So many books, so little holiday time. Summer is the time of year when you can sit back, relax, and read. From a fashion-fuelled memoir to a literary legend’s highly anticipated second novel, we’ve picked out summer’s best beach reads this August.
By Susan Devaney
This year’s most highly anticipated novel Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee has broken records for the number of copies it’s already sold. Scout – one of American literature’s young idealists, the heroine of Lee’s 1960 classic, To Kill a Mockingbird – returns to Maycomb, Alabama as a young woman.
As a budding young fashion journalist in the Eighties, Kate Betts depicts her coming-of-age journey, as she crosses continents to make something of herself in My Paris Dream. Leaving her native New York City, she follows her dreams to the City of Light. Poignant and beautifully insightful, she recounts the raw reality of finding yourself away from home.
Apparently, you only have to look along the Tube in London to see just how many commuters are utterly captivated by Paula Hawkin’s The Girl on the Train. A debut psychological thriller that will have you looking at other people and the lives they truly lead.
She was known as The Queen of Fashion and now author Meryle Secrest delves into the life of Elsa Schiaparelli, the fashion designer. Advising women to dare to be different, this biography captures her own difference in all its grit and glamour.
His debut novel Silver Linings Playbook was produced into an Oscar-winning film in 2012, now author Matthew Quick is back with this second, Love May Fail. This New York Times bestselling author delivers a quirky ode to love and fate, and finding the person you know you’re meant to be.
