Carole Barrowman Has Summer Book Picks

Summertime may mean that you have a little extra free time to sit back and enjoy a good book. Are you looking for a new read that's perfect for the beach, a long flight, or your patio? Our book guru, Carole Barrowman, is back with a handful of summer books that are sure to please! For more information on Carole and her own books, visit BarrowmanBooks.com. “The Heirs” by Susan Rieger - This is the kind of book made for summer if you don’t want a thriller. It’s a thoroughly engaging family chronicle that’s written with such a strong narrative voice you’ll really think you’re sitting next to the narrator, sipping a cold drink while she tells you this terrific story. A few months after the patriarch of a super wealthy New York family dies, leaving a grieving wife and five accomplished sons, a second family no one knows about sues the estate. “The Marsh King’s Daughter” by Karen Dionne - Take this one with you if you’re camping or heading to your cabin this summer. Set in the wild of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Dionne’s breathtakingly original psychological thriller. A charismatic man lures a naïve girl into the marshes of “the Soo,” locks her away in a cabin deep in the woods where he teaches her to cook and sew and cater to his every need. She gives birth to a daughter who worships her father, never knowing what he has done until one fateful day a snowmobiler comes to the cabin to ask for directions. The book is told from the daughter’s point of view after the father escapes from prison. “Afterlife” by Marcus Sakey - This is my thriller choice for the summer, the book that makes you ignore the screams of your children from the backyard. It’s a supernatural thriller set in Chicago now and Chicago in the afterlife and reminded me of Stephen King’s “The Stand.” FBI agent Will Brody is tracking a spree killer in a terrified Chicago only to become one of the victims. Suddenly Brody is tracking something worse in the afterlife, a dystopian Chicago that’s an “echo” of itself. This is a compulsive thriller drawing on motifs of multiple genres– mystery, mythology, scifi and romance. “The People We Hate at the Wedding” by Grant Ginder - Ignore the advice to never pick a book by its cover of its title. I picked this one up because of both. And because there’s always someone we hate at a wedding! Grinder’s book is my “snarky with heart “summer pick. Siblings Paul and Alice are invited to their step-sister, Eloise’s fancy schmancy wedding in the English countryside. This is family dysfunction at its finest. And we’ve all been there.