Best Summer Book Club Books

Book Summary

In this charming debut novel, Widower Tova works at the Sowell Bay Aquarium to occupy her mind and time. She takes pride in cleaning perfectly every night, even though she doesn’t need the money. She loves all the aquarium life but forms a special bond with the intelligent (and curmudgeonly) octopus named Marcellus.

He’s just as surprised to feel friendly toward this human who visits him nightly. Soon, he connects the sadness he sees in her with something he saw in the ocean long ago. Can he help her solve the mystery of her son’s disappearance 30 years ago?

Book Summary

Joan is content with her quiet life as a physics and astronomy professor at Rice University in Houston. Then, she sees an ad that changes her life. NASA is looking for the first women scientists to join the Space Shuttle program. After being selected from a pool of thousands of worthy applicants, Joan begins training in the summer of 1980.

As she trains with her new team, they become unlikely friends, and Joan finds a new passion for life. She also begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Book Summary

The life Jess is living is not the one she dreamed of. Recently divorced from her supposed “perfect husband,” Bobby, she has moved into her parents’ basement in Lake Como, New Jersey. She’s a dutiful, but often overlooked daughter, who cares for her parents and puts her own needs last.

She’s a talented draftswoman working for her Uncle Louie’s marble business. Louie is her confidant and believes that with a better wardrobe, she could achieve just about anything.

When her family suffers an unexpected loss, secrets are revealed that cause Jess to question who she can trust. She finally decides it’s time to take fate into her own hands by visiting her ancestral home in Italy. From the mountains of Tuscany to the streets on Milan, and on the shores of the other Lake Como, she begins to uncover the truth about her family history.

Along the way, Jess meets Angelo, an artist who works in gold. She discovers that her own skills are priceless, but it will take every tool she has mastered to carve out her own place in the world and live a life filled with creativity and love.

Book Summary

In 1942, sisters Cadence and Briar Smith are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard and German U-boats lurk in the waters off the coast. Cadence and her best friend, Beth, start a book club in an attempt to find some normalcy in their lives. Soon, the book club has grown in members and influence, catching the attention of a publisher who could make Cadence’s dreams come true. But then, a mysterious man washes ashore, and his appearance means there could be a spy in the community.

In 2016, Mari travels to Martha’s Vineyard after her mother’s death. She’s on the way to meet Elizabeth Devereaux, a reclusive painter. Under the guise of taking a painting class, Mari learns more and Mrs. Devereaux, the Smith sisters, and about her own connection to the island.

Book Summary

Every woman Justin goes on a date with seems to find their soulmate right after breaking up with him. It’s his curse, and now, thanks to a Reddit thread, everyone knows.

However, his viral embarrassment may have a silver lining. Emma has the same problem and has sent him a message. The solution is obvious. They’ll date each other, break up, and then destiny will bring them each their own soulmates.

Traveling nurse Emma finds a job in Minnesota and rents a cute cottage on Lake Minnetonka for her summer fling with Justin. But when Emma’s toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they’re suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected. Will these challenges quickly rip them apart, or does fate have other plans?

Book Summary

For years, Phoebe has dreamed of visiting the iconic Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island. She looked forward to shucking oysters and sailing into the sunset with her husband. But instead, she arrives alone and plans to stay in the most expensive room for one night.

As it turns out, Phoebe is the only guest at the Inn who is not a part of a big wedding party. The bride, Lila, thought she had accounted for every possibility in her effort to host the perfect wedding, but she couldn’t have predicted Phoebe’s arrival.

Phoebe and Lila are complete opposites, but sometimes chance meetings turn into the most unexpected friendships.

Book Summary

In 1962, at the dawn of the jet-set era, two Pan Am stewardesses are navigating an adventurous new life in this historical fiction novel.

