Fiction
In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden: A Novel by Kathleen Cambor. From Amazon: “In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden is the story of a bittersweet romance set against the backdrop of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood -- a tragedy that cost some 2,200 lives when the South Fork Dam burst on Memorial Day weekend, 1889. The dam was the site of a gentlemen's club that attracted some of the wealthiest industrialists of the day -- Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Andrew Carnegie -- and served as a summertime idyll for the families of the rich. In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden imagines the lives that were lived, lost, and irreparably changed by a tragedy that could have been averted.”
In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume. Okay, I haven’t read it. It just came out. But it’s Judy, and we know it’ll be good for the beach! UPDATE - I read it! You should, too, if you like a beach book. It kept me perfectly engaged through two long flights and a ferry ride. Most of the novel is set during a short period in the early 1950s when three planes crashed into the city of Elizabeth, NJ. There are multiple points of view, but the protagonist is a teenager, Miri, so we get a good dose of Judy Blume doing what she does best - creating likeable teenage characters. I loved Miri - she copes. It's not as "beachy" as Summer Sisters, but only in that it's not set on a beach. It has other attributes of a good beach book - nicely written, propulsive movement (no pun intended) well drawn characters. Synopsis: “In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place—Nat King Cole singing “Unforgettable,” Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on.”
Independent People by Halldor Laxness. “On recommendation from an Icelandic friend, bought this prior to a family trip to Iceland not quite knowing what to expect (the title isn't exactly scintillating). Run to pick it up for the summer... a brilliant novel from a Nobel prize winning author... highly recommend.”
The Informationist: A Thriller
Inheritance by Natalie Danford. “Italy (Urbino, no doubt, was the draw for me, as it's an incredibly beautiful Tuscan village with masses of interesting history). World War II. It's a gem and a quick read.” One half of the story begins after the death of Luigi Bonocchio, an Italian immigrant whose daughter Olivia discovers a mysterious deed among his possessions. The deed is to a house in Urbino, Italy---the hometown he barely spoke of. Intrigued, Olivia travels there. At first she is charmed by the historic city, the relatives she’s not met before, and the young lawyer she’s hired to help her investigate the claim. But when Olivia tries to sort out the deed, she is met with a puzzling silence. Everyone in the town remembers her father, but they are not eager to tell his story. However, Luigi tells his part of the tale directly to the reader as the chapters alternate between Olivia’s search for the truth and Luigi’s account of his history. By the end of this skillfully constructed book, the reader understands both sides of a heartbreaking, yet ultimately satisfying love story.
Innocent
Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova. “Inside the O'Briens tells the challenges of a normal Boston family coping with the effects of Huntington's Disease. As the story unfolds, Joe, a police officer receives a diagnosis of the disease then must learn to live with physical and mental limitations. His four children struggle with whether they should be tested for a positive gene that can be passed from parent to child. Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice, tells a captivating story while educating the reader about this horrible disease."
An Instance of the Fingerpostby Iain Pears. “If one gets into historical mysteries, this is an all-time winner.” From Amazon (quoting People): "It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife. When an Oxford don is murdered, it seems at first that the incident can have nothing to do with great matters of church and state....Yet, little is as it seems in this gripping novel, which dramatizes the ways in which witnesses can see the same events yet remember them falsely. Each of four narrators—a Venetian medical student, a young man intent on proving his late father innocent of treason, a cryptographer, and an archivist—fingers a different culprit...an erudite and entertaining tour de force."
The Interestings
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd “Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.” “This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women” “This is a flat-out masterpiece. Kidd has always written beautifully about the power of relationships between women (Secret Life of Bees) and in this book she does so again, set against the realities of slavery in the early 1800s. She focuses on fractious and loving mother-daughter relationships as well as how women grow in wisdom as well as years. The writing is perfect in every respect. This one deserves to become a classic.”
Invisible
The Invisible Bridge 
The Japanese Lover: A Novel by Isabel Allende. “The Japanese Lover is a love story and a multigenerational epic that sweeps from present-day San Francisco to Poland and the United States during WWII. Alma falls in love with Ichimei, the gardener’s son, who is sent to an internment camp. They reunite but are forced to hide their love. Years later, her caregiver and her grandson learn about this secret love. The book captures historical detail just like Allende’s other popular novels, The House of Spirits and Daughter of Fortune.”
John Saturnall's Feast
Joyland by Stephen King. “This one is more of a mystery than a novel of suspense. Most of the action takes place in and around a beach amusement park, so it makes a fine summer read. The book focuses on the long ago murder of a woman at the amusement park, whose ghost haunts one of the rides.”
Just Now Alive by Kristina Bicher. This collection will be released July, 2014, but trust me and preorder it now. Kristina (along with Doritt Carroll, whose poetry collection is also on this list) has lured me back to the wonderful world of poetry. Here is one of Kristina’s poems:
The Woodcutter’s Wife
Is Gretel happy?
Why does she run from me into the trees?
Why does she stare at her feet?
Why does she chew her braids?
Why does she cut herself with sticks, at night, and the blankets
are spotted dark and I wash and I wash?
Why does she try to clean herself with leaves?
What is to be done with Hansel?
Why does he hide my paring knife?
Why does he fill my shoes with stones?
Why does he sit on my lap, now at 12, and stroke my cheek
and twist my hair?
Why does his skin always smell though I use my best lye?
Why does he steal his sister’s bread?
Husband, dearest, where do you go?
How far do you roam to look for wood?
Why has your axe blade grown dull?
Why do you return home after dark and bring home the silence of the forest in your eyes?
Why do you ask if I’d like meat, perhaps a fat ham, when you know
I could live on your love?
Why do you furrow and gnaw at your knuckles?
And what do you see out the window?
The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. "Anthony is an elderly man whose fiancee died the day he lost a medallion she had given him. Since that day decades ago, he spent his life collecting and cataloging lost things, but he never finds a way to reunite people with their things. When he dies, he leaves his idyllic but haunted house to his assistant, who is charged with returning items to their owners. A charming, romantic ghost-story that will put you in the mood for tea and biscuits!"
Kicking the Sky by Anthony De Sa. “Takes in place in 1977 in Toronto's Portuguese neighborhood. The book is fiction but the true story murder of a shoeshine boy frames the background. The story focuses on a group of neighborhood boys as they grow from boys to teenagers and learn that the world is no so idyllic. You get a glimpse of Portuguese heritage and travel back to the late 1970s. A captivating read!”
The Kite Runner, by Khalid Hosseini. They recently published a tenth anniversary edition of this novel, which became an instant classic when it was published in 2003. Powerful, engaging, sad, yet also a page-turner, it tells the story of a friendship between a wealthy Afghan boy and the son of a family servant, set against the ominous backdrop of 1970s Afghanistan.
The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes. "40-something breast cancer survivor goes back to work only to find out her assistant has taken over her job and turned the historic fashion magazine into a shopping app."