Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout has been creating characters that feel like a part of my community and life for years. Olive Kitteridge. Lucy Barton. Bob Burgess. Opening up these books to spend time with the residents of Crosby, Maine, is always enjoyable, but this one was my favorite visit yet. Strout has a way of bringing stunning insights about the human condition with just a single sentence. It’s no wonder she won the Pulitzer Prize. The book begins with our beloved characters in the midst of a shocking crime and one in which Bob is defending the man accused. The best part about this book is witnessing the characters we’ve grown to love walk and talk with each other about their lives, fears, and regrets, as if the reader is saying, “tell me everything!”

MARGO'S GOT MONEY TROUBLES by Rufi Thorpe

Rufi Thorpe’s The Knockout Queen from 2020 knocked my socks off, and her newest, Margot’s Got Money Troubles, is another crowd-pleaser. Meet Margot, the child of a Hooters waitress and ex-pro wrestler who has an affair with her English professor, gets pregnant, and starts an OnlyFans account to make a living. When people question if Margot can be a good mother and participate in online sex work, troubles ensue. This book is the perfect August read. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, endearing with characters to love and remember, and so entertaining you won’t be stressing about your to-do lists and upcoming after-summer responsibilities.

THE ART OF FIELDING by Chad Harbach

The author Ann Patchett has a tagline: “If you haven’t read this, it’s new to you.” While I usually always feature books that are recently published for this article, I am going to take a page out of Ann’s book here and recommend one of my favorite reads from 2011, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. This is one of those novels that sits on my shelf and whenever my eyes scan the title, I think, “I loved that book.” It’s a campus novel, which I adore, and primarily about baseball, which I’m not particularly fond of, but its presence in this novel makes it a home run!

Student Henry Skrimshander at the fictional Westish College on the shore of Lake Michigan seems destined for big-league stardom, but when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. This is like the very best of John Irving and Jonathan Franzen, and it will always hold a special place in my heart and on my bookshelf. This was Chad Harbach’s debut and I wait and hope every year to see if he will write something again.

THEY DREAM IN GOLD by Mai Sennaar

Elin Hilderbrand and I started Season 2 of our literary podcast Books, Beach, & Beyond with special guest and award-winning actor, Sarah Jessica Parker. She created SJP Lit, a publishing imprint that brings us thought-provoking, inclusive, and big-hearted stories. The most recent title for SJP Lit is They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennaar. Buckle up, readers, because this literary debut by a striking new voice in fiction is a journey across half the globe, spanning two decades, and featuring two dreamers and the diasporic pursuit of home. Sarah Jessica Parker calls it a “mouth-watering delight!”

To listen to our episode with Sarah Jessica Parker and hear all about SJP Lit, visit booksbeachandbeyond.com or tune in wherever you get your podcasts.

THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB by Griffin Dunne

You can meet Griffin Dunne and get your book signed on Thursday August 15 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Mitchell’s Book Corner.

I am still seeing stars after reading The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne. This memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan is popcorn reading at its finest, but with such a genuine talent for writing and storytelling. You won’t believe all the people in these pages: Carrie Fisher, Sean Connery, Janis Joplin, Joan Didion, Thomas Wolfe—the list goes on. In the center of this star-studded crowd of film and literary celebrities is Griffin, and his voice and story leap off the page with humor, heart, vulnerability, and family tragedy. Sometimes celebrity memoirs are a dime a dozen, but this one is pure gold.

LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Literary close-ups on one family are some of my favorite types of novels, and Long Island Compromise is one you will get lost in. In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway. This dark moment shatters the Fletchers and their suburban paradise, and for 450 pages we are along for the ride of family dysfunction and trauma. The novel spans the entirety of one family’s history, through several decades and generations and multiple familial perspectives, and we witness their mistakes, quirks, joys, and trials, tears, drama, and mental and emotional health. It is ultimately a novel about inheritance, both financial and emotional, and how that inheritance defines them all. Don’t miss this laugh-out-loud, “maybe-my-family-isn’t-so-bad” story!