Books to dive into this summer
Local bookshops share their favorites for beach-reading season
It takes a village to compile a solid summer reading list.
One person wants detective stories, another wants to read about dreadlocks. One plans to devote the summer to fiction, another craves an inspirational read about rising strong from failure and disappointment.
Have we got some books for you.
Staffers at Houston’s independent bookstores — Blue Willow Bookshop, Brazos Bookstore, Murder By The Book and River Oaks Bookstore — weighed in with their picks. I offered some, too
The coming months promise one of the most anticipated novels of the century, Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman,” and another steamy peek at “Fifty Shades of Grey” — from the man’s point of view — in E.L. James’ “Grey.”
But there are loads of other stories to be consumed, real and imagined, for adults and kids.
Happy summer reading!
FICTION
1. “China Rich Girlfriend,” by Kevin Kwan (Knopf Doubleday, June 16). Lifestyles of the rich and famous, Chinastyle. A follow to Kwan’s lively debut, “Crazy Rich Asians,” this new book delivers more over-thetop consumption in Asia’s most exclusive locales. (Bookish)
2. “Church of Marvels,” by Leslie Parry (Ecco). The lives of four outsiders in late-19th-century New York become intertwined in a tumultuous story that moves between Coney Island and the tenements of the Lower East Side, a circus side show and a lunatic asylum. (Brazos Bookstore)
3. “Go Set a Watchman,” by Harper Lee (Harper-Collins, July 14). A sort of sequel — actually an early draft — of Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which won a Pulitzer in 1961. Set again in Maycomb, Ala., about 20 years after “Mockingbird,” the new book finds Scout returning home to wrestle with personal and political ideals related to segregation and the civil rights movement. (All)
4. “Grey,” by E.L. James (Vintage, June 18). Welcome back, Ana and Christian. This time, E.L. James tells the “Fifty Shades of Grey” story through Christian’s eyes. (Bookish)
5. “In the Unlikely Event’’ by Judy Blume (Knopf). From the author of young adult classics including “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” and “Forever,” this story explores how a series of plane crashes in 1950s New Jersey affects multiple generations. (Bookish)
6. “Language Arts,” by Stephanie Kallos (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Tuesday). Charles Marlow, a Seattle language arts teacher, has reached a point where he must face the future by confronting the past. With his autistic son about to age out of state-supported care, Marlow is hit with a flood of memories from his own childhood, most from 1963, when he was a fourth-grader in an experimental language arts program. (Blue Willow)
8. “The Nightingale,” by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s Press). Two French sisters struggle to survive during World War II; one raises a child on her own, and the other, betrayed by love, becomes part of the Resistance fight for liberation. (River Oaks)
9. “Orient,” by Christopher Bollen (Harper-Collins). A quiet town in Long Island is beset by several mysterious deaths. Is
teenage drifter Mills Chevern to blame? (BW)
10. “Our Souls at Night,” by Kent Haruf (Knopf Doubleday). The final novel from Haruf, who died in 2014, follows a widow and a widower in the twilight of their lives. Longtime acquaintances Addie and Louis decide to spend their nights together. In a small Colorado town, this is bold. (Bookish)
11.“The Paper Man,” by Gallagher Lawson (Unnamed Press). A bizarre but engrossing tale about a boy who suffered a childhood accident and was rebuilt out of paper by his father. A decade later, the boy longs to escape from the paper version of his teenage body. (BB)
12. “Pleasantville,” by Attica Locke (Harper-Collins). The Houston-born Locke revisits lawyer Jay Porter, the hero of her best-selling “Black Water Rising,” in this novel set in 1996 Pleasantville, a progressive black neighborhood in Houston. Politics and personal matters merge for Jay when a girl goes missing on Election Night. (Bookish)
13. “The Strangler Vine,” by M.J. Carter (Penguin Publishing Group). In 1830s Calcutta, a former East India Company officer goes searching for a popular romance author whose fiction is said to be based on fact. Soon enough, the two get sucked into a mysterious cult. (RO)
14. “Secessia,” by Kent Wascom (Grove, July 7). It is May 1862, and New Orleans has fallen to Union troops. A woman and her 12-year-old son must find a way to survive, despite a disturbed physician and Gen. Benjamin “the Beast” Butler, the man tasked with controlling an ungovernable city. (BB)
15. “The Sunken Cathedral,” by Kate Walbert (Scribner, Tuesday). A brief book with limitless depth, “The Sunken Cathedral” uses footnotes to move between past and present, thought and action. Set in New York City, most of the voices are female, starting with two 80-ish widows who venture out to take an art class. (BW)
NONFICTION
1. “Bastards: A Memoir,” by Mary Ann King (Norton, June 22). A poignant memoir about a girl whose parents were “great at making babies, but not so great at holding on to them.” King’s debut book begins in Camden, N.J., in low-income housing and ends with a family reunion of sorts. (BW)
2. “The Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy,” by Michael F. Patton and Kevin Cannon (Hill and Wang). God, ethics, logic, perception, free will ... it’s all here, and Heraclitus is our guide. “You have most likely heard that philosophy is the love of wisdom,” says the cartoon Heraclitus, “but it’s much more exciting than that — it is the pursuit of wisdom, and that’s both an activity and an adventure.” (Bookish)
3. “It’s a Long Story: My Life,” by Willie Nelson, with David Ritz (Little, Brown and Co.). As a musi- cian, Nelson has always operated to his own metronome, singing and playing guitar ahead and behind the beat but rarely on it. Similarly, “It’s a Long Story” takes liberties with the idea of linear narrative. Nelson quickly addresses the financial issues that separate his career into two distinct parts: struggling and rising musician, and struggling and rising American icon. (Bookish)
4. “Leaving Orbit: Notes From the Last Days of American Spaceflight,” by Margaret Lazarus Dean (Graywolf Press). Creative nonfiction stitched together by memoir and reportage, Dean’s book looks back and forward at American space flight from the vantage point of the generation born during the “shuttle era” who experienced the Challenger tragedy as children. “For those who were already adults, Challenger was a terrible accident, but for children it was something more like a betrayal of our deepest trust. It permanently damaged our faith that the world made sense and that the adults were properly in charge of it.” (Bookish)
5. “Rising Strong,” by Brené Brown (Spiegel & Grau, Aug. 25). After her best-selling “Daring Greatly,” the Houston social worker, research professor and author returns. “If we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall,” Brown writes. “This is a book about what it takes to get back up.”
