Towel? Check. Sun lounger? Check. Frilly drink with plenty of tinkling ice cubes? Check. A pool with clear water to dip your toes into? Check.
There’s just one thing that’s missing from your recipe for a perfect Sunday morning in your garden: a good book.
Here is our list of the top 10 books you should read this summer. Some of them are seasoned classics, while others are so new that they have that lovely smell of fresh ink and paper free from dog-ears. And, together with strawberry ice cream, suntan lotion and a fresh breeze, that’s the smell we love most.
The Lady in the Lake
Raymond Chandler
American author Raymond Chandler is credited with creating one of the greatest anti-heroes in detective fiction: Philip Marlowe. More than that, the Chicago-born writer’s greatest achievement is elevating a genre to literary greatness. To the uninitiated, reading The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely will give them the illusion that they are reading the work of some young genius – and yet, Chandler was typing away more than 80 years ago.
The Lady in the Lake is Chandler’s most important book, not because it is his best, but because it established him as a great. That said, it’s beautifully written. Just a few paragraphs into the first chapter, we meet this line: “The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.” A beautifully evocative line that is the harbinger of 300 pages of pure brilliance.
In his fourth outing, private investigator Philip Marlowe travels from his usual LA environs to the mountains in pursuit of wealthy businessman Derace Kingsley’s missing wife. Cue an uncomfortable marriage between power and corruption, an intricate plot, and a corpse in the water.
Mr Mercedes
Stephen King
The king of horror is back with a new novel: Mr Mercedes. In his 88th published work, Stephen King gives us retired cop Bill Hodges who is haunted by a crime he couldn’t solve, in which a stolen Mercedes was driven into a crowd of people lined up for a job fair. But that’s not all – the driver taunts the cop with indications that he has an even worse crime in mind. In a race against time, it’s only Hodges, together with a couple of unlikely allies, who can stop the insane killer.
The Son
Jo Nesbo
Detective Harry Hole has made Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo’s fortunes. And yet, Nesbo occasionally gives Hole a break so he can indulge in other adventures. He has, for instance, written children’s books and has also penned Headhunters, which was translated into film in 2011.
In The Son, Nesbo once again pushes Hole backstage and tells the story of Sonny, who has been in prison for 12 years serving time for crimes he didn’t commit. But then, when Sonny learns the truth about his father, he plans an escape and goes in search of the people responsible for the crimes he has paid for.
The Snow Queen
Michael Cunningham
The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of The Hours has just published his sixth novel: The Snow Queen. Michael Cunningham sets his new novel in New York in 2004, where Barrett Meeks, while walking through Central Park, experiences a religious awakening. His brother, Tyler, a struggling musician, is trying to write a wedding song for Beth, his wife-to-be who is seriously ill. He wants the song to be not just a sentimental ballad but an enduring expression of his love. The Snow Queen is comic and tragic, haunting and heartbreaking.
The Invention of Wings
Sue Monk Kidd
Sue Monk Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in the American South, where Hetty “Handful” Grimke, a slave in a Charleston household, yearns for freedom. The Grimke family’s daughter, Sarah, is growing up to be a headstrong woman, and becomes involved in abolitionism and the suffragist movement. Hetty and Sarah form an unlikely friendship.
The author of The Secret Life of Bees is at her best, with a triumphant story about women’s struggle for liberation.
The Secret History of Las Vegas
Chris Abani
“Chris Abani might be the most courageous writer working right now,” writes Dave Eggers. In his critically acclaimed novel The Virgin of Flames, Abani portrayed the richness of humanity set against the backdrop of the beautiful, crumbling bridges of east Los Angeles. In The Secret History of Las Vegas, poet and novelist Abani follows Salazar, a detective, on the trail of a string of recent murders. Determined to solve the murders before he retires, Salazar enlists Dr Sunil Singh, an expert in psychopathy.
Strange Bodies
Marcel Theroux
There is plenty of talent in the Theroux family. The father, Paul, is a travel writer and novelist best known for The Great Railway Bazaar and The Mosquito Coast. His youngest son, Louis, courted controversy with his brilliant documentaries Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends and When Louis Met… while the middle son, Marcel, is a broadcaster and novelist.
In his fifth and latest novel, Strange Bodies, Theroux proposes a literary thriller with science fiction undertones; a strange combination that works brilliantly.
The News: A User’s Manual
Alain de Botton
One of the most curious of authors, Alain de Botton has given us the thought-provoking The Art of Travel, The Architecture of Happiness and How Proust Can Change Your Life. In his latest foray, The News: A User’s Manual, de Botton turns his attention to the news and how this affects us: from the latest news about war to the breaking news of a celebrity getting a pizza.
Boy, Snow, Bird
Helen Oyeyemi
British novelist Helen Oyeyemi has just published her fifth novel, a significant achievement for an author who has yet to celebrate her 30th birthday. Just like White is for Witching and Mr Fox, Boy, Snow, Bird borders on fantasy and follows a 15-year-old girl named Boy. Living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late 1940s, Boy’s world is inhabited by giants, unicorns and talking spiders. It’s a kind of magic.
The Beach
Alex Garland
In British novelist Alex Garland’s iconic first novel, a group of young travellers journey to Thailand in the hope of finding an unspoiled paradise. What they find is a community of around 60 people camping on the edge of the jungle in apparent harmony. But in this Garden of Eden, serpents lurk. One of them is Richard, the narrator, whose atavistic yearnings mirror those in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.