The sun is out, the garden's calling, and somewhere between the deckchair and the second coffee is exactly the right amount of concentration for a very good book. We asked around Cambridge's best bookshops for their summer picks - here's what they told us.
OUR BOOK BUTLER’S RECOMMENDATIONS
"Every summer I go through the shelves looking for the books I'd actually want in my own bag, not just what's selling, but what's worth the sunburn. This year it's a smuggler's inn, a stolen summer, a wedding gone sideways and one very charming vampire. A little dark, a little warm, entirely unmissable."
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
A young woman, a smuggler-run inn on the Cornish moors, and a landlord you should not trust. Gothic, gripping, and best read with the curtains slightly drawn even in August.
Foster by Claire Keegan
A little girl is sent to stay with relatives she's never met and finds more warmth there in one summer than she's known in her whole life. Small, devastating, unforgettable.
The Wedding People by Alison Espach
A woman checks into a grand hotel alone, with a plan of her own - and gets swept into someone else's wedding instead. Coming soon to a cinema near you, courtesy of the team behind some very good tragicomedies.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
A 1990s book club, a suspiciously charming new neighbour, and considerably more bloodshed than their usual true crime picks. HBO is adapting it - read the original before the streaming spoilers arrive.
Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh
One long, chaotic last summer on a small Irish island, full of football, scandal and first love. Shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards - and every bit as funny as that sounds.
Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
Poirot on holiday at a glamorous beach hotel, which naturally means a body on the sand within days. 2026 marks fifty years since Christie's death, making this the perfect excuse to revisit the queen of crime at her most seasonal.
WATERSTONES’ RECOMMENDATIONS
Part of the national chain, but the Sidney Street branch has a character all its own - a sprawling, multi-floor shop just steps from Sidney Sussex College, with a strong events calendar and a fiction team that knows exactly what's worth your holiday luggage allowance.
The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson
Odysseus's ten-year journey home, in the translation everyone's been talking about. Christopher Nolan's film just landed in cinemas - read the original after you see it reinvented.
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
A retired lawyer's whole extraordinary life, told entirely through the letters she writes. Winner of the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction, and an absolute masterclass in the epistolary form.
Heartstopper: Volume 6 by Alice Oseman
The final chapter of Nick and Charlie's story, just in time for the Netflix finale. Ten years of first love, told with more warmth than a book has any right to have.
HEFFERS’ RECOMMENDATIONS
Cambridge's oldest bookshop, trading on Trinity Street since 1876 and still the go-to for staff recommendations you can actually trust.
Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
A young woman's coming of age, half of it spent falling in love at Girton College just down the road. A genuine Cambridge classic, written by someone who lived every page of it.
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
A curator dressing the rooms of a medieval palace becomes strangely entangled with the long-dead king who once lived there. Winner of the 2026 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and unlike anything else on this list.
Solace House by Will Maclean
Broke students clearing out a Victorian mansion stumble on journals hinting at another world entirely. This summer's word-of-mouth sensation, for anyone who misses The Secret History.
Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuang-zi, translated by Lin King
A Japanese novelist tours 1930s colonial Taiwan with her interpreter, and nothing is quite as simple as it looks. Winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature.
The Artist by Lucy Steeds
One sweltering Provençal summer, a reclusive painter, and the niece who's been quietly running his life for years. Waterstones Book of the Year, and a masterclass in slow-burn tension.
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
A journey through threatened rivers across three continents, anchored by the chalk stream near the author's own Cambridge home. Written by a Fellow of Emmanuel College - as local as nature writing gets.
THE BODIES IN THE BOOKSHOP’S RECOMMENDATIONS
Cambridge's dedicated crime fiction specialist, tucked away on Botolph Lane over two floors of new, second-hand and collectable mysteries, with a particular soft spot for authors with Cambridge connections.
The Dentist by Tim Sullivan
A homeless man's murder unravels into something far stranger, solved by one of crime fiction's most quietly brilliant detectives. First in a series by a Cambridge graduate turned Bristol-based crime writer.
The Boat Race Murder by R.E. Swartwout
Ten days before the Boat Race, one of the Cambridge crew turns up dead. Written by the actual cox who rowed Cambridge to victory in 1930 - fiction with real oars in the water.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
A true story of murder, eccentricity and Southern high society in Savannah, Georgia. A genre-defining slice of true crime, and still one of the best of its kind.