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This summer, while you’re busy relaxing, don’t forget to exercise your brain with an old-fashioned book. Reading is the perfect chill-out activity that you can do no matter where the surf and sand take you. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the insanely bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love is back with a new sultry novel on showgirls, but she isn’t the only author heating up this already sweltering season. Books on serial killers, an abusive reformatory for boys, and real women’s sex lives will keep you entertained and intrigued all summer long. Read up on all the best summer books below.
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Summer Books
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'City of Girls' by Elizabeth Gilbert
Gilbert transports readers to 1940s New York, where college dropout Vivian is inducted into the seedy and promiscuous world of Lily’s Playhouse. Long story short: a lot of sex ensues.
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'The Nickel Boys' by Colson Whitehead
In the Deep South circa the ‘60s, teenager Elwood Curtis makes one wrong decision and ends up in a brutally racist juvenile reform school. He suffers unfathomable treatment at the institution (which is based on a real-life school for boys in Florida that was shut down less than a decade ago) but manages to make a friend, the street-smart but cynical Turner.
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'Three Women' by Lisa Taddeo
A journalist delves into the sex lives of three American women in this erotic non-fiction tome. Taddeo exposes different forms of desire -- from a student-teacher tryst to infidelity to open marriage -- with unflinching honesty that isn’t always sexy but is definitely real.
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'American Predator' by Maureen Callahan
This non-fiction book explores the grim legacy of Israel Keyes, an American serial killer who committed at least 11 cross-country murders, then committed suicide in 2012.
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'The Gifted School' by Bruce Holsinger
Can’t get enough of college admissions scandals? Read this novel about four families scheming to get their kids into a magnet school for gifted students.
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'Mostly Dead Things' by Kristen Arnett
A young queer woman confronts her sexuality and her family’s grief after her taxidermist father commits suicide and she takes over his business.
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'Fall' by Neal Stephenson
After video game company founder Dodge kicks the bucket, his will reveals an odd request: that his brain be preserved so his consciousness can be later uploaded into a computer. Cue futuristic adventures in Bitworld, a platform for disembodied minds.
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'Vincent and Alice and Alice' by Shane Jones
Former painter-turned-state worker Vincent is killing his time until retirement. Through a twist of sci-fi fate, Vincent can recreate his life, and the one thing he wants is to have is his former wife Alice back…or at least a clone of her.
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'Thirteen' by Steve Cavanagh
This legal thriller takes the serial killer narrative and flips it on its head. Joshua Kane has secured a place on the jury of a murder case with the hopes of getting a movie star convicted for the deaths of two people. But as the case unfolds, Kane’s fellow jurors seem to be dying off, making a conman-cum-defense attorney wonder if the real murderer is closer to the case than he thought.
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'The Hotel Neversink' by Adam O'Fallon Price
In this multi-generational mystery, a young boy disappears from a Catskills hotel owned by the Sikorskys, a Jewish family. Unraveling what happened consumes the family as they contemplate the fate of the doomed property.
