Releasing this July we have the final installment of Colson Whitehead\u2019s Harlem Trilogy and the first ever short story collection from the wonderful Sigrid Nunez. Enjoy 5 Amazing New Books for July 2026.<\/p>\n
This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | Abebooks<\/a><\/p>\n Across the border from Oakfield, Massachusetts, the setting of Daniel Mason\u2019s North Woods, sits the college town of Greensbury, Vermont, where a young family arrives one summer day from California for an idyllic year in the country. There is Miles, a loveable if highly distractible scholar of Russian folktales who has been \u201cworking\u201d on his dissertation for fourteen years; Kate, his wife, a superstar English professor whose ambition is fueled by a brush with serious illness (and managing her hapless husband); their fantasy-loving son Wesley; their artist daughter Olive; and their dog, Giuseppe, a truffle-hunting master of excavation in a land with no truffles.<\/p>\n Over the course of the year, as Kate introduces her students to the pleasures of Milton and Blake, Miles will make no progress on Russian folktales, but will, through what Kate calls his \u201ccapacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere,\u201d gain entr\u00e9e into a world with a mystery of its own, a place not only of immense natural beauty and unforgettable neighbors, but also a bizarre, even ridiculous, local legend, which \u2013 Miles begins to wonder \u2013 might not be a legend after all.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | Abebooks<\/a><\/p>\n Over the course of thirty years, Sigrid Nunez has become one of contemporary fiction\u2019s most distinctive voices, producing nine penetrating, profound novels celebrated by fans and critics alike. Revered for their warm, unadorned style, Nunez\u2019s books are \u201cas sophisticated as they are straightforward\u201d (New York Times Magazine), melding a \u201cwry, withering wit\u201d (NPR) with \u201cexplosions of pathos\u201d (Washington Post) to conjure \u201cworld[s] of insight into death, grief, art, and love\u201d (Wall Street Journal).<\/p>\n But she has not, until now, produced a book of stories. In It Will Come Back to You, Nunez brings together thirteen of her best stories from the decades-long sweep of her career, tracing the origins of her style and her remarkable artistic range. Moving from the momentous to the mundane, Nunez maintains her expert balance between gravity and levity while probing the philosophical questions that illuminate her work.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | Abebooks<\/a><\/p>\n 1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner\/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture\u2019s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won\u2019t give his beloved wife, Elizabeth, a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.<\/p>\n 1983. To some, Carney\u2019s friend and partner in crime Pepper is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he\u2019s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth, he\u2019s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you\u2019re uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence \u2013 Pepper is a native speaker.<\/p>\n 1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie\u2019s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie\u2019s son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he\u2019s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.<\/p>\n With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination,\u00a0Cool Machine<\/em>\u00a0roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to Sugar Hill, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead\u2019s vivid characters, it\u2019s what\u2019s below the surface that reveals the truth.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | Abebooks<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cElisa left with Camilo.\u201d \u201cCamilo took her out of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n These are the text messages Nina receives while living in the storage room of a university in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where she\u2019s cleaning houses to make money to send back home.<\/p>\n Home is 4,500 miles away, in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where the water never runs on Mondays and there\u2019s yet another blackout. Where a trip to the grocery store costs 220 times the minimum wage.<\/p>\n Home is Elisa, her thirteen-year-old daughter, who loves to run around the house and belt out Queen\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Stop Me Now.\u201d Who should be growing, when instead her waist is shrinking. Home is Graciela, Nina\u2019s mother, who lately stays shut up in her room all day talking with her dead, most urgently her beloved husband, Ra\u00fal (who\u2019s just as eager to talk back from the grave).<\/p>\n And what the hell does Camilo think he\u2019s doing now, stealing off with their daughter to the United States of America\u2014the one place Nina most assuredly never wants to call home?<\/p>\n Narrated through the voices of Nina and her family, and through the voice of her treacherous ex, Camilo,\u00a0The Winds of Maracaibo<\/em>\u00a0is the heart-racing tale of a mother fighting to get her daughter back across the border, at any cost\u2014a brave and furious reversal of the American Dream and an ode to the Venezuelan women who gave their blood, sweat, and tears to a nation dismantled by the egos of men.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | Abebooks<\/a><\/p>\n Travis is Death in the modern world. He lives with his cat in a small, gray town. His job is to offer people comfort in their final hours of life, which he does without complaint or judgement. He\u2019s stoic, gentle, and a little naive, despite who he is, but he never tries to change anyone\u2019s fate. He is responsible for maintaining the balance of nature, and every life must eventually end.<\/p>\n Then Travis meets Dalia, a midwife, and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter Layla, who live across the hall, and despite his best attempts to keep his distance, he finds himself wholeheartedly embraced by other people for the first time. So it is with this seemingly unremarkable family that Travis begins to understand what it means to be truly alive\u2014and what might be irrevocably lost in death.<\/p>\n Written with radiant warmth, wisdom, and compassion, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt is a timeless and ultimately uplifting story about appreciating life, accepting its end, and finding our place in the universe\u2014especially when it feels most impossible\u2014that will resonate with anyone who has ever loved and lost or worried about time\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n5 Amazing New Books for July 2026<\/h2>\n
Country People by Daniel Mason<\/h2>\n
It Will Come Back to You by Sigrid Nunez<\/h2>\n
Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead<\/h2>\n
The Winds of Maracaibol by Mar\u00eda Elena Mor\u00e1n<\/h2>\n
Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves<\/h2>\n