Hi, my bookish friend!
I spent last week with family down at the Delaware Seashore. And besides making beach reading time a daily priority, I also made sure to stop into my favorite indie bookstores.
While I was fawning over the curated shelves of beach reads and staff picks, I noticed a common challenge: making a decision!
Everyone who knows me is well aware that I’m guilty of overthinking basically everything. But I wasn’t alone in this! In the bookstores, I was constantly surrounded by readers who asked each other and themselves, “This one or that one?”
I mean, don’t get me wrong … being spoiled for book choices is a great problem! But when you only have so much time and so much money, leaving with only one or two books feels like choosing between which child is my favorite!
So, if this is you too, especially when picking your next book, I have a solution: start a book series! Imagine the relief of having a predetermined line-up of reads! Now, all you have to do is decide on which addictive book series to start! Will the decision fatigue ever end?!
It helps to have a bookish friend to discuss this angst and to swap recommendations! (I hope I can be that friend for you!) So, this week’s two Summer Reading Mini-Challenges lean into the social side of reading.
Books provide so many opportunities for meaningful connection. I hope you and your bookish bestie enjoy completing this week’s challenges!
Happy Summer Reading!
Your friend,
Audry
P.S. I’m thanking new or current Annual or Founding Members by giving away a $50 Bookshop.org gift card on August 26th to celebrate the Bookish AF Summer of Reading!
On my original blog on my website, the post about 15 different book series quickly became one of my most popular! Since I wrote that in 2023, even more book series have become bestsellers and reader favorites!
So, for this list, I dug a little deeper past the well-known choices. (Fourth Wing/A Court of Thorns and Roses/Harry Potter series) While you may still have heard of the book series I’m featuring today, they all have a timely 2026 component: their final book was published this year, or a TV series or film adaptation is out now or coming soon!
This literary mystery series follows a different detective in each book. While every mystery stands on its own, the overlapping cast and evolving relationships make the series incredibly rewarding to read in order. Readers share that they love how atmospheric and brilliantly written it is!
If you love character-driven crime fiction, you’re in for a good time! The final book in the connected Cal Hooper trilogy, The Keeper, was just released this year.
Start with In the Woods. (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Part sci-fi adventure, part hilarious character study, these fast-paced novellas about a sarcastic, antisocial security android are incredibly bingeable. Murderbot keeps getting dragged into dangerous corporate conspiracies and life-or-death missions, only to save the humans it’s insisting it doesn’t care about.
This award-winning series has been earning a ton of hype recently! Likely, all the fuss has come from readers wanting to get their hands on Platform Decay, which was released this year. Plus, the series is now on Apple TV+. And I’m seeing that they’re fantastic as audiobooks!
Start with All Systems Red. (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
I never thought my interest would be piqued by a book about surviving a reality TV show with a talking cat after aliens have destroyed Earth. But the growing hype about this series has me curious! If I do read them, I plan to listen to the audiobooks. From what I’ve heard, narrator Jeff Hays provides a phenomenal theatrical performance.
A Parade of Horribles released in May 2026. And the television adaptation has been greenlit by Peacock. This cult favorite may not stay under the radar for long!
Start with Dungeon Crawler Carl. (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
In this very long-running urban fantasy series, Harry Dresden works out of a basement office and advertises his services in the Yellow Pages under “Wizards.” He also regularly consults with the Chicago PD when a murder is too strange for the regular police to explain.
What begins as entertaining mysteries grows into a massive, sprawling fantasy epic involving wizards, vampires, faerie courts, demons, and fallen angels. You’ve got 18 books of this magical mayhem to binge! The latest installment, Twelve Months, arrived in January 2026. The audiobooks, narrated by James Marsters (a.k.a. Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), are also worth checking out!
Start with Storm Front. (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
When a group of young London lawyers finds themselves tangled up in murder investigations and complicated legal schemes, they turn to their friend Hilary Tamar, a medieval law professor at Oxford, for help.
The books are deliciously clever and dryly funny in that British humor kind of way. Interestingly, throughout this four-book mystery series, you never know Hilary’s gender or age. Sarah Caudwell wrote the character without gendered pronouns or physical descriptions, leaving readers to make their own assumptions.
Start with Thus Was Adonis Murdered. (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
I’m calling this 11-book series Nordic Noir! It follows Carl Mørck, a deeply flawed Copenhagen detective assigned to solving cold cases. Carl is joined by his enigmatic assistant Assad and, later, the brilliant and eccentric Rose. This fascinating team of characters brings dark humor and personality to the chilling investigations.
The latest installment, No Song for the Dead, is set to publish on September 8, 2026, and the series has already been adapted into both Danish films and a Netflix television series.
Start with The Keeper of Lost Causes. (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
You could read any Abby Jimenez book on its own and enjoy it without feeling as if you’re missing something. However, if you read her books in order or within each trilogy, you’ll discover easter eggs through shared characters and locations.
Readers love Abby Jimenez’s heartfelt romances. They have just the right balance of humor, emotional payoff, and unforgettable characters. Her book series includes The Friend Zone, Part of Your World, and her most recent release, Say You’ll Remember Me.
Start with The Friend Zone. (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
View the booklist on Bookshop.org! (Local independent bookstores benefit from your purchases!)
For this week’s Summer Reading Bingo mini-challenges, don’t keep your next great read to yourself! A series can give you and a friend something to obsess over together for months. A recommendation can say, “I thought of you.” And, reading a chapter to someone can say, “I want to spend this time with you.”
July 30th is International Day of Friendship. So, what better way to celebrate than by recommending a book?
I enjoy recommending books to friends when we’re discussing books. But I’m also a little hesitant about it. Everyone has their own tastes and perspectives. So, it helps not to get too personally attached if they like your rec or not!
Trying to match their favorite genres, characters, hobbies, or the mood they’re in ups the success rate. So share away! Tell them, “I think you would LOVE this book because...”
Share all this bookish love with a friend!
I first wrote about reading aloud to others in this post back in April. I spotlighted a New York Times article about a reading retreat where participants take turns reading chapters to the group. Research has found that reading to another person creates an invaluable bonding experience. As a former teacher, I know this finding to be true firsthand!
Reading is usually something you do on your own. But it doesn’t always have to be! Choose a chapter from a favorite book and read it to someone you love. Even if it’s someone who doesn’t consider themselves “a reader.”
Yeah, it may feel a little weird at first. But remember the benefits! Reading to another person or to a group gives you:
A chance to slow down together.
A screen-free way to spend time.
Something to talk about afterward.
A shared memory you wouldn’t otherwise have.
A chance to appreciate a book in a whole new way.
So, read a hilarious chapter to a friend who needs a laugh. Or share a romantic chapter with your partner. Or find a kid who’d love you to read to them. Or all of the above and then some!
This summer, add whimsy to your reading habit! Follow along with the Bookish AF Summer of Reading 2026 here!
See which books made the cut for the 2026 Booker Prize here!
Have you seen the movie? Share in the comments! My son told me the movie’s volume is deafening. This Reddit thread backs up his claims. Save your ears and pick up this version to read instead! And for fun, Libby has a quiz to help you discover which Odyssey character you’re most like!
Spicing up your book diet? (See these spicy recs!) It’s so fun, but … you may be feeling some shame over reading a book with less intellectual merit and more, ya know, “action.” If so, check out this article on Summer of Smut: Why Everyone Is Reading Lustful Novels Right Now!
This week, I came across a Substack article that shared the concept of strengthening your reading habit like you would train for a 5K. Fun fact: I once trained and ran/walked a half marathon. But I’d much prefer this reading routine! Check out: let’s do a ‘couch to 5k’ for reading - by Naomi Alderman
The latest binge-worthy Netflix series is based on the classic novel, My Brilliant Career, written in 1901. You can watch it starting August 13th! In the meantime, learn all about it from Substack’s Bookish Media and Morgann Book in this post!
“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”
― P.G. Wodehouse
Shop for the books I recommend on Bookish AF at my Bookshop on Bookshop.org!
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As an additional thank you for your generosity of a paid subscription, I’ve recently added:
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