The best beach reads for summer 2025

Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine Books)The phenomenally popular author of “Malibu Rising” and “Daisy Jones and the Six” returns with another novel, once again focused on an ambitious female protagonist and with nods to recent history.In the early 1980s, Joan Goodwin was thrilled to be chosen for NASA’s space shuttle program.

But her space dreams confront harsh realities when a rocket mission with her love interest aboard goes very wrong.June 3Camilla Sten (Minotaur Books)Four childhood girlfriends meet up every year on a remote Swedish island for a night of fun — until, one year when they mysteriously disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.

A decade later, a struggling true-crime podcaster is intent on finding out what happened to the women, and she plans a bachelorette party for her best friend with eerie similarities to the missing women’s getaway. June 10.V.E.

Schwab (Tor Books)The author of the acclaimed “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” has written a gothic novel about three women vampires whose stories span five centuries as they reckon with their anger and appetites.June 10.Chris Pavone (MCD)Drama unfolds both inside and just outside a tony bourgeois-bohemian Manhattan apartment building as the city explodes into race riots after police kill a black man.

Beloved doorman Chicky Diaz finds himself carrying a gun to work.Out now.Lisa Jewell (Atria Books)When Ash’s widowed mother, Nina, starts dating a charming man named Nick, he seems too good to be true — and he is.

In the next town over, Martha, a florist with a new baby, begins wondering why her once-devoted husband has been traveling so much for work of late.The three women’s paths cross as they learn dark, dangerous truths about Nick in the latest thriller from the bestselling author.

June 24.Brad Thor July 1 (Atria/Emily Bestler Book)In the 24th Scot Harvath book, the Navy SEAL-turned-spy wrestles with a new administration and a major conspiracy that has far-reach...