Curated by AIDAN COOPER

While many lounge into the soft heat of these summer months — leaning back, feet up, a cold drink in one hand — The Common’s editorial assistants have been perched on the edge of their seats, hunched over stories large and suspenseful. In this edition of What We’re Reading, interrogate boatfuls of questionable characters; restage plays sparking with historical intellect; ride alongside mercenaries galivanting in the Brazilian backlands; and balance on a tightrope of familial love above the darkness of half-remembered myth. Here, AIDAN CAHILL, BEN TAMBURRI, CAMILA MASSAKI GOMES, AMAYA RANATUNGE, and I have been reading stories that epitomize summer’s intensity: flowering with fruitful prose and hurtling by at a landslide pace.