Summer 2011 reading picks
‘The Family Man’
Author: Elinor Lipman
Plot: Lipman's characters are intelligent and urbane, and they do not behave with incivility, even if their ex-wives have dumped them for crass, wealthy businessmen.
‘The Secret Speech’
Author:Tom Rob Smith
Plot: The sequel to last summer’s “Child 44” follows a security officer as he struggles to forge a new life with a new job at the Moscow homicide bureau.
‘The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet’
Author: Reif Larsen
Plot: Raised just north of the appropriately named Divide, Mont., by his rancher father and scientist mother, the precocious 12-year-old T.S. is a talented cartographer who dreams of mapping the natural world.
‘The Way Home’
Author: George Pelecanos . He wrote for a gritty HBO drama.
Plot: A generational battle between working-class Thomas Flynn, owner of a carpet business in Washington, D.C., and his son, Chris, who is more concerned with the rules of the urban streets than with his future.
‘Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange’
Author: Amanda Smyth
Plot: In her debut novel, Smyth paints a vivid portrait of a naive young girl who learns some hard truths about herself and her family. Arresting and powerful, it is a shining testament to human resilience.
‘The Little Stranger’
Author:Sarah Waters
Plot: A satisfyingly retro ghost story with an extraordinarily sharp dose of psychological terror.
‘The Signal’
Author:Ron Carlson
Plot: A bittersweet love story and a rousing adventure set in the remote stretches of the Wind River range of Wyoming, where a couple has planned their 10th annual backpacking trip.
‘Good Things I Wish You’
Author: A. Manette Ansay
Plot: Freshly divorced Jeanette Hochmann is juggling her teaching job at a Miami university, raising her 4-year-old daughter and writing a book on the relationship between 19th century German pianist Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, the protégé of Clara’s husband, Robert.
‘Where the Money Went: Stories’
Author: Kevin Canty
Plot: The college boy still reeling from having almost killed his brother; the married drinker who realizes that his new sobriety demands a big change in his life; the father who realizes he can't protect his 4-year-old son.
‘The Angel's Game’
Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Plot: In this gothic novel, a young writer receives an offer he can't refuse from an editor.
‘Do Not Deny Me: Stories’
Author:Jean Thompson
Plot: More contemporary short stories from one of David Sedaris' favorite writers.
‘The Strain’
Author:Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro
Plot: Vampires threaten humankind in the first of a planned trilogy.
‘The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder’
Author:Rebecca Wells
Plot: A girl grows up in Louisiana and presumably learns divine secrets about the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
‘Rain Gods’
Author:James Lee Burke
Plot:Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland attempts to uncover a grisly mass murder case in a town near the Mexico border.
‘Sweet Mary’
Author:Liz Balmaseda
Plot: A woman wrongly charged in a drug case seeks the real culprit in the first novel from the former Miami Herald columnist.
‘Imperial’
Author: William Vollman
Plot: A National Book Award winner tackles the moral aspects of life on the U.S./Mexican border.
‘Inherent Vice’
Author:Thomas Pynchon
Plot: Another National Book Award winner blends noir and the psychedelic '60s.
‘South of Broad’
Author: Pat Conroy
Plot:Charleston teens form a bond for life.
‘That Old Cape Magic’
Author:Richard Russo
Plot: Middle-aged people experience joy and angst in Cape Cod.
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