All this month we’re featuring a selection of fantastic summer reading selected by the experts at O: The Oprah Magazine. See more topics here.
Like all standout speculative fiction, these books use alternate realities as MacGuffins, telling tales about the present, the past, or eras that have yet to occur. In their visions of pandemics, fiscal crises, alternate histories, environmental disasters, and life-size sex dolls, you’ll discern a terrifying familiarity among the bizarre.
The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver (Harper)
In a Brooklyn soon to be, the upper-middle-class Mandible family copes with extreme water and food shortages, rampant homelessness, and an economy in meltdown. Tracing her characters’ varying responses to the emergency, Shriver deftly blends parable and satire with today’s headlines, creating a nightmarish world that looms just over our own horizon. Start Reading Now on B&N Readouts.
The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin (Ballantine)
In the explosive climax to Cronin’s best-selling Passage trilogy, a century-long vampiric siege has seemingly ended. But one monster lives on, determined to kill the young women who is humankind’s only hope. Start Reading Now on B&N Readouts.
The Swan Book Alexis Wright (Atria)
Set in a surreal Australia that melds myths and fairy tales with political and environmental tumult, Wright’s astonishingly inventive novel creates its own language and illuminates the embattled history of the Aborigines. Start Reading Now on B&N Readouts.
Some Possible Solutions: Stories by Helen Phillips (Holt)
Phillip’s gift is for making the peculiar seem like it’s happening down the street. A couple in crisis decides to formally bring in a Stepford wife-like third party; a woman inhabits a city where she keeps encountering doppelgängers. And just when you think you’re onto Phillips game, here comes another little fable, postmodernist puzzle or sly revelation. Start Reading Now on B&N Readouts.
Underground Airlines by Ben Winters (Mulholland Books)
An altered past in which the civil war was never fought and slavery was not fully abolished leads to the strange, modern universe in this genre-bending detective yarn, in which Victor, formerly a slave, works as a bounty hunter tracking a mysterious runaway. Start Reading Now on B&N Readouts.
The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan (Hogarth)
The eagerly awaited second novel from the author of “The Panopticon imagines an ice age in which Stella, a transgender preteen, must make sense of herself and the glacial entropy around her. Start Reading Now on B&N Readouts.
Looking for more inspirations for your summer reading? Explore more of The Best Books of Summer from the editors of O: The Oprah Magazine, in the B&N Review or in the pages of this month’s issue of O: The Oprah Magazine.
The Barnes & Noble Review http://ift.tt/29k4jF7
Sig Nordal 