8 books to read this summer

For many, the longer, slower days of summer mean more time to get lost in an interesting book. On Friday on PBS NewsHour, NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan and New York Times book editor Gilbert Cruz join Jeffrey Brown to reveal their summer reading picks.

Here’s a roundup of some of their favourites. These answers have been lightly edited for brevity.

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“The Five-Star Weekend” by Elin Hilderbrand

It is a summer staple. This is an author who has written nearly 30 books, most of which are set on Nantucket Island. It is a perennial bestseller. This includes a recently widowed food blogger bringing a group of friends together in Nantucket to help her heal.

– Gilbert Cruz

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“Crook Manifesto” by Colson Whitehead

[Colson Whitehead] He is a two-time Pulitzer winner. He won for very serious books about Black’s experience in America, “Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys.” But he has worked in many genres and has written a heist novel, this is a sequel to the heist novel “Harlem Shuffle”, which came out two years ago. This novel is set in 1960s Harlem, and this one is set in 1970s Harlem. And if you know anything about New York in the ’70s, it was a dirty place, a dangerous place, but also a very exciting place.

– Gilbert Cruz

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“Good night, Irene” by Luis Alberto Urrea

usually [Luis Alberto Urrea] He writes about issues related to the US-Mexico border, but here he draws a story drawn from his mother’s experiences during World War II. She was a volunteer with the Red Cross, and was called Donut Dolly. She and another woman drove a truck to bring coffee and cake to the soldiers. … His mother followed Patton’s army behind the lines at the Battle of the Bulge. So we get a great Herman Wouk-type history, but also with a lot of twists and turns and intense influences.

– Maureen Corrigan

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“I’m Homeless If This Isn’t My Home” by Laurie Moore

Laurie Moore, there is no one like her for the way she plays with language, her warm but absurd view of life. It tells a double story here. One of them is a story that takes place in the nineteenth century and has to do with Abraham Lincoln. So, anyone who reads “Lincoln in the Bardot” by George Saunders, those kind of people have that feeling…. The other story she tells is a very recent story about a young man who lost his lover.

– Maureen Corrigan

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“Silver Nitrate” by Silvia Moreno Garcia

This is set in a 1990s Mexico City movie scene. It stars a sound editor, her best friend who’s a soap opera actor, and this cult horror director who they run into who believes he’s been cursed by a movie made by a Nazi occultist. It’s creepy and scary, but it’s also set in Mexico City. So you have both cold and hot.

– Gilbert Cruz

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“Tom Lake” Ann Patchett

I’m looking forward to… ‘Tom Lake’ by Ann Patchett, in which she kind of plays the three Chekhov sisters. These are three sisters secluded in a family cherry orchard during an epidemic.

– Maureen Corrigan

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“Be Mine” by Richard Ford

[Richard Ford is] Frank Bascombe finishes his novels. … I love writing it. And to think that he’s kind of saying goodbye to this character whose life followed his life through the seasons of his life is really touching.

– Maureen Corrigan

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Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

This novel is set in the 1970s in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a Jewish and African American community. But a dead body was found under the floor of a construction site.

– Maureen Corrigan