Books to read in summer 2023: Leading Cambridge authors pick out some page-turners
Whether you’re lying on a beach, curling up in a cosy cottage or heading off on an adventure this summer, a book is always essential packing.
We asked a clutch of Cambridge authors and literature experts what is on their must-be-read pile for the holidays and which book they would press into another traveller’s hands.
Nicola Upson
I recommend:Uncle Paul, by Celia Fremlin. Celia Fremlin was writing witty, unsettling, beautifully observed psychological thrillers years before anyone invented the term ‘domestic noir’, and I can’t think of a better summer read than the latest of her books to be reissued.
Uncle Paul is the story of Meg’s holiday from hell at a seaside caravan resort with her sisters and new lover, where the family skeletons of an old murder threaten to tumble from a very creepy closet.
The book has a stunning twist, but it’s as memorable for the wicked delight with which Fremlin exposes the minutiae of family politics, deckchair etiquette and boarding house life; she had a genius for shining darkness into the brightest of everyday corners, and this is her at her sinister, most entertaining best.
What I will be reading: I’m looking forward to reading Peter Ross’s Steeple Chasing. I have no great faith, but I love churches – their art and music, the peace of a churchyard, the stories told by the gravestones which often give me my characters’ names.
This book – the follow-up to Ross’s A Tomb with a View – is ‘a travel book with bells on’, revelling in the history, secrets and people of Britain’s churches. I’m hoping to visit some across the summer, and perhaps store up a few plot ideas for future novels.
Nicola’s latest book is Dear Little Corpses.
Jill Dawson
I recommend:The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz. If you don’t know her novels, Jean is the American author of You Should Have Known which was made into the thriller, The Undoing, starring Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman.
I gulped The Plot down in a day and it’s perfect for keeping you stuck to your lounger by a pool. A thriller set in the world of publishing and creative writing, where one author steals the plot from a (dead) ex-student.
Korelitz really knows how to keep you hooked with intelligent, sassy writing, and she is also horribly accurate about the creative writing world, sometimes making me wince with recognition of her character’s petty grievances, but in other places having me nodding in agreement with her writing insights. Very satisfying.
What I will be reading: This year we’re off to Devon and Cornwall where I’ll hope to finish some of my to-be-read pile, including a terrific memoir by Catherine Taylor, The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time.
Catherine spent her teenage years in Yorkshire (as did I) and this promises to be a poignant, funny, beautifully written memoir of a young woman growing up in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper, plus a thoughtful interrogation of the ways that violence overshadows all women’s lives.
Jill Dawson’s latest novel is The Bewitching, telling the true story of the witches of Warboys, a sort of Me Too for the 16th century. It is out in paperback from Sceptre for £9.99 and currently short-listed for the New Angle Prize for fiction.
Mandy Morton
I recommend: The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier. My latest book deals with a certain amount of time travel, as I take one of my characters back to several significant moments in British history, and the writing of it reminded me of a book I read in my twenties.
I read very little fiction, but this summer I have decided to return to Daphne du Maurier’s The House on the Strand, a story set in Daphne’s beloved Cornwall, encompassing a number of themes including friendship, loyalty and the experimentation of hallucinogenic drugs.
Quite a mixture, I hear you cry! But the abiding edginess is provided by the way in which du Maurier buckets her reader back to the Middle Ages and into a parallel world set against the backdrop of an ancient Cornish house called Kilmarth. This book is a wonderful example of escapism, and perfect for a summer read.
What I will be reading: Having returned to du Maurier this summer, Margaret Forster’s biography has crept to the top of my next-to-read pile.
I had the joy of interviewing Margaret when her acclaimed book first came out, and her detailed account of Daphne’s complex life serves as an extraordinarily honest portrayal of a much-loved and respected writer who gifted to us so many classics like Rebecca, The Birds and, of course, The House on the Strand.
Mandy Morton’s The Windmill Murders: No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, published by Farrago Books, is out now and is book 11 in the series.
