Great Reads to Kick Off Summer

It's summer and it’s time to check out what books you’ll be putting in your beach bag or reading on your front porch.

Ann Patchett is an author whose works I always read, and her latest Whistler continues her streak of excellent novels. Daphne and her husband are in the Met Museum when they notice an older man following them. He turns out to be Daphne’s former stepfather, who was married to her mother for only a year when Daphne was nine. 

Daphne reconnects with him, which brings forth a memory of why he left her family all those years ago. It’s a wonderful story filled with characters whom you root for, and Patchett writes beautifully. I finished it in one day and loved it so. 

Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, The Things We Never Say is also a story about family. Artie is a beloved 11th grade history teacher whose best friend is a boisterous older widow who is moving away. He finds solace in his taking his boat out on Massachusetts Bay, but increasingly feels isolated and lonely.

When he learns that his wife has been keeping a huge secret from him, it upends everything and he has to decide how he will move forward. Like Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge) is a tremendous writer who encourages empathy in the reader for her characters. 

Evelyn Clarke is the pen name of two authors (V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke) who wrote a propulsive locked room mystery The Ending Writes Itself. Six authors are brought to a remote Scottish island to compete to finish a book written by a popular mystery series writer who drowned.

With two million dollars and a publishing contract at stake, each author is desperate to win, and soon one by one the authors meet a diabolical end. Who will be left standing and win the money? This is a book you will race through, and I was impressed that each character is distinct and memorable. 

Other big books this summer include Douglas Stuart’s new novel John of John, also set on a remote Scottish island. This one revolves around a young gay man who is summoned back home from Edinburgh by his religious father to come help care for the young man’s ailing grandmother. He struggles with his family’s expectations and life in a small town.

Stuart’s previous novel Shuggie Bain won many accolades, and John of John”is said to be his best book yet. 

Christina Baker Kline’s new historical novel The Foursome fictionalizes the story of famous conjoined twins Eng and Chang Bunker, who leave Siam to move to the United States in 1839. They marry two sisters (who are distant relatives of the author), and the story takes place over a fifty-year period as we see how the sisters deal with life married to conjoined twins. This one sounds intriguing. 

Kathryn Stockett’s last book, The Help was published seventeen years ago and became an instant bestseller. Her latest historical novel is The Calamity Club, set in Depression-era 1933 Mississippi. Meg is eleven years old and lives in an orphanage. She is deemed too old to adopt and so is stuck there.

Birdie is a unmarried woman, “a spinster” who befriends Meg as she works at the orphanage. When they meet Charlie, who is on the run from something, the three become friends. They come up with an idea to open a boarding house that caters to a certain clientele.

This is big book, over 600 pages, and the themes of found family and the limited choices of women during the Depression are dealt with humor and heartache. 

You need a little romance for summer, and popular sensation B.K. Borison’s second in her Heartstrings series will steam up your glasses, even though her new novel And Now, Back to You is set during winter.

Jackson is a buttoned-up meteorologist at a local Baltimore radio station who is raising his twin fifteen year-old sisters. Delilah is a delightful, friendly meteorologist on a local Baltimore TV station whose jealous boss is using every humiliating way to get her to quit.

The pair, who have a contentious relationship, are teamed up to travel to the mountains of Deep Creek, Maryland to cover a massive snowstorm headed their way. Of course they are forced to share a room with only bed, and well, you can guess what happens. 

If Nonfiction is your genre of choice, Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book London Falling tells the story of a young man who dies jumping off a balcony in London. While looking for answers as to what happened to their son, his parents discover that he was impersonating the son of Russian oligarch. Radden Keefe looks for answers in this true story. If you liked Keefe's book about the Troubles in Northern Ireland titled Say Nothing, you'll want to read London Falling.

Happy summer reading!

Summer Reads

Reprinted from auburnpub.com:

Memorial Day has passed us by and now it is time to prepare for our Summer Reading Season. Whether you’re headed to the lake, the beach, or just your own front porch, you’re going to need some good books to enjoy. 

Abby Jimenez’s romance Just For the Summer is the perfect way to kick off summer reading. Emma is tired of dating guys, breaking up with them and then finding that they find their true love after the breakup. 

When she discovers through social media that a young man named Justin has the same bad luck, they decide to date each other. Their theory is that when they break up, they will each then go on to meet their soulmate. So they decide to date ‘just for the summer’ to test their theory. What could go wrong? This is a fantastic read and so well-written.

Catherine Newman’s novel Sandwich is set on Cape Cod during an annual summer vacation. Rocky looks forward each year to having her husband and adult children all together, along with a visit from her parents. 

