Your Shelf Life: 5 Books to Read in July

The protagonist of Jesse Ball’s How to Set a Fire and Why is a smart, sassy young woman who finds inspiration in an underground arson club at her school.

A fraught, intense bond between mother and daughter is poetically rendered in Hot Milk, Deborah Levy’s follow-up to the 2011 Man Booker short-listed Swimming Home.

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Psychological suspense will propel you through Hannah Pittard’s Listen to Me, about a couple with a shaky marriage who set out on a cross-country trip that turns dark.

In But What If We’re Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, Chuck Klosterman looks at current thoughts on sports, music, science, and politics and tries to predict how they will change in the future. He consults writers and artists such as George Saunders and David Byrne along the way.

Phaidon publishes a coffee table book about Annabelle Selldorf, the German-born architect designing the expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s La Jolla location. Learn about her past projects via interviews, designs, and photos in Selldorf Architects: Portfolio and Projects.

Your Shelf Life: 5 Books to Read in July