Cathy Moore, CEO of the Cambridge Literary Festival
I recommend:Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. If you enjoy a long, immersive read there can be no better book to pack in your suitcase this year than Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
This latest prize-winning novel from an outstanding novelist has taken the story of David Copperfield and made it her own.
Demon Copperhead is the coming-of-age story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-coloured hair.
We follow him through the modern perils of foster care, child labour, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, the dizzying highs of true love, and the crushing losses that can accompany it.
This is not a novel for the faint-hearted with its shocking depiction of big pharma profiteering from ruined lives caused by addiction.
As an antidote one of my favourite summer novels is The Offing by the supremely talented Benjamin Myers. This is a charming and tender novel of love and friendship set on the Yorkshire coast over the course of one summer at the end of World War Two.
What I will be reading: Among my summer reads this year will be a couple of volumes of the recently reissued The Diary of Virginia Woolf (Granta).
Woolf and her circle of friends are endlessly fascinating, and the diaries will provide a great backdrop to her writing, state of mind as well as the daily humour and trivia of life.
I will also pack the two novels by Barbara Kingsolver which I haven’t yet read – Flight Behaviour and Prodigal Summer.
Both set in the Appalachians, and which tell compelling human stories against a backdrop of the natural world and her overarching insistence that we respect and conserve the planet we inhabit.
Sophie Hannah
I recommend:The Memory Game by Nicci French and See Jane Run by Joy Fielding. As the perfect summer read, I would recommend either or both of my favourite psychological thrillers of all time – both full of gasp-out-loud, jaw-dropping moments of revelation and addictively unputdownable.
What I will be reading: On my sun lounger in Portugal, I’m going to be reading Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll. Knoll is my newest favourite writer – her characters are spiky, not always sympathetic, and often ruthless.
I’ve loved her first and second novels, Luckiest Girl Alive and The Favourite Sister. Bright Young Women is a murder mystery set partly in a sorority house, and there’s also a missing person element... it sounds incredible, and I know I will find Knoll’s shrewd, brazen prose irresistible, just as I did when I read her first two novels.
Sophie Hannah’s latest book, The Double Best Method, is published on Amazon Kindle. Sophie says: “It introduces a decision-making method I have invented that I genuinely believe is the best decision-making method in the world – it works perfectly whoever you are, and no matter what the situation. Try it and see!”
Kate Rhodes
I recommend:Apricots on the Nile, by Colette Rossan. The book I’d like to recommend as the perfect escapist beach read is Apricots on the Nile.
This memoir is a picture-perfect evocation of Cairo in the 1930s, where the author lived as a child, with her Egyptian-Jewish relatives.
It’s a heady mix of vividly rendered scenes from Cairo street-life, recipes, and family photographs. I loved her description of the Khan-al-Khalili street market, which evokes every smell, sight, and sound in lush detail.
I almost felt like I could inhale the exotic spices, and see the skeins of silk, and elaborate silverware. The book is beautifully written, and a feast for the senses, from start to finish. The author doesn’t shy away from describing the impact of World War II on Egyptian life, but her story has a refreshingly naïve voice, because it’s told from a child’s perspective.
I haven’t attempted the book’s meatballs in apricot sauce recipe yet, but intend to give it a try soon!
What I will be reading: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. There’s a tremendous buzz around this book, because Kennedy’s writing is highly acclaimed.
She has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, and is by no means a typical author. She worked for 30 years as a professional chef in Northern Ireland, where Trespasses is set.
It’s a love story, set in Belfast, during the peak of the Troubles. The main character is 24-year-old Cushla Lavery who works as a primary school teacher and also does shifts behind the bar, at her family’s pub.
When she falls in love with a much older married barrister, Michael Agnew, the political suddenly becomes personal. Critics have described it as “tender and unflinching,” so it promises to be a riveting read.
Kate’s latest book is The Brutal Tide, published by Simon and Schuster, paperback £7.99.
Francis Spufford
I recommend:The Midnight News by Jo Baker (Phoenix, £16.99). A Blitz-set drama, by the author of the great Longbourn, which constantly twists off the path you think it’s taking.
