Reflections on sartorial queens Elizabeth II and Audrey Hepburn battle good old-fashioned mysteries and big short story collections to win your hand this summer.
If you’re here, it’s because you love beauty and style but more. All things well, good and a cut above excite you—including books. You’re on the right page to dig for your next or maybe first in a long time read. These 25 titles remind us summertime also serves the adventurous, tasteful and mindful readers who seek both challenges and comforts…from a New York Times Style editor’s take on how viewing art today is a radical act, to the rare worthwhile celebrity memoir, to a mosey along James Patterson thriller consecrating Viola Davis as a novelist.
Some of these landed a minute ago, but you may have missed them or been on the fence. Don’t waver any longer! Still some are upcoming, so save the dates. But all these fashion, biography, fiction and scholarly reads could make this summer of 2026 pass like a breeze…
Beauty, News and NYC Books
1. Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect by Valerie Bertinelli (Harper Wave, March 2026)
Bertinelli familiarizes us with her seemingly every gray hair, wrinkle, flab, body secretion, tear drop, ache, pain… This goddess goes in and I love her for it. Anyone who feels a stranger to how they look, smell or move at any stage including puberty needs Getting Naked. Though conversational almost girlfriend chatty prose, this is one star of another industry really being a writer here. She narrates her believably terrifying butt naked book cover shoot and her revelatory journal entries. She pays constant homage to other writers who motor her daily acceptance of youth’s evaporation. Trigger warning for her releasing a near lifelong secret of sexual abuse as a child, to inform what drove her creative spirit for decades and face her audience as a dimensioned human being.
2. Dekonstructing the Kardashians: A New Media Manifesto by M.J. Corey (Penguin Random House, May 2026)
Nearly 500 pages about the Kardashian-Jenner family would be unnecessary overkill if just about them. However, Dekonstructing the Kardashians is not really about the family. Its primary subject is the media the family figured out how to subvert and ultimately vanquish, from traditional gatekept paths into uber-fame to democratic digital means self-making celebrities by the day. Media pros, analysts and acolytes should study this guide to overturn most of what they learned in school, online or under “coaches” to learn new and unspoken rules to media prowess.
3. Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music and Changing the Culture by Fab 5 Freddy with Mark Rozzo (Viking, March 2026)
I learned of this book from the man himself, born Fred Braithwhite, appearing on his release day on the Tamron Hall Show in all his now-senior abuelo glory. I met him once at Margaret and Quincy Troupe’s bustling Harlem Art Salons, for him to be so familiar and formative to my Gen X mind that I initially thought he was an old co-worker. This urban, “hood” New York’s match to Manhattan’s Fran Lebowitz waxes poetic on his life in art, culture and style including early days tagging New York as a groundbreaking graffiti artist, relationships with Basquiat and other artists he curated, and of course his hip-hop historymaking. Everybody’s Fly urges us to find our inner cool kids from NYC and beyond.
4. It’s Never Too Late: A Memoir by Marla Gibbs and Contributions by Malaika Adero (Amistad, February 2026) Long after George and Weezy gave up movin’ on up, Marla Gibbs is still going on. Recently viral for hitting the gym at 94, the American television icon (“The Jeffersons,” “227”) added “published author” to her surprisingly average life adventures with It’s Never Too Late. Readers learn how she kept working a real job long after her star launched as Manhattan maid “Florence” on the classic Normal Lear creation “The Jeffersons,” how she survived career downturns and how she made her own way young artists can follow. The memoir is not only funny and wise but useful to anyone seeking a big break.
5. Queen Elizabeth II: Fashion & Style by Caroline de Guitaut with a foreword by Anna Wintour (Royal Collection Trust, May 2026)
This April, the UK celebrated what would have been Queen Elizabeth II’s 100th birthday in- what else?- high style and flamboyant festivity. No other woman leader in history is as discussed, influential and remembered for her fashion than perhaps Cleopatra (We sadly never got to see the pantsuits and mumu revolution a Hillary Clinton presidency would have inspired). This official centenary publication distributed in the States by University of Chicago Press complements Buckingham Palace’s exhibit of clothes, hats and more from the Queen’s wardrobe on display all year. A measured tribute from Anna Wintour as Foreword and incredible photos help this insight into her team and their hard work shine.
