What We’re Reading July 2025

Author:
Fredrik Backman

Most people don’t even notice them-three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures. Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care.

Author:
Ashley Schumacher

Raised in the ren faire circuit, seventeen-year-old Madeline is grieving the loss of her mother when she meets Arthur, the son of the faire’s new owners, who encourages her to go on adventures, take chances, and enjoy life. Since her mother’s death, Madeline “Gwen” Hathaway has been determined that nothing in her life will change ever again. She keeps extensive lists in journals, has had only one friend since childhood, and looks forward to the monotony of working the ren faire circuit with her father. They arrive at the end-of-tour stop to find the faire is under new management and completely changed. Arthur, the son of the new owners and an actual lute-playing bard, messes up Maddie’s plans even more. When he ropes her into becoming Princess of the Faire, Maddie is overseeing a faire dramatically changed from what her mother loved– and worse of all, she’s kind of having fun.

Author:
Jeff Lemire

Ten years after planet-sized robots called Harvesters appeared and wreaked havoc across the galaxy, a young robot named TIM-21 wakes to find that all robots have been outlawed. But TIM may hold the secrets to the Harvesters in his machine DNA and he quickly becomes the most wanted robot in the universe. With bounty hunters and threats lurking at every turn, TIM embarks on a mind-blowing adventure through the stars along with his robot dog, Bandit, and the lumbering mining droid, Driller.

Author:
Stephen Graham Jones

“Peter Straub’s Ghost Story meets Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies in this American Indian horror story of revenge on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Four American Indian men from the Blackfeet Nation, who were childhood friends, find themselves in a desperate struggle for their lives, against an entity that wants to exact revenge upon them for what they did during an elk hunt ten years earlier by killing them, their families, and friends.” — Provided by publisher.

Author:
Callie Hart

Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen’s reservoirs for as long as she can remember. In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn’t much a girl wouldn’t do for a glass of water. But a secret is like a knot. Sooner or later, it is bound to come undone. When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently reopens a gateway between realms and is transported to a land of ice and snow. The Fae have always been the stuff of myth, of legend, of nightmares…but it turns out they’re real, and Saeris has landed right in the middle of a centuries-long conflict that might just get her killed.