This year Rocky is dealing with menopause, along with family secrets that come to light. Sandwich is funny and charming, and anyone who has vacationed with family will relate to Rocky’s situation. The characters are wonderful.

Holly Gramazio’s novel The Husbands has a unique concept. When Lauren arrives home one night after too much partying she is greeted by her husband, but she isn’t married. Her husband goes up to the attic and when he comes back down, he is a different man- literally. 

Lauren discovers that every time her husband goes up into the attic, a different husband comes down. She cycles through several men, and when she decides she doesn’t like something about them, she sends them up to the attic to get a new husband. It’s hilarious and thought-provoking at the same time.

Speaking of husbands, author Beatriz Williams’ Husbands & Lovers has two main characters in three time lines. In 2018, single mom Mallory Dunne’s 10 year-old son Sam gets acute mushroom poisoning at summer camp and has to go on dialysis. 

Three years later, her sister convinces Mallory to finally tell her summer fling from 2008 that he is Sam’s father. The only problem is that she is going to tell him on the weekend he is to be married to another woman.

In 1952, Hungarian war refugee Hannah is in Egypt with her British diplomat husband. She begins an affair with a hotel manager who has something to hide. We slowly get Hannah’s backstory, and how Beatriz Williams connects the stories of these two women is just brilliant. 

Historical mystery fans will want to read the final chapters of two of the best series in recent years. Jacqueline Winspear closes out her captivating WWII Maisie Dobbs series with The Comfort of Ghosts. 

We meet up with all of the characters in private investigator/psychologist Maisie’s life that we have come to love as she attempts to help some young orphaned squatters and a seriously injured serviceman. Maisie discovers that they have some connection to her deceased husband. This is one of the most satisfying endings to a series that I have ever read.

Susan Elia MacNeal says goodbye to her protagonist Maggie Hope in The Last Hope. We have seen Maggie go from a secretary to Prime Minister Winston Churchill to a spy for the top secret WWII SOE agency where she risked her life many times over. Maggie is one of the most intriguing characters in historical mysteries and MacNeal gives her a proper sendoff. 

If Nonfiction is more to your taste, Erik Larson is back with The Demon of Unrest about the battle at Fort Sumpter that began the Civil War. History buffs have already made it a best seller. 

For more current history, George Stephanopoulos and Lisa Dickey team up for The Situation Room which puts the reader right into the famed Situation Room in the White House where they recount the tales of twelve presidents who have dealt with crisis and disasters at critical junctures in our history. 

If you love looking at birds in your backyard, author Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles is for you. Tan’s beautifully illustrates the bird she saw in her backyard and has a story about each of them in this lovely book that would make a great gift. 

Happy Summer Reading!

Summer Reading Picks

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Memorial Day is past and now Summer Reading Season is upon us. This month’s column is filled with suggestions for books for everyone to read at the beach or on your front porch.

For the person who enjoys a good family story, J. Ryan Stradal’s new novel, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club tells the story of four generations of women involved with the running of their family supper club in a small town in Minnesota. Some of them take to the family business, others feel confined by it. You’ll feel dropped right into this community. Stradal never misses, his books are must-reads for me. 

Susie Luo’s debut novel, Paper Names tells of the immigrant experience seeking the American dream. Tony leaves his job as an engineer in China to give his family a better life in New York City where he now works as a doorman. The lives of Tony, his young daughter Tammy, and Oliver, a lawyer who lives in the building where Tony works, collide after a violent incident. 

If Historical Fiction is your favorite genre, Luis Alberto Urrea’s Good Night, Irene, a story about women who worked for the Red Cross in Europe during WWII, is inspired by his own’s mother experiences. 

Kristin Harmel’s The Paris Daughter is set in 1939 Paris where a young mother forced to flee the Nazis entrusts her daughter to her best friend. Her return after the war leads to complications.  

Lisa See’s Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is also inspired by a true story, this one about a female physician in 15th century China who undertook medical care for women when no one cared about them. 

Mysteries and thrillers are always great beach reads. William Landay’s All That Is Mine I Carry With Me begins when a mother disappears and her husband, a defense attorney, is suspected but never charged in her disappearance. Her raises their three children alone and when her remains are found 20 years later, their children must decide if is he is guilty or not. 

Dennis Lehane’s new novel Small Mercies is set in Boston during the summer of the busing protests of the 1970s. When a teen girl goes missing the same time that a young Black man is killed in the subway, her tough Irish mother will stop at nothing to find her, including running up against the most dangerous mobsters in town. (This one has raw and offensive language, as well as violence, appropriate for the time and subject.) 