Judy Goodman and Beverly Caldwell had different reasons for seeking the coveted position of a Pan Am stewardess, but both were looking to put continents and oceans between them and their pasts. Judy is running away from an oppressive marriage in small-town Pennsylvania, while Beverly is leaving behind the gilded cage of her NYC society life.

By joining the elite team at Pan American Airlines, they embrace the culture, etiquette, and strict rules of the world above the clouds. The job takes them to faraway destinations and presents them with opportunities they could have only dared dream about.

As the two women build a deep friendship, they see each other through both love and danger while discovering what is truly important. They will also be forced to confront secrets that could change their lives all over again.

Book Summary

The French Riviera’s glamorous hotels were dazzling in the summer of 1939 as the world’s wealthiest vacationers and Hollywood movie stars arrived for the first Cannes film festival. American Annabel Faucon has also arrived on the Côte d’Azur. She left a broken heart and a dead-end job back home in New York to work for her uncle at the Grand Hotel.

Annabel is selected to keep an eye on two stars staying at the hotel for the film festival – a mysterious screenwriter and a renegade actor. However, celebrity drama will seem insignificant when Nazi guests arrive during this last summer before the outbreak of war. Annabel’s new duties include disrupting a Nazi communication system.

Book Summary

While jogging near her home on Nantucket, novelist Vivi is killed in a hit-and-run accident. After her death, Vivi is granted the opportunity to watch what happens to her family for one final summer. In addition to watching, she gets three “nudges” to change the outcome of events on Earth.

Between troubles for her children, the investigation into her death, and a childhood secret wrapped into the final novel she was writing, Vivi must be cautious with her nudges while learning to let her family make decisions without her.

Book Summary

Mary Jane tells the story of two very different family lifestyles and a 14-year-old girl trying to decide who she really is. Mary Jane is a quiet, book-loving girl from a traditional, conservative family in 1970s Baltimore. When she is offered a job as a nanny for a local doctor, her mom assumes their home is equally tidy and respectable.

However, the house is a huge mess, and it’s about to get crazier. The doctor has welcomed a rock star and his wife to stay at the house while he tries to get sober. Mary Jane has a lot to teach them about tidiness and schedules, and all the while, they are opening her eyes to the world outside her bubble. By the end of the summer, she’ll have a much better understanding of who she wants to be.

Book Summary

Ever since her dad vanished two decades ago, it’s just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their organic farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. But her quiet routine is upended when Reuben Hill, a Boston-based novelist, arrives claiming to be her half-brother.

Reuben reveals that their father abandoned multiple families across the country and proposes a road trip to find their other half-siblings and confront their elusive father.

As Madeline and Reuben journey through America, they gather more siblings, each with unique stories shaped by the same absentee father. From a college basketball star in Oklahoma to a young filmmaker in Utah, the group navigates their shared histories and the complexities of newfound familial bonds.

Book Summary

In the 1930s, it wasn’t easy for a woman in the United States to get a divorce…unless she headed to Reno, Nevada. In this former frontier town, women could establish residency by spending six weeks at a “divorce ranch,” and then they’d be eligible for legal divorce through the Nevada laws, which gave women more rights to leave a husband.

Evelyn will do anything to get out of her loveless marriage. She heads to the Flying N Ranch and soon bonds with her housemates, most of whom have never traveled from their homes. During their stay, the women can ride horses by day and dance with cowboys by night. However, there is no escaping the grim realities of Depression-era America hiding just below the glamour of Reno.

Book Summary

Gail’s daughter Debbie is getting married tomorrow, and Gail was already having a bad day because she wasn’t invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Things got worse when she lost her job. Then, her ex-husband just showed up on her doorstep, with a cat, and with nowhere else to stay.

However, her true crisis begins when Debbie shares something she just learned about her fiancé. Suddenly, the wedding is thrown into question, but the secret also brings up old feelings about Gail’s past marriage.

