20 new books to read in June

Says the author: “The questions that I try to answer in the book through fiction are questions about people I knew when I was a child, that I didn’t get to know a lot about.” (June 4)Gailey’s inventive debut is part quirky fantasy, part noirish mystery, and part bittersweet family tragedy. (June 11)The best-selling author’s latest, her most sprawling and intensely personal novel to date, attempts to answer the question “How should a woman be in the world?” It follows two sisters, Jo and Bethie, from their 1950s childhood to the present day, tackling racism, sexual identity, abuse, and how women are shaped — but not defined — by their choices. Net­flix is breaking down the boundaries between film and television, and was sort of made for a book like this.” (June 11)Best known for her award-winning celebrity profiles — among others, she memorably wrote about Gwyneth Paltrow and Bradley Cooper last year — Brodesser-Akner turns to fiction with this stimulating debut. (June 25)The Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker TV critic singularly traces the medium’s evolution from a variety of angles, in a set of essays which collectively argue that “we are what we watch.” (June 25)This sprawling debut could be the big family saga of the summer, unfurling the fallout of a long-buried secret and persisting rivalries between four sisters across 50 transformative years.