N’s resident bookwork Tim Ehrenberg shares six of his favorite reads.
CHANCES ARE by Richard Russo
Chances are… you have heard of Richard Russo. The Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls is back with his first freestanding novel in a decade. Let’s go island hopping this month from Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard where we meet three sixty-six-year-old men. They became friends in college, survived Vietnam, and as the book begins, arrive on our neighboring island each with his own secrets, regrets and memories. The pages fly by as each character recounts his past and ponders the mystery of what happened back in 1971 when the girl they all loved disappeared.
INHERITANCE: A MEMOIR OF GENEALOGY, PATERNITY, AND LOVE By Dani Shapiro
Imagine sending your DNA to a genealogy website and your results come back that prove, surprisingly, that your deceased father was not your biological father. Dani Shapiro’s memoir, the book that she was quite literally born to write, unfolds at a novel’s pace and shows the mystery of memory, history, biology, identity and experience that makes us who we are. Every reader will take something away from these timely and personal themes. Dani Shapiro will be on Nantucket Monday, August 5th, from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. for a book signing at Mitchell’s Book Corner.
THE PORPOISE By Mark Haddon
I will read whatever my friend and bookseller Cristina Macchiavelli of Mitchell’s Book Corner tells me to read and her favorite book this summer is Mark Haddon’s The Porpoise. It begins with a harrowing plane crash; Maja, the pregnant wife of the wealthy Philippe is killed, but their daughter survives. Philippe becomes obsessed with his daughter’s safety and a young man tries to come to her rescue. The story seamlessly turns into the legend of Shakespeare’s Pericles whose own losses change the course of his life. This story is filled with gorgeous language as the author plays with myth, legend and fantastical elements that speak deeply to our current moment. Cristina says, “This book is absolutely amazing! Beautiful, masterfully told and utterly heartbreaking! Read it and reread it!”
THE TURN OF THE KEY By Ruth Ware
Summer thriller alert! Lock your doors with an extra turn of the key because this one will knock your bathing suit right off. The fifth novel by the “Agatha Christie of our time” starts with a live-in nanny post too good to be true and ends with a child dead and our main character in prison, awaiting trial for the murder. We all need a little thrill during these dog days of summer and Ruth Ware keeps you turning the pages way past the sunset on your beach day. On shelves August 6th!
WANDERERS By Chuck Wendig
I like big books and I cannot lie! There is something about a door-stopping tome that makes me so excited to dive in and be lost in a story for that many pages. In the tradition of The Stand comes a gripping epic saga set in an America under the spell of a strange epidemic. One morning, a group of people wake up and begin sleepwalking, all in the same direction toward some unknown destination. While the book is obviously speculative fiction, you can’t help but pick up on eerie parallels to our current reality, and wonder, in some ways, if this isn’t already happening.
OUT EAST: MEMOIR OF A MONTAUK SUMMER By John Glynn
Summer continues on Nantucket Island, and who would ever want to leave, but I invite you to pack your beach bags and take a figurative journey 93 miles west across the Atlantic Ocean to Montauk, New York. Out East is a gripping memoir and portrait of a summer, intimately written by John Glynn, who lived in a share house in 2013 from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The house was dubbed the Hive and here friendships, conflicts, secrets and epiphanies blossomed during a summer the author will never forget and after you turn the last page, neither will you.
Support your Island Indies. All books are available at Mitchell’s Book Corner, Nantucket Bookworks and online at Nantucket Book Partners!
