Fiction Five: Hot new releases for summer reading

With dozens of popular new titles releasing every month, it’s easy for some noteworthy books to slip on by. This month I’m highlighting five new novels that may not have received as much pre-publication attention. While they may not be on your reading radar yet, you won’t want to miss these stories.

Culpability by Bruce Holsinger

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, killing an elderly couple, 17-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of AI, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret that implicates them all in the tragic accident.

During a week long recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions there is a darker truth behind the incident. His suspicions are heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenage daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

“Culpability is a thought-provoking and riveting meditation on family, parental love, morality and artificial intelligence—and where they all intersect. A wise, propulsive, and deeply powerful novel.” — Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me

If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard

Around the time of the release of Hannah Pittard’s third novel, she learned her husband had cheated on her with her best friend. Her fifth book, We Are Too Many, chronicled this experience and the fallout from it. Pittard’s now ex responded with his debut, an auto-fictional account providing his perspective of the same events. Adding another chapter to this live dramatic literary conflict, Pittard has now replied with her own tongue-in-cheek auto-fictional narrative If You Love It, Let It Kill You.

Divorced and childless by choice, Hana P. has built a cozy life in Lexington, Kentucky, teaching at the university, living with her boyfriend and helping raise his pre-teen daughter. Her sister’s sprawling family lives just across the street. Her long-divorced, deeply-complicated parents have also recently moved to town.

One day Hana learns an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently in her ex-husband’s debut novel. For a week her life continues largely unaffected by the news, but one morning she wakes up changed. The contentment she’s long enjoyed is gone. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues featuring a talking cat, a visit to the dean’s office, a shadowy figure from the past, a Greek chorus of indignant students whose primary complaints concern Hana’s auto-fictional narrative, and a game called Dead Body.

“I loved this book. It’s exquisitely sharp, very funny, moving, and strange in the best possible way.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, New York Times bestselling author of Station Eleven

Her Many Faces by Nicci Cloke

When four wealthy and influential members are poisoned at London’s most exclusive private club, a young waitress is arrested. As her personal life and upbringing are picked over, her obsession with online conspiracy theories is exposed.

After the murder accusation, five men begin to question how well they really knew her. To each of them — her father, a reporter, her former lover, her friend and her lawyer — she is someone entirely different. But which is the true face of Katherine Cole? Is she a killer?

The truth about who Katherine is and what exactly she has done lies somewhere between these five male perspectives. The searing laser of the male gaze has never been more dangerous, as Katherine’s trial grips the nation and theories and perceptions about her spiral out of control.

What follows is a chilling kaleidoscope of a thriller. It's both a smart courtroom drama and a frightening examination of how one woman can be so ruthlessly deconstructed by the men who know her best. What happens when she decides to speak out at last?

“I devoured this brilliant book. What a joy to read something so original, thrilling and utterly addictive. I loved it." — Alice Feeney, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ugly

Matchmaking for Psychopaths by Tasha Coryell

Alexandra (Alex) is on the verge of achieving her dreams. Her career as a matchmaker for psychopaths is taking off. She has a beautiful home and has discovered love in the arms of her gorgeous boyfriend.

Alex is floored when she arrives at her birthday dinner with her boyfriend, expecting a ring in a little box, and instead finding her best friend at the table. Her boyfriend and best friend have news. They're together now.

Suddenly, Alex's world implodes. She has lost the two people in the world closest to her. She's utterly alone, her future in pieces. When she unexpectedly bumps into a client, Rebecca, and Rebecca seems to want to be friends, it feels like a lifeline.

Then Alex's now ex turns up dead and more people around her seem to be dropping like flies. She can't help but wonder if this new friendship is a match made in hell.

" jaunty mashup of rom-com and serial killer thriller ... adventurous readers and fans of Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series will enjoy this twisted romp.” — Publishers Weekly

Archive of Unknown Universes by Ruben Reyes Jr.

Cambridge, 2018. Ana and Luis’s relationship is on the rocks, despite their many similarities, including their mothers who both fled El Salvador during the war. In her search for answers and against her best judgment Ana uses The Defractor, an experimental device that allows users to peek into alternate versions of their lives. What she sees leads her and Luis on a quest through Havana and San Salvador to uncover the family histories they are desperate to know. They are eager to learn if what might have been could fix what is.

Havana, 1978. The Salvadoran War is brewing and Neto, a young revolutionary with a knack for forging government papers, meets Rafael at a meeting for the People's Revolutionary Army. The two form an intense and forbidden love, shedding their fake names and revealing themselves to each other inside the covert world of their activism. When their work separates them, they begin to exchange weekly letters. As the devastating war rages on forces beyond their control threaten to pull them apart forever.

Ruben Reyes Jr.’s debut novel is an epic, genre-bending journey through inverted worlds. One where war ends with a peace treaty and one where it ends with a decisive victory by the Salvadoran government. What unfolds is a stunning story of displacement and belonging, of loss and love. It’s both a daring imagining of what might have been and a powerful reckoning of our past.

"Pitch-perfect dialogue, propulsive prose, fast-paced flashbacks, and epistolary interludes.... A gripping family history with a fresh speculative edge and timely resonances with the currently unfolding timeline." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)