawning crimes of the heart….The people who got rich off the poisons walked away unscathed, their names now kept alive in art museums and foundations. Though it’s an old story, maybe even uniquely American, it is still one worth repeating.”
–The New York Times Book Review

Hito Steyerl, Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat
(Verso)

“A Dante-esque journey through the roaring inferno of twenty-first-century visual culture. With the world’s most astute observer as our guide, we move through a strange underworld of images that have become statistical, operational, thermal, perverse, boring, and deadly. Absolutely essential.”
–Trevor Paglen

John Cassidy, Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI
(Picador)

“[A] magisterial new study….Is the primary problem with free markets moral, economic or both? Is technology intrinsically bad, or can it be harnessed for progressive ends? Do markets rely on imperialistic expansion, or can domestic consumers sustain them? Is capitalism destined to tear itself apart, or can it weather the downturns it invariably induces? . . . Cassidy does not answer these questions, but his rewarding book provides an impressively lucid guide to a fascinating array of attempts to do so.”
–The Washington Post