Off the Shelf: What Should Be on Your Summer Reading List

By Sharon Saye on May 16, 2018 via Connect-Bridgeport.com

It may still be spring, but the recommended lists of books for summer reading are starting to appear.  And there are quite a few books hitting the shelves in May that will certainly be contenders for any summer reading list.
           
Michael Ondaatze, the author of “The English Patient,” returns with a new novel set immediately after World War II.  Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are left in the care of a strange acquaintance known as the Moth when their parents announce that they are going away for a year.  Neither of them is too fond of this arrangement especially when a strange assortment of characters starts to appear at their house.  “Warlight” deals with the secrets brought on by war and how they affect even the children decades later.
           
Paula McLain is known for her biographical novels particularly “The Paris Wife,” about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson.  Now she has returned to another wife of the writer who was a foreign correspondent on her own, Martha Gelhorn, in “Love and Ruin.”  Gelhorn meets Hemingway while they are covering the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and her fearlessness in a man’s profession catches his attention.  From Madrid to Havana to Key West, the two fall madly in love and marry until she begins to realize that being with one of the most famous writers in the world is getting in the way of her own goals.
           
“The Map of Salt and Stars” by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar brings to life the horrors of the war in Syria.  Its heroine, Nour, is living in America when her family returns to their home in Homs to be with the rest of the family unaware that Syria’s civil war is about to begin.  Tied to this story of displacement and constant danger is an older story of another young girl who disguises herself as a boy to help her family and embarks on a quest to map the known world. 
           
“The Elizas” by Sara Shepard, the author of the “Pretty Little Liars” series, follows a young woman found at the bottom of a hotel pool.  Eliza is certain someone pushed her, but her family and police aren’t so sure since Eliza has survived several suicide attempts and she was drunk that night.  Coincidentally, the security cameras were knocked out by a storm.  Readers will piece together the real story as Eliza struggles with anxiety, memory lost and paranoia.
           
These are but a few of the new books appearing this summer.  Please pick up a copy of BookPage to read about 73 new books out in May.



Connect Bridgeport
© 2024 Connect-Bridgeport.com