Booked Solid for Summer

‘The Witches of Cambridge’

The Witches of Cambridge from Alice Hoffman is everything you want and expect from the writer of “The Practical Magic” series. The story mixes magic and longing as two friends attending Radcliff navigate their burgeoning power in a buttoned down 1950s Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ava, a beautiful redhead who has always felt she didn’t belong, and Lauren, from a wealthy family and filled with anger, are invited to join an organization of witches. What follows is a story about friendship, love, and betrayal set against the shadow of the McCarthy-era “witch hunts,” the more distant memory of the Salem witch trials, and the unsettling ways history seems doomed to repeat itself. 

‘The Responsible Party’

Claire Carusillo makes a spectacular debut with her novel The Responsible Party. Honestly, it took several dozens of pages to hook into her quirky prose, and I hope you will stick with it too, because the payoff is great. It is a story – and a style – that will ask much of your concentration. Claire (the novel’s protagonist) comes from a line of female ancestors who have a strong tie to water. Two of her relatives “drown,” only to remerge later with spectacular careers in vaudeville. There are grifters and performers, recluses and keepers of many secrets. It’s witty, heartfelt, and unique.

I’ve heard it compared to Geek Love (a personal favorite from author Katherine Dunn, who was kind enough to endorse my sideshow film Bound by Flesh) which I think is a big sideshow stretch of the imagination. This feels more intimate and grounded. At its heart is a story about women in trouble and the complicated ways in which they survive.

‘Hot Girl Murder Club’

A pop singer who organizes a group of revenge killers? It sounds fantastical, but Ashley Winstead makes it work in her sizzling summer read, Hot Girl Murder Club. The story is a fun romp through a jungle of predatory men in Hollywood and the women seeking justice. A series of mysterious deaths links pop singer Scout Sage, and her close-knit group of gals with a detective secretly investigating her sister’s disappearance years ago. The novel features a dual timeline, and what has become the trend in fiction; an abundance – I think an overabundance – of shifting points of view, with more characters weighing in as the complicated story unfolds. Still, I think readers will eat this one up. 

‘The Amateur’

Chris Bohjalian, a prolific writer who continues to explore a wide variety of themes and characters, from a Civil War heroine to a drunken flight attendant, has written another compelling drama with a complicated protagonist. The Amateur is – as I suspected and confirmed by asking – his most personal to date, and concerns a damaged girl possessed of such hope until a terrible accident changes everything for her, her family, and the small Westchester community she lives in. It is 1978 and Mira is a young tennis protégé, having a secret fling with an older man when one fateful day on the golf course forever marks her. What follows is a gripping tale of loss that becomes a courtroom drama with a twist.

‘Henry Tudor Must Die’

Henry Tudor Must Die by Jillian Laine is a page-turning hoot of a wish-it-had-happened story. When King Henry’s first and second wives team up to stop his head-slashing ways, magic, mystery, and court intrigue are soon revealed. Will Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon be able to save the other young girls Henry sets his eyes on? The story is about female friendships, patriarchy, and the vengeance of wives who had no say in whether they wanted to marry the wretched, sick old king. This feminist retelling had me rooting for Anne and Catherine and the four wives that followed. Again, a few too many points of view, but worth the read.

‘The Great Wherever’

Shannon Sanders The Great Wherever begins with a death. We don’t know why our narrator died at such a young age, but she becomes the storyteller of her family history, told from Wherever she is. Along with other dead relatives who are relentless gossips, our narrator follows the hapless Aubrey Lamb, a young woman struggling after a breakup and barely able to pay rent, despite numerous jobs. When Aubrey discovers she is part inheritor to a sprawling piece of land in Tennessee, she meets the other heirs who must decide to keep the land in the family or sell. This one caught me from the beginning; a unique voice, a magical story. A bunch of gossiping dead relatives spy on Aubrey as she navigates cousins who want to keep the land and those that want to sell. Sanders has written an emotional epic of family and land. It is funny and heartbreaking and absolutely a must-read for your final weeks of summer.