Has the summer heat got you melting like candle wax? I can barely blink my eyes without breaking a sweat. Luckily, page-turning isn't a strenuous exercise. These seven novellas are the perfect way to spend a hot week at home with your fan’s artificial breezes. Once you’re done, you can even swing by your friend’s place to lend her your copy. You know which friend I mean. The one with the air conditioner. And a love of books. But really, the air conditioner.
Below you'll find classics and new favorites. Stories about prisoners in Guantánamo, a teacher and her students, and young lovers. Cry one day and laugh the next. You promised to read more this year, so now’s your chance. These seven novellas will leave you feeling as fresh as a leap into a cold swimming pool. Check them out!
In this philosophical sci-fi novel, Anax takes the grueling entrance exam the Academy. New Zealand author Bernard Beckett delivers an enthralling read, with its own twists and tricks, that won the 2007 Esther Glen Award for children's literature, and the 2007 New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
"The ‘last truly great book’ I read has to be Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai. A subtle, eerie, ultimately wrenching account of failed young love in Chile among the kind of smartypant set who pillow-talk about the importance of Proust." —Junot Díaz
"Yoko Ogawa's fiction is like a subtle, psychoactive drug. Long after you read it, The Diving Pool will remain with you, shifting your vision, eroding your composure, raising questions about even the most seemingly conventional people you encounter. Her gift is to both reveal and preserve the mystery of human nature." —Kathryn Harrison, author of The Kiss