Is it a romance? A spy story? A murder mystery? A record of madness? Through every twist and turn there’s a brilliant evocation of life on the nerves’ edge, in a city battered nightly. And it has a heroine in the shape of kind, damaged, impulsive 20-year-old Charlotte who you’ll root for helplessly.
What I will be reading: Volume two of Daniel Abraham’s new fantasy trilogy, Blade of Dream (Orbit, £20.) Daniel Abraham wrote half of the TV science fiction series The Expanse, and that was pretty good, but when it comes to fantasy he’s one of the great innovators and stylists working now.
From the old fantasy idea of the teeming, imaginary city, where the action stretches from the gutter to the palace, he’s building stage by stage something as exquisitely made, and intricately interconnected, as a gold watch.
Every book in the trilogy covers the same events from a different point of view; every book reveals new secrets, new beauties of characterisation and plotting. When it’s finished it’s going to be a wonder.
Francis Spufford’s latest novel, Cahokia Jazz, is due out on October 5 (Faber, £20). Featuring Tommy guns, jazz and Jesuits, it’s a crime novel set in a version of 1920s America which didn’t quite happen in real history.
Penny Hancock
I recommend:The Black Dress by Deborah Moggach. I’ve been reading about older women recently, by which I mean post-menopausal women whose voices haven’t been heard much in literature in the past.
The book I’d recommend as a summer read is The Black Dress. It is told from the point of view of Pru, a captivating woman in her seventies who has been left by her husband and realises that to begin a new relationship her best bet is attending funerals.
It is alternately darkly funny and very sad. Moggach is brilliant at nailing feelings like loneliness, but is also able to make you laugh out loud.
It is also a page-turner, as we accompany the narrator on her quest to understand why her husband of many decades decided to leave her, and how she is going to relaunch herself. It is ultimately optimistic, showing us it’s never too late to start again.
What I will be reading: I am planning to read psychological thrillers, including The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley.
I am returning to writing psychological thrillers and there is nothing like reading to help with your writing. Lucy Foley has been recommended to me several times, along with Lisa Jewell, whose The Night She Disappeared had me gripped recently.
Penny’s latest book, The Choice (published by Pan Macmillan), is about a therapist and grandmother Renee who fails to pick up her grandson from school one day.
When he disappears, the family secrets that have been carefully buried rise to the surface, but the small island community where Renee lives is not going to easily forgive her.
Helen Callaghan
I recommend: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. This is the story of Theranos, a Silicon Valley company touting a device that could diagnose dozens of diseases through a simple blood test, which was proven to be a vast, ambitious scam.
I read this in a single day and night. As much as I love a bit of true crime, I was not sure that big time financial fraud would qualify as gripping reading.
Oh God, I was so wrong. It’s an amazing story – elderly billionaires are persuaded to part with millions of dollars on the basis of little more than charm, while ex-employees are made to tow the line through appalling legal harassment (spending years being obviously shadowed and photographed by “private investigators” whenever they left the house).
Ruin, bankruptcy, breakdowns and suicides follow. That said, the woman at the centre of the book remains an enigma.
What I will be reading:Yellowface by R F Kuang. I’m so looking forward to this – I’m taking it with me to the Harrogate Crime Festival this year!
When Athena, Asian-American literary darling, dies in a freak accident, her friend June steals her manuscript and passes it off as her own, at the same adopting a new pseudonym and a new ethnic identity. But this will have consequences…
This premise just fascinates me – I am a sucker for characters making impulsive decisions that give off truckloads of unpleasant consequences down the line!
The Drowning Girls by Helen Callaghan will be published by Michael Joseph on August 17, and priced £9.99.
Una McCormack
I recommend:Oh My God What a Complete Aisling by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen. It’s about Aisling, a small-town Irish girl with a big heart, looking for romance, happiness, and a full hotel breakfast.
It’s a Bridget Jones-style comedy romance set in Ireland. Aisling is a small-town girl who likes big city lights and weekend mini-breaks – and always packs a sensible pair of shoes. This follows her trials and tribulations as she ends her engagement and moves to Dublin, taking up with some madly glamorous flatmates.
