What the Guardian books team are reading on our holidays

I’ve been saving Esther Freud’s new novel My Sister and Other Lovers to read on holiday. It’s a follow-up to Hideous Kinky, her fictionalised account of her bohemian childhood in Morocco with her mother and sister, which I enjoyed many years back, so I’m looking forward to reuniting with those characters (and picking up where the last book left off). I’m also taking Flesh by David Szalay. I’m always drawn to novels that tell the whole story of a life, and I’m intrigued to follow his Hungarian protagonist István through some of the major events of our era. Charlotte Northedge

As fiction editor, I’m usually reading novels before they come out: in awe, recently, of the huge achievement of Sarah Hall’s millennia-spanning Helm (late August), and relishing the hammock-worthy treat of Mick Herron’s latest Slow Horses instalment Clown Town (early September). But for me, summer reading means a break from fiction, and this year I’ve got some Scandinavian train journeys to fill. Recently, while discussing Richard Lloyd Parry’s brilliant investigation into a young woman’s disappearance in Tokyo, People Who Eat Darkness, a reading buddy gave me another very strong true-crime recommendation. So I’ll be packing the great Australian writer Helen Garner’s story of competing narratives in a murder trial, This House of Grief: a novelist’s take on how reality can be twisted. Justine Jordan

I do like a good story of turmoil and chaos lurking behind seemingly perfect facades, so I’m looking forward to reading Among Friends by Hal Ebbott, in which an “unforgiveable” act shatters a decades-long bond between two rich and successful middle-aged men. I’m obviously intensely curious about what this betrayal might be, but also interested to read a novel that centres friendship rather than a romantic partnership. Ebbott told one interviewer: “American culture tends to privilege romantic and familial relations as the bedrock of a good life, with friendship falling in the category of ‘nice to have’. As someone who believes it ought to garner the same degree of respect and concern, I was drawn to the way this story could do that.” David Shariatmadari

I’ll be taking Brian on holiday with me this year. Jeremy Cooper’s story of a solitary man who finds meaning and friendship through nightly visits to watch films by directors such as Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda and Federico Fellini at the BFI on London’s South Bank sounds appealingly subtle, cinematic and strange. I haven’t read Florence Knapp’s sliding doors novel The Names yet so that’s also going in the case along with Hungry for What, a collection of short stories by Maria Bastarós, largely set in the region of Spain that I’m visiting. Wild and psychologically disturbing (like your average family trip) they should make fun reading on my Galician adventure. Liese Spencer

A road trip novel feels very fitting for summer, especially if it comes in at an easily-transportable 192 pages. Christian Kracht’s Eurotrash – translated from German by Daniel Bowles and longlisted for this year’s International Booker prize – bills itself as a “tragicomic quest”, following a middle-aged writer on a journey through Switzerland with his mother, freshly discharged from a mental institution, as they attempt to give away her wealth amassed through investments in the arms industry. And I have always enjoyed reading about sport more than playing or watching it, so Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year, a poetic meditation on the basketball greats, will also be coming on holiday with me. Ella Creamer

I am a long-time fan of the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and known for the feminist “Bechdel test” for films – which started life as a joke in one of her cartoon strips. I recently got my hands on her latest graphic novel, the fictionalised memoir Spent, and it’s another gorgeous volume – as with her last book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Bechdel’s drawings have been beautifully coloured by her wife Holly Rae Taylor. Granted, Spent is not the most practical book to take away on holiday, being a fairly bulky hardback, but if it’s even half as wise and joyful as her previous work, then having to lug it around with me will be well worth it. Lucy Knight