What to read in July - the best of this month's new books

The Satisfaction Cafe – Kathy Wang

RRP £20 (Abacus)

Check price

Welcome to sunny California, and to the café where tea and sympathy await – a dream project for Joan Liang. From her childhood in Taiwan to Palo Alto, through two marriages and motherhood, Joan has had tough times, she understands the need to belong.

Peopled by a rich mix of flawed humanity, this novel joins her on her life odyssey. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages – Jenny Colgan

RRP £16.99 (Hodder & Stoughton)

Check price

Audiologist Janey Carter’s Highland cottage is a little small to contain her stroppy daughter, Essie, home from Edinburgh after losing her high-flying job. They’re both scratchy. Janey’s husband left. But the power of community, friendship and fresh challenges work their magic.

And for both mother and daughter, love is in the air. A charm!

Attention All Shipping – Kathy Biggs

RRP £16.99 (Harper Collins)

Check price

Grace’s father, Jack, is half lost to dementia, and to help him sleep she plays an old recording of the shipping forecast. Her brother was lost at sea, presumed drowned in 1999, but when a young woman shows up, claiming to be his daughter, with proof that he was alive in 2001, the three embark on a campervan trip from Wales to Whitby to find him. I went overboard for this one.

The Little I Knew – Chiara Valerio

RRP £13.99 (Foundry Editions)

Check price

In the resort town of Scauri, lapped by the Tyrrhenian Sea, the enigmatic, charismatic Vittoria, at 64, is found drowned in her bath. Que será, será, shrug the folk in Bar Italia, but lawyer Lea Russo is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. In elegant, spare prose, Valerio perfectly conjures life in small-town Italy.

Open the vino, send out for a pizza and enjoy.

Lifelines – Julian Hoffman

RRP: £18.99 (Elliott & Thompson Limited)

Check price

Twenty-five years ago, Hoffman and his wife, Julia, left the city and settled in Prespa, a region of lakes and mountains where Greece, Albania and Macedonia meet.

It is a place of "remarkable biodiversity and wild beauty", where his encounters with brown bear and golden eagle, pelican, griffon vulture and mongoose, animate a story of finding a home far away from home.

The Red Shore – William Shaw

RRP £18.99 (Harper Collins)

Check price

When Met officer DS Eden Driscoll’s estranged eco-warrior sister goes missing, Driscoll relocates to Teignmouth and gets on the case – much to the delight of the local constabulary!

His investigation proceeds alongside a slow-build relationship with his recalcitrant nephew, Finn – the warm heart of this riveting novel, the first of Shaw’s new Devon crime series.

A Place in the Sun – Jo Thomas

RRP £9.99 (Transworld Publishers Ltd)

Check price

Ah, gorgeous Tuscany! Thea’s late husband, Marco, blew their life savings on Casa Luna, a doer-upper in a hilltop village that could almost do her in.

Without the help of the community, she and the kids won’t get it in shape to sell, and as the locals rally round, she helps out in the community kitchen alongside handsome chef Giovanni – and that’s amore. Pure escapism.

The Best We Could Hope For – Nicola Kraus

RRP £10.99 (Verve Books)

Check price

New York, 1972. When teen runaway Bunny leaves her three children with her older sister, Jayne, and Jayne’s journalist husband, they settle into a stable home.

Then Bunny bursts back on the scene and all descends into a chaos of which, as adults, the kids must try to make sense.

A brilliant, nuanced novel peopled by intriguing characters.