Vacation novels

With the end of the academic school year just a week away, and the weather surely turning consistently sunny just as soon as the Rose Festival is over, the thoughts of many folks will be turning to summer vacations, or at least an hour or two sitting outside with a drink and a good book. If you like murder mysteries and history, I recommend a five-book series of fiction based on World War I, by Anne Perry. The first book, No Graves as Yet, is set in Cambridge, England, just before the outbreak of the Great War. The others are mostly about life in the trenches of Belgium and France, and the five books should be read in order as each covers the progression of the war as well as the stories of the characters. I generally whip through murder stories to get to the end to find out whodunnit, but with these books I find myself starting each page over after skimming it, to catch all the details of the descriptive prose. They will greatly enrich modern day events like this, and travel in Europe, for you.

Anne Perry has another series of historical fiction based on a post-Crimea nurse in London, which of course I find particularly interesting. They are listed as the William Monk stories, as ostensibly the main character is a policeman with amnesia. Those and her Thomas/Charlotte Pitt novels paint intricate word pictures of class-ridden London society, and the dawn of women’s rights. They are full of strong women characters working behind the scenes in a male-dominated political structure, and the intelligent men who love them rather than feeling threatened by them.

My favorite American fiction writer currently is Janet Evanovich, who writes about Stephanie Plum, a donut-loving bond enforcement agent in New Jersey. The titles in her main series include numbers; One for the money; Two for the dough, etc. The latest, Lean Mean Thirteen, is due out in a couple of weeks. These books are light, ridiculous, unbelievable, and funny. Especially if you’ve ever spent any time in New Jersey and/or with Stephanie’s type of family.

Another series I enjoy is by Philip Craig, whose stories set on Martha’s Vineyard are not only entertaining, but include seafood recipes. I’ve never tried them, but they sound delish.

Other suggestions for light summer reading?