Midsummer may mean plentiful harvests of stone fruits and sweet corn, but for fiction lovers who want more than the average page turner, these are lean months. Undaunted, Salon's book critics searched high and low, forsaking the summer sun to hole up in our armchairs and root out June's best fictional offerings.
The results are eclectic to say the least. You can investigate the mythological high jinks of Neil Gaiman's latest fantasy, savor the amorous peccadilloes of a typical batch of David Lodge academics or swoon to the romantic implications of being held hostage with a soprano in a Latin American mansion. If your tastes are more down-to-earth, country music legend Steve Earle is happy to regale you with tales of the kind of down-on-their-luck Americans who star in his songs. In case you missed our reviews earlier this month, we also loved "The Collected Stories of Richard Yates" and James Ellroy's latest magnum opus of crime and conspiracy, "The Cold Six Thousand." And if you're still catching up with spring books, don't miss our picks from earlier months, listed below.
Our first June pick: A cast of burned-out deities on a cross-country comeback tour
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