Summer Books I Loved

FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL/Sheri Fink
An account of Hurricane Katrina at one New Orleans hospital. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion: an avalanche of weather, weak infrastructure, poor planning, and traumatized decision-making.

THE ASSASSIN'S BLADE/Sarah J. Maas
If you follow me on Twitter, you know how I adore the Throne of Glass series--epic fantasy with a fierce and damaged YA heroine. This book comprises several novellas set prior to Caelena's introduction in The Throne of Glass, showing her rise and fall as Adarlan's star assassin.

THE OUTCAST DEAD/Elly Griffiths
One of my favorite mystery series right now is this one featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway. This story weaves together a possible Victorian murderess whose bones may have been unearthed with the contemporary death and abduction of local children. The title comes from an Anglican service held yearly in London in memory of those buried in mass paupers' graves.

A DARK AND TWISTED TIDE/Sharon Bolton
Another favorite series is Bolton's featuring Lacey Flint. Now working with the River Police rather than homicide, Lacey is drawn back into murder when she finds a body in the Thames. Was it left for her to find? How is it connected to the cases of young foreign women being smuggled into England? And could undercover detective Mark Joesbury be a suspect?

WE WERE LIARS/E. Lockhart
A slim but powerful YA novel about loss and friendship and first love. Cadence spends every summer on the Sinclair family's private island with her cousins and, eventually, a friend who might become more. As the three adult daughters quarrel with and over their aging father and his estate, the teens draw tightly together. Except for one summer--one that Cadence cannot remember. After two years of debilitating pain and migraines, Cadence returns to the island to piece together what happened.

NEVER LET ME GO/Kazuo Ishiguro
Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were raised at Hailsham, a somewhat idyllic childhood at a beautiful school in the English countryside. From the beginning, Ishiguro lets the reader know not all is right with the children or their lives now--I would call this a literary dystopian novel. As Kathy moves between her life today and remembering Hailsham, the reader falls into a seductive story of what it means to be human.

A THOUSAND LIVES/Julia Scheere
The story of the Jonestown massacre, beginning with Jim Jones's meteoric rise in Indiana to the beginnings of his paranoia and brutal control in California. Scheere tells many smaller stories of the individuals and families caught in the web of Jonestown and, though a reader knows how it all ends, it's still a tense experience akin to watching a horror film and wanting to scream, "Look behind you!"

WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE?/Maria Semple
On my bookshelf for over a year--now I'm wondering why I waited so long. This is the story of Bernadette, once a noted architect, who disappears from her Seattle home leaving her husband and daughter to wonder what happened. Fifteen-year-old Bea tries to find her mother by piecing together emails, old articles, official documents and secret correspondence between her mother and a virtual assistant in India. Wonderfully comic and moving story of one girl's search to understand the secrets adults keep.

HERETICS AND HEROES/Thomas Cahill
The subtitle says it all: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World. Cahill writes the Hinges of History series, of which this is the latest, exploring those periods in time which changed the course of the world as we know it. Particularly apt for me as I am writing my new trilogy set in the 1580s, as the Renaissance and Reformation began to reap their rewards.

THE UNICORN HUNT and TO LIE WITH LIONS/Dorothy Dunnett
I am obsessed with Dorothy Dunnet's historical sagas. I started the House of Niccolo series a little diffidently, confident that it could never replace The Lymond Chronicles in my heart. Well, it doesn't replace it--but it wonderfully, magically, stands beside it. In books 5 and 6, Nicolas's plots in 1470's Europe reach their apogee as he schemes against his vengeful wife and sets Scotland on a collision course with history. I am now halfway through the 8th and final book in the series . . . and find myself reading slowly because I don't want it to end. I suspect when I finish I will pick up The Game of Kings and read The Lymond Chronicles once more too sooth my broken heart.