All images and blurbs featured in this article are from the respective publisher’s websites.
With busy lives, it can be difficult for even the most avid of readers to find time to sink your teeth into a good read. But with summer and holiday season upon us, we’re gifted this opportunity to finally make a dent in our To-Be-Read pile. So, whether you’re on a sun lounger basking in the sun or bored witless as you try to stay cool during a heatwave (or maybe you’re not really experiencing any kind of summer at all, here are our suggestions for books to read this summer.
Karis’ choices
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Tom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life – and he’s willing to kill for it. Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors, and the law, Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to Europe. But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking.
This is the first in Highsmith’s classic series featuring the character of Tom Ripley. The Talented Mr Ripley also inspired the Academy Award-winning film starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law.
The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants’ office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and new experiences takes on a far darker significance as she heads on a journey of self-destruction. Infinity and eternity attend Lise’s last terrible day in an unnamed southern city, as she meets her fate. One of six novels to be nominated for a ‘Lost Man Booker Prize’, The Driver’s Seat was adapted into a 1974 film, Identikit, starring Elizabeth Taylor.
Further Under the Duvet – Marian Keyes
I haven’t yet read Keyes’ first collection Under the Duvet; I randomly picked the sequel off my mum’s bookshelf and so have technically read them the wrong way round. But this collection of Keyes’ journalism doesn’t need to be read in order – you’ll enjoy Keyes’ humorous tales in any case.
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not an outdoorsy type. If I was offered the choice between white-water rafting and being savaged by a rabid dog, I’d be likely to tick the box marked “dog”‘
Under the Duvet brings together Marian Keyes’ unputdownable and utterly irresistible journalism and musings on life.
Whether it’s shopping, travel, feminism or fashion, Marian takes us on a riotous anecdote-packed journey into her weird and wonderful world.
There are adventures with fake tan, love affairs with shoes and nail varnish, and, as a special treat, she includes seven of her hard-to-find (and, she tells us, harder to write) short stories.
Cher’s choices
The Lavender Keeper -Fiona McIntosh
Provence, 1942
Luc Bonet, brought up by a wealthy Jewish family in the foothills of the French Alps, finds his life shattered by the brutality of Nazi soldiers. Leaving his abandoned lavender fields behind, Luc joins the French Resistance in a quest for revenge.
Paris, 1943
Lisette Forestier is on a mission: to work her way into the heart of a senior German officer, and to infiltrate the very masterminds of the Gestapo. But can she balance the line between love and lies?
The one thing Luc and Lisette hadn’t counted on was meeting each other. Who, if anyone, can be trusted – and will their own emotions become the greatest betrayers of all?
Remember Me This Way – Sabine Durrant
She thought losing him was the worst thing that could happen.
She was wrong.
They tell her not to worry. Her sister, the police. They say it’s only natural, when someone close to you dies, to see him everywhere, sense him still nearby.
But they don’t know Zach like she does.
How much he loved her.
How he liked things just his way.
How far he would go to get revenge…
The Expected One –
A deadly political rivalry that ended in two brutal executions…An intricate love triangle that altered the course of history…A religious revolution that changed the world… THE TREASURE… For two thousand years, an undiscovered treasure rested in the rocky wilds of the French Pyrenees. A series of scrolls written in the first century by Mary Magdalene, these startling documents hold the power to redefine the events and characters of the New Testament. Protected by supernatural forces, the priceless cache can only be uncovered by a special seeker, one who has been chosen for the task by divine providence – The Expected One. THE CHOSEN ONE… When journalist Maureen Paschal begins the research for a new book, she has no idea that she is stepping into an ancient mystery so complex and dangerous that thousands of people have killed and died for it. As a long buried family scandal comes to light, she can no longer deny her own role in a deadly drama of epic international consequences.
Vivian’s choices
A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor. JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world. Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm. And withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity.
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself. By midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome – but that will define his life forever.
Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.
Almond – John Won-Pyong
A teenage boy who cannot feel emotions and a hotheaded troublemaker discover how love, friendship, and persistence can change a life forever in this remarkable debut novel from a rising international literary star. “Intense and moving . . . a phenomenal book that deserves a wide audience among readers.”—Wall Street Journal
This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. One of the monsters is me. Yunjae was born with a brain condition called alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that—but his devoted mother and grandmother provide him with a safe and content life. On Christmas Eve—Yunjae’s sixteenth birthday—everything changes. A shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation, until troubled teenager Gon arrives at his school, and the two develop a surprising bond. As Yunjae begins to open his life to new people—including a girl at school—something slowly changes inside him. And when Gon suddenly finds his life at risk, Yunjae will have the chance to step outside of every comfort zone he has created to perhaps become the hero of his own story.
