---
title: "What to Read This July: A Summer Reading List"
description: "From Colson Whitehead closing out his Harlem trilogy to an L.A. journalist's chilling biosecurity reckoning, July's new releases are uncommonly strong. Here is a curated reading list for the long summer ahead."
category: "Entertainment"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/entertainment
author: "Gabriela Soto"
published: 2026-06-30T21:48:00.000Z
updated: 2026-06-30T21:48:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/what-to-read-this-july-eight-books-worth-the-heat
tags: ["books", "reading", "summer reading", "fiction", "nonfiction", "California"]
---
# What to Read This July: A Summer Reading List

From Colson Whitehead closing out his Harlem trilogy to an L.A. journalist's chilling biosecurity reckoning, July's new releases are uncommonly strong. Here is a curated reading list for the long summer ahead.

The heat is here, and so is a strong shelf of new books. A few worth your July, across genres.

## Literary fiction

**Cool Machine** by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, July 21) closes the Harlem trilogy that began with *Harlem Shuffle* and continued in *Crook Manifesto*, returning to furniture dealer and part-time fence Ray Carney in a 1980s New York being remade by finance and real estate, [per its publisher](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/742026/cool-machine-by-colson-whitehead/). If you haven't read the first two, this is the summer to start.

## Young adult

**Heartstopper, Volume 6** by Alice Oseman (Scholastic, early July) brings the beloved LGBTQ+ graphic-novel series to a close, following Nick and Charlie as they face their futures. For readers who found the story through its streaming adaptation, the source material is worth every panel.

## True crime

**Catch the Devil** by Pamela Colloff (Knopf, July 14) is a decade in the making from a celebrated investigative writer, tracing a serial con man who worked as a jailhouse informant in Florida — peddling fabricated confessions and helping send an innocent man toward death row. It is a book about how a single unreliable witness can break the justice system.

## Science and security

**Biological War: A Scenario** by Annie Jacobsen (Dutton, July 28) comes from the Los Angeles–based investigative journalist behind *Nuclear War: A Scenario*, [according to her publisher](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/783250/biological-war-by-annie-jacobsen/). Built on interviews with scientists and officials, it stress-tests what would happen if a weaponized pathogen were released — urgent, and very hard to put down.

## California history

**Tin Can Coast** by Joseph Ogilvy (Bloomsbury, July 21) is the California book of the summer for anyone who has driven Highway 1 and wondered about the old canneries. It traces how the immensely productive waters off the coast sustained Indigenous peoples and drew wave after wave of fishers — before the canning industry plundered them, conservation efforts undercut from the start by racism and commercial pressure.

## Memoir

**Dad, Love, Me** by Matthew Quick (Simon & Schuster, July 21), the debut memoir from the author of *The Silver Linings Playbook*, is written as a letter to his ailing, estranged father. Expect a controlled reckoning with inherited damage and the ambivalence of caretaking.

## And one more

For nonfiction readers chasing the summer's bigger conversations, Barnes & Noble's [July roundup](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/the-best-books-of-july-2026) is a useful guide to the rest of the month's releases. Two of this list's standouts — Jacobsen's biosecurity scenario and Ogilvy's coastal history — carry strong California threads, a reminder that some of the season's most ambitious books are rooted close to home.

## Sources

- [Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/742026/cool-machine-by-colson-whitehead/)
- [Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/783250/biological-war-by-annie-jacobsen/)
- [The best books of July 2026](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/the-best-books-of-july-2026)