It feels fitting that, on the cusp of summer vacation, the notable books we can expect this month are a well-traveled bunch. Below you can find books set in Ireland and South Korea, Los Angeles and Tuscany, the Western Front of WWI and … whatever you want to call the ecological wastelands of Earth 7. The point being, there is ample reason to spare yourself those engorged gas prices, the rental car fees, the uncannily shrinking airplane seats – all those nightmares required to reach "dream destinations" – and just walk to your local public library instead. The place probably has air conditioning too, for what it's worth.
Knopf
Land, by Maggie O'Farrell (June 2) Ireland lost almost a quarter of its population to its Great Famine in the mid-19th century. That stunning total includes those killed by potato blight and the malfeasance of its absentee British landlords; and the waves of refugees lost to emigration, often to the U.S. "We know those stories, in a sense — and they're terrible, tragic stories," O'Farrell told NPR's Scott Simon on Saturday, "but I think what interested me was the people who neither died nor left, the ones who stayed in Ireland and survived." Land, the Northern Irish author's first novel since the release of Hamnet's Oscar-winning adaptation, is a chronicle of the lives of two such survivors Tomás and his wife, Phina. Their twists and tribulations open the window onto a truly brutal history.
