It's already toasty warm where I live. The heat of summer has arrived early it would seem. I definitely need a few good distractions to keep my mind off it. Of course my reading pile is offering a number of wonderful diversions. And then, there are new books forthcoming. As is they are something to look forward to when the heat begins to subside (I don't want to wish time away, but I don't do well in really hot weather so it is nice to look ahead and new books offer a sort of place marker). So here's a handful of books that I will be looking forward to that will help get past those upcoming hot and humid days. The dates preceding the title are release dates.
July 11 (still hot, but oh well): At the Table of Wolves by Kay Kenyon -- "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets X-Men in a classic British espionage story. A young woman must go undercover and use her superpowers to discover a secret Nazi plot and stop an invasion of England." This sounds like fun so maybe it will be a nice escapist read.
August 3: Midwinter Break by Bernard McLaverty -- "A retired couple, Gerry and Stella, travel to Amsterdam for a holiday to refresh the senses, do some sightseeing, and generally take stock of their lives. Their relationship seems easy, familiar—but over its course we discover the deep uncertainties between them. Bernard MacLaverty is a master storyteller, and this is the essential MacLaverty novel: compassionate observation, elegant writing, and a heartrending story. It is also a profound examination of human love and how we live together—a chamber piece of resonance and power."
August 15 (But the end of summer is getting closer): Things That Happened Before the Earthquake by Chiara Barzini -- "An Italian teenage girl shows up in 1990s Southern California in this culturally astute, strong-voiced novel. Barzini, truly a writer to watch, positions herself astride both American and Sicilian cultures, and packs this visceral book with strong sensations from both. The novel and its heroine, Eugenia, are deeply seductive (NYT)."
September 5: The Ghost Orchard by Helen Humphreys -- I really love her writing, though I have only read novels so far. This one sounds really interesting. "With her signature insight and exquisite prose, she brings light to such varied topics as how the apple first came across the Atlantic Ocean with a relatively unknown Quaker woman long before the more famed “Johnny Appleseed”; how bountiful Indigenous orchards were targeted to be taken over or eradicated by white settlers and their armies; how the once-17,000 varietals of apple cultivated were catalogued by watercolour artists from the United States’ Department of Pomology; how apples wove into the life and poetry of Robert Frost; and how Humphreys’ own curiosity was piqued by the Winter Pear Pearmain, believed to be the world’s best tasting apple, which she found growing beside an abandoned cottage not far from her home."
September 12: The Madeleine Project by Clara Beaudoux -- I love the sound of this and can't wait for it! "A young woman moves into a Paris apartment and discovers a storage room filled with the belongings of the previous owner, a certain Madeleine who died in her late nineties, and whose treasured possessions nobody seems to want. In an audacious act of journalism driven by personal curiosity and humane tenderness, Clara Beaudoux embarks on The Madeleine Project, documenting what she finds on Twitter with text and photographs, introducing the world to an unsung twentieth-century figure. Along the way, she uncovers a Parisian life indelibly marked by European history."
September 12: We Were Strangers Once by Betsy Carter -- "On the eve of World War II Egon Schneider--a gallant and successful Jewish doctor, son of two world-famous naturalists--escapes Germany to an uncertain future across the sea. Settling into the unfamiliar rhythms of upper Manhattan, he finds solace among a tight-knit group of fellow immigrants, tenacious men and women drawn together as much by their differences as by their memories of the world they left behind."
September 12: Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss -- " . . . an achingly beautiful and breathtakingly original novel about personal transformation that interweaves the stories of two disparate individuals—an older lawyer and a young novelist—whose transcendental search leads them to the same Israeli desert."
October 3 (Just in time for RIP season--can you already smell the apple cider and pumpkin aromas in the air?): Colonial Horrors: Sleepy Hallow and Beyond by Graeme Davis -- "This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the Colonial era’s stifling religion and its dark and threatening woods."
Brr. January 9, 2018: The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey -- "Inspired in part by a real woman who made history by becoming India’s first female lawyer, The Widows of Malabar Hill is a richly wrought story of multicultural 1920s Bombay as well as the debut of a sharp and promising new sleuth, Perveen Mistry."
January 23, 2018!: The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn -- This looks like one of those voyeur-looking-out-the-window and seeing something you should not books. "Twisty and powerful, ingenious, and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock."
A few books to take us through the summer and well into fall.