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Summer Reading
 

Hot Topic: Summer Reading

Maureen Brook —

A little bit of everything

Summer, and especially the Summer holiday, is the perfect time to catch up on that pile of books you've been meaning to read, and to rediscover old favourites, or perhaps try something new. Plenty of time during the long Summer days and nights to laze in the sun, switch off from everything around you and immerse yourself in a good book!

The following is a list of popular fiction, classics, and short stories. Enjoy!

The Japanese Lover. Isabel Allende
In 1939 young Alma Belasco's parents send her from Poland to live with her aunt and uncle in San Francisco, where she meets and falls in love with Ichimei Fukuda, the son the the family's Japanese gardener. After the bombing of Pearl Harbour the Fukuda family are rounded up and sent to internment camps. Years later, Alma looks back on her life and contemplates the impact of identity and fate on our lives and the extraordinary power of human love.

The President is Missing. Bill Clinton
A writing collaboration between Bill Clinton and James Patterson. The President of the United States goes missing amidst a background of threats of cyber-terror and espionage. It seems there is a traitor in the cabinet and the President himself becomes a suspect.

A Year at Hotel Gondola. Nicky Pellegrino
Kat is a food writer who spends her time travelling the world and writing about interesting food. She embarks on a relationship with a Venetian man and plans to run his hotel business with him and write about the food, the recipes she collects and the people she meets.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. Holly Ringland
After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers - a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. As Alice grows older and faces family secrecy and betrayal, she must learn a new way of dealing with life.

The Other Woman. Daniel Silva
Part of Gabriel Allon spy series - legendary art restorer, assassin and head of the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. Long ago the KGB inserted a mole into the heart of the West and now the fate of the post-war global order is hanging in the balance. Allon's search for the mole will take him back in time to the twentieth century's greatest action of treason.

Stoner. John Williams
Born on a small farm in central Missouri in 1891, when William Stoner leaves school he expects to continue working on the family farm. He is advised to go to Agricultural school, but finds himself drawn to English Literature. He becomes a teacher, and while his personal life has many disappointments, Stoner is proud of his academic work and seeks solace in the beauty of literature.

Short Stories:

First Thrills: High Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Authors. Lee Child
Choose Somebody Else. Yvonne Fein
Ford County. John Grisham
The Name on the Door is not Mine. C K Stead
You Think it, I'll Say it. Curtis Sittenfeld
Patched Words: A Collection of Short Stories. Rae McGregor