It’s the summer of 1946 and Emily Stanton is returning to New York City for her wedding. After graduating from college and having her life planned out for her, she’s ready to walk down the aisle to the perfect man. That is until she’s face-to-face again with the woman who defined her love for the city and so much more over one long summer four years earlier. Kate Alessi has made a life photographing the times and people around her, while trying to forget the woman who came to town for a few short months and turned her world upside down. When she ends up as the photographer for Emily’s coming wedding, she and Emily will have to navigate how to follow their dreams while realizing the ones that were lost along the way—the biggest of those dreams being their love for one another.

The first novel from award-winning author Gianfranco Calligarich to be published in English, Last Summer in the City is a witty and despairing classic of Italian literature. Biting, tragic, and endlessly quotable, this translated edition features an introductory appreciation from longtime fan New York Times bestselling author André Aciman. In a city smothering under the summer sun and an overdose of la dolce vita, Leo Gazarra spends his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between run-down hotels and the homes of his rich and well-educated friends, without whom he would probably starve. At thirty, he’s still drifting: between jobs that mean nothing to him, between human relationships both ephemeral and frayed. Everyone he knows wants to graduate, get married, get rich—but not him. He has no ambitions whatsoever. Rather than toil and spin, isn’t it better to submit to the alienation of the Eternal City, Rome, sometimes a cruel and indifferent mistress, sometimes sweet and sublime? There can be no half measures with her, either she’s the love of your life or you have to leave her. First discovered by Natalia Ginzburg, Last Summer in the City is a forgotten classic of Italian literature, a great novel of a stature similar to that of The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye. Gianfranco Calligarich’s enduring masterpiece has drawn comparisons to such writers as Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, and Jonathan Franzen and is here made available in English for the first time.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author shares an “exceptionally nuanced, tender, funny, tragic, and utterly transfixing portrait” of one man’s troubled century (Booklist, starred review). At 115 years old, former newspaperman Sam Cunningham is also the last surviving veteran of World War I. As he prepares to die in a Chicago nursing home, the results of the 2016 presidential election come in—and he finds himself in a wide-ranging conversation with a surprising God. As the two review Sam’s life, the grand epic of the twentieth century comes sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana under the flawed morality of an abusive father. Eager to escape, Sam enlists in the army while still underage. Though the hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the United States, Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam’s at almost every turn. As he contemplates his relationships—with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son—Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years.

There’s nothing like summer in Manhattan. The days are long and the nights are even longer. But when the lights go out on the city, fireworks explode. . . Night at the Museum by Lori Wilde Art restorer Ria Preston knows a thing or two about beauty. And when she discovers her neighborhood crush, gregarious Wall Street advisor Vic Albright, is locked overnight in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her, she can’t resist taking him on a very private tour . . . Lights Out by Priscilla Oliveras Back in high school, Vanessa Ríos and Mateo Garza were theater troupe rivals. Now Mateo’s a rising Broadway star and Vanessa’s his most scathing critic. Cue a plot twist straight out of central casting: the two end up alone in his New York City apartment during the blackout, setting the stage for what could be their second act romance . . . Mind Games, by Sarah Skilton What happens in college stays in college—unless you never get over it. In fact, Alison has been waiting to take her revenge on Nick, once the hottest guy on campus, now the hottest guy on the rising magician’s circuit. But her plans to sabotage his first show are upended by the power outage. That’s when the real magic happens . . .

EMMA FREEMAN IS waving buh-bye to her standard summer of stationwagoning around the suburbs. This summer she’s heading to the big city. Emma’s totally prepped for days at a fabulous internship and nights of socialite-ing around town. But when you’re 17 and not an heiress, reality is far from pink fizzy drinks and red velvet ropes. As the summer heats up, Emma learns that glamour is hard to come by when your only friend is too boy-crazy to hang, your budget is more H&M than D&G, and you spend 8 hours a day working for a man who proves that the devil wears Dockers too. Add one little white lie told to one very hot coworker and a roommate who makes Paris Hilton look junior varsity, and this summer in the city is starting to turn into one hot mess.

Inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia and the Grimm fairy tale "Brother and Sister," Michelle Ruiz Keil's second novel follows two siblings torn apart and struggling to find each other in early '90s Portland. All her life, seventeen-year-old Iph has protected her sensitive younger brother, Orr. But this summer, with their mother gone at an artist residency, their father decides it’s time for fifteen-year-old Orr to toughen up at a wilderness boot camp. When their father brings Iph to a work gala in downtown Portland and breaks the news, Orr has already been sent away against his will. Furious at her father’s betrayal, Iph storms off and gets lost in the maze of Old Town. Enter George, a queer Robin Hood who swoops in on a bicycle, bow and arrow at the ready, offering Iph a place to hide out while she tracks down Orr. Orr, in the meantime, has escaped the camp and fallen in with The Furies, an all-girl punk band, and moves into the coat closet of their ramshackle pink house. In their first summer apart, Iph and Orr must learn to navigate their respective new spaces of music, romance, and sex-work activism—and find each other before a fantastical transformation fractures their family forever. Told through a lens of magical realism and steeped in myth, Summer in the City of Roses is a dazzling tale about the pain and beauty of growing up.

A team of artists find stories and images on the field and behind the scenes about the Durham Bulls.