What defines the perfect summer read? Is it a novel that transports you to a far-flung location in the space of a few well-crafted sentences, or a book that turns up the heat with a riveting plotline? Perhaps it’s a sizzling story set poolside, or a page-turner that makes a long journey simply fly by. 

In compiling a list of ultimate summer reads, we turned to our readers. Here, our community of Booker Prize Book Club members, Substack subscribers, and social media followers have spoken, detailing their choices from the nearly 700 works longlisted or shortlisted for our prizes over the past 55 years. 

From prize winners to hidden gems, from books to stir nostalgic memories of holidays past to novels set in picturesque destinations, these reads capture the essence of the season. Pair them with a 99 cone and enjoy the ultimate summer escape… 

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

In the summer of 1920 two men meet in the quiet English countryside. One is a war survivor, living in a church, intent upon uncovering and restoring a historical wall-painting. The other, too, is a war survivor, camping in the next field in search of a lost grave. Out of their physical meeting comes a deeper communion – with the landscape, with history – and a renewed belief in the future. In J.L. Carr’s tale of survival and healing, a damaged veteran rediscovers the primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War.

What our readers said: ‘A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr is an exquisite novella about what happens when a First World War veteran arrives in a North Yorkshire town one summer to uncover the local church’s wall painting of Judgment Day. There is something achingly gorgeous about this not-quite-love story, as evanescent as ideal summer days.’ 

Rebecca Foster, Substack 

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Ruth discovers a ‘Hello Kitty’ lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home. Within it lies a diary that expresses the hopes and dreams of a young girl. She suspects it might have arrived on a drift of debris from the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan. With every turn of the page, she is sucked deeper into an enchanting mystery. Ruth Ozeki’s bewitching metafictional novel about our shared humanity and the search for home.

What our readers said: ‘A Tale for the Time Being imparts hope and love to a troubled world; it deploys the magic of Zen Buddhism, quantum physics, and the intersubjectivity allowed through reading and writing to transform the postmodern subject from spectator into historical actor. While we watch violent mass death, destruction, and ruin occurring all over the world on blinking screens and feel mostly powerless to stop any of it, sometimes we can bend the laws of the physical universe to intervene and make a difference in the life of another person. When we save even one life, we have saved the whole world.’ 

Rebecca Gordon, The Booker Prize Book Club

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Molly Lane had many lovers, among them Clive Linley, Britain’s most famous composer, Vernon Halliday, editor of a respected broadsheet, and Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary - and tipped to be the next prime minister. When Clive and Vernon meet to pay their last respects to Molly at her funeral, they make a pact that will have unforeseen and profound consequences for everyone concerned. A fragile friendship descends into hatred and revenge, in Ian McEwan’s darkly humorous 1998 Booker Prize-winning novel.

What our readers said: ‘Probably not an obvious choice and, notably probably one of the shortest, Ian McEwan’s novel Amsterdam is one of my favourite Booker winners. It is an intelligent novel that draws you into a battle with your own moral compass. Its narrative unreliability serves to unburden the novel from temporality, resonating with you regardless of who, where or when you are.’ 

Louise Edensor, The Booker Prize Book Club 

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Iris Chase – married at 18 to a politically prominent industrialist, but now 82 and poor – is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by her once-prosperous family. While bewailing her unreliable body and deriding those who try to help her, Iris reflects on her far-from-exemplary life and perilous times, particularly on the events surrounding her sister Laura’s mysterious early death - a death which confirmed her iconic status as the author of a scandalous novel. Margaret Atwood’s 2000 Booker winner is a multilayered drama that weaves its narrative threads across past and present, fiction and reality.

What our readers said: ‘I’ve been saving a beautiful used copy of The Blind Assassin to cart with me during my summer travels because there’s something so uniquely perfect about Atwood’s craft. Sitting in a quiet place and being alone with her books feels like a gift. They are vivid and alive, easy to immerse yourself in. Plus, when I read Margaret Atwood, I often have to stare at a wall and let the words sink in, which looks much less silly to do on a beach.’ 

Charlotte, Substack 

Darkmans by Nicola Barker

Darkmans is a very modern book, set in Ashford (a ridiculously modern town), about two very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It’s also a book about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. And the main character? The past, which creeps up on the present and whispers something quite dark – quite unspeakable – into its ear. Nicola Barker’s startling visionary narrative. If history is just a sick joke that keeps repeating itself, then who exactly is telling it – and why?

What our readers said: ‘I’ve two weeks travelling coming up. I’ll be re-reading the brilliant Darkmans by Nicola Barker and then the equally superb Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess. Darkmans is a blast! Ingenious plotting, some laugh-out-loud moments and some equally disturbing elements.’ 