A sweet heroine with a great supporting cast of characters, funny and very readable. And it’s part of a series, so if you like this one, you can move straight on to the next.
What I will be reading: I plan to read The Coral Bones by EJ Swift, which is a novel about climate change, set in Australia, following three women – past, present, and future – as they struggle to stop ecological disaster. It sounds fantastic.
I also have Queuing for the Queen by Swéta Rana on my to-be-read pile. Set while the late Queen was lying in state, it follows a group of people who join the queue to pay their respects, particularly a British Indian mother and daughter, struggling to put their differences behind them.
I love family stories, and stories that remind us how we’re all connected to each other. There’s been a buzz about this first novel, and it looks like it will be perfect for when I’m travelling over the summer.
Una’s novel, Coup de Grace, based on the science fiction series Firefly, will be out from Titan on July 25, £18.99 in hardback.
Guinevere Glasfurd
I recommend:Cole the Magnificent by Tony Williams. This is Williams’ second novel and is published this month by Salt.
It’s a novel that could easily fall below the radar, but I heartily recommend you seek it out. Told in the form of a saga, read it for its wit, wisdom, imagination and daring.
Cole’s journey is a difficult one: trial snaps at the heels of travail. The reader may not realise it at first but Cole’s tale, which runs in many directions, reveals a clearer path. In the end, it doesn’t matter if we can’t know for certain who Cole was: a more profound truth has surfaced: Cole, a man broken to pieces by a promise he was determined to keep, is remade. He shows us what it is to live.
What I will be reading: Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (W&N). I’ve heard nothing but good things about this novel, which won the 2023 International Booker Prize.
A man opens a hotel where each floor reproduces a decade in detail. Touted as a treatment for Alzheimer’s, the hotel is soon booked out by the well, desperately seeking to escape from the world beyond.
Guinevere Glasfurd’s third novel, Privilege, is available now, published by Two Roads Books (£9.99).
Paige Toon
I recommend: Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan. Emotional love stories are my favourites and this one is pure summer escapism.
Sam is engaged to her doctor boyfriend and her family is putting pressure on her to host the wedding near their family beach house – a place Sam has resisted visiting ever since her heart was broken as a teenager by Wyatt, the boy who lived next door.
Sam and Wyatt haven’t seen each other in years, but that’s about to change… I adore a love triangle with angsty never-got-over-your-first-love vibes so this was right up my street. I also highly recommend Annabel’s sparkling debut, Nora Goes off Script.
What I will be reading:The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren. I’ve read practically everything writing duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings has ever written – their books have varying amounts of spice, but they’re always packed full of chemistry and heart.
I have been saving it for my holiday because I know it’ll make perfect poolside reading. I’m also excited to read Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune and Things We Hide from the Light by Lucy Score.
Only Love Can Hurt Like This by Paige Toon is published by Century / Penguin Random House and priced at £8.99.
Mick Findlay
I recommend:Saturday Lunch with the Brownings by Penelope Mortimer. This is a book of short stories, all centring on middle class families and their relationships.
It’s set in the 1950s. I had never read Penelope Mortimer before but was delighted by this book. It is humorous, beautifully written and insightful, particularly about the relationship between couples and the interactions between children and their parents.
What I will be reading: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, which is about a confidence trickster who finds himself killing a man.
It’s also set in the 1950s. So many people have told me how good it is over the years, and one more person said the same to me last week. That was the tipping point. It’s also got something in common with the perspective in the book I’m currently writing.
I’m also going to read Robbie Robertson’s autobiography Testimony, mainly because I’m a Bob Dylan fan and there’s a lot in it about Robbie’s times with Bob.
Mick’s latest book, Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders, is about four Zulus who find themselves stranded in London in the 1890s.
When one is killed in a Quaker Meeting House, they come to Arrowood to help them find the killer. It is published by HQ Harper Collins (paperback £8.99; ebook £4.99).
