Summer Escapes: Vacation Reads for 2016

May 31, 2016 Top Ten Tuesday 12

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature/meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is Ten Beach Reads.

I rarely go to the beach.

I can hear you all gasping in horror. But I sunburn easily, and I’m not a fan of hot weather, so I usually prefer to take summer vacations in the mountains or up north, where it’s cooler. That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, most of our summer vacations are spent with family in one part of the country or another. This summer, we’ll spend a week in the Mammoth Caves area of Kentucky (caves are nice and cool!) and another week visiting my parents and sister in New Mexico.

Avoiding the beach doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy vacation reading, though! A vacation book should be as much of an escape as the vacation itself. So here, in no particular order, are ten books I’d like to read on my trips this summer.

 

 

Summer Releases

  • Marrying Winterborne (Lisa Kleypas) Because Lisa Kleypas + historical romance is a winning combination
  • The Invisible Library (Genevieve Cogman)  Described as being “like Doctor Who with librarian spies.” Sounds irresistible!
  • Illusion Town (Jayne Castle) Castle’s futuristic romantic suspense novels are pure escape reading—one of my guilty pleasures.
  • Deadly Fate (Heather Graham) 18th in a romantic suspense series with ghosts and other paranormal occurences. This one takes place in Alaska—nice, cool reading for a hot day!
  • Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure (Nancy Atherton) I’ve had a long love affair with this series, and while the first four or six are my favorites, I still enjoy them. The ultimate light cozy mysteries, set in an English village. There’s hardly ever a murder, and rarely even a crime.
  • Death at the Day Lily Cafe (Wendy Sand Eckel) The first book in this deeper-than-a-cozy series was very good; I’ve been looking forward to book two.
  • Bay of Sighs (Nora Roberts) I wasn’t totally in love with the first book in the series, but this one features a mermaid. Romantic suspense, magic, and myth all set on an island: it doesn’t get much more “summer reading” than that.

 

Older Titles (That I’ve Been Wanting to Read)

  • Unbound (Jim C. Hines) And also the sequel, Revisionary. I loved the first two books in the Libriomancer series, where magic-users can literally pull anything out of a book, so I want to read the rest of them.
  • Shades of Milk and Honey (Mary Robinette Kowal) Magic and romance in Regency-era England, and the first book in a series I’ve heard really good things about.
  • A Darker Shade of Magic (V. E. Schwab) My daughter Robin says I have to read this book, and her track record for recommendations is excellent so far.

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12 Responses to “Summer Escapes: Vacation Reads for 2016”

  1. Lianne @ eclectictales.com

    Shades of Milk and Honey was a fantastic read, I hope you enjoy reading it! 🙂

    I haven’t checked out Lisa Kleypas’ most recent series yet but the book covers are so pretty 😀 Great list!
    Lianne @ eclectictales.com recently posted…Top Ten TuesdaysMy Profile

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      Thank you, Lianne! I’ve heard such good things about the Glamourist Histories, and I keep meaning to make time to read them. I’ve promised myself to read at least the first one this summer.

  2. Katherine @ I Wish I Lived in a Library

    That’s the first description I’ve seen of The Invisible Library and I can’t think of anything that would want to make me read it more! It was already on my list because it has the word library in the title and that’s enough for me! Bay of Sighs made my list as well and Heather Graham is ALWAYS vacation reading! I really need to read Aunt Dimity. Would you believe I’ve never read any? I’m not really a beach person either. I like hot weather but I can handle only a day or two at the beach before I’m ready to go!
    Katherine @ I Wish I Lived in a Library recently posted…Top Ten Tuesday – Ten Beach ReadsMy Profile

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      Oh, I’d love to see what you think of Aunt Dimity’s Death, the first book in the series. I hope you get to read it (them!) sometime. And I know; that description of The Invisible Library totally sold me.

  3. Lark

    I loved A Darker Shade of Magic. It’d definitely be a fun summer read. And I think I’m adding The Invisible Library to MY list of summer books. 🙂 Great list!
    Lark recently posted…Murder, He Wrote …My Profile

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      I borrowed it from the library, but I doubt I’ll have time to read it before it has to go back—the next month is really busy!

  5. Literary Feline

    Summers in the mountains are my favorite too. 🙂 The Invisible Library is on my list to read this summer. Doesn’t it sound good?