By Emily Schmidt and Gabriela Steinmetz
Summertime offers warm days, cool drinks, and long hours on beach chairs or in the backyard for reading.
Rye residents rely on recommendations from friends, book clubs, and local bookstores to help shape their reading choices, said Patrick Corcoran, owner of Arcade Books.
Here are some of Rye’s most popular books this summer.
“Dolly All the Time,” local author Annabel Monaghan’s fifth novel, was “Good Morning America’s” Book Club pick for June. Monaghan is always popular with local readers, and he expects the novel to do well this summer. Set in Rhode Island, Dolly Brick returns to her hometown to help her dad and brother fix their house after a fire. There, she meets Stewart Whitfield, a wealthy man recovering from a public breakup, and the pair enter a fake relationship that gradually becomes something more.
“Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi has spent 22 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Both the Rye Free Reading Room and Corcoran recently reported high demand for the novel. Corcoran said he has sold hundreds of copies, including 140 to a single customer who wanted to give them to friends. Many book clubs are reading this novel, which follows an elderly stranger, Theo, who begins buying portraits from a local coffee shop in Golden, Ga. He returns those portraits to the people depicted in them in exchange for their stories.
“Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke, a GMA Book Club pick for April, has been popular in Rye. The story centers on Natalie Heller Mills, a “tradwife” influencer whose seemingly perfect life is carefully staged by a team working behind the scenes. One day, she awakens to find herself transported to 1855, where she’s forced to live the reality of a grueling farm life. Anne Hathaway is set to star in and produce the novel’s film adaptation, according to Deadline.
Rye readers are still gobbling up “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans, which has been on The New York Times bestseller list for 25 weeks. For her debut novel, Evans received the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction from the Women’s Prize Trust and a film adaptation starring Jane Fonda is reportedly in production. Readers follow 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer who navigates life through letters and emails. This epistolary novel finds Sybil confronting old wounds and finding forgiveness.
While fiction remains popular with many readers, Corcoran said nonfiction books are a summer trend in Rye, particularly those about birds. He credited this to the beautiful backyards across Rye. But it’s not just in Rye. Google Trends found that February 2026 recorded the highest number of bird book searches in New York since COVID-19.
This summer, Corcoran predicts “Whistler” by the popular Ann Patchett, the author of the bestselling “Bel Canto,” will be a favorite among Rye readers. Sarah Prosser, a librarian at the Rye Library, confirmed that the novel is gaining popularity. “Whistler” tells the story of a reunion between a stepdaughter and her stepfather decades after a tragic event separated them. It’s a story about memory, bravery, and small, yet consequential, moments that change lives.
Whether readers are looking for romance, historical fiction, epistolary novels, or guides to local wildlife, the library and Arcade Books are set to help them find the books they seek.
