9 Books Out This June to Get Stuck Into
Summer is officially here, and we’ve got a fresh stack of new reads to keep you company through long, lazy afternoons and golden hour commutes. This month’s picks are sharp, funny, and full of feeling – books that get under your skin and stay there long after the final page.
We’re obsessed with Thirst Trap by Gráinne O’Hare – a bold, biting debut that skewers online performance, female desire, and the strange, slippery rules of modern connection. Then there’s Pal Meridian, Grace Flahive’s surreal, razor-sharp novel about grief, identity, and the strangeness of living in your own skin. And if you like your heartbreak with a side of dark humour, The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp by Krystal Evans is your next must-read – a memoir that’s as tender as it is wildly funny.
Whether you’re in the mood to cry, laugh, or spiral a little bit (the good kind), these June releases are here to keep you company. Let’s dive in.
Palm Meridian
Out Now
It’s 2067 at Palm Meridian Retirement Resort, Florida, and the last day of Hannah’s life. Tomorrow, as the sun burns the dew off the lawns, she’ll close her eyes for the very last time.
But she won’t be going quietly. Tonight, Hannah’s throwing an end-of-life party: the drinks are on ice, and the palm trees are strung with lights beneath technicolour skies. And though Hannah has less than twenty-four hours left, she’s holding out for one last, impossible thing…
Amongst the guest list is Hannah’s long-lost love Sophie – the woman who Hannah can’t forget, even after forty years. Hannah has to give her greatest love one last try.
Soon, the party is in full swing. Hannah waits nervously, unaware that before her last ever dawn breaks, a devastating secret will come to light. If Sophie shows, how can Hannah say goodbye all over again? And is there enough time to fix the past?
Brimming with heart, and just as hilarious as it is heart breaking, Palm Meridian is a one-of-a kind novel that will stay with you forever. Grace & Frankie meets The Notebook, for fans of Malibu Rising, this bittersweet novel affirms that life is what we choose to make of it, and any story can be a love story, if you let it.
Thirst Trap
Out Now
Sometimes friends hold you together.
Sometimes they’re why you’re falling apart.
Maggie, Harley and Róise are friends on the brink: of triumph, catastrophe, or maybe just finally growing up. Their crumbling Belfast houseshare has been witness to their roaring twenties, filled with questionable one-night stands and ruthless hangovers. But now fault-lines are beginning to show.
The three girls are still grieving the tragic death of their friend, Lydia, whose room remains untouched. Their last big fight hangs heavy over their heads, unspoken since the accident. And now they are all beginning to unravel.
Empire Without End
Out Now
From the 1500s to the mid-twentieth century, the events that took place in the Caribbean – from conquest, colonisation and capitalism to racial slavery, revolution and migration – and the people who forged them played a seminal role in creating modern Britain and the Anglophone Caribbean. By the 1960s, Western global empires had begun to crumble. Yet the British Empire in the Caribbean did not end. Instead, colonialism was replaced with a new type of power whose impact can still be felt: neo-colonialism.
Empire Without End offers a new interpretation of the British Empire, its enduring entanglement with the Anglophone Caribbean and the longevity of systemic racism. Taking a longer historical perspective starting in the period of European contact with the Caribbean and ending today, Imaobong Umoren looks at the impact and legacies of racial slavery to explore how later linked histories relating to capitalism, class, labour, war, political economy, poverty, gender and culture are crucial to telling the full story. In doing so, she sets out a compelling strategy to define our roles and responsibilities in challenging the legacy of colonialism and hierarchy – a legacy that continues to blight our society and our politics.
The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp
Out Now
When Krystal Evans was 14, the house that she shared with her mother and little sister burned down. Narrowly escaping by breaking a window and jumping out head-first Krystal suffered burns, smoke inhalation, and the unimaginable tragedy of losing her sister. That Evans has written such a warm and disarmingly funny memoir about what led the family to that fatal night, and how they coped with its aftermath, is nothing less than astonishing.
This is a spellbinding story of growing up poor in America, living with a mentally ill mother, and having a wolf for a pet (really). From the indignities of being rejected from a summer camp for burn victims, to putting up with a succession of her mom's increasingly shady friends and partners, Krystal and Katie's childhoods were marked by adult chaos, inappropriate behaviour, and never knowing what the next day would bring.
But, writing with joy, skill and candour, we witness Krystal growing as a person from the ashes of disaster into the confident, funny, and (reasonably) well-hinged adult, mother and comedian that she is today.
At the same time, funny, tragic and inspiring, it is the story of a family dangerously close to the edge, and of a girl struggling to make her way into adulthood, once the smoke clears.
