Books
Featuring Ruth Madievsky’s All Night Pharmacy, Joyce Carol Oates’ Zero-Sum, Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter, and more.
Another month, another fresh set of book releases to devour. See NYLON’s monthly reading list, ahead.
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter - Scribner, July 11
A haunting coming-of-age story set in a Silicon Valley startup hellscape. A young woman with a gnawing sense of dread has to figure out how far she’ll go for success — especially after she becomes pregnant — while her boss’ demands become increasingly less legal.
Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery - Bloomsbury, July 11
This coming-of-age story about a teenage girl working in Andy Warhol’s Factory as a transcriptionist in the 1960s is a gossip-filled, artistic romp through a turbulent era.
All Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky - Catapult, July 11
In this breathless fever dream of a novel, two sisters in Los Angeles share a bag of pills at a nightclub, causing one of them to commit an act of drugged-out violence — just before the other disappears, leaving one to figure out what happened. (Related: Ruth is very funny on Twitter.)
Hope by Andrew Ridker - Penguin Random House - July 11
A portrait of a tumultuous year in the life of a Jewish family in the suburbs of Boston in 2013. It takes us from Brookline to Berlin to Syria as a seemingly exceptional family undergoes a series of scandals — and ultimately, as the title suggests, finds hope.
Elsewhere by Yan Ge - Scribner, July 11
The English-language debut from celebrated author Yan Ge is a genre-bending short story collection that’s as haunting, dreamlike, and addictive as a melatonin-induced slumber. It’s got it all: poets, devastating earthquakes, college students who fall for their likely dead acquaintances, and Confucian scholars.
Excavations by Hannah Michell - Penguin Random House, July 11
Loosely based off of a tragic 1995 Sampoong department store collapse in Seoul, South Korea, Michell’s novel follows a former journalist-turned-stay-at-home mom who ventures into South Korea’s underbelly to find her missing husband in this gripping story of love and disaster.
Zero-Sum by Joyce Carol Oates - Knopf, July 18
Joyce Carol Oates, fresh off having her novel Blonde adapted into the Ana De Armas film, is back with a bewitching collection of speculative stories about women dealing with society and violence. We see a group of high school girls exact revenge on sexual predators; a philosophy student bent on seducing her philosopher mentor but finds herself outmaneuvered — all with quintessential Oates intrigue and mystery.
Counterweight by Djuna - Pantheon, July 11
For fans of A24 and Squid Game, this novel was originally conceived as a low-budget science fiction film. Part cyberpunk, part detective fiction, part parable of the effects of South Korea’s neocolonial ambition — it is quite the ride.
After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley - Knopf, July 11
Summer is the best time to read short stories — in between dips in the pool, pages dotted with sunscreen and popsicle juice. In this triumph of a collection about people and coincidences, tiny moments are big revelations: Two estranged sisters run into each other at a posh hotel and ignore each other; a teenager on vacation in Florida with her parents starts seeing them through disenchanted eyes; a man reconsidered his affair with his wife’s friend after the death of his own best friend.
So Much Heart by Drew Buxton - With an X Books, July 25
Drew Buxton’s debut short story collection exposes the wiry underbelly of things: schemes, addiction, dead bodies, intrusive thoughts, masculinity, American mythology, with a beating heart interested most in affirming the strangeness of everything in this life.