Summer 2016 Reading List

Even though summer is well on its way and it will be fall before we know it, there is still plenty of time to get in a good book. When I wasn't working at a library and reading all the time, summer is when I would always get the most reading done and would often find some of my favorite books. I've compiled a list of books that I am currently reading or planning on reading before the summer ends. What books are you reading?

Mystery/Thriller:

1. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Read this book now before it comes out as a movie!

"Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She looks forward to it. She's even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

Until today. And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough. Now everything's changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes tot he police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?"

2. Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta​​

"When thirteen-year-old Jace Wilson witnesses a brutal murder, he's plunged into a new life, issues a false identity, and hidden in a wilderness-skills program for troubled teens. The plan is to get Jace off the grid while police find the two killers. The result is the start of a nightmare.

The killers, known as the Blackwell Brothers, are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him. Now all that remains between them and the boy are Ethan and Allison Serbin, who run the wilderness-survival program; Hannah Faber, who occupies a lonely fire lookout tower; and endless miles of desolate Montana mountains.

The clock is ticking, the mountains are burning, and those who wish Jace Wilson dead are no longer far behind."

3. Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger

"20-year-old Finley Montgomery is rarely alone. Visited by people whom others can't see and haunted by prophetic dreams she has never been able to control or understand, Finely is terrified by the things that happen to her. When Finely's abilities start to become too strong for her to handle - and even the roar of her motorcycle or another dazzling tattoo can't drown out the voices - she turns to the only person she knows who can help her: her grandmother Eloise Montgomery, a renowned psychic living in The Hollows, Yew York. Merri Gleason is a woman at the end of her tether after a ten-month-long search for her missing daughter, Abbey. With almost every hope exhausted, she resorts to hiring Jones Cooper, a detective who sometimes works with psychic Eloise Montgomery. Merri's not a believer, but she's just desperate enough to go down that road, praying that she's not too late. Time, she knows, is running out.

As a harsh white winter moves into The Hollows, Finely and Eloise are drawn into the investigation, which proves to have much more at stake than even the fate of a missing girl. As Finely digs deeper into the town and its endless layers, she is forced to examine the past, even as she tries to look into the future. Only one thing is clear: The Hollows gets what it wants, no matter what."

4. The Round House by Louise Erdrich

"One Saturday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

While is father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first tot eh Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning."

General Fiction:

5. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner

"It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. But, unbeknownst to the general, this captain is an undercover operative for the communists, who instruct him to add his own name to the list and accompany the general to America. As the general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, the captain continues to observe the group, sending coded letters to an old friend who is now a higher-up within the communist administration. Under suspicion, the captain is forced to contemplate terrible acts in order to remain undetected. And when he falls in love, he finds that his lofty ideals cash violently with his loyalties to the people close to him, and contradiction that may prove resolvable."

6. The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

"Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a 19-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, "The Nest," which they are but months away from finally receiving. Meant by their now-deceased father to be a modest midlife supplement, The Nest's value has unexpectedly soared along with the stock market, and the Plumb siblings have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they've envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives."

Biography:

7. The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn Beer & Susan Dworkin

"Edith Hahn was an outspoken woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced Edith and her mother into a ghetto, issuing them papers branded with a J. Edith was taken away to a labor camp, and when she returned home months later, she found her mother had been deported. Knowing she would become a hunted woman, Edith tore the yellow star from her clothing an went underground, scavenging for food and searching each nigh for a safe place to sleep. Her boyfriend, Pepi, proved to terrified to help her, but a Christian friend was not. Using the woman's identity papers, Edith fled to Munich. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite her protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity secret.

In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how, when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Soviet army and sent to Siberia, Edith was bombed out of her house and had t hide at night with her daughter in a closet while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street. Yet, despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document and set of papers issued to her, letters she received from her lost love, Pepi, and photographs she managed to take inside labor camps."

Romance:

8. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

"Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life - steady boyfriend, close family - who has barely been farther afield than her tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair-bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life - big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel - and he is not interested in exploring a new one.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy - but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, Lou sets out to show him that life is still worth living."

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