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Summer reading suggestions

18summertree credit David Goldi

Graphic: For the interactive experience of summer reading recommendations.

If you liked “Gone Girl” By Gillian Flynn

■  “Casebook” by Mona Simpson (April 15) A teenage boy must reckon with evil when he goes to maniacal lengths to spy on his separating parents.

 “The Painter” by Peter Heller (May 6) An expressionist painter with a murderous past tries and fails to conquer his violent impulses.

 “Summer House with Swimming Pool” by Herman Koch (June 3) The Dutch writer is bound to satisfy fans of “The Dinner” with a new psychological thriller about nasty people on an opulent vacation.

In case you missed it . . .

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 “The Exception” by Christian Jungersen (2006) Four female nonprofit apparatchiks in Copenhagen turn against one another when they start receiving death threats.

If you liked “Running With Scissors” By Augusten Burroughs

 “What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding” by Kristin Newman (May 20) A sitcom writer dallies with a plethora of sexy foreign men.

 “Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America” by John Waters (June 3) The “Hairspray” director with the pencil-thin moustache set off on a grand tour of the country in other people’s cars and wrote a book about what did and didn’t happen.

 “Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town” by Sarah Payne Stuart (June 12) A writer chronicles her lifelong enchantment with the writers of Concord and the perils of living in a house she can’t afford.

 “Let the Tornado Come by Rita Zoey Chin (June 24) A poet with a terrible childhood finds solace in a horse.

In case you missed it . . .

■  “I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I’ve Dated” by Julie Klausner (2010) A comic offers a self-deprecating take on a number of failed romances.

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If you liked “Mystic River” by Dennis Lehane

 “Remember Me Like This” by Bret Anthony Johnston (May 13) A young boy in a small Texas town disappears mysteriously and returns more mysteriously to a family torn asunder.

 “The Orphans of Race Point” by Patry Francis (May 6) Two murders alter the lives of a couple living in Provincetown’s tight-knit Portugese-American community.

 “The Arsonist” by Sue Miller (June 24) A trusting community in New Hampshire bristles when someone starts setting fire to their homes. ■  “Everything I Never Told You” by Celeste Ng (June 26)

A Chinese-American family living in a small Ohio town is devastated when the favored middle daughter drowns.

In case you missed it . . .

 “Gob’s Grief” by Chris Adrian (2003) An 11-year-old in rural Ohio loses his twin brother in the Civil War, then goes to fantastic lengths to try to bring him back from the dead.

If you liked “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen

 “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour” by Joshua Ferris (May 13) A self-defeating dentist has an identity crisis when he discovers he is being impersonated online.

 “The Vacationers” by Emma Straub (May 29) A dysfunctional family takes a holiday in Mallorca, ripping open old wounds.

 “Friendship by Emily Gould (July 1) Two clever urbanites face 30 and the possibility that their long friendship is coming to a close.

In case you missed it . . .

 “The Sleeping Father by Matthew Sharpe (2003) Teenage siblings attempt to rehabilitate their brain-damaged father with hilarious and touching results.

If you liked “Atonement” by Ian McEwan

 “All The Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr (May 6) The lives of a blind French girl and a Hitler Youth intersect in occupied France.

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 “Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932” by Francine Prose (April 22) A group of bohemians hang out at a jazz joint before Europe goes crazy and erupts into war.

 “Euphoria” by Lily King (June 3) A trio of temperamental anthropologists find a new tribe in New Guinea in the period between the two world wars.

 “Lucky Us” by Amy Bloom (July 29) An aspiring starlet and her best gal pal travel across America and witness the changes wrought by World War II.

 “Warburg in Rome” by James Carroll (July 1) An American official navigates the chaos of Rome in the wake of World War II.

In case you missed it . . .

 “Suite Française” by Irène Némerovsky, translated by Sandra Smith (2006) A powerful book set during the occupation when Parisians of all stripes were forced to reckon with the Nazis and each other.

If you liked “The Bone Season” by Samantha Shannon

 “The Book of Life” by Deborah Harkness (July 15) The final book in the All Souls Trilogy finds a historian-witch and a vampire scientist reckoning with the past.

 “The Magician’s Land” by Lev Grossman (Aug. 5) The final book in the Magicians Trilogy finds its titular magician attempting to return to the secret, magical land of his dreams.

In case you missed it . . .

“The Fortress of Solitude” by
Jonathan Lethem
(2003) Two
teenage boys navigate rough childhoods in 1970s Brooklyn, grow up, and find a magic ring.

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If you liked “The Night Circus” By Erin Morgenstern

■  “An Untamed State” by Roxane Gay (May 6) A Haitian woman’s fairy-tale life takes a turn for the worse when she is kidnapped by a group of armed men.

■  “The Snow Queen” by Michael Cunningham (May 6) A lovelorn New Yorker has a divine vision and seeks transcendence in a cruel world.

 “Boy, Snow, Bird” by Helen Oyeyemi (March 6) A haunted woman inadvertently finds herself in the role of the wicked stepmother when she marries a man who is passing for white.

In case you missed it . . .

 “The Sky Below” by Stacey D’Erasmo (2010) A disaffected obituary writer undergoes a mythic transformation after a brush with death.

If you like Stephen King

 “Mr. Mercedes: A Novel” by Stephen King (June 3) A trio of Midwestern misfits band together against a murderous madman.


Eugenia Williamson is a writer and editor living in Somerville. She can be reached at eugenia.williamson@gmail.com.