12 Books I Can’t Wait to Read in June

Parallel narratives trace a centuries-long legacy of missing child cases in Oklahoma in the latest from Lisa Wingate (Before We Were Yours). In 1909, 11-year-old Ollie knows that her stepfather's intentions toward the two Choctaw girls living with them aren't pure. When the older girl disappears, Ollie flees to the woods with the younger, 6-year-old Nessa. The two form an unlikely band with others like themselves, struggling to outrun those who want to harm them. Decades later, in 1990, park ranger Val is faced with local controversy, a missing teenage hiker and the long-hidden burial site of three children unearthed in a cave. Val finds an ally in the neighboring Choctaw Tribal Police, but soon collides with local secrets and the tragic and deadly history of the land.

You might know Nicola Yoon as the best-selling author of books like The Sun Is Also a Star and Everything, Everything. Her latest centers on Jasmyn and King Williams, who move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California, in search of a community of like-minded people. King settles in right away, while Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find social justice activists striving for racial equality, but instead she encounters residents who seem more focused on ignoring the world’s troubles. When Jasmyn discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders, the truth threatens to destroy her world in ways she never could have imagined.

You’re probably aware of the ethical problems with fast fashion, from sketchy labor practices to lax environmental standards, but what about the dangerous effects your clothes are having on your own health? In To Dye For, journalist Alden Wicker (whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue and ore) dives deep into the unregulated toxic chemicals that are likely in your wardrobe right now, how they’re harming you and what you can do about it. For example, did you know that, to this day, there’s little to no regulation of the clothes and textiles we wear? Wicker explains how we got here and what we can do in the fight for a safe and healthy wardrobe.

With page-turners like The House Across the Lake and Final Girls, Riley Sager has established himself as a master of the thriller. In Middle of the Night, a man faces the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend. One July night, 10-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent on the lawn of a quiet New Jersey cul-de-sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had taken Billy. Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home, where he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors. But the closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that nowhere is completely safe—and the past has a way of haunting the present.

Did you know that dreaming is one of the most deeply misunderstood functions of the human brain? In This Is Why You Dream, dual-trained neuroscientist and neurosurgeon Dr. Rahul Jandial shows why humans have retained the ability to dream across millennia and how we can now harness its wondrous powers in both our sleeping and waking lives. Tracing recent cutting-edge research, Dr. Jandial shows how to use lucid dreaming to practice real-life skills, how to rewrite nightmares and what our dreams reveal about our deepest desires.

When Jon Stewart praises a book as “f*cking great!!! Raw, intimate, hilarious, actually inspiring,” we’re ordering a copy immediately. In this memoir-in-essays, comedian, screenwriter and podcaster Chelsea Devantez writes about her tumultuous upbringing and career path into Hollywood, from the time she tried to break her three-year spell of celibacy using a guide of seduction tips to getting sentenced to the “hell hill” at Mormon church camp. Centering each story around a different woman who shaped her life, Devantez’s debut feels like when your funniest friend covertly whispers, “I really shouldn’t say this, but…”

$28 at Amazon

Dating often sucks, and in Thank You, More Please, dating coach Lily Womble argues that it’s largely the patriarchy has royally screwed up how we find love. That’s why she’s written a feminist guide to navigating the perils and pitfalls of modern dating, flipping patriarchal dating on its head and challenging you to ask for and get what you want. From learning how to ditch self-blamey, rigid dating advice and starting trusting your gut to embracing and celebrating your singleness, this is a funny, no-BS guide to finding love exactly as you are.

$27 at Amazon

It’s a classic tale: woman whose professional life is in perfect order has a mess of a romantic one. In this sweet novel from the bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script, Ali is a professional organizer whose own life is anything but together. Her mom died two years ago, her husband left and she hasn’t worn pants with a zipper in longer than she cares to remember. Ali surprises herself, then, when the first time she takes off her wedding ring and puts on “hard” pants, she meets someone. Someone who looks at her like she’s the best version of herself. The last thing this newly single mom needs is to make her life messier, but a little summer romance can’t hurt, right?

Journalist Mike De Socio (Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Guardian) weaves in his own experience as a scout in Morally Straight, a fascinating history of the American LGBTQ+ rights movement through the lens of the Boy Scouts. De Socio introduces James Dale, the poster child of Scouting who took his fight for inclusion to the Supreme Court; Jennifer Tyrrell, the lesbian den mother whose expulsion from the Scouts reignited the gay membership controversy; and other pivotal Scouters who played roles in the fight for full inclusion. Regardless of your childhood involvement in scouting, it’s an eye-opening and poignant narrative.

A teen girl is thrust into pop superstardom in the late ‘90s in this coming-of-age novel that Emma Straub calls a “sexy swagger of a debut.” It’s 1997, and Amber Young has received a life-changing call: the opportunity to join a girl group in Los Angeles and escape her small town. But as Amber embarks on a solo career and her fame intensifies, she finds herself surrounded by people who claim to love her but only wish to exploit her. Honey will make you rethink what you know about some of the most famous pop icons of the ’90s and 2000s and reimagines the superstars we idolized, oversexualized and underestimated.

After years of racing up the corporate ladder, writer and podcaster Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success one strives for on a vision board: a C-suite dream job, a well-received book and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on ‘making it.’ At home, she had a husband and a precocious child. But beneath the surface, she was struggling with unresolved trauma and chronic overwork. In her new memoir, Romolini explores workaholism and the addictive nature of achievement, the lingering effect of childhood trauma and more. As it deconstructs the American Dream, Ambition Monster is perfect for people pleasers, overachievers and anyone whose trauma has driven them to push for success no matter the cost.

Poet, filmmaker and artist Anna Goodman Herrick survived sexual assault in her teens by a classmate, and left home at 14. The grandchild of an Auschwitz survivor, she’s been a New York City club kid, writer-producer at MTV, nun at a Vedanta convent and student of Chassidic rabbis. The poems in A Speaker Is a Wildnerness weave Jewish sacred texts, mysticism and more to address the interconnection of individual, communal and global trauma, towards collective liberation and radical love.