Every summer, our editorial team at ScrollWorks Media runs into the same problem: we read far more books than we can reasonably recommend, and narrowing the list down feels like choosing a favorite child. But this year, we decided to do something different. Instead of producing a tidy, impersonal list, we asked each of our editors to select the books they are most excited about this summer and to tell you, honestly and personally, why each one matters to them.

The result is a reading guide that reflects the genuine passions of the people who spend their days working with words. You will find books from our own catalog alongside titles from other publishers, because good editors read widely and recommend generously. Some of these picks are brand new, and some have been on our shelves for a while, waiting for the right season to be rediscovered. All of them are books we believe will reward your time and attention, whether you are reading on a beach, in a hammock, or on a crowded commuter train pretending to be somewhere else entirely.

Pour yourself something cold, find a comfortable spot, and let us introduce you to your summer reading stack.

Elena’s Pick: The Last Archive by Catherine Voss

Chosen by Elena Torres, Senior Editor, Literary Fiction

I have been editing literary fiction for twelve years, and I can count on one hand the number of manuscripts that made me cancel my evening plans because I could not stop reading. The Last Archive by Catherine Voss was one of them. When the manuscript arrived on my desk, I opened it expecting to read ten pages and make notes for the editorial meeting. Three hours later, I was still at my desk, the office empty around me, completely submerged in Voss’s meticulously constructed world.

The novel follows Maren Lund, a young Danish archivist assigned to catalog a deteriorating collection of Cold War-era documents in a fictional Eastern European state. What begins as a quiet, procedural story about the painstaking work of preservation gradually transforms into something far more dangerous. Maren discovers that certain files have been systematically altered, and the people responsible are still very much alive and very much interested in ensuring the truth stays buried.

What makes The Last Archive exceptional is not the plot, though it is genuinely gripping, but the way Voss writes about knowledge itself. The novel asks what it means to preserve a record of the past, who gets to decide which version of history survives, and what happens to a society that allows its archives to be corrupted. These are not abstract philosophical questions in Voss’s hands. They are life-and-death stakes for a character you come to care about deeply.

This is the kind of book that changes the way you look at libraries, at filing cabinets, at the quiet people who dedicate their careers to keeping records intact. It is also a cracking good thriller that will keep you turning pages well past your bedtime. If you like literary fiction that actually makes you think, this is it.

Marcus’s Pick: Echoes of Iron by David Okonkwo

Chosen by Marcus Chen, Editor, Historical Fiction and Narrative Non-Fiction

I grew up in a family that told stories around the dinner table, long, winding narratives about relatives I had never met and places I had never been. That early exposure to oral storytelling shaped my entire career, and it is why Echoes of Iron by David Okonkwo hit me so hard. This is a novel that understands, in its bones, how stories travel across generations and how the stories we inherit shape the people we become.

Set in Nigeria during the final decades of British colonial rule and spanning forward to the present day, Echoes of Iron follows three generations of the Adeyemi family. The patriarch, Emeka, is a blacksmith whose forge becomes an unlikely meeting place for independence activists. His daughter, Ngozi, becomes a journalist in newly independent Lagos. And his grandson, Tunde, is a London-based academic wrestling with what it means to study his own family’s history from the comfortable distance of a university office.

Okonkwo writes with a rhythmic, almost musical prose style that reflects the oral traditions his characters inhabit. The forge scenes are extraordinary: you can feel the heat, smell the charcoal, hear the ringing of hammer on iron. But the novel is equally powerful in its quieter moments, particularly the scenes between Tunde and his aging mother, where the gap between lived experience and academic understanding becomes achingly real.

I edited this book, so I am admittedly biased, but I have also read it four times now, and each reading reveals new layers. If you loved Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun or Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, this is a book that belongs on the same shelf. It is a stunning achievement in historical fiction, and it deserves a wide readership this summer and beyond.

Priya’s Pick: Still Waters by Elena Marsh

Chosen by Priya Nair, Editor, Memoir and Personal Essays

I spend my professional life immersed in personal narratives, and the question I ask of every memoir that crosses my desk is simple: does this writer have the courage to be truly honest? Most do not. Most retreat behind polished prose and tidy resolutions that make the messy business of living look neater than it is. Elena Marsh, in Still Waters, does not retreat from anything.

Still Waters is a memoir about grief, but that description does not begin to capture what it actually does. After the sudden death of her husband during a family vacation at a lake house in Vermont, Marsh finds herself unable to leave the property. What was supposed to be a two-week stay becomes a year-long vigil, as she gradually transforms the house into a space where she can dismantle her grief and examine its components with the precision of a naturalist cataloging specimens.

