Let it begin! The suntan lotion is packed, the wine is chilled, the new two-piece has been picked out. It’s time for a little beach reading. Here are a handful of titles we’re razzed about for the summer months.
The Secret Speech
by Tom Rob Smith
Grand Central Publishing
We interviewed Tom when his debut thriller, “Child 44” came out. We’re most pleased that he has a follow-up out now for our beach-side pleasure.
The Strain
by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
William Morrow
The first in a trilogy about vampires in Manhattan. Nelson DeMille says it’s like “Bram Stoker meets Stephen King meets Michael Crichton.” Yes, please.
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You
by Peter Cameron
Picador
LA WEEKLY said this was “one of the all-time great New York books.” Yeah, they’d know. Then again, the Times (NOT the LA Times) called it “terrific, piercing and funny.” An 18 year-old in Manhattan suffers personal discovery and a summer in the city before he must run out into the world and grow up. Oh, youth!
Pygmy
by Chuck Palahniuk
Doubleday
If we are to believe the inside flap, this little volume is “The Manchurian Candidate” meets ‘South Park.’ In order to discover for yourself, you must be a true Palahniuk fan; the prose here (first-person accounts of twelve year-old spies from a totalitarian state) reads like the lost diary of R2D2. It’s funny, but you gotta work a little.
Sunnyside
by Glenn David Gold
Alfred A. Knopf
With Charlie Chaplin as it’s focal point, Gold’s second novel takes us into the heart of 1916, and the dawn of the modern age. The fates of three men in love, in war, and (of course) in Hollywood take us on an epic ride that’s nearly a century behind us already.
The Missing
by Tim Gautreaux
Alfred A. Knopf
And a few years later, Gautreaux takes us onto steamboats rolling down the Mississippi, the carnage of a war’s final days, and one man’s journey to find a little girl who has gone missing through the wilderness of Arkansas. And everyone is in danger as he gets closer to finding out the truth about what happened to her.
The New York Restaurant Cookbook
Recipes from the City’s Best Chefs
by Florence Fabricant
Rizzoli Books
The updated edition of your kitchen cupboard must-have has 30 new restaurants listed. We’re licking our chops over Eli Zabar’s Rasberry Crostada. Preheat the oven!
