Have you heard? A24 is taking over Hollywood. Possibly the world. The indie company that initially marketed itself as the edgy underdog has become a pillar/last bastion of extra-Marvel movies. No longer so scrappy, the gang of cinephiles that’s likely behind your latest fave is taking names and making deals.
The production and distribution company behind Marty Supreme and I Saw the TV Glow—two films that have already received tailor-made reading lists on this site—isn’t going anywhere this summer. But you may be. Which means you’ll want a book.
Here’s what to read next based on your favorite A24 movie. On the beach, the train, etc.
If The Drama, then Marie Ndiaye’s My Heart Hemmed In.
So I gather you like your mysteries unsettling and mostly psychological, and your attachments insecure. Hie thee then to the French novelist Marie Ndiaye, who loves to smash violence and mundanity together. This book about a couple in complex crisis creates a sense of political alienation that The Drama frankly dances around.
If If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, then Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane.
There’s a terrific, robust literature of new mothers on the edge. But few novels I’ve encountered capture the terror and fatigue unique to parenting a small person with extraordinary needs.
Herzog’s Pulitzer Prize finalist play is deep and unflinching about this experience. Just like Rose Byrne’s face, in this film.
If Materialists, then Mariam Rahmani’s Liquid.
Assuming you love your modern love with a side of brass tacks, this novel following a Ph.D candidate who goes on a ruthless quest to marry rich should slake that practical thirst.
But true rationalists, beware; as in your favorite A24 film, here love may prove more powerful than the bottom line.
If Sorry, Baby, then Emily Labarge’s Dog Days.
Labarge’s memoir is currently buzzing around a lot of wonderful water coolers. The novelist Catherine Lacey praised this book in a Substack letter just today.
A closely considered work on trauma and its cultural and psychological ramifications, Dog Days is an intellectual’s effort to square violence with the urge to write about it. Very Sorry-coded.
If Friendship, then Wayne Koestenbaum’s My Lover the Rabbi.
Okay, hear me out with this one. Friendship was a tender, absurd depiction of a one-sided, quasi-platonic infatuation. Though Koestenbaum’s novel is decidedly curious about the psychosexual aspect of obsession, the core themes—and a certain gleeful irreverence—are consistent across both texts.
Just in this case? Paul Rudd is the rabbi.
If The Brutalist, then Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History.
I could recommend a dozen doorstops that would pair well with this film following a refugee who makes good, then bad, in his unwelcoming adoptive homeland. But Claire Messud’s history comes to mind for its interest in thorny inheritance.
Following three generations of the Cassar family as they wrestle with what it means to come from and carry colonialism, this novel has truly fresh things to say about the origin stories families tell themselves.
If Past Lives, then Aisha Muharrar’s Loved One.
Muharrar is mostly a television writer behind some of your favorite sitcoms. Her debut novel is a welcome addition to the Unresolved-Business-With-Ex-Boyfriends canon.
Like Celine Song’s masterpiece, Loved One depicts an ambiguous loss. And also asks the question, how do we mourn the people we were with our other people?
If Janet Planet, then Helen Garner’s The Children’s Bach.
It’s Helen Garner month in my household. The Australian queen of coolly-observing-bohemia is one of my favorite 2026 discoveries. Like playwright Annie Baker’s warm, lush first feature, The Children’s Bach spins around a dreamy mother whose life is rattled by the appearance of a rakish rogue.
But to describe is to diminish this one. I must insist you take my word on it.
If The Invite, then Erin Somers’ The Ten Year Affair.
I loved catching The Invite this weekend. Olivia Wilde’s sex farce calls up Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and 70s domestic satires like Bob & Carol & Alice & Ted.
But for its ultra-modern treatment of both (spoiler alert) kinky sex and the place where desire and domesticity collide, there’s no better buddy than Erin Somers’ sly novel about two couples who just can’t seem to quit one another.
If The Witch, then Magda Szabo’s The Door.
This is a vibes based if/then. For Szabo’s freaky, compact masterpiece is not explicitly about witches. It just feels haunted. Though like The-Witch-the-movie, this strange, jarring delight is concerned with the fate of older women in un-hospitable climes.
If On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, then Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer.
This is a reparative reading recommendation. Rungano Nyoni’s film considered the radiating legacy of a violent man. But Braithwaite’s wry, wonderful novel paints a world where violent men are dealt with…sometimes by a certain sister.
Both art works are smart, funny, surprising, and strange on the ways women manage impossible circumstances.
If Minari, Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish.
The lovely Minari follows a South Korean family’s dispatch to rural Arkansas in the 1980s. This debut novel follows a Pakistani-American family who are navigating the same era in Milwaukee.
Akhtar’s quasi-autobiographical novel, like Lee Isaac Chung’s film, closely observes a childhood fraught with both consuming love and cultural tension.
If Lady Bird, then Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor.
For its evocation of a smart-alecky, precocious teen with grand delusions and schemes, and for its warm summery fondness for the golden years, I think fans of Gerwig’s first solo feature will dig Sag Harbor. Whitehead contempo-realism hive, assemble!
But because the Lady deserves it, I’ll leave you of great taste with a bonus recommendation. Lily King’s Writers and Lovers could well be about Christine in twenty years.
Happy read/watching!
