‘Booking’ Your Summer Travel

In Flight

Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Romance in Aviation’s Glory Years

William Stadiem

Remember when commercial flight was sexy? No, you don’t. But Stadiem does, and he’s got the cocktails, “skycoons” and sexy stews to prove it.

The Arctic

In the Kingdom of Ice

Hampton Sides

The true story of the U.S.S. Jeanette, which set out for the North Pole in 1879. The voyage descended into disaster, but the crew fought on with a heroic determination that recalls Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken (8/5).

Majorca, Spain

The Vacationers

Emma Straub

The Post family is in heaven—or at any rate Majorca—-but they’ve brought hell with them in the form of secrets and lies and insecurities of all kinds. Straub observes it all with wisdom, good humor and no mercy.

The Middle East

The Kills

Richard House

A colossal (1,024 pages) four-part novel of Pynchonesque ambition that starts with graft among military contractors in Iraq and follows the tendrils of corruption outward across the globe (8/5).

Provence, France

A Wedding in Provence

Ellen Sussman

Specifically in Cassis, where Olivia and Brody will tie the knot amid the splendors of the Côte d’Azur and all the tensions and drama that weddings inspire (7/15).

U.S. Virgin Islands

Land of Love and Drowning

Tiphanie Yanique

A sprawling, century-spanning story of love, family and magic that follows the changing fortunes of a ruined family and those of their troubled home, the U.S. Virgin Islands (7/10).

New Guinea

Euphoria

Lily King

A love triangle with three scientists in the jungles of New Guinea, King’s novel is loosely based on the life of Margaret Mead and rendered in suitably lush, steamy prose.

China

The Emperor Far Away

David Eimer

China is a vast place, with millions of people from dozens of ethnic minorities living far from Beijing, in regions where Westerners rarely go. Eimer visited the fringes and tells us what he saw there (7/15).

Japan

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Haruki Murakami

At 36, a Japanese train engineer seeks out his four best friends from high school to discover why they all unceremoniously dropped him (8/12).

Sweden

The Farm

Tom Rob Smith

Daniel’s parents are peacefully retired in rural Sweden. Or are they? Suddenly Dad says Mom is psychotic and has her committed. Mom denies it and says Dad is lying. It’s up to Daniel to dig up the truth.