6. Intimate Audrey: An Authorized Biography by Sean Hepburn Ferrer & Wendy Holden (Grand Central Publishing, April 2026)
Usually, attempts by famous names to share their war stories in print to be more “relatable” are transparent and weak as PR and money grabs they too often are. But Audrey Hepburn truly has war stories, as in World War II, where her son Sean Hepburn situates the birth of his mother’s searing spirit as a child survivor of it. This authorized biography follows Sean’s wish to exhibit his mother’s clothes, memorabilia and personal affects in what would have been her 90th year of life. The superior look into her loves and motherhood, as well as her real and lasting friendships Hollywood often thwarts, makes us wish every icon’s biography had a child this thoughtful to write it.
7. David Kibbe’s Power of Style: A Guided Journey to Help You Discover Your Authentic Style by David Kibbe (Penguin Random House/Rodale Books, January 2025) Can I get an “Amen” for the idea of Love-Based Beauty? Its creator, wildly popular beauty and your best body guru David Kibbe, should bless us in podcast conversation with Valerie Bertinelli. They lead a forefront to overthrow massive harm from technology’s onslaught of artificial or manipulated self-images hurling society past already unrealistic standards we thought we’d survived before this present iteration our digital age has wrought. Kibbe’s mantras “Beauty comes from Individuality” and “Style evolves from Identity” are touchstones to inform your relationship with this must-have transformative book all will feel beautiful for. Read/gift/share it, then go flaunt your swimsuit body, warts and all.
8. Inside the Hamptons by
9. Dear New York, by Brandon Stanton (St. Martin’s Press, 2025) I got lucky to be in the Bronx, therefore a slave to green line trains, so stumbled into last Fall’s Humans of New York exhibit in Grand Central. I hadn’t known of it otherwise, despite being an HONY loyal follower since its Tumblr infancy. Ordinarily, you can’t go anywhere in the 5 boroughs without suffocating in overt and covert advertising, but powers that be sacrificed all ads in this most major NYC transportation hub to promote only its biggest asset: its people. Stanton’s giant close-up headshots of everyday people with eloquent narratives of their lives were everything art and museums today should be: large, interactive and unforgettable. If you weren’t so lucky to see it live, catch up with this exciting companion publication Dear New York, with 500 of Stanton’s subjects featured in this true New York lover’s love letter to the city.
Fiction
10. Behind These Four Walls by Yasmin Angoe (Thomas & Mercer, January 2026)
This classic simmering missing person’s tale blends a good coming-of-age story with gripping adult mystery when crafty protagonist Isla wriggles into Virginia’s wealthy homes and circles to find her childhood best friend, Eden, Eden disappeared from their promised L.A. reunion after they bonded in an orphanage, for a worthwhile start to the book all on its own. Then Angoe’s literary gymnastics infuse this mainstream novel with winds through time and space to challenge readers to a tempestuous ending.
11. Judge Stone by Viola Davis and James Patterson (Little, Brown and Company, March 2026)
Even bestselling mainstays like Patterson need boosts of new formulas, fresh themes and public excitement too. Enter Viola Davis. She serves that for her co-author in Judge Stone. Their collaboration on the perilous outcomes of African American female Judge Mary Stone’s trying a controversial abortion case in Alabama finally brings the iconic author to racism and women’s rights as themes. This mass market book deserves serious attention as possibly Patterson’s most important given these and possibly scary future times, but Davis’s known soulful passion for characters makes it just a great American novel.
12. Black Arts: Stories by Megan Giddings (Amistad, September 2026)
These 13 stories from a rare writer I believe we’ll see produce throughout her entire lifetime place Megan Giddings in conversation with contemporary horror story masters like Kelly Link and canonized leaders like Shirley Jackson. The title story “Black Arts” adds the requisite haunted house to any great horror book. Its ending tale, “How to Be a Black Writer,” employs second person for an Erasure book to American Fiction film level of indictment of scary structural racisms informing every style of Black writer, whether we like it or not. All wrap drumbeats of African American matriarchal lineages, Black intellectual concerns and unique millennial generation anxieties into prose so eerily good it is more spine chilling than her plots.
