Booklovers Podcast: Hot Summer Reads
In this episode of the Booklovers Podcast, Andrea and I talk about new(ish) books – our picks for hot summer reads. Andrea went with a beachy, seaside theme and I chose mysteries. If you read one of our suggestions, drop us a comment below or on Twitter – we’re at @ClermontLibrary – and let us know what you thought.
Hot summer reads
The Rumor by Lesley Kara. When a single mother hears a rumor outside her son’s school, she never intends to pass it on. But one casual comment leads to another . . . and now there’s no going back. Rumor has it that a notorious killer, a woman who has been released from prison years after her brutal crime, is living under a new identity in Joanna’s seaside town. So who is the supposedly reformed murderer now living in their neighborhood? Suspicion falls on everyone. As Joanna becomes obsessed with the case, her curiosity will expose her son and his father to a heartless psychopath who has killed–and may kill again. And she will learn how dangerous one rumor can become . . . and just how far she must go to protect those she loves from harm. She is going to regret the day she eversaid a word . . .
The Dying Game by Asa Avdic. A masterly locked-room mystery set in a near-future Orwellian state. The year is 2037, and on the tiny island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a forty-eight-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position with the totalitarian Union of Friendship. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment: to stage her own death and then to observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the six other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? But then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins.
The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan. Desperate to escape from London, single mother Zoe wants to build a new life for herself and her four year old son Hari. She can barely afford the crammed studio apartment on a busy street where shouting football fans keep them awake all night. Hari’s dad, Jaz, a charismatic but perpetually broke DJ, is no help at all. But his sister Surinder comes to Zoe’s aid, hooking her up with a job as far away from the urban crush as possible: a bookshop on the banks of Loch Ness. And there’s a second job to cover housing: Zoe will be an au pair for three children at a genuine castle in the Scottish Highlands.
But while Scotland is everything Zoe dreamed of—clear skies, brisk fresh air, blessed quiet—everything else is a bit of a mess. The Urquart family castle is grand, but crumbling, the childrens’ single dad is a wreck, and the kids have been kicked out of school and left to their own devices. Lottie has her work cut out for her, and is determined to rise to the challenge, especially when she sees how happily Hari has taken to their new home.
With the help of Nina, the friendly local bookseller, Zoe begins to put down roots in the community. Are books, fresh air, and kindness enough to heal this broken family—and her own…
The Mad Hatter Mystery by John Dickson Carr. At the hand of an outrageous prankster, top hats are going missing all over London, snatched from the heads of some of the city’s most powerful people. But is the hat thief the same as the person responsible for stealing the lost story by Edgar Allan Poe, purloined from a private collection, which Dr. Gideon Fell has just been hired to retrieve? Unlike the manuscript, the hats don’t stay stolen for long; each one reappears in unexpected and conspicuous places shortly after being taken. When the most recently vanished hat is found atop a corpse in the foggy depths of the Tower of London, the seemingly harmless pranks become much more serious — and when the dead man is identified as the nephew of the book collector, Fell’s search for the missing story becomes a search for a murderer as well.
Big Sky by Kate Atkinson. Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It’s picturesque, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes.
Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network-and back across the path of his old friend Reggie.
The Woman Who Spoke to Spirits by Alys Clare. London, 1880. “I’m dreadfully afraid someone is threatening to kill my wife…” When accounts clerk Ernest Stibbins approaches the World’s End investigation bureau with wild claims that his wife Albertina has been warned by her spirit guides that someone is out to harm her, the bureau’s owner Lily Raynor and her new employee Felix Wilbraham are initially skeptical. How are the two private enquiry agents supposed to investigate threats from beyond the grave? But after she attends a séance at the Stibbins family home, Lily comes to realize that Albertina is in terrible danger. And very soon so too is Lily herself.
Conclusion
Dive into one of these great hot summer reads. Or visit your local library and ask for more suggestions.
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