5 Graphic Novels to Take Along on Your Next Beach Day

Are you packing up for the beach or making plans to this summer? Be sure to take a good comic along with you! Sure, graphic novels aren’t traditionally considered beach reads, unlike most featured in our recent Best Beach Reads roundup, burounduplet that stop you. Be a beach rebel!

If you’re having trouble deciding which comic to rebel with, here are some suggestions for your trip.

Goldie Vance Volume One by Hope Larson and Brittney Williams For those who want to get engrossed in a mystery on vacation, check out this one about teen detective Goldie Vance, the unofficial house detective at her father’s beach resort! Can she ever prove herself to the official house detective?

Lumberjanes Volume One: Beware the Kitten Holy by N.D. Stevenson Okay, so hear me out on why Lumberjanes is my ideal beach read. It’s the story of a group of young ladies at summer camp. But it’s no ordinary summer camp. The forest is filled with magical creatures, dangers, and mysteries. And these young ladies, these Lumberjanes? They run toward danger and always rely on each other and their friendship to solve every problem and right every wrong. Yes, it’s a comic book. Yes, it’s pretty much middle grade. And that’s why it’s perfect. It’s easy to read, fun and funny, and it warms the heart as the sun warms my skin. — Chris M. Arnone

One Piece Volume One by Eiichiro Oda If you’re new to manga or simply looking for new-to-you manga, One Piece is perfect for the beach for a few reasons. Apart from being one of the longest-running and most internationally loved manga series, it’s got pirates sailing the Seven Seas of a fantastical world, found family, and even a few heart-touching moments. At the head of it all is Monkey D. Luffy, who dreams of finding the One Piece treasure and becoming King of the Pirates. He just needs a loyal crew…and to deal with the curse of never being able to swim again that he accidentally exchanged for an extraordinary power. — Erica Ezeifedi

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Comic by Various Creators It’s right in the theme song to the show: you should really just relax. This innovative book, which has the stars of the rebooted series lampooning public domain comics, is just the way to do it!

This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki Rose has always looked forward to spending the summer on the lake with her friend Windy. But this summer, familial strife and physical dangers threaten to upend the duo’s vacation.

Grab even more beach-ready reads with our big roundup.

The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.

We love a good cover, and this week, we’re highlighting a list of the best short story covers. Trust us when we say that these will look so demure on your bookshelves!

Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.

In the course of writing about great book covers, there’s one thing that I’ve noted several times: short story collections have some of the most innovative, memorable, and eye-catching covers of them all. Why is that? Perhaps part of it is because short story collections are a harder sell to the average reader, so the first line of marketing has to be for the bookshop browser, whether they’re perusing on or off line. Perhaps part of it is that many great short story collections are coming from smaller presses, so pushing boundaries with design is part of what’s possible because there are fewer stakeholders to please in the process. Perhaps it’s also simply that short story collections, by nature of their diversity, invite more creativity into the cover design process.

Whatever the reason or reasons, I suspect anyone who appreciates a good book cover is here for it.

Let’s take a look at some of the banging short story book covers that have hit shelves this year, as well as look at some of the upcoming covers of collections you’ll want to pop on your TBR ASAP. If you’re reading this when the piece publishes in mid-May, know you’ll be reading it in time to partake in Short Story Month, too. Any month can be short story month, of course, but May gives extra reason to dive into bite-sized fiction.

As always, caveats abound here. It is still unnecessarily difficult to track down cover designers and artists for book covers, especially if you don’t have the book in your hand to double-check. Many publishers still don’t put this information on the landing pages for these books, so it takes good Googling and a lot of luck to dig up names to credit.

Autocorrect by Etgar Keret, translated by Jessica Cohen and Sondra Silverston (May 27) If you’re looking for a collection of darkly funny stories, this cover is not going to steer you in the wrong direction. It’s a squirrel that’s clearly been launched right into the book title, and he looks completely unfazed by it all. There’s a lot of nice movement in this design, especially as it is very simplistic.

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