Your Shelf Life: 5 Books to Read in July

Alissa Nutting has written the most hilarious and downright bananas book of the summer. Made for Love follows Hazel as she tries to escape her marriage to a maniacal tech titan. She lands in a senior citizen trailer park with her father and his sex doll.

Curtis Dawkins, an MFA graduate and convicted murderer, has a powerful collection of stories about how inmates survive and struggle in prison with The Graybar Hotel.

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Zinzi Clemmons’s debut, What We Lose, is about an American black woman struggling with identity and grief after she loses her South African mother to cancer.

Live from Cairo is Ian Bassingthwaighte’s relevant, funny, and moving debut novel about four characters whose lives converge around Dalia, an Iraqi refuge trapped in Egypt during the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square after the US denies her entry.

Feast for the Eyes is a coffee table book about the delectable history of food photography. Susan Bright’s commentary offers insight into the form’s development, from still life to Instagram.

Your Shelf Life: 5 Books to Read in July