Summer Reading
Part 2
We hope you enjoyed Part 1 of our Summer Reading Series. Part 2 has ten more excellent suggestions for your summer reading pleasure. Please let us know which of these turn out to be your favorites. We look forward to hearing from you.
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 Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
This 2009 Pulitzer Prize Fiction winner is a
powerful collection of short stories centered around a retired schoolteacher
who is blunt, opinionated and as weathered -- but solid -- as the coastal Maine
town which is such a part of her. The harsh but beautiful setting mirrors the
equally haunting emotional landscape. With its precise and simple language,
each story easily stands on its own, but it's the fact that the whole is even
greater than the sum of those parts that makes this book unforgettable.
 Entertaining Disasters
by Nancy Spiller
If you love playing hostess and creating gourmet
meals for a crowd - well, you may not appreciate this oh-so-creative story. But
if you're like most of us - panicked at the thought of opening our houses to
guests and criticism - this novel will leave you reeling. The narrator is an
unnamed freelance food writer who's been writing about fictional dinner parties
for years. When a new editor wants an invitation, our heroine is forced to face
her demons and host a real party. Spiller deftly works the connection between
food and emotion, and shows how we try to use one to nourish the other.
 Dark Places
by Gillian Flynn
"I have a meanness in me, as real as an organ,"
proclaims Libby Day in the opening sentence, and from there, all bets are off.
This disturbing crime thriller is riveting and a natural follow-up to Flynn's
award-winning "Sharp Objects." Once again, the subject is female violence, and
Flynn holds nothing back. Libby Day was seven when her mother and sisters died in
an infamous crime. She testified that her brother was the killer, and 25 years
later, she's approached by the Kill Club to revisit the events of that night.
The harrowing story is not always to easy to stay with, but it will easily stay
with you long after you've finished the book.
 Girls in Trucks
by Katie Crouch
Despite years of Cotillion and literally paying
her dues as a Camellia, Sarah Walters is still unprepared for real life. She's
been trained as a debutante but somehow missed the lessons in love and
heartbreak. Crouch writes with compassion, giving Sarah an appealing and
original voice which will echo in your own heart as you debate whether her next
move is stepping toward her future or away from her past.
 Dirt: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House
by Mindy Lewis
We like this book even more than we dislike
cleaning - and we really dislike
cleaning. Editor Mindy Lewis has put together a fascinating collection of 38
essays by writers like Ann Hood, Rebecca Walker and Laura Shaine Cunningham,
who share their personal feelings about everything from vacuuming to dust
bunnies. Lewis gives as much space to neat freaks as slobs, and shows how our
cleaning habits often reflect deeper fears and longings. What these writers
reveal so eloquently is that, no matter what you do, life is still going to be
messy.
 The Grift
by Debra Ginsberg
The premise of this book is so intriguing - a
psychic, who's been faking her readings for years, mysteriously experiences the
real thing and finds herself accused of a murder she predicted - and Ginsberg
nails the execution, weaving a deftly-told tale of illusion and reality. She
toes that thread-like line with her usual grace, and brilliantly answers the
question of what happens when a psychic's grift suddenly becomes her gift.
 Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities
by Amy Stewart
With titles like "Lawn of Death" and "More Than
One Way to Skin a Cat," this is the most delightfully macabre gardening book
ever. If you're looking forward to a summer of cultivating that green thumb,
make sure you keep this little guide handy. Plants with some of the prettiest
names - finger cherries, milky mangroves and angel's trumpets - can cause
vision problems, including blindness, and there are trees that shed poison
daggers, vines that strangle and shrubs that paralyze. You'll gain a whole new
respect for Mother Nature after learning about the beasts in your own backyard.
 April & Oliver
By Tess Callahan
Love and loss reign in this compelling debut
novel about inseparable childhood friends who, after years apart, reunite at a
funeral and end up back in each other's lives, with all the baggage of the past
still waiting to be claimed. Callahan keeps the air charged both sexually and
emotionally, and you won't be able to put the book down until you see whether
April and Oliver's relationship is destined or doomed.
 One True Theory of Love
by Laura Fitzgerald
You've got to like a character who believes in
the "hokey-pokey" theory of life, and throws her whole self into everything she
does. Meg Clark is a single mom whose heart is taken up by her nine-year-old
son until an unexpected man enters the picture, offering her a second chance at
love. Fitzgerald deals warmly and wisely with the universal issues of love and
truth, and you'll happily throw your whole self into her story.
 Best Intentions
by Emily Listfield
This must-read will make you question everything
- and everyone - you think you know. Listfield combines the best of suspense
with the heart of women's fiction in a story that's fast-paced, filled with
beautiful language and grounded with characters and relationships that ring
true. It will keep you up at night, glancing questioningly at the one sleeping
next to you.
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