Becky's Summer Picks
Vanessa reluctantly has the strange ability to read peoples’ futures from their tea cups. When she predicts death, she decides she needs to train under her equally clairvoyant Auntie. Her Auntie has opened a tea shop in the magically, romantic city of Paris. Vanessa travels to Paris from the USA to learn from her. This beautiful story is a love letter to Paris, art, love, fate, and delicious food.
My favorite retelling! In this iteration of the classic tale, our Darcy character, DJ Caine, is a successful yet poor chef from England who has used all his savings to help his sister who has a terminal brain tumor. Dr. Trisha Raje is a neurosurgeon who is the only one who can save DJ’s sister. This is a gender bender telling! There is pride. There is prejudice, and there is DELICIOUS FOOD!
Noemi is a feisty, privileged party-girl in 1950s Mexico City. Her cousin married an Englishman whose family resides in the rural Mexican countryside. After receiving a strange letter from her cousin whose ramblings confuse their family, Noemi travels to her cousin in hopes of figuring out what is going on. She finds a decaying, macabre mansion and a delusional cousin. Are there ghosts? This book is so delightfully Creepy!
Lowen is a broke author. An opportunity of a lifetime when Jeremy Crawford, husband of famous author Verity Crawford, asks Lowen to complete his wife’s book. Comatose has suffered a traumatic brain injury. While looking through Verity’s notes, Lowen stumbles across an manuscript for an unpublished memoir. Lowen is deeply disturbed by its content. Is this a love story, horror, or a thriller? Yes. This will leave you bewildered and questioning the story you just read.
After her mother's tragic death, Bree attends a high school to college program at UNC in an attempt to distract herself from her grief. She stumbles upon some students slaying...a demon?! She realizes that it seems to be connected to her mother's death. She infiltrates these students to investigate. Little does she know that she's uncovered a secret society of people descended from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Is Bree in over her head?!
This is a space opera mystery! Hundreds of years in the future, Humanity has colonized both Mars and the Asteroid Belt. In “the belt” Detective Miller is tasked with finding a missing rich girl. In space, Holden and his team discover an empty dead space ship. While investigating, the rest of their crew is murdered. Conspiracies abound. And are there aliens?! Each book in this series is just as good as the last!
An Eastern European telling of Rumpelstiltskin! The story centers on Miryem, a Jewish moneylender in her small town. She’s so good at what she does, that she brags she can turn silver turn into gold. She is overheard by the Fay king, kidnapped, and tasked with turning all of his silver into gold. This multilayered feminist fairytale is one of my favorites!
Olive is a PH.D student just trying to survive and find a lab that will fund her research. She masterminds fake dating a hard-ass, grumpy, yet sexy professor. This is a hilarious rom-com! This book actively makes fun of all the tropes we love: fake dating, one bed, witty banter, and not expressing one’s feelings when that would make everything better! This steamy STEM story is sure to have you laughing out loud.