Liv Constantine’s The Senator’s Wife tells the story of a DC power couple. Sloane is a philanthropist married to a Senator, and when complications from her lupus become challenging they hire an assistant. As Sloane’s health deteriorates, she begins suspect her assistant is up to something nefarious. This one has twists galore. 

Romance novels and sunshine go together and this season the queen of summer beach reads Elin Hilderbrand is back with The Five-Star Weekend. This one celebrates friendship as Hollis, a popular food blogger, invites her best friend from each stage of her life to join her on a five-star weekend. It doesn’t go as smoothly as she hoped.

Susan Wigg’s Welcome to Beach Town begins when the town’s elite high school valedictorian, a scholarship student, reveals a town secret during her speech that tears the town apart. When she returns to the town years later, will everyone welcome her back and forget why she left or is she still a pariah? 

For people who prefer Nonfiction, Helen Ellis’ collection of humorous essays, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge, celebrates life with her loving husband as they navigate the Covid lockdown in New York City. The hilarious essay 'An Email To Our Cat Sitter’ is worth the price of the book alone. Give this one to your favorite couple celebrating an anniversary in June. 

Bethanne Patrick’s memoir Life B- Overcoming Double Depression recounts the book critic’s lifelong struggle to deal with depression. When she hits her fifties, Patrick finally receives a diagnosis and the help she needs to become healthy for herself and her two daughters. 

Summer always brings a big biography, and this year it’s Jonathan Eig’s King-A Life a 688-page comprehensive look at the life of Martin Luther King Jr.  This one has garnered much critical praise. 

I hope there is something here for you to read this summer, email me with your summer picks.

The Friendship List by Susan Mallery

The Friendship Listby Susan Mallery

Published by Harlequin Books ISBN 9781335136961

Hardcover, 426.99, 384 pages

From the title of Susan Mallery's new novel, The Friendship List, you would assume that a friendship plays the major role in the book. And while Ellen and her best friend Unity's friendship is important, there are some very sexy scenes that will have readers reaching for a cold drink to cool down.

Ellen is a high school English teacher and single mom to Cooper, 17 years old and a football player. For all their lives, it's just been Ellen and Cooper, as Ellen got pregnant in high school and never had a relationship with Cooper's father beyond the one night.

Her best friend since childhood is Unity, who lost her parents in a car accident when she was a teenager. Unity married her high school boyfriend whose career in the military meant they moved around a lot. When he was killed in action three years ago, Unity's life fell apart and she has yet to recover.

Both Ellen and Unity don't have a lot of experience with dating, and their friendship has been the cornerstone of the life. It's also kept them from experiences that many adult women have had.

When Ellen discovers that Cooper is reluctant to go away to college as they had planned, it is because he is fearful of leaving his mom alone. She overhears him tell a friend that he believes she depends on him for everything, and he just can't go.

This spurs Ellen to join with Unity and create the Friendship List. On this list are things the women plan to do to expand their horizons. There are things like skydiving, rock climbing, getting a tattoo, and having sex with a hot guy on the list. The first one to complete the list gets treated to a spa day by the other one.

Ellen's other good friend is Keith, the high school football coach. They have dinner together frequently, and have never thought of each other as anything more than friends. Ellen is traveling with Keith, Cooper and some football players on a college tour trip. She decides that it will be the perfect time to show her son that she has a life of her own.

She gets a tattoo, and buys a sexy outfit to wear to dinner with Keith. Ellen's lack of experience does not dampen her enthusiasm for sex, and the scenes where she inadvertently tortures poor Keith are amusing and sexy. The dialogue between the two is witty, even laugh-out-loud funny.

Meanwhile, Unity's older friend Dagmar sets her up on a date with her nephew Thaddeus. Thaddeus is a wealthy entrepreneur and former stripper (how is that for a double whammy?) who is tired of the dating scene and looking for "the one".

But Unity cannot  move on with her life after the death of her husband three years prior. She works as a handywoman, with a large clientele at the local senior living complex. For fun she plays in the senior pickleball league (even though she is only 34), and she still attends a weekly grief support group.

Can Ellen and Unity shed their fears and move forward with life? You'll have to read this delightful story, The Friendship List, to find out. I read it in one day, and it moved me (Unity's heartbreaking sadness)

and made me smile (Ellen's curiosity about sex) in equal measures. 

If you are looking for a terrific story that has female friendship and steamy sex scenes, put The Frienship List on your TBR list. It's a great summer read.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on Susan Mallery's blog tour.