Is there anything more satisfying than warm sunshine and narratives about wealthy people who are utterly miserable? This page-turning saga is a cleverly plotted, Rashomon-like, Russian nesting doll of a novel, with eccentric moguls worthy of Succession, and has a heartless powerful Manhattan financier and philanthropist at its heart. It’s a shrewd novel of tricks, snobbery and several unreliable narrations that only a Pulitzer Prize finalist could pull off.

This novel doesn’t need a push from us – it’s already the June selection for the Barnes & Noble Book Club and Amazon Books’ just-launched monthly group. But we’re recommending the latest from Kentucky-based homemaker (who Roxane Gay calls “a consummate storyteller’) anyway. The story of a middle-aged woman, who – after her husband’s betrayal – relocates to Paris for a fairytale year of European pleasures while reassessing her life, scratches the itch for both wanderlust and wish fulfillment.

Set around a crowded reading room table at the Boston Public Library, this Australian lawyer-turned-writer’s metafictional romp is easily the most satisfying mystery-within-a-mystery of the year. It’s structured as chapters of a novel by, and about, a mystery writer, who’s swapping draft notes with her assistant proofreader from afar when a real homicide (or is it?) takes place. As everyone present becomes a suspect, asides in the margins of their correspondence address pandemic precarity, the unhoused, racial inquality – and whodunit.

The New York Times bestselling author of many page-to-screen novels, including HBO’s The Undoing with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, is back with another multigenerational character study about – what else? – a rich but dysfunctional New York family. The IVF-conceived Oppenheimer triplets and their parents don’t like one another much, and that is exacerbated when they go off to college, and their lonely mother opts to have another child with the spare fourth embryo. The slow-paced novel grapples with the challenges of their campus lives and balances the drama happening at home, across three timelines.

Here’s a cure for Bridgerton withdrawal. Step 1: see Mr. Malcolm’s List (in cinemas July 1), the Jane Austen-inspired comedy with colour-blind casting and racially blended aristocratic families about the upper-class mating rituals of Regency-era England. Step 2: Stretch out on the chaise lounge with this delightful comedy of manners, a debut by a former assistant publishing editor that’s a whirl of high-stakes scheming social climbers and barbed bon mots. (July 12)

The Swiss-American’s novel was fresh in my mind when a 1955 Mercedes-Benz sold for a record-setting US$143 million at auction in the spring, because the similar sale of a rare 1963 Ferrari is what sets his breathless thriller in motion. It’s a classic premise: suave private spy Simon Riske (i.e. Cary Grant, if he’d been 007) follows the money. But Reich’s execution is equal parts Bond and Bourne, by way of filmmaker Guy Ritchie’s self-consciously slick aesthetic. The prose’s action is vivid and so are the Russian oligarch henchmen, and it all hinges on suspenseful forensic accounting (yes, really) as Riske gallivants from California to Switzerland, Sardinia and Corsica, with the help of a deftly purloined American Express Black Card and untraceable operatives over WhatsApp. I don’t know how I missed this fantastic series before, and although it totally works as a standalone, I’ll be reading the rest this summer.

A mysterious and reclusive bestselling author dies, leaving her house cleaner to dispose of her extensive library. The will’s other proviso is a bigger ask: Liv, the maid (and aspiring writer), is also required to complete her final manuscript. This uplifting dive into the writing life – by an English author whose stories have been made into Hallmark movies – is peppered with both hope and literary references. It’s the stuff bibliophile dreams are made of, and will leave you grinning. (June 28)

This sultry novel follows Feyi, a young widow, as she gets back into the dating (and hookup) scene. The queer Black woman’s search for healing from grief and trauma takes her on a complicated whirlwind romance from New York to the Caribbean, where Nigerian author Emezi (The Death of Vivek Oji) is especially alive to the particulars and healing rhythms of island culture. A vein of melancholy courses through it and keeps it grounded, but fair warning: You’ll need a cool dip or two while reading this explicit, sex-positive romance.

This charmer unexpectedly disarmed my baseline cynicism. As Esme dog-sits for a high-powered woman (with a Carrie-worthy walk-in closet), each chapter takes her on an excursion around New York in a different pair of designer shoes (Chapter Five: The Lanvin Black Patent Leather Mary Janes). Underneath the American author’s fabulous descriptions of fabulous footwear is a heartwarming story about second chances at life and love, brought about by the unlikely cross-generational friendship between Esme (whose promising career was derailed by years of caring for her father) and nonagenarian Sy, the locally famous founder of a legendary New York deli.

The latest 33 1/3 title is for culture vultures short on concentration or simply craving something light to toss into the beach tote. Each book in the series goes behind the scenes of a single major album. Here, music journalist Horton delves into the making of Michael’s landmark Faith, after the singer took a risk leaving Wham! at 23, and the 1987 solo album went on to sell 25 million copies. Horton analyses song themes and critical response against the background of Thatcher-era British politics, but if this Gen X icon isn’t your jam, the series has previously turned its lens on Kraftwerk, Celine Dion, Neil Young and Donna Summer’s anthemic Once Upon a Time.