Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside of work, much of her free time is spent looking for her next great read and planning her next snack.
Find her on Twitter at @Erica_Eze_.
With the new season (and new heat) comes a bevy of new books to get excited for. Everywhere I turn, I see someone else’s best-of-the-summer list. I thought to add my (BIPOC-minded) hat into the ring with a short list of books to read this summer. There are many more than this that are coming out soon, but these are a great start.
They include the latest by literary shape-shifter Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the story of teenage moms in Florida by a former Youth Poet Laureate, and even a nice gothic joint set in 18th-century Mexico.
The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s latest horror novel is a witchy tale exploring the story of women from three different areas who get caught up in witchcraft. Minerva is a graduate student, studying the history of horror. When she discovers that horror author Beatrice Tremblay’s most famous novel was inspired by a true story, Minerva becomes obsessed with finding out the truth behind the manuscript. Decades earlier, when Tremblay attended the same university as Minerva, a girl went missing under mysterious circumstances. —Emily Martin
The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley
The author of Nightcrawling is back with a story about a group of teenage moms in Florida. When Adela gets pregnant at 16, her parents send her to her grandmother’s house in Padua Beach. There, she meets the Girls: a group of young moms and pregnant teenagers. Together, they try to navigate through graduation, love, friendship, and betrayal. This is already making its way onto several Best Books of 2025 So Far lists! —Danika Ellis
Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde
The author of Vagabonds! is back with an exploration of queer life in Nigeria today. It follows a rotating cast of dozens of queer people in Lagos as they navigate romantic, familial, friend, and sexual relationships. They find love even while dealing with bigotry. Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!, says: “I can’t believe how alive Eloghosa Osunde’s Necessary Fiction is, how supersaturated and smart… Hustle, heart, privacy, sex, yearning so strong it buckles you—it’s all here. The ink practically hovers off the page.” —Danika Ellis
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Archive of Unknown Universes: An Alternate History Timeline Saga Through Love, War, and Displacement in the Salvadoran Civil War by Ruben Reyes Jr.
Ruben Reyes Jr. is author of the short story collection There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven. This is his debut novel about two families in two timelines—Cambridge in 2018 and Havana in 1978—of the Salvadoran civil war. This is a genre-blender exploring displacement and loss, but also belonging and love, and one that asks big questions about what could have been. —Vanessa Diaz
The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas
Cañas’s The Hacienda had me by the throat when it first came out. Listening to it on audiobook had me looking over my shoulder. The atmosphere was rich—very gothic, very demure. That’s why her latest—which has a demonic possession (!!)—is on this list. I also got an advanced copy of it and am super excited to get into it.
It’s 1765 when a plague strikes Zacatecas, Mexico. Alba is privileged and able to flee with her wealthy parents to her fiancé Carlos’s isolated mine. But then other things start happening: she starts having strange hallucinations, sleep walking, and having very violent convulsions. There’s also the matter of that thing that cold angry thing that’s lurking just beneath her skin.
Elías is Carlos’s cousin. He is off to the New World to make his own way outside of his family’s greed, but he can’t seem to stop thinking about Alba and the growing tension between them…or the way she’s started to deteriorate as the demon’s desires grow stronger.
If you’re after even more BIPOC books to read this summer, here’s a list of different publications’ most anticipated summer books.
English (US) · 