(bright music) - Looking for the perfect summer read?

We've got you covered on PBS Books.

From page-turning mysteries to unforgettable literary escapes, today, we're sharing the books we think deserve a spot in your beach bag, carry on, or favorite patio chair this summer.

A couple of our favorite authors might pop in, too, to tell us about their brand-new books.

(bright music) Welcome to the "PBS Books Readers Club."

I'm Lauren Smith, and joining me with their top summer picks, our Princess Weekes and Heather-Marie Montilla.

Hi, book friends.

- Hi.

Miss you.

- Miss you, too.

Can you believe it's been 30 episodes?

This is our 30th episode.

- Oh, wow.

- Wow.

- That's incredible.

- Amazing.

- So exciting.

- Well, I can't wait to hear what your book picks are.

My first pick is "One of Us" by Elizabeth Day.

It's set within a powerful and wealthy English political family, with plenty of glamor and many secrets.

It's part family drama, part thriller.

I personally love the voices of the characters.

It's one of those books that's written, sort of, different chapters, different characters.

They were so funny, so sharp, you really felt like you're inside the minds of these fascinating, and, in a lot of cases, terrible people.

I just love that.

- Hello, my name is Elizabeth Day.

I'm the author of "One of Us," and I'm so thrilled that the "PBS Readers Club" has selected my novel as one of their recommended summer reads.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

We, authors, would be nothing without our readers, and it means the world to me.

"One of Us" is a tale of why we sometimes fall in love with the people who damage us and why, occasionally, we elect them, too.

It's about rich people behaving badly.

If you love "Real Housewives" crossed with "Succession," with a dash of "The Talented Mr.

Ripley" and a bit of "White Lotus," I think this novel is for you.

It tells the story of former best friends, Martin and Ben.

Martin, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, always desperate to fit in, and the aristocratic Ben Fitzmaurice, who is now on course to become the next UK prime minister.

Martin, though, is hell-bent on revenge.

I hope that you love it, and thank you so much for the support.

- And we love a good revenge story, don't we, Princess?

- Absolutely.

My first pick is a little bit of a revenge story.

It's "The Intrigue" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Ever since we interviewed her, she has become one of my go-to favorite authors and her latest book, "The Intrigue," is a noir, in the '40s, about a handsome conman named Ulises, who ends up working with a woman named Ines to steal her aunt's fortune.

But it is not as easy as you would expect.

It's giving "Sunset Boulevard" with all these different point of views, and she's just one of the most incredible, compelling authors holding the pen.

Love her previous book, "Silver Nitrate," and I believe the book does pair very well with an Aperol spritz under a beach chair.

- Ooh, I love a drink pairing.

That's amazing.

I love that.

All right, Heather, what is your first pick?

- Well, people who know that I'm a librarian who loves historical novels, books, and New York City will not be surprised by my selection: "The Sisters of Book Row" by Shelley Noble.

It is captivating novel about courage, friendship, the freedom to read, and women who helped save New York's famed Book Row, which was an eclectic group of 40 bookshops along Fourth Avenue in the early 1900s, let's say 1950.

It was a book mecca where book buyers went for local bargains, and it gained the attention and became a target of a vicious censor in American history, Anthony Comstock.

This story explores Arcadia Rare Bookshop, the home of three sisters who risk everything to protect books.

Shelley weaves brilliantly history and heart together, showing how love of stories can spark bravery, challenge injustice, and bring people together.

It celebrates resilience, power of knowledge, and the bond of family friendships with its suspense.

I love strong women, secret adventures, and the love of books.

- I love that.

- Incredible.

- That sounds amazing.

Thank you, Heather.

Also, I love a book about books.

That's just the best combination.

- Mm-hmm.

- So, okay, my next pick, I'm really excited about.

This book is called "Take What You Can" by Naima Coster.

She's the New York Times bestselling author of "What's Mine and Yours."

Her new book is a beautifully layered story about friendship, motherhood, class, and the complicated ways that we grow together and a part over the course of a lifetime.

I was really interested in the reflection on how relationships, and, particularly, friendships that are bound not by blood and, like, obligatory holiday gatherings.

People that you choose to be with, how those relationships change and manage to survive or not through different phases of life.

Now, this book, it's not on sale until August 4th, but you can pre-order it, and it is well worth adding to your TBR list.

- Hi, I'm Naima Coster, and I'm thrilled that my new novel, "Take What You Can," is a PBS Books' recommended read for summer.

"Take What You Can" is a story of two best friends, Milly and Val, who decide to move closer to one another when they're both pregnant so that they can raise their girls together.

They're motherless mothers and determined to be family to one another.

But once they're enmeshed in each other's lives again, the cracks in their friendships start to show.

Milly and Val can't talk about the tremendous class differences that have come up between them, and they also can't talk about the truth of their past.

The fact that they were once a trio, taken under the wing of an elegant, wealthy, older woman named Helene, who they met while studying abroad in France.