6. “Tony Buzbee: Defining Moments,” by Michael Lee Lanning (John M. Hardy Publishing). A portrait of the tenacious Texas trial lawyer, from his small-town upbringing in East Texas to his high profile cases involving oil companies, the federal government and Cadillac Ranch. (Bookish)
7. “Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles,” by Bert Ashe (Bolden/Agate). A look at black male identity by way of hair, from a University of Richmond (Va.) professor who has worn dreadlocks for 17 years. (Bookish)
8. “Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles,” by Bernard Cornwell (Harper-Collins). Cornwell’s first book of nonfiction delivers an illustrated history of the bloody battle that occurred June 18, 1815, in Belgium, in which the British and Prussians defeated France’s Napoleon. (RO)
9. “Whatever ... Love Is Love: Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves,” by Maria Bello (Dey Street). While recovering from a parasite she picked up in Haiti, actress and activist Bello reread the journals she’s kept since childhood, prompting a flood of questions about modern families and contemporary life: Am I a partner? Am I forgiving? Am I a bad girl? Am I resilient? Am I enough? (Bookish)
MYSTERY/THRILLER
1. “The Cartel,” by Don Winslow (Knopf Doubleday, June 23). A follow-up to Winslow’s “The Power of the Dog,” this story spans the past 10 years of the Mexican-American drug war. Is it justice or revenge that DEA agent Art Keller seeks in his determination to take down Adán Barrera, head of the world’s most powerful cartel? (Murder By The Book)
2. “Eeny Meeny,” by M.J. Arlidge (Penguin Publishing). An international best-seller and the first in a British series introducing Detective Inspector Helen Grace of the Hampshire police. When a cruel fiend starts making sport of people’s lives, Grace must find the killer and face her own demons, as well. (MBTB)
3. “Finders Keepers,” by Stephen King (Scribner). Featuring the same threesome he introduced in “Mr. Mercedes,” King returns with a “Misery”-esque plot about a vengeful reader whose obsession with a reclusive writer goes off the rails. (Bookish)
4. “Swerve,” by Vicki Pettersson (Gallery Books, July 7). Pettersson’s first psychological thriller sans any paranormal elements is essentially a scavenger hunt to find a killer in the desert outside of Las Vegas. (MBTB)
TEENS
1. “Because You’ll Never Meet Me,” by Leah Thomas (Bloomsbury). The story of two best friends, Ollie and Moritz, who can never meet — Ollie’s epileptic fits are triggered by electricity and Moritz wears a pacemaker — but who share their lives through letters. (BW)
2. “Devoted,” by Jennifer Mathieu (Roaring Brook Press). Onthe heels of her acclaimed “The Truth About Alice,” Houston’s Mathieu weaves a first-person story about a teen who tries to stay devoted to her fundamentalist Christian church, but whose curiosity leads her toward self-discovery. (BW)
3. “Emmy & Oliver,” by Robin Benway (Harper-Collins, June 23). In a stunning story of loss and reunion, Benway depicts two teens who were torn apart by terrible circumstances 10 years earlier. Emmy wants to reconnect with the boy who disappeared, but can Oliver readapt to a life he barely remembers? (BW)
CHILDREN
1. “The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate,” by Jacqueline Kelly (Henry Holt and Co., July 7). Kelly revisits Calpurnia Tate, the curious young Texan featured in her Newbery Honor–winning “The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.” This time around, Callie Vee takes care of stray animals and learns how to manage various members of her human family, as well. (BW)
2. “Echo,” by Pam Muñoz Ryan (Scholastic). A harmonica links three complex characters and their separate stories, spanning Philadelphia, California and Germany. (BW)
3. “Murder Is Bad Manners,” by Robin Stevens (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers). Best friends Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong launch a detective agency at their 1930s boarding school. Will they be able to solve the mystery surrounding their science teacher, Miss Bell? (BW)