Marsh writes about the natural world with the attentiveness of Annie Dillard and about emotional pain with the unflinching honesty of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. But her voice is entirely her own: wry, self-aware, occasionally very funny, and always deeply compassionate toward the person she was in those dark months. There is a passage about watching ice form on the lake in November that is one of the most beautiful things I have read in years, and I will not spoil it here except to say that it manages to be simultaneously about water, about time, and about the slow, almost imperceptible process of learning to live in a world that has fundamentally changed.

This is not a sad book, though it contains sadness. It is a brave book, a book about paying attention to the world when everything in you wants to look away. If you read one memoir this summer, make it this one.

James’s Pick: The Cartographer’s Dilemma by James Whitfield

Chosen by James Oduya, Editor, Science and Culture

I have a weakness for books that make you see familiar things in entirely new ways, and The Cartographer’s Dilemma by James Whitfield does exactly that. The next time you open a map on your phone, you will think about this book, and you will never look at navigation the same way again.

Whitfield, a geographer and historian of cartography, takes us on a sweeping journey through the history of mapmaking, from the earliest known maps scratched into Babylonian clay tablets to the satellite-powered digital maps that now guide our every movement. Along the way, he reveals the hidden assumptions, political agendas, and outright fabrications that have shaped every map ever drawn. Maps, he argues, are never neutral descriptions of physical space. They are arguments about what matters, who belongs, and how power is distributed across territory.

The book is full of fascinating stories. There is the tale of the phantom islands that appeared on European maps for centuries, some of them persisting into the twentieth century, despite the fact that no one had ever set foot on them. There is the account of how the Mercator projection, the map most of us grew up with, systematically distorts the size of countries near the equator, making Europe and North America appear far larger relative to Africa and South America than they actually are. And there is a gripping chapter about the Cold War cartographic arms race, when both superpowers poured resources into mapping each other’s territory with obsessive precision.

What elevates The Cartographer’s Dilemma above a simple history of maps is Whitfield’s ability to connect the past to the present. His chapters on digital mapping and GPS are genuinely alarming in places, exploring how the companies that control our navigational tools also control what we see and what we miss. If Google Maps decides a neighborhood does not warrant detailed coverage, that neighborhood effectively becomes invisible. Whitfield is not a technophobe, but he is a rigorous questioner, and his questions about who benefits from our current mapping infrastructure are ones we all need to be asking.

It’s the kind of book that fills your head with things you want to tell people about. Good summer reading if you like ideas.

David’s Pick: Bitcoin for Absolute Beginners by Alexander Hawthorne

Chosen by David Reese, Editor, Finance and Technology

I know what you are thinking: a book about Bitcoin is not summer reading. I would have agreed with you before I read Alexander Hawthorne’s Bitcoin for Absolute Beginners. But this is not the book you are imagining. It is not a breathless manifesto from a cryptocurrency evangelist, nor is it a technical manual that requires a computer science degree. It is, quite simply, the clearest and most honest explanation of Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency landscape that has ever been written for a general audience.

Hawthorne, a former financial journalist who covered the 2008 banking crisis, comes to the subject with exactly the right combination of skepticism and genuine curiosity. He does not tell you that Bitcoin will change the world, but he also does not dismiss it. Instead, he walks you through the technology from the ground up, using analogies and explanations so precise that you will genuinely understand what a blockchain is, how mining works, and why anyone would use a digital currency, all within the first hundred pages.

The real strength of this book, though, is in its second half, where Hawthorne addresses the questions that most cryptocurrency books avoid. What are the genuine risks? What are the environmental costs, and how are they changing? How should regulators approach a technology that was designed to resist regulation? And, perhaps most importantly, who actually benefits from the current cryptocurrency ecosystem? Hawthorne’s answers are balanced, evidence-based, and refreshingly free of ideology.

Whether you are cryptocurrency-curious, cryptocurrency-skeptical, or simply tired of nodding along in conversations about Bitcoin without understanding what anyone is talking about, this is the book that will bring you up to speed. I read it in three sittings by the pool, and I am not ashamed to say I enjoyed every page.