Bob ‘The Bookerworm’, Substack 

Holiday by Stanley Middleton

Edwin Fisher is at the seaside, but this is no normal beach holiday. To escape the death of his son and the death-throes of his marriage, he has retreated to a place where he had once known the unqualified happiness of childhood. But as painful memories rise unbidden and uncontrolled, Edwin must confront each in turn – realising that without a past there can be no future. Stanley Middleton’s 1974 Booker prize-winning novel is both a precisely observed portrait of English provincial life and a moving exploration of grief and regret.

What our readers said: ‘I don’t think you can get any better than Stanley Middleton’s fine winner Holiday, about a man taking a time out by the seaside after the collapse of his marriage. Lots of lovely descriptions of holidaying in England by the sea.’ 

Kenneth Williams, The Booker Prize Book Club

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

Two strangers arrive in a small Spanish fishing village. The older woman is suffering from mysterious paralysis, driven to seek a cure beyond the bounds of conventional medicine. Her daughter Sofia has spent years playing the reluctant detective in this mystery, struggling to understand her mother’s illness. Surrounded by the oppressive desert heat, searching for a cure to a defiant and quite possibly imagined disease, Sofia is forced to confront her difficult relationship with her mother. Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of motherhood, testing the bonds of parent and child to breaking point.

What our readers said: ‘Hot Milk by Deborah Levy is the encapsulation of summer. I love the sweltering setting, the surreal nature of the plot – what’s really going on? – and the sinister tone that underlies the whole book. It’s a great one to reread, you’ll find new meaning every time.’ 

Rachel Rothe, The Booker Prize Book Club

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

In Martin MacInnes’s 2023 Booker Prize longlisted novel, Leigh grows up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms.  

When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of Earth’s first life forms. What she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings, and leaves her facing an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.   

What our readers said: ‘No need to travel, just read In Ascension by Martin MacInnes. This astonishing novel takes us on a journey far away to outer space and within our inner world. Both unknown places that stretch our imagination and our consciousness. A beautifully written novel.’ 

Karin, Substack

Possession by A.S. Byatt

Maud Bailey is a scholar researching the life and work of her distant relative, a little-known 19th-century poet named Christabel LaMotte. Roland Mitchell is looking into an obscure moment in the life of another Victorian poet, the celebrated Randolph Henry Ash. Together, the two uncover a dark secret in Ash’s life: though apparently happily married, he conducted a torrid affair with LaMotte. As Maud and Roland dig deeper, they too find themselves falling in love. A gloriously exhilarating novel of wit and romance which won the 1990 Booker Prize

What our readers said: ‘Because treasure hunts, requited but unconsummated love, and academics conducting research all suggest summer.’ 

Framji Minwalla, Twitter

Second Place by Rachel Cusk 

A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally between our internal and external worlds. Rachel Cusk offers a deep affirmation of the human soul, while grappling with its darkest demons, in her 2021 Booker Prize longlisted novel. 

What our readers said: ‘I think this summer might be the time to pick up a copy. Her work is perfect for summer, as she’s often describing her experience travelling and exploring, and the intense curiosity of the human spirit is just the right vibe for a summer filled with friends and activities.’ 

Jen, Substack

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

February, 1862. Two days after his death, 11-year-old Willie Lincoln is laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. All that night, his father Abraham paces the darkness of the graveyard, shattered with grief. Meanwhile, Willie is trapped in a state of limbo between the dead and the living – drawn to his father with whom he can no longer communicate, existing in a ghostly world populated by the recently passed and the long dead. George Saunders’ startlingly original novel is a thrilling exploration of death, grief and the possibilities of life, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize.

What our readers said: ‘It made me cry, it moved and touched me deeply. You can read it anywhere, it doesn’t matter. It takes you somewhere else completely. The way to tell a story like this is simply brilliant…the book is so exciting, but also so deeply moving, I found it really superb and unforgettable❤️.’ 

Gold Mari, The Booker Prize Book Club

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

A patch of ice on the road, a casual favour to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil – can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? In Paul Murray’s brilliant tragicomic saga, shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, the Barnes family is definitely in trouble. So where did it all go wrong? And if the story has already been written – is there still time to find a happy ending? 

What our readers said: ‘I’ve just finished The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and found it the perfect read to have taken away with me to Spain. It’s an ambitious family saga in which each character becomes fleshed out over the 600+ pages of the book, as more and more back-story is fed in. It’s involving, credible, and the various twists in the tale are entirely believable.’ 

Margaret Lawrenson, Substack

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili, translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin

At the start of the 20th century, a Russian family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution that is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste. Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband. But Stasia’s will be only the first of a symphony of romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century. Tumbling down the years, great characters and greater relationships come and go, in Nino Haratischvili’s 2020 International Booker Prize-nominated novel.

