Best New Books for Summer 2013
Want to know what the best new books of that summer are? Our sister company Simon & Schuster is at it again with a great list of books to get you reading this summer.
The Light Between Oceans: A Novel
By M.L. Stedman
After four years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on a small island, bringing his wife Isabel along with him. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, Isabel hears a baby's cries – coming from a boat washed up on the shore and makes a decision that affects the rest of their lives. Not every novel that people call "un-putdownable" always lives up to that description, but The Light Between Oceans really is just that – you will be engrossed in this beautifully written and morally complex novel from start to finish and compelled to talk about it immediately.
For fans of: The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Gold: A Novel
By Chris Cleave
Chris Cleave, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Little Bee, brings us an elegant novel about the struggles of parenting, love, and passion. IF your dreams pull you in one direction and your heart in another, which should you follow? This is the question that haunts Kate Meadows, a world champion athlete whose eight-year-old daughter Sophie is battling a recurrence of childhood leukemia just as Kate is about to compete for her last chance at an Olympic gold medal. For years, Kate has sacrificed everything for her family – how can she do what is right for her daughter without abandoning all of her dreams?
For fans of: Chris Cleave's Little Bee or Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry
Love Anthony
By Lisa Genova
As Olivia Donatelli struggles to overcome her pain of losing her young son, a chance encounter with another woman brings him alive again in a most unexpected way. In a piercing story about motherhood, autism, and love, Lisa Genova offers us two unforgettable women who discover the small but exuberant voice that helps them find both the answers they need. Sprawl out on your beach blanket with this one – but make sure you pack a few tissues!
For fans of Jodi Picoult's House Rules
The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down
By Andrew McCarthy
In this deeply personal memoir, actor, director, and award winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy takes us to some of the world's most evocative locales. Unable to commit fully to his fiancée, McCarthy finds himself at a crossroads. As he ventures from the treacherous slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro to an Amazonian riverboat in the dense Costa Rican rain forest, The Longest Way Home is as much an intimate memoir of self-discovery as it is an unforgettable love song to the woman who be his wife.
For fans of Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends or Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed
The Lavender Garden
By Lucinda Riley
In this dazzling novel of intrigue and passion set in modern day South of France and Nazi-occupied Paris, one woman inherits much more than she bargained for. Emilie de la Martinières finds herself sole inheritor of her childhood home – a magnificent chateau in the south of France – and with it, comes a mountain of debt and a long list of questions. As Emilie learns what happened to her aristocratic family during World War II, she discovers an epic story of family secrets and betrayal.
For Fans of: Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge or Downton Abbey fans looking for something to read in between seasons!
The Silver Star
By Jeannette Walls
From the author of The Glass Castle – one of the bestselling memoirs of all time – comes a novel about an intrepid girl who seeks triumph over adversity. When Liz and Bean's mother leaves them with enough money to cover food for two weeks, the two girls instead hop on a bus to their distant Uncle's home in Virginia. It's the 1970s and as the sisters adjust to small town life, they discover answers to questions they never thought they'd find. This is a deeply moving of the power of siblings and the injustices of the adult world – and so compulsively readable you'll want to devour it in one sitting!
For fans of: Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle or Half-Broke Horses