13. Tear the City Down by Andre Hardy (Grand Central, September 2026)
Art imitates life as ex-NFL player turned MFA-trained author Andre Hardy invents Coltrane Davis, whose shady career assisting a crime kingpin goes into overtime when a San Diego Chargers’ star disappears before a high-stakes game. Hardy’s gifts for Mosleyesque everyday dialogue and characters with cliffhanging chapters elevates this dark and at times violent thriller to a debut worthy of a series I hope we see from it.
14. Savvy Summers by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Minotaur Books, July 2026)
This time, it’s a Chicago conference room where Chicago culinary master and take-no-mess cafe owner Savvy Summers cuts her amateur murder-solving teeth when a dead body pops up at her catering gig. Jackson-Opoku’s knack for capturing Chicago-style speech, language and local humor keeps this second, even better than the first installment of her Savvy Summers series barreling to a tasty, satisfying end. Fans of the first, Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes, should look out for new characters.
15. Hansel and Gretel by Stephen King with illustrations by Maurice Sendak (Harper Collins, September 2025)
What is summer without camping trips, bonfire nights and vacation bedtime stories? Enter the master of bedtime stories for the not-so faint of heart, Stephen King, and everybody’s beloved childhood author, Maurice Sendak, to make a familiar tale fresh and scary again. Their collaboration on this legendary Grimm Fairy Tale retelling features spooky text and spookier illustrations to collect for children and the child in all adults, especially fine art lovers. The 48-page collectors edition features special holding cases and notes on the story for the most dedicated bibliophiles.
16. How to Ruin a Wedding by Elba Luz (Mindy’s Book Studio, August 2026)
It isn’t summer without weddings. From Mindy Kaling’s imprint at Amazon with an intro by the actress, here is your My Best Friend’s Wedding-level marriage hijink of the year in book form. When Lucy Delgado, the undercover wedding crasher you won’t forget, finds life is lifing way too much, her handsome new client Anders Kennedy swoops in for the save. But the high price he’ll pay for Lucy to sabotage his sister’s impending nuptials may just sabotage her, and your, disbelief in true love and fairytale endings.
17. The Great Eastern by Howard A, Rodman (Rare Bird Books/Unnamed Press, May 2026 reissue)
You needn’t be an English major or book nerd with PTSD from requisite (re)readings of Moby Dick to make this your New York novel of the summer. Rodman, a famed screenwriter and Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic, far from just recapitulates Melville’s conventions of adventure in the high seas in this epic re-issue distributed by Simon & Schuster, set in the mid-1850’s from New York and Europe as far as India. Instead he expertly manipulates his larger than life characters Isambard Kingdom Brunel, aiming to engineer his ship The Great Eastern into the world’s largest vessel ever, his foil to that plan Captain Nemo and the integrally conniving ghost of Moby Dick‘s Captain Ahab. The Great Eastern is a sheer welcome surprise of contemporary American fiction.
18. The Blood Year Daughter: Stories by G.G. Silverman (Creature Publishing, April 2026)
This gutfelt collection introduces Silverman as a contemporary feminine Lovecraft willing to mine to sinister, feral and savage inclinations of human beings so close to the edge they can only be horror personified. With running themes of cannibalism in real and imagined practice, anything but girl next door female protagonists (and antagonists) and suspension of belief plot twists, these tales stretch the limits of magic realism to offer something more uncategorizable to chew on long after the last page, pun intended. This is a conversation starter for every plane and train ride, barbecue or beach day for sure.
19. Served Him Right: A Novel by Lisa Unger (Park Row, March 2026)
Ahhhh… What is summer for if not to keep our camera phones busy showing off and posting best life brunches with friends on sidewalk restaurants, sunny rooftops and backyard patios? But when there’s a murder on the table, you better hope you’re not the ex-partner suspicions will naturally turn to. In Served Him Right, that ex and main suspect of this hopscotching whodunit is Ana. She organizes a noteworthy breakup brunch with friends like a bride’s rehearsal dinner to land on Unger’s signature fast-paced clock to clear her name from malfeasance. Then both she, her defenders and her nemeses drip drop clues to the quenching finale of this cautionary tale about never truly knowing people.