Book Summary

Set during the summer of 2020, Lara’s three adult daughters have returned home to quarantine at the family’s northern Michigan cherry orchard. As they pick cherries and go about running the family business in isolation, the sisters beg their mother to tell them the story of her long-ago romance with celebrity Peter Duke. When Lara was in her early 20s, she and Peter shared the stage during a Michigan summer stock theater run of the play Our Town.

Lara begins the story with her very first experience on stage in high school and works her way forward through her brief but eventful theater career. As the girls learn more about their mother’s life, they are forced to reconsider everything they thought they knew about her and their father.

Book Summary

On Memorial Day in 1958, the residents of Jewel, Minnesota, are shocked to discover the dead body of the town’s most powerful citizen, wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn. Sheriff Brody Dern must investigate, but he’s still carrying the physical and emotional scars of his military service, which complicate his career.

The townspeople have a prime suspect before Dern even has the autopsy report. Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran, has recently come back to town with a Japanese wife. But does the couple’s return have anything to do with this case?

The River We Remember explores midcentury life in America and highlights how countless small towns were affected by the WWII scars that remained well after the last shots were fired.

Book Summary

Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a 21-year-old nursing student who has been raised by her conservative parents to always do “the right thing.” But when her brother ships out for Vietnam in 1965, she begins to change her views of right and wrong. Frankie impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows her brother to Vietnam. As she tends to the green and inexperienced young men who have been sent to fight the war, she is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction. Returning home to a changed America doesn’t prove to be any easier.

While The Women is the story of Frankie going to war, it also shines a light on the story of all women who risk everything to help others. The publisher describes this book as “a novel of searing insight and lyrical beauty” that is “profoundly emotional” and “richly drawn.”

Book Summary

Greta James had musical talent from childhood, but her parents had different visions of where that talent would lead. While her mother was her biggest fan, her dad could only see the likely pitfalls of a music career.

She has spent years trying to prove him wrong and reached the point of appearing on magazine covers and playing sold-out shows. However, with the pressure of a sophomore album and the shock of her mother’s recent death, Greta has an on-stage meltdown that goes viral.

She very reluctantly agrees to join her dad on an Alaskan cruise because she hopes it will give her an escape from media coverage and the pressure of her struggling career. Their relationship is as icy as the Alaskan waters. But together aboard the ship, they will finally come to terms with the baggage of their past so that they can face the future.

Book Summary

When bombings began in London in 1939, 14-year-old Hazel and her 5-year-old sister, Flora, were evacuated to a rural village in the English countryside. Living with a woman and her teenage son in a charming stone cottage, Hazel comforts Flora by telling her stories of a magical fairy tale land. It provides the sisters with a fictional place where they can escape the fears and hardships of war.

One day, while playing near the banks of the River Thames, Flora disappears. Hazel blames herself and carries the guilt into adulthood. Twenty years later, Hazel’s life looks ideal from the outside – charming boyfriend, a nice flat in London, and a good job at a rare bookstore. But on the eve of her new career at Sotheby’s, she unwraps a package that changes everything.

It’s an illustrated first-edition book called “Whisperwood and the River of Stars.” It’s the imaginary world that she created for Flora – one that she never wrote down and never told anyone else about. What does it mean? Is Flora still alive? And does this fairy tale hold the truth about her disappearance? Hazel embarks on a feverish quest for answers. Along the way, she’ll reconnect with people from her past and put her future in jeopardy.

Book Summary

After losing her husband in WWII and her daughter to illness, Iris walled herself off from the world. She’s spent many decades hiding behind the tall fence around her home. In place of human connection, Iris has surrounded herself with a family of flowers. She propagates her daylilies and roses and tends a garden that keeps the memories of those she loved alive.

In the early 2000s, Abby is a young mother whose husband has recently returned from military service in Iraq. When Abby’s family rents a cottage along Lake Michigan, next door to Iris’ property, the older woman can’t help but view the young family as a window to the life she once had.

