Great New Summer Reads

Greeting LIFEers! What a beautiful (and hot) summer it is shaping up to be. But fortunately, it won't be a boring one, thanks to Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Book Shop. She joined us this week to dish out some good summer reading suggestions, and our LIFE class ate up every minute.

Fiction:

• My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliviera - civil war historical fiction about a woman trying to become a medic with a Lincoln cameo


• Room by Emma Donoghue - heavy on the "ick" factor, but a great read and unanimously voted one of the best books of the year by all who've read it, a moving tale from the point of view of a 5 year old boy locked in a room with his mother


• The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer - story of a Hungarian Jewish family and how they survived WW2 with the war approaching on two fronts


• Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert - beautifully written story about an obituary writer in a small town who gets involved in the case of a missing girl


• Informationist by Taylor Stevens - action/adventure similar to the Steig Larson books, the heroine does jobs no one else will do, here she is hired to search for a missing girl in Africa


• Still Missing by Chevy Stevens - story of a missing girl, a dark and more disturbing story


• I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson - a young David Cassidy fan in Wales grows up and struggles with her mother and boyfriend


• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - fluff, a fun read about a widower in a British village trying to get his father's gun back while befriending a foreign woman in town

Non-Fiction:

• In the Garden of the Beasts by Eric Larson - story of William Dodd, the America's Ambassador to Germany in the 1930s


• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - story of a Maryland woman who died of cancer but whose cells have lived on and contributed to science in many ways


• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - story of Lewis Samborini, an American Olympic athlete who enlisted in WW2 and was a POW in Japan

Young Adult:

• Divergent by Veronica Roth - action, distopian future with a heroine


• True (Sort of...) by Katherine Hannigan - outgoing teen befriends a troubled girl

Short Stories:

• If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black - stories of love, loss, grief, kids, marriage, etc...

Blue Willow Book Shop is located near the intersection of Memorial Drive and Dairy Ashford. They have lots of fun events and automatic discounts for frequent customers.

Blue Willow Book Shop
14532 Memorial Drive
Houston, TX 77079(281) 497-8675
http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/