Cathy's Recommending Some Great Beach Reads (Sand Optional)

I like to think of myself as having dual citizenship: East Coast  and Colorado.  I grew up in the East, wheremy father's family  first landed in the 17th Century, and my Mother was born and bred  in Colorado, with
family going way back to the 1890's.  Colorado  pioneer status gives you bragging rights and a cool license plate  if you want to pay for it.   When I was a child my family would  alternate summer vacations, one year we'd spend a month in  Colorado, the next summer at the beach, sometimes Martha's  Vineyard, some years on Cape Cod, later, when we lived in  Washington at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, and then one year on the  Jersey Shore.  That was in 1969 and we moved to what in my 15 year old eyes was  a tiny provincial town,  Princeton, New Jersey.  I quickly learned that Princeton was not so  provincial,  and the Jersey Shore has some lovely towns whose  residents are not featured on TV.   The Colorado summers were  action packed, with horseback riding, swimming, mountain climbing  and non-stop shenanigans with a pack of cousins.   Beach vacation  summers were, and remain, reading summers.  Position the beach  chair, lay the towel nearby to flop on when you get out of the  water and the day's agenda is set.   This summer was a Cape Cod  summer. Well, a Cape Cod week, for me.   I mailed a big a box of  books ahead of time and included a few ARC (advance reading copies) to be  shared among the family members coming and going  throughout July.     This bounty was shared by an eclectic group  with varying tastes in literature, but a pattern emerged of  favorites among all of us.

The winner across age and sex lines was The Return of Captain John  Emmett, a gripping novel of post World War I England.  John Emmett  has run away from a  hospital catering to shell shocked veterans.    When he is found dead, shot by his own hand, his sister Mary is  determined to find out what led to this terrible end.  Laurence  Bartram, an old flame of Mary's and friend of John agrees to help  her, and uncovers more suspicious deaths of men from  Emmett's  regiment and the horrific event that ignited it all.


The next most sought after was The Twelfth Enchantment by David  Liss.  Liss is a
master of historical thrillers and he tweaked his  style a bit with this.  It is set in Regency England and the  historical detail is wonderful.  It is a thriller, but with a  twist.  The best way to describe it, and I do this with great  affection, is a Paranormal Regency Romance Thriller.  I do not  normally read the first three subgenres in the aforementioned  description but I could not put this down.   About to be married off to a dull mill owner by her nasty, miserly uncle, beautiful  Lucy Derrick discovers she has a gift for magic when she lifts a  curse from the impossibly handsome and charming Lord Byron.   Complications occur when she finds herself caught between powerful  people trying to change the course of history using supernatural  powers and employing the undead as their minions.  Far fetched?   Absolutely.  Brilliantly
executed?  Undoubtedly.  A very  entertaining romp.  On our shelves August 9.


My plane trip home went by in a flash as I devoured  Helen  Shulman's This Beautiful Life.  A happy family is rapidly derailed  when the teenage son forwards a pornographic video sent to him by a  very young, scorned admirer.  The fallout from the viral spiral is  more than any family could handle, and this beautifully wrought  story is certain to  be a book club favorite.

 Last month I mentioned how excited I was about Rules of Civility,  set in New York in the 1930's.  It finally landed on July 26th and   bears a second mention because it is
such a literary treat.  I also  want to shine a light on an amazing new literary talent
who has  already established himself as a gifted songwriter.

 

Josh Ritter's  debut novel, Bright's Passage, set just after World War I, is heart  wrenching and lovely and we are so happy that Ritter is sharing his  gift for language beyond the sphere of music. 

Another of my  favorites that is due any day is Anatomy of a Disappearance by  Libyan author Hisham Matar.  The narrator's  father is quietly  working against the Gaddafi regime in it's early years and the  mystery surrounding his disappearance and its devastating,  lingering impact is powerfully rendered and deeply moving.

And so it goes. Stay tuned for a plethora of wonderful fall  releases.  Happy reading, sand or no sand.

--Cathy


This column originally appeared as The Book Lady column on gabbygourmet.com.