This is part four in a series of suggested summer reads. Part 1 and Part 2 were fiction suggestions. Part 3 was non-fiction suggestions. These are books that will be released soon (or were just released.)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (releases on June 18)
I am a big fan of Neil Gaiman. I have read all of his other novels. I would also recommend Neverwhere (unusal quest book) and Stardust (great adult fairy tale) as very good beach reads.
Also his children’s novel Coraline is a very good creepy children’s book.
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (released May 21)
I have read the Hosseini’s first book, The Kite Runner, but not his second, A Thousand Splendid Suns. His new book And the Mountains Echoed is getting good review, including this one from Goodereader.com. One of my weaknesses of a reader is not reading enough books by people that are not from the US and culturally western. Hosseini has done a good job helping western readers to see Afganistan as a place that has real people.
The Fall of Arthur by JRR Tolkein (Released May 23)
Christopher Tolkien has again edited and finished another one of Tolkien’s book. This is a long narrative poem. So this will not be for everyone, but those that love Tolkien may be interested in reading it.
Joyland by Stephen King (Releases June 4)
I have never read a Stephen King novel. But he has a new one out next week. The publisher’s description: “Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.”
King also has another book coming out in September – Doctor Sleep
The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks (Releases Sept 17)
What can be more summer read than Nicholas Sparks? And it is technically still summer when it releases.
In the tradition of his beloved first novel, The Notebook, #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sparks returns with the remarkable story of two couples whose parallel love stories intersect in profound and surprising ways.
Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen (Releases June 11)
Hiaasen’s brand of quirky mystery seems quintessentially summer read to me.
Andrew Yancy””late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office””has a human arm in his freezer. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it’s not called the roach patrol for nothing). But first””this being Hiaasen country””Yancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including his just-ex lover, a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; two avariciously optimistic real-estate speculators; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy’s new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey, who with hilarious aplomb earns his place among Carl Hiaasen’s greatest characters.
Here is Hiaasen doing what he does better than anyone else: spinning a tale at once fiercely pointed and wickedly funny in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida””now, of the Bahamas as well””get their comeuppance in mordantly ingenious, diabolically entertaining fashion.
The Silver Star: A Novel by Jeannette Walls (Releases June 11)
I have not read anything by Jeanette Walls, but a friend last night said that her earlier book Glass Castle was one of her favorites. So I ran across this new book when I was looking for Glass Castle.
The Silver Star, Jeannette Walls has written a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult world””a triumph of imagination and storytelling.
IT IS 1970 in a small town in California. “œBean” Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, a woman who “œfound something wrong with every place she ever lived,” takes off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that’s been in Charlotte’s family for generations.
An impetuous optimist, Bean soon discovers who her father was, and hears many stories about why their mother left Virginia in the first place. Because money is tight, Liz and Bean start babysitting and doing office work for Jerry Maddox, foreman of the mill in town””a big man who bullies his workers, his tenants, his children, and his wife. Bean adores her whip-smart older sister””inventor of word games, reader of Edgar Allan Poe, nonconformist. But when school starts in the fall, it’s Bean who easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz who becomes increasingly withdrawn. And then something happens to Liz.
Jeannette Walls, supremely alert to abuse of adult power, has written a deeply moving novel about triumph over adversity and about people who find a way to love each other and the world, despite its flaws and injustices.
Other books that would be on my summer list but they are coming out in the fall
The House of Hades by Rick Riordan (#4 in Heroes of Olympus)
Allegient by Veronica Roth (Divergent #3)
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell