Summertime Page Turners

‘Doll Parts’

Penny Zang makes a spectacular debut with Doll Parts. Zang’s story is infused with her own personal loss and grief in this compelling psychological thriller about two college friends navigating sad girl obsessions during the 1990s. Sadie and Nikki are buddies attending an all-girls school. On campus is an eerie obsessed Sylvia Plath club led by a sketchy professor encouraging the girls to examine suicide. Fast forward 20 years and Nikki has committed suicide. Or is it something darker? Complicating things, Sadie marries Nikki’s ex and has his baby. Told in dual timelines, this is a powerful story of girlhood and friendship.

‘The Last Assignment’

The Last Assignment by Erika Robuck is a terrific book about photojournalist Dickey Chappell who covered every war from WWII through the Vietnam War. Robuck is at her finest in this gripping tale about a maverick woman who wore pearl earrings on assignment as she jumped out of planes with the U.S. Marines and marched through the jungles of Vietnam. This is a harrowing story about a woman captured by Hungarian communists, who covered Castro’s “liberation” of Cuba, and fought through her work to show the American people the price of freedom and war. (I previously covered First to the Front – a biography about Dickey by Santa Barbara’s own Lorissa Rinehart – which is absolutely fabulous.)

‘The Women of Arlington Hall’

If espionage, the cold war, and romance are your jam, slip into Jane Healey’s The Women of Arlington Hall – a novel based on real people and historical events to do with codebreaking and the unveiling of Russian spies, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. A meticulous researcher, Healey brings us the simplified version of a complex problem – the breaking of Russian codes by the women of the Venona Project during the mid-late 1940s. Healey has uncovered fascinating history around a group of women working on a secret military project to expose the Soviet spy network that had infiltrated every level of the U.S. government. 

‘Asylum Hotel’

Asylum Hotel by Juliet Blackwell is a creepy gothic suspense centered around a once famous 1920s-era hotel, now long abandoned. Aubrey is an architect who loves photographing abandoned buildings. While photographing an old hotel, she meets a dashing man who warns her about the curse of the place. A one-night stand with this stranger ends with his body sprawled at the base of the seaside cliffs the next morning. Was it the curse of the hotel or something more sinister? 

‘A Killer Getaway’

Looking for a fun beach read? Look no further than Sienna Sharpe’s (literary agent Jenna Satterthwaite’s literary pseudonym) A Killer Getaway. For the past five years Lily Lennox has escaped her successful catering business for a summer job lifeguarding at a Caribbean resort. Could she be the culprit in the deaths that occur there every summer? You’ll have to read to find out

‘The Keeper of Lost Ark’

I love reading books set in Tuscany, Italy (while I’m working in Italy all summer). I thoroughly enjoyed Laura Morelli’s latest, The Keeper of Lost Art. Set during WWII, the narrative is inspired by the true story of how Sandro Botticelli’s masterpiece Primavera (along with other great works of art) was hidden away in a Tuscan villa from the looting German soldiers. It is 1942 and Stella is sent to the countryside for safety. However, the villa where she is staying is soon overtaken by German soldiers, putting lives and art at risk.