For the Daring
20. The Lost Songs of Nina Simone by Shonda Buchanon (Running Wild Press, May 2025)
Literary, African American and Indigenous American Studies scholar Dr. Shonda Buchanan regurgitates her decades of study of one of America’s foremost pianists, composers and voices into graceful, majestic bursts of spirit as brilliant, heartfelt poetry originated from love for the icon. Claiming her sisterhood with Simone on basis of shared Black Indian roots, Buchanan’s poetic biography of Simone’s humble origins and later known disruptor persona elegizes the Civil Rights Movement and Black women’s still unsung place in shaping America to what it became. In doing so, Buchanan’s warm and loving works show critical theorizing and artmaking don’t have be mutually exclusive.
21. Backtalker: An American Memoir by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (Simon & Schuster, May 2026)
In Backtalker, Crenshaw tears off her scholarly hard hat to trace the personal life, losses and loves that built up her towering intelligence to change women’s and race studies in the academy forever. Her special class of Black American Renaissance Woman and rarely recognized genius breaks through in this clear-eyed telling of a small-town childhood in the American Midwest, sheltering by active and intellectual parents, and adult reckonings with unfair treatment as a Black woman driving her academic ascension. Besides its import for critical studies and audiences, it is just a good old-fashioned autobiography of American possibility and freedoms.
22. Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe by Gail Crowther (Gallery Books, May 2026)
Thanks to this delightfully inventive and fresh approach to graphing a supposedly well-known life through their book collection, now you know, as I only did after nabbing a cool refrigerator magnet photo of baby-faced Marilyn reading Ulysses in a park back in the day, that Norma Jean Rae’s literary pursuits went far further than marrying Arthur Miller. I hope Marilyn and Her Books starts the change to future generations’ image of the sensationalized country girl who, as bookworm high school dropout Norma Jean Rae, perfected the art of playing dumb for genius aims still reverberating today. Old and new fans alike will be delighted to learn of the titles she favored and reading habits her intimates knew her for, with unprecedented access by her estate in remembrance of what would be her 90th birthday.
23. How it Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves by Megan O’Grady (FSG, April 2026)
O’Grady reminds us there was a time when we all weren’t just anxiously awaiting for the next domestic or world affairs shoe to drop, but aiming for if not relishing in leisure time. How it Feels to Be Alive announces that a critical chunk of O’Grady’s leisure time went to growing up on and living through engagement with beloved art works and curiosity about the artists behind them. Her quirky collage of images and words praises five different works of art and five artists. For the first time I’ve understood paintings or photographs to be capable of what songs, books and films do all the time- really change how see ourselves and the world thus changing our lives forever. We share one of those life-changers, Carrie Mae Weems’s “Kitchen Table Series” of self-portraits capturing spare Black life, as one of many artists’ works that have jolted me to write.
24. It’s Time to Give a FECK: Elevating Humanity Through Forgiveness, Empathy, Compassion and Kindness by Chaz Ebert (Forefront Books, May 2024)
‘Tis always the season for forgiveness, empathy, compassion and kindness. That is why this book released over 2 years ago is still going strong, most recently with a glitzy Chicago gala for the FECK Awards after a nationwide nomination process of average individuals who symbolize all the book aims to teach people. Chaz Ebert, whose other half Roger Ebert triggered the shift to thoughtful film and humanities criticism for the masses, reminds readers she is a writer for more than film and Roger’s legacy. The FECK principles arise from her own spiritual transformation in recovery from racism, substance abuse and grief. This book is hugely recommended as the perfect gift to combat adversary division and differences for anyone wishing to be a better human being.
25. The Booze-Free Bar(c)art Book: The Art of Crafting Easy, Elegant Mocktails for Your Bar Cart by CeCe Bailey Page (Schiffer, September 2025)
This is your friendly reminder that summer is always heavy on the socializing and therefore the chances to drink. You can’t keep it sexy, let alone healthy, if drunk. Enter the mocktail, usual impossible to make tempting… unless you pair the cutest illustrations of bar cart tools, essential ingredients and specific glasses to make sumptuous alternatives like the “Dolly Parton” and “Lavender Haze” with fruit, veggies, garnishes, salt, sugar and more in most recipes. Beauty News NYC covered this book in detail for light and non-drinkers at the holidays, but let’s keep up our sober spirits, pun intended, all year!
Missed Beauty News NYC Official’s great books of 2025? Head HERE for last year’s best holiday gift books you can still throw in your summer bags and read on vacay travels.
