I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of my Summer Reading Series. Part 2 has ten more excellent suggestions for your summer reading pleasure. Please let me know which of these turn out to be your favorites. I look forward to hearing from you!
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout – This 2009 Pulitzer Prize Fiction winner is a powerful collection of short stories centered around a retired schoolteacher who is blunt, opinionated and as weathered — but solid — as the coastal Maine town which is such a part of her. The harsh but beautiful setting mirrors the equally haunting emotional landscape. With its precise and simple language, each story easily stands on its own, but it’s the fact that the whole is even greater than the sum of those parts that makes this book unforgettable.
Entertaining Disasters by Nancy Spiller – If you love playing hostess and creating gourmet meals for a crowd – well, you may not appreciate this oh-so-creative story. But if you’re like most of us – panicked at the thought of opening our houses to guests and criticism – this novel will leave you reeling. The narrator is an unnamed freelance food writer who’s been writing about fictional dinner parties for years. When a new editor wants an invitation, our heroine is forced to face her demons and host a real party. Spiller deftly works the connection between food and emotion, and shows how we try to use one to nourish the other.
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn – “I have a meanness in me, as real as an organ,” proclaims Libby Day in the opening sentence, and from there, all bets are off. This disturbing crime thriller is riveting and a natural follow-up to Flynn’s award-winning “Sharp Objects.” Once again, the subject is female violence, and Flynn holds nothing back. Libby Day was seven when her mother and sisters died in an infamous crime. She testified that her brother was the killer, and 25 years later, she’s approached by the Kill Club to revisit the events of that night. The harrowing story is not always to easy to stay with, but it will easily stay with you long after you’ve finished the book.
Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch – Despite years of Cotillion and literally paying her dues as a Camellia, Sarah Walters is still unprepared for real life. She’s been trained as a debutante but somehow missed the lessons in love and heartbreak. Crouch writes with compassion, giving Sarah an appealing and original voice which will echo in your own heart as you debate whether her next move is stepping toward her future or away from her past.
Dirt: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House by Mindy Lewis – We like this book even more than we dislike cleaning – and we really dislike cleaning. Editor Mindy Lewis has put together a fascinating collection of 38 essays by writers like Ann Hood, Rebecca Walker and Laura Shaine Cunningham, who share their personal feelings about everything from vacuuming to dust bunnies. Lewis gives as much space to neat freaks as slobs, and shows how our cleaning habits often reflect deeper fears and longings. What these writers reveal so eloquently is that, no matter what you do, life is still going to be messy.
The Grift by Debra Ginsberg – The premise of this book is so intriguing – a psychic, who’s been faking her readings for years, mysteriously experiences the real thing and finds herself accused of a murder she predicted – and Ginsberg nails the execution, weaving a deftly-told tale of illusion and reality. She toes that thread-like line with her usual grace, and brilliantly answers the question of what happens when a psychic’s grift suddenly becomes her gift.
Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart – With titles like “Lawn of Death” and “More Than One Way to Skin a Cat,” this is the most delightfully macabre gardening book ever. If you’re looking forward to a summer of cultivating that green thumb, make sure you keep this little guide handy. Plants with some of the prettiest names – finger cherries, milky mangroves and angel’s trumpets – can cause vision problems, including blindness, and there are trees that shed poison daggers, vines that strangle and shrubs that paralyze. You’ll gain a whole new respect for Mother Nature after learning about the beasts in your own backyard.
April & Oliver by Tess Callahan – Love and loss reign in this compelling debut novel about inseparable childhood friends who, after years apart, reunite at a funeral and end up back in each other’s lives, with all the baggage of the past still waiting to be claimed. Callahan keeps the air charged both sexually and emotionally, and you won’t be able to put the book down until you see whether April and Oliver’s relationship is destined or doomed.
One True Theory of Love by Laura Fitzgerald – You’ve got to like a character who believes in the “hokey-pokey” theory of life, and throws her whole self into everything she does. Meg Clark is a single mom whose heart is taken up by her nine-year-old son until an unexpected man enters the picture, offering her a second chance at love. Fitzgerald deals warmly and wisely with the universal issues of love and truth, and you’ll happily throw your whole self into her story.
Best Intentions by Emily Listfield – This must-read will make you question everything – and everyone – you think you know. Listfield combines the best of suspense with the heart of women’s fiction in a story that’s fast-paced, filled with beautiful language and grounded with characters and relationships that ring true. It will keep you up at night, glancing questioningly at the one sleeping next to you.
This post originally appeared on my former blog, StyleSubstanceSoul.
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