Summer's Top Book Picks: Heartfelt Stories & Thrillers

0:00From Adelaide, this is your February 27th update. Critics have shared their top picks for the best new books they read this summer, highlighting a mix of heartfelt stories, thrillers, and family. Dramas from authors around the world. Standouts include Julian Barnes' Departures, his announced final novel Blending Memoir, and fiction while reflecting on illness and memory. Helle Helleys, they capture a Danish mother and daughter's quiet bond amid terminal illness, told in poignant vignettes. Readers and reviewers praise these for their emotional depth and fresh voices, by Gnadia Davids' Kate Fever, a subversive tale of a young servant in Colonial South Africa hiding her literacy, and Tyari Jones' kin following two motherless black girls in the Jim Crow South. Other gyms cover extremism in Tim Mylif's Dark Desert Road, inspired by real Australian crimes, intergenerational black stories in Nikesha Elise. Williams is the seven daughters of Dupree, and quirky grief in George Camp's soft serve set in a bushfire threatened Australian town.

1:06These recommendations span cultures and eras, perfect for late summer reading, with more details on shows like The Book Show. Happy reading. Thanks to our sponsor for helping bring you this episode. It is a pillow that plays your podcast and music without earbuds, build for listening in bed, S-O-L-I, solelypillow.com.