If your reading list is looking a bit thin these days — and really, whose isn’t after sticking around the house for a year? — you’ll like the following book suggestions. They come from Mel Valva, reference associate at Brunswick Library. All debuting this summer, make room on your list for these seasonal hot picks.
Legends of the North Cascades
By Jonathan Evison
Expected Publication: June 8
A traumatized soldier takes his young daughter to live in a cave in the mountains. Their experiences are intertwined with that of a mother and son who also lived there — but thousands of years earlier. Their stories weave a mesmerizing survival tale and an ode to parental love that will leave readers spellbound.
Read this while you wait: “The Great Alone” by Kristin Hannah
Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Childhood on the Run
By Cheryl Diamond
Expected Publication: June 15
By the time Cheryl Diamond was 9, she and her family had assumed six separate identities. A childhood spent on the run around the world was exciting, but as Cheryl grew older, she struggled to know who she truly was beneath a lifetime of secrets and lies. This candid and engaging memoir will have readers rooting for her.
Read this while you wait: “Grand: A Memoir” by Sara Schaefer
Island Queen
By Vanessa Riley
Expected Publication: July 6
“Island Queen” is based on the exciting life of Dorothy Kirwin Thomas, a woman of color who became one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the West Indies. Born a slave, Dorothy — known as Doll — bought her freedom and cleverly leveraged her way to becoming an 18th-Century entrepreneur and luxury hotelier. Readers are transported to the lush and vivid worlds inhabited by a spectacular woman who could not — and would not — be defeated.
Read this while you wait: “The Girl with the Louding Voice” by Abi Dare
Project Hail Mary
By Andy Weir
Expected Publication: May 4
Ryland Grace is humanity’s last chance to save itself in this science-based thriller by cinematic writer Weir. He awakens alone on a spacecraft, millions of miles from Earth, to find his crewmates mysteriously dead and his memory gone. The only thing he remembers is that they have come to fight a threat to human extinction, and now he is alone — or is he? This space adventure is filled with suspense, discovery and impossible new worlds.
Read this while you wait: “Annihilation” by Jeff VanderMeer
The Godmothers
By Camille Aubray
Expected Publication: June 15
Four vibrant women with checkered pasts marry into a prestigious Italian family and find themselves managing the family business when their husbands are forced to leave them during WWII. Their posh Greenwich Village lifestyles are now complicated by scandals and gangsters, and they must learn to work together to protect their loved ones as well as their own fates. This sumptuously entertaining family saga will make the perfect beach read.
Read this while you wait: “The Lost Vintage” by Ann Mah
