Summer reading sounds simple enough, but everyone’s summer is different – and so is everyone’s ideal novel. Maybe you want heat (dragons!). Or maybe you want heat (cli-fi meltdown). So we’ve built a choose-your-own adventure: 10 summer moods, 10 ways to find the 2025 book that’ll keep you company, all ready for your beach bag.

The jet-lagged time traveller

You love multi-timeline epics, cross-continental narratives and characters swept up in strange tides of history and mythology. You don’t need to take a plane anywhere; literature is your passport.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
A Victorian polar explorer lands in modern London and becomes HR’s weirdest onboarding case. Romance, bureaucracy and cross-century chaos ensue in this wildly clever adventure.

Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory
When Anne Boleyn falls, her sister-in-law Jane becomes an unwilling courier of secrets in Henry VIII’s court. Suddenly, she’s dodging courtiers, crossing borders and trying not to get executed before supper.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
Two desperate PhD students plunge into the underworld to retrieve their missing supervisor and, more importantly, their letters of recommendation. A witty romp that skewers academia with all the subtlety of a vengeful Greek god.

A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose
From the vineyards of revolutionary France to colonial Tasmania, we follow Caroline Douglas as she crosses the world with a secret and a fierce desire
to start over. A sweeping novel of legacy, reinvention – and champagne (’tis the season!).

The big-feelings bather

You crave fiction that slips under your skin. Family histories, quiet reckonings and love in all its complicated forms. The kind of books that are emotionally tidal and will leave you rinsed, wrung out and spiritually exfoliated. You cry beautifully, ideally into a glass of rosé.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Joan Goodwin joins NASA’s second-ever astronaut cohort with women, and falls into a slow-burning sapphic love story just as a mission goes catastrophically wrong. Even gravity won’t pull this page‑turner away from you.

The Underworld by Sofie Laguna
A gorgeously melancholic novel about Martha, a classics-obsessed teen navigating loneliness, desire and the depths of her imagination. The Miles Franklin winner luminously captures boarding-school friendships, mythic fixations and the tumult of a private inner world.

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
A wonderfully Tyler-esque novel about a mother of the bride navigating job loss, wedding chaos, an ex-husband who turns up with a cat, and a secret that threatens everything else. Wise and warm.

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Nineteen-year-old Hai is about to jump from a bridge when he’s interrupted by Grazina, an elderly widow with slipping memory. Their unlikely friendship becomes a lifeline in a tender novel about second chances.

The introvert who needs a lie-down

You gravitate to stories that whisper rather than shout. Quiet, meditative books that trace a life from the inside, one pared-back sentence at a time – precise, observant, resonant.

Cure by Katherine Brabon
A mother and daughter share a chronic illness and travel to Italy chasing a promise of healing. Quiet and introspective, the story explores the body, illness, identity and the fragile spaces between them.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang
When Kyungha travels to South Korea’s Jeju to look after her friend’s pet bird, she confronts a historical national trauma that sits just beneath the island’s snow. This is the Nobel laureate whispering at full power.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
An expat couple perfects their Berlin aesthetic – plants, playlists, ennui – until the vibes crack. Minimal, elegant and gently savage about highly curated lives. Come for the coolness; stay for the existential crumble.

Flesh by David Szalay
A life unfolds in quiet shrugs and the word “OK”: work, desire, class, the body. The Booker Prize-winning novel follows Istvan, who we meet as a teen in Hungary, as he drifts through the decades of his life. An elegant read that packs a punch.

The sunburnt sleuth

There’s no time to rest when there are crimes to solve. You want twisty, pacy mysteries that keep your brain racing while your body stays horizontal.

Last One Out by Jane Harper
Five years after her son goes missing, Ro returns to Carralon Ridge, a town slipping into its own extinction. Harper’s gift for the rural psyche turns the novel into a study not just of loss, but of the delicate calculus of staying and leaving.

Clown Town by Mick Herron
The ninth novel in the Slough House series focuses on the consequences of operation Pitchfork, based on a real-life MI5 operation in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Political farce, corruption and lethal incompetence collide.

Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson
After being attacked by an unseen intruder, Jet is given one week to solve her own murder before she succumbs to an aneurysm. A strong adult debut from the multimillion-copy bestselling author of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

The Detective by Matthew Reilly
An earnest yet exacting private investigator is drawn into a century-plus-old mystery in the American South involving disappearing women and modern-day slavery. A pivot to crime for Reilly, but still expect non-stop action.

The sandy thrill-seeker

You want fiction that goes hard while you go nowhere – survival stories, pacy mysteries and high-quality literary thrillers. The kind of book you finish sunburnt because you forgot to reapply sunscreen.

The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
Robert Langdon is back, this time heading to Prague, where a colleague has vanished without a trace from her hotel room. It’s pure, breathless Dan Brown: ridiculous, relentless. Pack SPF – the plot burns fast.

Unfinished Business by Shankari Chandran
CIA agent Ellie Harper returns to Sri Lanka to investigate a journalist’s assassination, finding corruption, ghosts of a failed mission and a deadly political conspiracy. A morally tangled thriller.

The Crash by Freida McFadden
Pregnant and stranded in a Maine snowstorm, Tegan is “rescued” by
a couple whose cozy cabin quickly turns sinister. As the storm traps her, escape becomes a race for survival – and her baby.

Signs of Damage by Diana Reid
On a French holiday, 13-year-old Cass disappears for hours. Sixteen years later, a wedding, a fall, and Cass’s seizures drag the past back into brutal focus. A sleek, psychological mystery about the power of stories and memory’s lies.