As Iris and Abby are drawn together by their shared love of flowers, the friendship that blossoms between them is a testament to the healing power of both gardening and human connection.

Book Summary

Do you dream of seeing the Venetian canals, the Amalfi Coast, or wandering through gorgeous Tuscan villages? This novel will transport you to all three dramatically different scenic Italian locations in vivid detail.

Two hundred years ago, Filomena Fontana cursed her sister. Ever since then, every 2nd born sister in the Fontana family has been unable to find love.

Some of the women believe in the curse, and others are skeptical, but when elderly Aunt Poppy invites two of the young second-born sisters to return to Italy with her, promising to have a plan to break the curse, they can’t pass up the chance. The trio of women travels throughout Italy, learning about their family history and uncovering secrets.

Book Summary

Single mom Mallory receives a devastating call that her son ingested a poisonous mushroom at summer camp. He’s alive but needs a kidney transplant. When she finds out that neither she nor her sister is a match, the hunt is on to find a donor. Her mom was adopted from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, so Mallory does an Ancestry.com-style DNA test, hoping to find more blood relatives.

In 1951, Hungarian refugee Hannah made a new life for herself after the war. Her husband is a British diplomat, and they’re currently stationed in glamorous Cairo. However, everything is at risk when an unexpected encounter with the manager of a spy-filled hotel leads to a passionate affair. As Cairo’s streets buzz with the possibility of revolution, Hannah is snared in a game of intrigue between two men.

Book Summary

In 1957, McCarthyism and the Red Scare ruled Hollywood. Isabella is a young starlet with the promise to become the next Grace Kelly. Just after an audition with Hitchcock, she is sequestered by the studio’s “fixer” in a tiny Carmel cottage to ride out this dark period of American history.

Her new neighbor, Léon Chazan, was a successful screenwriter until he was blacklisted. He’s continued writing despite knowing he won’t be able to sell his next script and is annoyed when Iz interrupts his work. But he can’t stay mad at her long, and soon they are exploring the coast in his roadster despite the studio’s insistence that Iz not leave her cottage.

Sixty years later, twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan is in Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage. She finds a safe of secrets, raising questions about her grandfather and whether she can live up to his name. Can his old friend Iz, who still lives next door, help her?

Book Summary

West With Giraffes is a charming tale of adventure that takes you on the ride of a lifetime from the East Coast of the US to the West, alongside a rowdy 17-year-old, a grumpy older man, and two giraffes. The year is 1938, and no American zoo has successfully housed giraffes before. The female zoo director of the San Diego Zoo believes she can do it. The giraffes have just survived a hurricane en route to the East Coast, and Riley Jones, the zoo’s curmudgeonly head keeper, is responsible for safely transporting the giraffes from New York City to San Diego.

America is still in the throes of the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl conditions continue to ravage the drought-stricken Southern Plains states. A coast-to-coast trek with giant animals is no easy feat. Jones begrudgingly teams up with a starving teenager named Woody to help him make the journey. The adventures along the way include run-ins with circus con artists, being tailed by a female photographer looking for a big scoop, an emotional visit to Woody’s hometown, and so much more.

At its heart, this is a coming-of-age story. Now, at the age of 105, Woody recounts his 12-day cross-country trip with Jones and the giraffes and how it shaped his life.

Book Summary

In this non-fiction read, Bill Bryson dives deep into the events of the summer of 1927. The summer began with Charles Lindbergh becoming the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, instantly making him one of the most famous people on the planet. 

Back in the US, Babe Ruth began his run to the home run record, and the first “talking picture” changed the movies forever. While the tabloids spent the summer covering the murder trial of a Queens housewife who murdered her husband, gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through his reign of terror. A massive storm flooded the South while President Calvin Coolidge took a three-month vacation. And four of the most powerful bankers on Earth met in secret and made a decision that would lead the future crash and depression. 

All these events and more marked a summer that would have a lasting mark on the twentieth century.