Summer Reading Suggestions

Reprinted from the Citizen:

Another Memorial Day has come and gone and we now turn our thoughts to summer reading. It seems to be a good time to escape from the weather, our jobs, current world events and read a good book (or two or three). 

Dorothea Benton Frank’s annual summer book is set during summers at the beach in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. “Same Beach, Next Year” tells the story of a couple who while vacationing at their usual summer condo discover that the wife of the new couple at the complex is the former high school love of the husband. 

Same Beach, Next Year

The couples become fast friends, vacationing every summer, and their families become close as well. But when the old attraction between high school sweethearts appears rekindled, and their respective spouses also become close, trouble ensues. There’s a real beach-y feel to this book, and part of it is set in beautiful Greece, so you get to travel there as well.

Karen White’s “The Night The Lights Went Out” is a romantic suspense story about Merilee, a woman whose husband leaves her for their daughter’s 4th grade teacher. She relocates her two children to a smaller home with a cranky landlady, a hunky contractor, and a fellow mom who is a little too eager to help. When a man is found dead, Merilee’s past comes back to haunt her.  Fans of Lianne Moriarty’s “Big Little Lies” will enjoy this one, and the landlady is fantastic character. 

The Night The Lights Went Out

Cozy mystery and cruise fans will welcome aboard Ellie Alexander’s latest Bakeshop Mystery, “A Crime of Passion Fruit” . Jules and her mom own a lovely bakery in a small town near Portland, Oregon. When Jules’ estranged husband Carlos, a chef on a cruise ship, asks Jules to come back and work as a pastry chef for a week, she agrees and brings her mom and her mom’s boyfriend, a police detective, along. 

A Crime of Passion Fruit

A murder occurs and Jules and company are on the case to find the killer. You don’t have to have read any of the previous books in this series to enjoy this one, and you get a peek at life below deck on a cruise ship, along with great food descriptions.

Adriana Trigiani’s newest family saga, “Kiss Carlo” brings us from Roseto Valfotore, Italy to Roseto, Pennsylvania as a young man yearns to become an actor in a post-WWII world. The characters here are fantastic, from the big, loving Italian Palazzini family to Calla Borelli, trying to keep her father’s theatre alive, to my favorite, Hortense, the wise and wise-cracking taxi dispatcher. 

Kiss Carlo

It’s a big, beautiful family story, and whether you yearn to be in a big family or are from your own big family, “Kiss Carlo” is for you. (And soap opera fans should keep an eye out for a cameo from superstar producer Gloria Monty.)

Julia Fierro’s “The Gypsy Moth Summer” drops the reader in 1992 Avalon Island, a stand-in for Long Island. The island is home to an aviation factory with long-term military contracts, and a wealthy enclave of people with ties to the factory. 

The Gypsy Moth Summer

When Leslie’s returns to her the large family estate after a years-long estrangement with her parents, she brings her African-American husband, teenage son, toddler daughter, and a determination to right past wrongs. It’s a beautifully written emotional story, and sure to be one of the most discussed books of the summer. Fierro gets the 1992 atmosphere pitch-perfect.

If your taste runs more to nonfiction, Sally Mott Freeman’s “The Jersey Brothers”, about a navel officer missing in WWII and the quest of his two brothers also serving in the military to find him, is a gripping read. All three brothers ended up in the middle of the most important events of the war, and Hillary Clinton recently raved about the book at the annual Book Expo in New York City. 

The Jersey Brothers

David Grann, author of the classic “The Lost City of Z” has a new book out, “Killers of the Flower Moon” about the murders of members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma and how the investigation led to the rise of the FBI.  In the 1920s, the Osage discovered oil on their land and became overnight millionaires, the richest people in the world per capita. 

Killers of the Flower Moon

When some Osage were murdered, new FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sends one of his best men in to unravel what has been happening there. This one is a page-turner.

Enjoy your summer reading!