The cult beachcomber

You want fiction that behaves like a bizarro artefact washed up on shore – off-kilter, impossible to categorise and alarming in the best way. The weirder the better.

Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle
A culinary fever dream about Kostya, a dead-end dishwasher who discovers he can taste the favourite foods of the departed. He rises through the New York restaurant industry, but his actions begin to threaten the stability of the afterlife.

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata
In a society where intimacy is taboo and children are engineered, Amane struggles to live a “normal life” that conforms to expectations. Murata pushes strangeness to a new, glorious extreme, exposing the cost of fitting in to the “factory” of modern life.

Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su
After discovering a sentient blob outside a nightclub, a lonely woman decides to sculpt him into the perfect partner. A deranged, funny love story about obsession, autonomy and the dangers of DIY romance. It shouldn’t work but does.

Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
In 1932 Milwaukee, detective Hicks McTaggart searches for a missing heiress and stumbles into bombings, fascists, cheese conspiracies and a cruise ship full of spies. A gloriously paranoid noir only Pynchon could conjure.

The New Yorker tote on hols

You packed your sunscreen and swimmers in a New Yorker tote you think no one else owns. You want fiction that wriggles out of categories, plays with the meta and gets suddenly profound on page 42.

Pan by Michael Clune
Fifteen-year-old Nicholas is convinced the god Pan has crawled into his panic disorder. With friends, drugs and a manipulative older teen drawing him into bizarre rituals, he spirals towards psychosis in this wild portrait of adolescence as occult terror and accelerated consciousness.

Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood
A writer loses her grip on reality after succumbing to COVID-19 in New York. Hilarious and deranged, the novel captures a creative mind short-circuiting with metaphors misbehaving, syntax boiling over and fiction pushed to its limits.

Audition by Katie Kitamura
An unnamed actress begins rehearsals in New York when Xavier, a stranger copying her gestures, asserts he’s her son. His presence destabilises every scene she enters – onstage and off. Then the novel restarts from a different angle, forging a gripping meditation on performance, identity and the void beneath coherence.

Endling by Maria Reva
Yeva’s mission to save Ukraine’s endangered snails collides with two sisters targeting the shady “romance tour” industry, sending them on a chaotic road trip with kidnapped bachelors. Midway, the narrative ends, shifting into a daring reflection on authorship, trauma and creating art as war reshapes everything.

The SPF-50 and smut reader

You want magic, danger and perhaps a romance hot enough to melt your bookmark. It’s warm outside, but your imaginative forecast is frankly unsafe.

The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
Diviner Sybil Delling reads every future except one: the heretic knight Rodrick. When fellow visionaries vanish, Sybil is forced into a perilous quest with the one man she shouldn’t desire. Gothic gods, cursed moors and scorching longing.

A Forbidden Alchemy by Stacey McEwan
Nina and Patrick learn young that Artisans aren’t born magical – they’re engineered. Years later, a rebellion reunites them on opposite sides, and they must choose between love and loyalty.

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
After 18 months at Basgiath, Violet Sorrengail finally faces real war. There are dragons at her back and enemies everywhere, and a relationship so spicy it should come with its own fire warning.

Alchemised by SenLinYu
Helena Marino wakes with missing memories, outlawed magic and a necromancer captor convinced she’s hiding a war-ending secret. There’s dark magic, as forbidden chemistry ignites.

The wild-world wanderer

You read to feel outdoorsy without actually going outside. You want fiction charged with elemental drama, the kind where reviewers solemnly declare “the landscape is a character”.

Isola by Allegra Goodman
Abandoned on a remote 16th-century island by a vengeful guardian, Marguerite and her forbidden lover face hunger, grief and a landscape that feels both holy and merciless. Goodman renders the wilderness so vividly you feel the cold bite your bones. An elemental story of endurance.

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
As climate-ravaged Kolkata collapses, Ma loses the visas that could save her family – stolen by Boomba, a desperate young man. Their lives collide in a tense, compassionate story of survival.

The Island of Last Things by Emma Sloley
On Alcatraz, now the world’s final zoo, introverted keeper Camille meets rebel newcomer Sailor, whose plan to smuggle animals to a secret sanctuary forces Camille to choose between safety and an audacious, life-risking escape.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Dominic Salt and his three children are the last inhabitants of Shearwater, an island guarding the world’s final seed vault. When a mysterious woman washes ashore, their refuge fractures. A wind-whipped thriller of survival and secrecy.

The holiday hot mess

You like fiction where modern life unravels stylishly, fuelled by longing, bad decisions and emotional honesty at inconvenient times.

I Want Everything by Dominic Amerena
A fame-hungry writer latches on to reclusive literary legend Brenda Shales, hoping to shortcut his way into relevance. Between selling his blood, envying his “Melbourne-famous” girlfriend and plotting a parasitic tell-all, he becomes the funniest disaster you’ll meet all summer.

Crush by Ada Calhoun
When her husband suggests she “sparkle” by kissing other men, an unnamed writer tumbles into an intense, brain-melting email affair with an old college crush. Soon she’s juggling two men, a collapsing marriage and a lot of philosophical sexts. A novel about desire blowing up your life.

Lonely Mouth by Jacqueline Maley
Half-sisters Matilda and Lara share an unstable past; one’s a lonely Sydney restaurant worker, the other’s a carefree Paris model. When their estranged father resurfaces, Matilda’s controlled life starts to spiral. A novel about hunger, body image and trying to feel worthy of love.

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor
A young black painter drifts through a sweltering New York summer in a haze of artistic burnout, tangled desires and self-sabotage, chasing “real life” in his work and in a romance with a former priest. It’s glorious, slow-burn disarray.

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