Summer reading recommendations are available all over the Internet for all sorts of readers.  Unfortunately, everyone always wants to read the latest bestsellers and the holds’ lists start to grow and grow.  So, while you are waiting for “Malibu Rising” or “The Sweetness of Water,” let us look to the past decade for some great books that are sitting on the shelves or waiting to be downloaded. 

 

This would be a great time to read favorite “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens about a young girl who raises herself in the marshes of North Carolina after her family abandons her.  Another top book from 2019 is by Taylor Jenkins Reid, the author of this summer’s hot book, “Malibu Rising;” “Daisy Jones & The Six” follows the rise and fall of a rock band in the 1970s. 

 

“The Fifth Season” by N. K. Jemisin won the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction novel, as did the other two books in the trilogy, a feat never accomplished in the award’s long history.  This follows three women in a world beset by climate catastrophes. 

 

If you like big, meaty fantasy novels, then Sarah J. Maas is the author for you.  “A Court of Thorns and Roses” has magic, evil villains, faerie princes, revenge, enchantments, etc.  It is part of a multi-volume series, so if you like the first book, your summer reading has now been selected. 

 

Kristin Hannah’s “The Nightingale” is one of those books that everyone recommends by telling you how they much they cried over it.  It is about two sisters who make life-changing decisions when their small village in France is occupied by the Nazis.  If you are lucky on the holds’ list, her latest is just as popular, “Four Winds,” about the Depression. 

 

Other novels you might have missed from the past decade are: “Big Little Lies” by Liane Moriarty, “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel, “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins, “All the Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr, “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt, and “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman.