2025 Summer Reading List

If your summer reading tastes run toward thrillers with teeth, you’re in the right place. This list is packed with espionage, assassins, and the kind of international intrigue that pairs perfectly with long flights or lazy afternoons by the pool. You’ll find genre heavyweights like The Brotherhood of the Rose, Prince of Fire, and The Lions of Lucerne—books that drop you straight into a world of covert ops, global conspiracies, and flawed heroes with dangerous pasts. Whether it’s Daniel Silva’s art restorer turned spy or Brad Thor’s bullet-dodging agent, these novels deliver fast-paced plots and just the right amount of grit.

But it’s not all high-stakes action. The list also dives into riveting non-fiction like Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap, which read with the tension of a thriller but are grounded in sobering historical reality. Add in Alex Joske’s Spies and Lies for a deep-dive into Chinese espionage, and you’ve got enough real-world deception to make you question everything. To balance things out, there’s Carl Hiaasen’s Fever Beach for a splash of Floridian chaos, and Agrippina by Emma Southon—because who doesn’t want a sharply told, wickedly funny biography of one of ancient Rome’s most infamous women? From dark alleys in Europe to palace plots in Rome, this list was built to keep you turning pages all summer long.