Dragons, skeletons, and a pirate queen top our summer beach reads

When it comes to summer reading, I firmly believe there is no right answer. If you’re at the beach and you’re reading it, it’s a beach read. 

My son celebrated the end of his junior year of college with “Heart of Darkness” (confession: Joseph Conrad does not scream “pleasure reading” to me) and then moved on to Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and “The Rest Is Noise” by New Yorker music critic Alex Ross. 

His parents are, comparatively speaking, lightweights. My husband is happily working his way through “The Pot Thief” series (no, not that kind of pot) by J. Michael Orenduff. The comic mysteries serve up Southwest culture, archaeology, excellent food, and plenty of Hatch chiles, and they remind Brian of his desert childhood. 

This summer I’m finally diving into “H Is for Hawk” and “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.” (Perils of a reviewer: There are so many new books that if you don’t make time to circle back, you never catch up with the ones you weren’t assigned.) 

When it comes to summer 2023, people are seeking a sense of adventure and reconnection – and, let’s be honest, we all could use a good laugh. We’ve got you covered whether you’re interested in a book club read, a BookTok author, a real-life adventure, a fantasy, a mystery, or a novel that can make you snort-laugh poolside. We’ve also got a pirate queen.

Pony Express redux

The Pony Express existed only 18 months, but it has endured in the imagination as an institution for much longer than riders carried the mail via horseback from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. “It was the greatest display of American horsemanship to ever color the pages of a history book,” writes Outside magazine contributor Will Grant. (Only one mailbag, called a mochila, was lost.) Grant sets out to follow their trail in his new book, “The Last Ride of the Pony Express,” covering 2,000 miles with his horses Chicken Fry and Badger. Grant, who spent his youth working with horses, gives the trio 100 days rather than the 10-day relay route so dangerous that one advertisement allegedly read, “Orphans preferred.” In addition to the miles, he also covers the philosophy, history, and environment of the American West and how the land shaped a people.

Summer school satire

For a far more irreverent take on U.S. history, and with a sincere apology to any high school student actually studying for the Advanced Placement exam, Washington Post humorist Alexandra Petri creates the Americana she wished existed. “Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up)” offers essays ranging from “How To Pose for Your Civil War Photograph,” to Elizabeth Cady Stanton getting pulled involuntarily into a Hallmark movie when she traveled to Seneca Falls. (Any career-minded woman who ventures to a small town is doomed to be trapped in a sweet and probably snow-filled future.) There’s a new take on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that tries to be more accurate about who actually warned that the British were coming. (Editor’s note: Longfellow never let a name or a fact get in the way of a poem.) Petri knows her stuff – readers are advised to check out the footnotes – and some of the most absurd flights of history are, in fact, true. 

A legendary Chinese pirate queen 

If you’d prefer a combination of fiction and history with more emphasis on the fiction – and 100% more piracy – pack Rita Chang-Eppig’s debut, “Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea.” Nineteenth-century pirate queen Shek Yeung ruled the South China Sea at a time when women were not allowed to chart their own path. Shek is a vibrant, complicated heroine who was sold into sexual slavery as a teenager, only to win her freedom and captain half a fleet. Chang-Eppig starts her epic in the middle of a battle, when Shek’s pirate husband is killed. The novel then moves backward and forward through time, as the master strategist begins the fight for her own life and her children – a survivor who refuses to live life on anyone else’s terms again. 

A tangled murder mystery 

If, like me, you’ve needed a mystery handy since the pandemic to help restore your sense of order, author Elly Griffiths’ character, Ruth Galloway, can relate. The British forensic archaeologist “feels that she has been fighting things – Covid, the university, her own feelings – for too long,” writes Griffiths in “The Last Remains,” the conclusion to her well-loved and long-running series. Ruth’s university plans to shut down her department to cut costs, and Ruth is trying to summon the energy for one more battle. (“We need to fight back, David texted. I’m starting a Twitter account.”) Meanwhile, a skeleton has been found behind a bricked-up wall in a pub – a traditional punishment meted out to erring women. Cathbad, Ruth’s friend, not only knew the dead woman but also suddenly vanishes, leaving Ruth, Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, and Cathbad’s family distraught with worry. A careful craftswoman, Griffiths brings back characters from earlier mysteries, and the novel chimes with echoes that reach back to Ruth’s first outing, “The Crossing Places.” While I got a little weary of the romance a few books ago, Ruth and her found family remain good company, and Griffiths offers up the historical detail that has enriched each mystery. (Nicola de la Haye, 12th-century castellan and savior of England, is someone I’m happy to know about.) 

Finding grace in grief 

In a country as bad at mourning as the United States, it’s hard to think of a novelist who handles grief with more gentleness than Steven Rowley. He follows up his utterly charming “The Guncle,” in which the main character steps in to care for his niece and nephew after the death of his sister, with “The Celebrants.” Five college friends vow to be there for each other at their lowest moments in life by throwing funerals. The point is simple: when life gets really hard, “to remind you that you are loved.” 

They drop everything and fly 3,000 miles when parents die, when a marriage fails, when an honest mistake is about to send someone to prison. When you can’t find the light in your own life, “it’s someone else’s turn to hold the lantern.” The marketing copy calls it a Gen X “Big Chill,” but Rowley himself nails the vibe as “four funerals and a wedding.” Some of the situations are a little forced – a destination funeral, a surprise funeral – but then, what memorial service isn’t staged, with the celebrants unsure how to act or what to say? 

Rowley’s repartee is witty, and the importance of making sure those you love know how much they mean to you comes through on every page.

Dragon-filled fantasy 

Speaking of friendship, every reader should have a book friend in their life. Mine handed me “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros with the admonition that I shouldn’t look it up or read any reviews. This was sage advice. If you loved the series “The Dragonriders of Pern” but cringed at the consent issues, hie thee to a bookstore. Here be dragons! Violet Sorrengail survived a childhood illness that left her with weak joints and prematurely gray hair. She planned to live an indoorsy life as a scribe among her beloved books. Her general mom conscripts her into the fantasy equivalent of the Air Force Academy in which fellow students see weakness as a reason to kill you. Oh, and several of her classmates’ parents were executed on her mother’s orders. Be warned: There is a cliffhanger. It is a doozy.