New England Beach Reads
SIX BOOKS WITH CONNECTIONS TO THE REGION TO KEEP YOU TURNING PAGES ALL SUMMER
STAY TRUE: A MEMOIR WHAT:
In his Pulitzer Prize winning 2022 memoir, Hua Hsu retells his turbulent college years, focusing on a friendship with someone his polar opposite who irrevocably changed his life.
WHY:
The memoir, which takes place in the Bay Area and ends in Cambridge, is a mesmerizing meditation on friendship, identity, grief, and the experiences that bind us across our differences.
– Young-Jin Kim
THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE WHAT:
Eddie Coyle is a low-level Boston criminal, running guns to bank robbers, who gets caught in a tightening vise between the syndicate he works for and the ATF agent who wants him to become an informer.
WHY:
When he was writing, George V. Higgins served Massachusetts as assistant attorney general and then assistant US attorney, and he uncannily captures the hard-boiled dialogue and gritty settings of Coyle’s world. This tautlyplotted 1970 novel launched a thousand Boston crime dramas. It’s still the best.
– Matthew Reed Baker
THE BLUE BISTRO WHAT:
After working for years at various resorts, Adrienne Dealey finds herself on Nantucket employed by a marquee restaurant and falling in love with its owner, who harbors a secret that involves his mysterious chef.
WHY:
Author of more than two dozen novels, Elin Hilderbrand is the undisputed queen of the New England beach read. The Blue Bistro (2005) boasts her trademark island vibes and warm romance, but earns extra points for its heartbreaking subplot, luscious food descriptions, and being inspired by Nantucket’s real-life culinary fixture, Galley Beach.
– MRB
AFTERLIFE WHAT:
Antonia, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic living in Vermont, continues a dialogue with her husband, despite his death of a brain aneurysm. He’s still teasing out the best in her as she grapples with her sister’s disappearance and helping a pregnant, undocumented immigrant.
WHY:
Julia Alvarez, based in Vermont, is that rare author who can launch a novel with a chapter written as poetry, drawing the reader into her character’s thoughts and never letting go in the narrative. Contending with grief, purpose, and sisterhood, 2020’s Afterlife also explores expectations society has of a Latina.
– Lisa Button
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA: THE TRAGEDY OF THE WHALESHIP ESSEX WHAT:
In this National Book Award winner for nonfiction, it’s the year 1820, when the doomed Nantucket ship Essex is sunk by a sperm whale attack, and sailors try to survive for months in the open waters of the Pacific.
WHY:
A longtime Nantucket resident and premier historian of the island, Nathaniel Philbrick has crafted this gripping narrative, published in 2000, around the accounts of the ship’s first mate and cabin boy. And if the tale of the Essex sounds somewhat familiar, that’s because it directly inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick.
– MRB
THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK WHAT:
Law professor Talcott Garland is driven to investigate the suspicious death of his father, a prominent federal judge and former Supreme Court nominee, in this 2002 novel.
WHY:
Yale Law School professor Stephen L. Carter writes incisively about upper-crust Washington, D.C., Martha’s Vineyard, and “Elm Harbor” (a thinly veiled Yale and New Haven), and weaves a complex mystery through a vast cast of characters. Political intrigue and family drama make nearly 700 pages breeze by.
– MRB