Helene is no longer a part of their lives, but she haunts them still.

Moving back and forth between their present in Brooklyn and their past in France, "Take What You Can" is a juicy, honest story of what it means to become a mother when you have none, to face class, resentment, and privilege in a friendship and what it means to show up as someone's person through all the phases of life.

- And we love Naima Coster.

Can't wait to see where her writing goes next.

Okay, Princess, what else you got on your list?

- Well, to follow up with Heather's New York story, I am picking for my second pick, "Cool Machine" by Colson Whitehead.

It is the third book in his "Harlem Trilogy" series.

We go back to the world of Ray Carney, but now we're in 1980s, Wall Street, capitalism is on the run, Reaganism is here, and we are dealing with all of the changes that are gonna happen to Harlem, Manhattan, with this glut of money and power and disgusting 80s-ness.

It's incredible.

I think Colson Whitehead is one of the most important American writers today.

"The Nickel Boys" is one of my favorite reads.

My mother loves this book, so I'm so excited, and it pairs lovely with a Manhattan and you can look up and glare at the ugly skyscraper at their building to cover the view of the Empire State Building.

- Oh, my God.

Can we make drink pairings with book pairings a new thing forevermore?

I love this so much, and I love Colson Whitehead.

I'm so glad that you picked him.

Okay, Heather, you are up next.

What else you got?

- Okay, so it is stained with themes of books.

So "Book of Forbidden Words."

It is by Louise Fein, and it's a perfect next read.

Well, it was for me, and there's a dual timeline.

It's a historical novel.

It takes you 1552 Paris and then 1952 New York, and there are two courageous women, Lysbette and Milly.

Both women defy authorities.

They share a dangerous forbidden manuscript.

Lysbette, in 1552, she's an educated orphan.

She risks her life under the Inquisition to publish a manuscript on women's equality, seeking out a real-life printer, Charlotte Guillard, who I actually had studied about in library school.

So yes, I am a book nerd, you guys know, but I was so excited to see her up here.

I was like, "Oh, my God, Charlotte."

- We know it and we love it.

- And so anyway, in this book, it also goes to New York, and you have a crypt analyst who decipher the encrypted manuscript during the restrictive McCarthy era.

Once again, there is a theme of, you know, censorship in this, and it's linked, these dual storylines linked over 400 years, and it's actually inspired by the real-life Voynich manuscript.

It emphasizes gender equality and enduring human spirit and taking risks.

It's a fabulous read, and the author just keeps you wanting to turn the page.

- That sounds so good, and you did such a good job describing it that before I give my next pick, I wanna go back to you, because I know you've got a fourth on your list, and I'm dying to know all about it.

- My fourth book actually, which is a book also about women, and it's Marie Benedict's "Daughter of Egypt," and it actually goes back to Tutankhamun and the founding of the tomb.

And it shadows and follows Evelyn, who is the daughter, and so I don't know how many people know about the woman who was a pharaoh and a female, Hatshepsut, and it, okay, so yeah, so this is all about, I guess, I'm into female power right now.

I'm sorry y'all, it's just what I'm reading, but it's amazing.

And once again, good read.

- I am so intrigued.

I love books about, like, ancient Egyptian storytelling.

I love that a lot.

- I remember you gifted me a book about one of... I think it was about her.

If not her, Nefertari?

- Yeah, Nefertari.

- Nefertari, yeah.

So it's like we definitely love ancient Egypt women over here.

- We do.

I like that one.

It's a good story.

so, yeah, I read that a few times.

I love that book.

So my next pick is a beach read.

Actually, it has a beach on the front cover, and I actually read it on a beach, and I whipped right through it so fast.

It's called "The Shampoo Effect" by Jenny Jackson.

She was the New York Times bestselling author of "Pineapple Street."

That one was a huge hit.

This one is really good, too.

It's the story of an ambitious young writer.

She moves to the windswept Massachusetts coast to focus on work, but, of course, she becomes entangled in a complicated romance with a local man and has to navigate her path with him, but also his longtime childhood friends whose relationships are so entwined that it only takes one story to unravel the fabric of their lives.

- I'm Jenny Jackson, author of "The Shampoo Effect."

This is the story of a young woman, a New Yorker, who moves to a small town in Massachusetts for a writing fellowship, but instead of working on her novel, she falls in love with a local guy and his wild group of friends.

Soon, she becomes enmeshed in these locals and their late nights, their private jokes, their secret affairs.

But when she discovers that her boyfriend's ex is pregnant with his baby, the fabric of this group rips open, and she does something in a potent act of heartbreak and revenge that changes the lives for everyone in this social set.

I hope that everyone at PBS Books Club enjoys it.

Thank you.

- I love the exploration about growing up into midlife.

You're supposed to be a grownup, but I feel like you don't get there until you hit your 40s, with just the right balance of juicy betrayals to keep you turning pages.

Princess, do you have one more pick for us?

- I do.