What our readers said: ‘I would take The Eighth Life on holiday if you haven’t read it already. Instead of lugging and thinking of ten different books to carry, you just need one! At 45 hours of listening pleasure or over 1000 pages of reading, there would be no need to overthink other choices and it transports you to a place far from any current reality. It’s easy to drop and pick up or completely engrossing if that’s what you want it to be.’ 

Poonam Krishnan, The Booker Prize Book Club

The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky

The modest apartment in Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The living room furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night. Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced of possessing great artistic talent. If he didn’t have a family to feed, he’d be a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but full of arrogance and resentment, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. It’s his first-born who, years later, will sift the lies from the truth to tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble. Narrated against the vivid backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, The House on Via Gemito was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. 

What our readers said: ‘I often choose books that are set in a country and a culture I feel an urge to visit during the summer. Italy calls to me this year.’ 

Jean Fernandez, Substack

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. Eleanor Catton’s fiendishly clever novel is both a ghost story and gripping mystery. It won the 2013 Booker Prize.

At 832 pages, The Luminaries is the longest winning novel in the Booker Prize’s history. 

What our readers said: ‘The Luminaries – and not just because I am from New Zealand! The complexity of the plot at the beginning draws you in and as the plot lines interweave and the characters develop, the truth becomes clear. It paints a picture of 19th-century New Zealand like no other.’ 

Chris Haig, The Booker Prize Book Club

The Promise by Damon Galgut

The narrator’s eye shifts and blinks, deliciously lethal in its observation of the crash and burn of a white South African family. On their farm outside Pretoria, the Swarts are gathering for Ma’s funeral. The younger generation detests everything the family stands for, not least the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land, yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled. The Promise won the Booker Prize in 2021.

What our readers said: ‘Misunderstood, neglected and desperate Amor, as Damon Galgut’s The Promise sets out on a half-century of spectacular familial dysfunction, concludes as the only Swart with integrity intact and with hope of a satisfactory ending. Sad material redeemed by its relentlessly humorous take on an archetypal South African 20-21st century extended family. Laughed and cried with the author. True to life.’ 

Ross Ian Fleming, The Booker Prize Book Club 

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

A hijacked aeroplane blows apart high above the English Channel and two figures tumble towards the sea: Gibreel Farishta, India’s legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices. Washed up on an English beach, their survival is a miracle. But there is a price to pay. Gibreel and Saladin have been chosen as opponents in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil. But chosen by whom? Which is which? And what will be the outcome of their final confrontation? Salman Rushdie’s magical realist epic. shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1988, remains one of the most controversial books in recent literary history.

What our readers said: ‘It’s a masterfully crafted sculpture with manifold expressions, multilayered revelations, rich in imagination; traversing a number of complex, breathtaking episodes, through the wallowishness of dream and shudder of reality, it leads us to an unthinkable extreme which can be grasped if you’ve steady state of mind, patience and enough time to think, definitely summer holiday is the best time to read it.’ 

Debasish Dey, The Booker Prize Book Club

The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

Charles Arrowby, leading light of England’s theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, and to amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. But his plans fail, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of strange events and unexpected visitors – some real, some spectral – that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core. Iris Murdoch turns her microscopic gaze on vanity and obsession in her 19th novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1978.

What our readers said: ‘Both farcical and funny, the backdrop of the sea provides a vivid landscape for Charles Arrowby’s new home at Schruff End where he plans to live on his own and write his memoirs. Things however do not go to plan and he has to manage a host of visitors who one by one disturb his plans for the summer.’ 

Mary King, The Booker Prize Book Club

The Sea by John Banville

Led back to Ballyless by a dream, Max Morden returns to the coastal town where he spent a holiday in his youth. The Grace family appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. Drawn to the twins, Chloe and Myles, Max soon found himself entangled in their lives, which were as seductive as they were unsettling. What ensued haunts him for the rest of his years and shapes everything that is to follow. John Banville’s haunting and evocative novel won the Booker Prize in 2005.

What our readers said: ‘In The Sea, the main character just lost his wife and goes back to the seaside house where he used to spend his summers as a child. Love, loss, summer.’ 

Victoria Toujilina, Substack

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein 

The fourth volume in the dazzling saga of a friendship between two women: brilliant, bookish Elena and fiery, uncontainable Lila. Having moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books, Elena returns to her home city to be with the man she has always loved. Lila, on the other hand, never freed herself from Naples. And her entrepreneurial success only draws her into closer contact with the nepotism, criminal violence and inviolable taboos that infect her neighbourhood. Elena Ferrante delivers a searingly honest chronicle of a lifelong female friendship, in her 2016 International Booker Prize-longlisted novel.

What our readers said: ‘Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels… I wish it were still common practice to be sent to the beach to regain health and composure ☀️’ 

Samataned, Instagram