Sandra Brown "Smoke Screen"

A few words about detective story I recommend to read. When newswoman Britt Shelley wakes up to find herself in bed beside Charleston PD detective Jay Burgess, she remembers nothing of how she got there – or how he wound up dead. Burgess was one of four heroic city officials who risked their lives five years earlier to lead others to safety from a catastrophic fire. His lifelong friend, Raley Gannon, was later assigned to investigate. But Raley never finished the inquiry because one calamitous night his career was destroyed by scandal. Now the newswoman whose biased reporting helped bring about Raley’s downfall might be his only chance to vindicate himself and get justice for the fire’s victims. But the more Raley and Britt discover about that fateful day, the more perilous their situation becomes, until they’re not only chasing the truth but running for their lives.

Ann  

Wally Lamb "She's Come Undone"

  In his extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invited us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain and renewal with the most heartbreaking comical heroine to come along in years.

  Meet Dolores Price. She’s thirteen, wise mouthed but wounded, having bid childhood good-bye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she’s determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.  
  Larisa

Christie Golden "Marooned"

If you are a science fiction fan and especially the Star Trek Voyager’s fan then it’s time to read a real thing – a book of the Star Trek Voyager series by Christie Golden named “Marooned”.

When an alien pirate abducts Kes, U.S.S. Voyager takes off in hot pursuit, but the first rescue mission fails disastrously; an ion storm forces the shuttle to crash on an unknown world. Now Captain Janeway and her Away Team must embark on a hazardous trek through a hostile environment in search of a way off the planet, while Voyager, commanded by Chakotay, confronts an enemy fleet in the depth of space.

Vadim

Rich Cohen "Lake Effect"

Raised in an affluent suburb on the North Shore of Chicago, Rich Cohen had a cluster of interesting friends, but none more interesting than Jamie Drew. Fatherless, reckless and lower middle class in a place that wasn’t, Jamie possessed such an irresistible insouciance and charm that even the teachers called him Drew-licious. Through the high school years of parties and Cub games and girls, of summer nights on the beach and forbidden forays into the blues bars of Chicago’s notorious South Side, the two formed a lasting bond. Even after Cohen went to college in New Orleans (Jamie went to Kansas) and then moved to New York, where he had a memorable interlude with the legendary New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, Jamie remained oddly crucial to his life. Exquisite and taut, Lake Effect is a bittersweet coming-of-age story that quietly bores to the essence of friendship and how it survives even as it is destined to change.

Rich Cohen has taken the everyday stuff of life and made it joyously readable. The mundane becomes richly evocative in his hands. The usual becomes unusual, the boring becomes interesting, the sweet becomes bittersweet and Lake Effect becomes the proverbial book you can’t put down.
Michail    

What to Read This Summer