Awakened
Out Now
A hidden power. A sinister force. A mystery she can't ignore.
In a near-future London where technology affects everything from our bodies to our politics, journalist Pels Badmus wants to make a real difference. She's desperate to solve a spate of disappearances of young Black kids-including her friend's brother. But her boss doesn't want to hear it. Instead, he assigns her to cover the "unreasonable" protests thousands of miles away in Benin, against culturally oblivious tourists travelling to partake in sacred Spirit Vine rituals.
Pels soon finds herself in West Africa, ignoring her boss's motives in assigning her to this piece and hoping to use it as leverage later. She's also trying to ignore the strange, ethereal dreams she's been having...
However, when Pels takes the Spirit Vine herself, she experiences something mind-boggling. Something that points to an unfulfilled destiny that could change the course of her life. But first she must return home and confront an otherworldly conspiracy related to the missing children.
Because she may just be the only one able to stop it.
A bold imagining of our future through the lens of ancient spirituality, Awakened is a page-turning fable about a Black woman coming into her power, perfect for fans of N.K Jemisin and Netflix's Supacell.
Turn Yourself On
Out Now
Do you feel confident talking about your sexual needs? Is sex as pleasurable as you’d like? Do you ever get stuck in your head? Or maybe your desire’s dwindled…
If so, you’re not alone. Anna and Billie, creators of sexual wellbeing app Ferly, have helped over half a million women overcome these same challenges. Their debut book, Turn Yourself On, delves deeper, combining the latest science with their own intimate struggles to reveal 8 key principles that will not only help you have great sex – but a healthy, confident, and pleasurable life overall.
With 24 step-by-step tools for how you can feel more empowered in sex and in life, Turn Yourself On is a practical guide that will radically transform your relationship to sex. Rebellious, relatable and real talk, it takes you on the ultimate journey of self-discovery with the exact blueprint you need to feel more connected, to communicate more confidently, and ultimately, to enjoy sex – and life – like never before.
The Woman Who Laughed
Out Now
In the first months of 2020 there was a spate of murders of Black sex workers in northern cities. One of them was Ella Bailey, last seen talking to a punter in an alley in Sheffield city centre, and although no trace of her was ever found, the punter, Michael Godley, soon confessed to all three murders.
Five years later, as another sex worker is murdered in the same district, the bag Ella had been carrying with her reappears, hanging on the door handles of a café, and a local vagrant claims to have seen Ella sitting on a bench in a churchyard near the site of the murder. South Yorkshire Police call in the Finder.
So begins a search that takes him back to the strange days of the pandemic, to talk to those who knew Ella best, such as her wayward girlfriend ‘Loz’, abusive boyfriend Caine Poynton-Smith and respectable foster-parents still struggling to come to terms with Ella’s life. How did their intelligent, strong-willed daughter – bright student and national schoolgirl athletics champion – end up in that alley?
As fear grips the city, our Finder must court danger to discover the truth.
The Counting Game
Out Now
Into the woods.
Count to ten.
Only one of us comes home again.
1995, Ireland. Panic grips the village of Drumsuin when a teenage girl goes missing in the nearby forest.
Saoirse is not the first girl to disappear in those woods. And when it’s revealed she was playing the Counting Game that day – a ritual believed to ward off the forest’s evils – old superstitions send the community into turmoil.
One person saw what happened to Saoirse. But 9-year-old Jack won’t tell the Gardai. Freya, an English psychotherapist with her own history of grief, is brought in to help the investigators break his silence.
As the race to find Saoirse alive accelerates, can Freya make Jack talk? Why is he keeping the forest’s secrets? And who is hell bent on driving Freya out of Drumsuin before the truth is discovered?
The Counting Game is a deeply haunting, atmospheric and emotional mystery, from an unmissable new voice in Irish crime fiction, perfect for fans of Tana French, Erin Kelly and Belinda Bauer
When Sleeping Women Wake
Out Now
Hong Kong, 1941. Following the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the wealthy Tang family flee to Hong Kong.
As the First Wife of the family, Mingzhu leads a sheltered – if lonely – existence overseeing her daughter Qiang and managing the household alongside her devoted maid, Biyu.
But when the Japanese army invade, the three women are scattered. Mingzhu is coerced into working for a Japanese captain. Qiang and Biyu escape the island, only to be forced into factory work then separated after an encounter with the East River Column Resistance fighters.
The longer the brutal occupation lasts, the more determined the women are to resist. And as war rages around the world, each is holding onto the hope that the other is alive.
Beautifully told and compulsively written, When Sleeping Women Wake is an utterly transporting story of female resistance and untold bravery, at once epic and intimate, heart breaking and hopeful.
