There’s something about summer that makes it one of my favorite reading seasons (along with my other three favorites, of course: fall, winter and spring). Summer always brings many great new releases, but I’m just as happy with a mildewed paperback discovered on a dusty shelf (can you smell it in your imagination?). I cherish my childhood memories of seemingly endless summer days, reading poolside or on my back under a tree; or maybe tucked cozily into a nook while a summer rain pounded the windows and roof. Even now, settling in with a new book, I can still conjure the simultaneous pleasures of safety, thrill, and adventure. What will happen next?  And, do not disturb me!

Last summer, I wrote a weekly update piece on books that star older adults and in turn asked our community to share books they were reading and loving.

Another NNV reader (and board member), Rosemary Marcuss, reminded me how much I loved Richard Osman’s, The Thursday Murder Club, (and its three wonderful successors).

Rosemary recommends all four of Osman’s “murder club” books. He released the fourth in the series, The Last Devil to Die, last summer. The books are about a group of people living in a retirement community who have a “murder club.” They meet every Thursday, and work together to solve mysteries.  Rosemary wrote, “It sounds silly, but the books are very entertaining.” She read the first three in quick succession (as did I), and last summer, noticed that Osman was speaking at Politics and Prose on tour for his fourth book. She lives nearby and decided to drop by to see what he was like. She was stunned at the size of the crowd. She said that “the crowd was the biggest, to me, since the blow-out for Julia Childs many years ago. I guess that is testament to the fact that the books are a lot of fun!”.

Murder Club number two, The Man Who Died Twice, and number three, The Bullet that Missed, are just as wonderful. Steven Spielberg has signed on to the movie rights, so check these books out before the film debut!

I asked my colleagues to contribute a recent favorite read, and Stephanie Chong, NNV’s executive director, shared that she couldn’t put down The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson by Ellen Baker.

Three years after Cecily's mother left her at an orphanage, she was sold to the circus and given a new identity as Jacqueline DuMonde, the "little sister" to the glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. At 94 years old, Cecily Larson's family surprises her with a DNA test that uncovers the secrets Cecily worked so hard to keep. This is a story about love, trust, sacrifice, and forgiveness. The perfect summer read!

Leslie Pace, our communications coordinator, and I both recently read The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride. Set in Chicken Hill, a ramshackle neighborhood of immigrant Jews and African Americans, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, this is a mystery, a love story, an exploration of race and ethnicity, and American storytelling at its finest.

Leslie also recently enjoyed The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Evelyn Hugo, an aging Hollywood starlet who has never given interviews contacts an unknown journalist to share her life story. Why now? And why that journalist? This novel follows the personal lives of fictional Hollywood royalty starting in the late 1950s. The author based her main character on the lives of Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner.

We hope you all will share with us what’s on your summer reading lists! Just reply to this email with what’s on your nightstand, and I’ll write a follow up piece with your recommendations!