School is out and summer is officially here. Whether we're heading off in search of adventure or kicking back at home, our reading lives are infused with the holiday spirit.

We start with the packing tips provided by this year's Booker panel – if you're carrying contemporary fiction then David Mitchell, Siri Hustvedt and Neel Mukherjee are obvious fellow travellers. But how has the longlist been shaped by this year's groundbreaking rule change, opening the award up to American books?

Of course summer reading isn't all about the latest novels. We gather a host of recommendations from readers and critics alike.

The beach can also be the perfect scene for crime fiction, so breezing on to the Books podcast is the bestselling US mystery writer Laura Lippman. She's been investigating the seedier side of Baltimore since 1997. She tells us how her latest, After I'm Gone, was inspired by an intriguing paragraph of the city's history, and why she only found the right structure for her story of a mistress, a mother and her three daughters after a number of false starts.

Reading list
After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman (Faber)