The books of summer

Plus:

• National insecurity: In Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart creates a fake country in order to skewer the sorry state of real-world affairs.
• Book notes: Russia revisited
• Down with love: Curtis Sittenfeld’s second effort tracks a woman unlucky in romance.
• At a loss: In The Afterlife, Donald Antrim mourns and celebrates his troubled mother.
• Book notes: World views
• Milwaukee brood: In Pauls Toutonghi’s Red Weather, a teenager and his expat family struggle to adapt in the alien Midwest.
• Suburban blight: Rachel Sherman sets her dark tales in picket-fence America.
• Book notes: Leisure time
• Full exposure: Augusten Burroughs continues to flaunt his flaws in a new collection of essays.
• Comedy of terrors: A couple’s bitter divorce plays out against the September 11 attacks in Ken Kalfus’s wry new novel.
• Book notes: The crime blotter
• Now hear this: Planning a road trip? These new audiobooks will keep you company.
• Book notes: Strange crew
• Writers’ picks: Authors reveal their summer reading lists.

For many, summer reading means easygoing fare, books that go down smoothly while you’re relaxing in sunny locales. This summer’s best titles are enjoyable, to be sure—but they also come fortified with ideas that linger long after the last page is turned. Take Gary Shteyngart’s brilliant, rollicking novel Absurdistan, packed with as many themes as a Dostoyevsky doorstop. Many authors display a darkly intelligent humor: Ken Kalfus describes his 9/11 novel as a comedy, while Augusten Burroughs serves up another collection of self-exposing vignettes. Others deliver intense meditations on death (Donald Antrim) and the difficulties of adolescence (Rachel Sherman, Pauls Toutonghi, Curtis Sittenfeld). Meanwhile, we checked in with some of our favorite scribes—surreal storyteller George Saunders, historical novelist Emily Barton and more—to find out what’s on their  reading lists this season. Whether you’ll be poolside or in a room with the shades drawn, this grab bag of books should keep your brain busy while your body is on vacation.—Michael Miller, Books editor