Summer Hot List: Reads for When You Are Feeling the Heat
How hot is it? It’s so hot if you read your hot list book in the sunlight it will catch fire.
But, seriously. It’s hot. I know we get the occasional summer cold front. But dropping into the nineties is still hot. If you are too hot to move it’s probably time to grab a book and enjoy that air conditioning. In an effort to commiserate, conserve your energy and pick a book from our Summer Hot List. Here are eight books that like the heat as much as we do.
Come on, you like the heat, right? It’s why we live in Texas!
Women’s Fiction
Hello, Sunshine: A Novel, by
Sunshine Mackenzie is living the dream she’s a culinary star with millions of fans, a line of #1 bestselling cookbooks, and a devoted husband happy to support her every endeavor.
And then she gets hacked.
When Sunshine’s secrets are revealed, her fall from grace is catastrophic. She loses the husband, her show, the fans, and her apartment. She’s forced to return to the childhood home and the estranged sister she’s tried hard to forget…
Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
It’s been six years since Daphne Berg and Drue Cavanaugh’s friendship blew up. So, Daphne is stunned when Drue, looking as amazing as ever, suddenly reappears with a huge request. Drue wants Daphne to be her maid-of-honor at a fancy summer wedding. They haven’t spoken a word in all this time, and Daphne doesn’t even check Drue’s social media.
Drue always seemed to have it all, except for lasting friendships. Daphne, on the other hand, has built a good life for herself as a plus-size Instagram influencer. Letting the charming Drue back in her life is a gamble, but it includes a weekend at a beautiful Cape Cod mansion. When Drue begs and hints at meeting cute single guys, Daphne can’t resist saying yes.
According to a Source: A Novel, by Abby Stern
Ella Warren has a cool job: secretly reporting on celebrities for a magazine called The Life. She spends her nights at fancy Hollywood parties and clubs, always looking for the next big scoop.
But when Ella’s new boss makes the reporters compete for an exclusive story or lose their jobs, things get intense. Now, Ella has to decide if getting ahead in Hollywood is worth risking her friendships, her boyfriend, and her family. When she gets caught up in a huge public scandal, she might lose everything.
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness.
As Ava embarks on her mission to save them all, we are drawn into a lush debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of reality.
The Forever Summer, by Jamie Brenner
Psychological Thrillers
The Fireman: A Novel, by Joe Hill
The fireman is coming. Stay cool.
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
The golden haze of the late 1950s Italian summer sets the stage for a dangerous obsession. Tom Ripley, a young, cunning opportunist, is sent to the sun-drenched coast to retrieve wealthy, charismatic Dickie Greenleaf.
Amidst the intoxicating blend of carefree days, lavish yachts, and sizzling nights, Ripley finds himself seduced by Dickie’s opulent lifestyle. As the Mediterranean sun beats down, so does the intensity of Ripley’s desire, blurring the lines between admiration and a deadly fixation. In this paradise of indulgence and privilege, a dark undercurrent of envy and ambition lurks beneath the shimmering surface, leading to a chilling unraveling under the scorching heat.
mYSTERY
The Dry by Jane Harper
After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.
Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.
Non-Fiction | Crime, Biography, Memoir, History
American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land, by Monica Hesse
The arsons started on a cold November midnight and didn’t stop for months. Night after night, the people of Accomack County waited to see which building would burn down next, regarding each other at first with compassion, and later suspicion…. The culprit, and the path that led to these crimes, is a story of twenty-first century America. Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse first drove down to the reeling county to cover a hearing for Charlie Smith, a struggling mechanic who upon his capture had promptly pleaded guilty to sixty-seven counts of arson. But as Charlie’s confession unspooled, it got deeper and weirder. He wasn’t lighting fires alone; his crimes were galvanized by a surprising love story…
The Hot One: A Memoir of Friendship, Sex, and Murder, by Carolyn Murnick
As girls growing up in rural New Jersey in the late 1980s, Ashley and Carolyn had everything in common: two outsiders who loved spending afternoons exploring the woods. Only when the girls attended different high schools did they begin to grow apart. While Carolyn struggled to fit in, Ashley quickly became a hot girl: popular, extroverted, and sexually precocious.
After high school, Carolyn entered college in New York City and Ashley ended up in Los Angeles, where she quit school to work as a stripper and an escort, dating actors and older men, and experimenting with drugs. The last time Ashley visited New York, Carolyn was shocked by how they had grown apart. One year later, Ashley was stabbed to death at age twenty-two in her Hollywood home.
The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, by Nina Riggs
Hot Can Be Bright
An exquisite memoir about how to live and love every day with death in the room, ….Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer one small spot. Within a year, the mother of two sons, ages seven and nine, and married sixteen years to her best friend, received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.
How does one live each day, unattached to outcome? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty?
The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found, by Mary Bear
Pompeii, the famous ruins visited by millions, holds a fascinating and sometimes violent history stretching over two thousand years. Destroyed by a volcano in 79 AD, Pompeii offers incredible clues about daily life in the Roman Empire. Historian Mary Beard digs into these remains to show us what the town was really like, covering everything from personal relationships and politics to food, religion, slavery, and reading. She paints a vivid picture, bringing us so close to the past we can almost experience it.
Beyond the well-known volcanic destruction, Pompeii has also inspired modern artists like Pink Floyd and Primo Levi. Yet, the site still holds many secrets. This book reveals that Pompeii is much more complex than just a city frozen in time on that fateful day in 79 AD.
Happy reading, and if you figure out how to cool off – let me know!