I do.

I picked "Land" by Maggie O'Farrell, the author of "Hamnet" and "The Marriage Portrait," two of my favorite pieces of recent historical fiction.

She's back with "Land," a novel that takes us right into Ireland, right after An Gorta Mor, also known as The Great Hunger, or the Irish Potato Famine.

We have this man named Tomas who is working for the Ordnance Survey project, which is kind of going through the maps and landscaping all of Ireland.

And he's really determined to do that and highlight the disaster of the famine and how it's changed the landscape of Ireland.

But, of course, that a body comes up and British soldiers are arriving any day now.

And so we have this tension of this land at the aftermath of a disaster.

And Maggie O'Farrell just knows how to really put you into a setting and charm you and intrigue you.

She's a fantastic, beautiful writer.

This book is incredible, and I also love Irish history, and this pairs with a delicious Irish coffee made of course with Jameson for those who like a cooler summer experience.

- I love that a lot.

I will pair the book with the Irish coffee and my Irish sheep sweater.

- Yes.

- I think that is perfect.

- Exactly.

- I love an Irish story, and actually I know PBS viewers, PBS Books lovers are into Ireland, too.

I've filmed more than one Irish music concert overseas, so I know that our readers will be really into that.

Thank you for that.

Okay.

- Oh!

And I wanted to do a secret Irish pick because I saw it at my bookstore.

It's "The Keeper" by Tana French, the third and final novel in the Cal Hooper trilogy, which we have been covering here on the bookstore.

It is finally out.

So if you wanna get your summer reading early and you miss Cal, you miss rural Ireland, Tana's got us.

- Yes.

Cal Hooper.

Seriously, I imagine Cal is our good friend, Fred.

Honestly, when I read it, Cal Hooper is Fred.

We miss Fred.

He'll be back next time.

Okay, so I have another pick, and actually, I surprised myself with how much I love this book.

You might know Ruta Sepetys from books like "Salt to the Sea" and "Between Shades of Gray."

Her newest book is called "A Fortune of Sand."

- [Princess] Oh, I wanted to read that.

- It's so good.

So it's set in the 1920s Detroit era, and it's amongst the wealthy, powerful auto families, but it's sort of haunting, and it's this twisty historical mystery about ambition, power, and the dangerous secrets hidden behind one wealthy family's glittering facade.

- Hi, I'm Ruta Sepetys, author of "Salt to the Sea," "I Must Betray You," and other historical novels, and I'm so excited that PBS Books has selected my new novel, "A Fortune of Sand" as one of their summer read recommendations.

"A Fortune of Sand" is set in the 1920s in Detroit.

Did you know that Detroit was once considered the Paris of the Midwest?

It was, and it follows a wealthy and wily automotive family whose making terrible decisions but gaining a ton of power while doing it.

Their youngest daughter, Marjorie, discovers a web of lies within the family and then has to face a terrifying truth.

Just how far will a dynasty go to keep their secrets?

It's full of twists and turns.

Expect the unexpected.

And I hope you enjoy "A Fortune of Sand" this summer.

- So take "The Great Gatsby" and mix it with "Mexican Gothic," 'cause it's a little bit spooky and set it in Detroit and you have a serious page-turner in "Fortune of Sand."

Okay, my librarian friend, Heather, what's left on your library list?

- It is a murder mystery.

So I love Anthony Horowitz.

We've had a pleasure of interviewing him twice on PBS Books, and his newest book is "A Deadly Episode."

And so those of you who love "Magpie Murders," "Moonflower Murders," or any of his novels, he once again delivers with this book.

It's brilliantly layered.

He writes in such a captivating, seamless way, the book follows a tangled web of secrets, lies, unexpected connections, and Horowitz keeps you guessing, unfolding with such precision.

So basically, they're making a major feature film, and it's based on a mystery novel within this book.

And it's supposed to be in the south coast of England.

And then everything goes wrong, including guess what?

A murder.

And the narrative keeps you guessing at every turn, it blends motives.

Perfect suspense.

You will love this.

- Yes, we love him as a person.

He's a great writer.

He is a great guy.

He is fun to talk to, and we love a cozy mystery always.

Well, I don't know about you, ladies, but I added several titles to my TBR list, so I'm stacked for the summer.

If you want a copy of any of these titles, you can find them on the PBS Books bookshop site.

Go to bookshop.org/shop/pbsbooks, where you can view the whole list from this episode and snag your next read or two for your summer adventures.

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You'll also be the first to find out our book pick for upcoming months.

Thank you, Princess and Heather, for joining us and for sharing your book picks.

- Thanks for having us.

- It nice to see you.

- It's so good to see you guys.

- Yeah.

- I love you all.

- Yeah, it's so great to see you.

Thanks for having us again.

- Yes.

- And thank you all of you our book friend community for joining us as well.

Subscribe on YouTube now, so you don't miss our next set of recommendations.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you for joining the "PBS Books Readers Club."

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