I’ve been compiling my summer reading list for some time on my goodreads page but am just now presenting it officially.
For my seasonal reading lists I pick books that look interesting, enjoyable, and will hopefully add something to my life even if it’s just insight into a particular time and place of history. So if you are looking for mindless beach reads you will want to find a different list though I can recommend this book. I do hope you will find a book or more that interest you on this list and will read along with me this summer. Be sure to follow my blog; I will post more on these books as I read through my list (no spoilers).
Publishers notes are in block quotes. You can click on the titles or book covers to find out more and/or to purchase on Amazon.
The Chelsea Girls: A Novel by Fiona Davis
The bright lights of the theater district, the glamour and danger of 1950s New York, and the wild scene at the iconic Chelsea Hotel come together in a dazzling new novel about a twenty-year friendship that will irrevocably change two women’s lives—from the national bestselling author of The Dollhouse and The Address.
I recently read and loved The Dollhouse by the same author so that’s why this new book tops my summer reading list.
UPDATE: Loved this – post is here.
Park Avenue Summer by Renee Rosen
It’s 1965 and Cosmopolitan magazine’s brazen new editor in chief—Helen Gurley Brown—shocks America and saves a dying publication by daring to talk to women about all things off-limits…
The Passengers by John Marrs
You’re riding in your self-driving car when suddenly the doors lock, the route changes and you have lost all control. Then, a mysterious voice tells you, “You are going to die.”
This is my “psychological thriller” pick for the summer because it is a follow up to the book by the same author I raced through earlier this year, The One.
The Nickel Boys: A Novel by Colson Whitehead
In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
I had the opportunity to hear Whitehead speak last year so his new books will always go on my reading list.
Normal People: A Novel by Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.
This novel is already a bestseller and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
City of Girls: A Novel by Elizabeth Gilbert
Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.
Recursion: A Novel by Blake Crouch
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and the Wayward Pines trilogy comes a relentless thriller about time, identity, and memory—his most ambitious, mind-boggling, irresistible work to date.
Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram by Isha Sesay
The first definitive account of the lost girls of Boko Haram and why their story still matters—by celebrated international journalist Isha Sesay.
Literary Paris: A Photographic Tour by Nicole Robertson
An essential addition to the library of every booklover and Francophile, this unique love letter to Paris offers an immersive photographic stroll through its literary delights, from historic bookstores to hidden cafes.
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
In Furious Hours, Casey Cep unravels the mystery surrounding Harper Lee’s first and only work of nonfiction, and the shocking true crimes at the center of it.
Montauk: A Novel by Nicola Harrison
An epic and cinematic novel by debut author Nicola Harrison, Montauk captures the glamour and extravagance of a summer by the sea with the story of a woman torn between the life she chose and the life she desires.
That’s enough to keep me busy reading for a couple of months! Let me know what you plan to read this summer in the comments below.
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