Beyond Our Catalog: Five More Essential Summer Reads

Good editors read widely, and our team’s recommendations extend well beyond the ScrollWorks catalog. Here are five more titles we are passing around the office this summer, each one selected because it offers something extraordinary.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, this retelling of David Copperfield transposed to the opioid-ravaged hollows of Appalachia is one of the most ambitious and compassionate American novels in recent memory. Kingsolver writes with furious energy and deep empathy, and the voice of her narrator, a foster kid named Demon, is unforgettable. If you have not read it yet, this is your summer.

Educated by Tara Westover

Westover’s memoir of growing up in a survivalist family in Idaho and eventually earning a PhD from Cambridge University remains one of the most astonishing personal narratives of the past decade. It is a book about education in the broadest sense: the painful, exhilarating process of learning to see the world clearly and to think for yourself. If our own Elena Marsh’s Still Waters resonates with you, Educated should be next on your list.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro’s Nobel Prize-winning sensibility is on full display in this quiet, devastating novel about an artificial friend observing the human world with innocent precision. It is a book about what it means to love and what it means to be seen, told in Ishiguro’s signature spare prose, where every sentence seems to carry more weight than it should. Read it slowly, preferably outdoors, and let it work on you.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

The definitive account of the Sackler family and the opioid crisis, Empire of Pain reads like a thriller but hits like a sledgehammer. Keefe’s investigative reporting is meticulous, and his narrative skill transforms a complex story of corporate malfeasance into a compulsively readable page-turner. Pair it with Demon Copperhead for a summer of reckoning with one of America’s most pressing crises.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

If you want to read something genuinely unlike anything else, Piranesi is a small, strange, beautiful novel about a man living in an infinite house filled with classical statues and tidal seas. It is a mystery, a philosophical fable, and an act of world-building so confident and complete that you will forget you are reading fiction. Clarke, author of the much longer Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, proves here that she can be equally powerful in miniature.

What to Read Next: Building Your Summer Stack

If you are wondering where to start, here is how our editors suggest approaching this list. If you tend to read one book at a time, begin with whichever title description made your pulse quicken. Trust your instincts. Your first reaction to a book recommendation is usually the most reliable one.

If you are the kind of reader who likes to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, we suggest pairing titles. Read The Last Archive alongside Empire of Pain for a summer steeped in the politics of truth and institutional power. Alternate between Echoes of Iron and Educated for perspectives on how family and history shape identity. Follow The Cartographer’s Dilemma with Piranesi for a journey from the real spaces we map to the impossible spaces we imagine.

And if you are building a summer reading list for a book club, we particularly recommend Still Waters and Klara and the Sun. Both are books that provoke deep, personal conversations about grief, love, and what it means to pay attention to the world around us. They are the kind of books that make people lean forward in their chairs and say, “But what did you think about the part where…” which is exactly what a book club should do.

For those who want to explore the full ScrollWorks Media catalog, every title mentioned above is available through our Books page, where you will find detailed descriptions, sample chapters, and ordering information. We also encourage you to visit your local independent bookstore and ask a bookseller for their personal recommendations. Some of the best reading discoveries happen in conversation, and there is no algorithm that can replace a passionate bookseller who knows your taste.

A Note on How We Choose

We want to be transparent about something. As a publisher, we have an obvious interest in promoting our own titles, and five of the ten books on this list come from our catalog. We do not apologize for that. We publish books we believe in, and it would be strange if our editors were not enthusiastic about the work they have helped bring into the world.

But we also believe that the best way to earn your trust as readers is to recommend honestly and broadly. That is why half of this list comes from other publishers. More readers is good for everyone, and a reader who discovers a great book, wherever it comes from, is a reader who will keep reading. Our industry thrives when readers are excited about books, full stop.

Every recommendation on this list comes from a specific editor who has read the book, thought about it, and chosen to put their name next to it. These are not algorithmic suggestions or paid placements. They are personal endorsements from people who have spent their careers developing the judgment to know when a book is genuinely worth your time.

We hope this list serves you well this summer. If you pick up any of these titles and want to tell us what you thought, we genuinely want to hear from you. Reach out through our contact page or find us on social media. Reading is best when it is shared, and the conversation does not have to end when you close the back cover.

Happy reading, from all of us at ScrollWorks Media.

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Curated by the ScrollWorks Media editorial team: Elena Torres (Literary Fiction), Marcus Chen (Historical Fiction and Narrative Non-Fiction), Priya Nair (Memoir and Personal Essays), James Oduya (Science and Culture), and David Reese (Finance and Technology). Our editors bring a combined forty-plus years of experience in book publishing to every recommendation. For more about our titles, visit our Books page.