Add these new books to your summer reading list.
compiled by Sally Brewster
Sharing in the Groove by Mike Ayers
Ayers shares the untold history behind the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler and others that helped define the 1990s jam-band scene, paving the way for modern-day cultural institutions such as the Bonnaroo Music Festival and keeping the Grateful Dead ethos alive. It was also a scene with its own values and its own unique interactions with fame, record labels, MTV, drugs and success. Ayers, a veteran music journalist, has been to more than 130 Phish shows, 20 Grateful Dead shows and countless others by the bands profiled in this book.
Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa
In spring 1972, 12-year-old Tomoko leaves Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home — and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft-drink company — are symbols of that status. At the center of this beguiling family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious girl of 13 who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. Behind the family’s sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand — her uncle’s mysterious absences, her German grandmother’s experience of WWII and her aunt’s misery. Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time — and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.
Pariah by Dan Fesperman
Hal Knight is a famous, if deeply polarizing, figure in Hollywood and on Capitol Hill. After a disastrous #MeToo encounter, Knight resigns from his seat, quits social media and disappears to a Caribbean island. Upon his arrival, he is approached by a group of mysterious strangers, whom he discovers are CIA agents hoping to penetrate Bolrovia — a hostile, eastern European country. They want his help. Bolrovia’s oligarch, Nikolai Horvatz, is a fan of Knight’s movies, and the agents anticipate Knight will receive an invitation for an official visit imminently. Though Knight is skeptical about the mission, he agrees to the job. Arriving in Bolrovia as Horvatz’s guest of honor, Knight is faced with his ultimate acting challenge. What begins as an assignment to keep his eyes and ears open quickly turns into a life-or-death mission.
An Inside Job by Daniel Silva
Gabriel Allon has been awarded a commission to restore one of the most important paintings in Venice. But when he discovers the body of a mysterious woman floating in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, he finds himself in a desperate race to recover a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci. The painting has been gathering dust in a storeroom at the Vatican Museums for more than a century. Because no one knows it is there, no one notices when it disappears one night during a suspicious power outage. No one but the ruthless mobsters and moneymen behind the theft — and the mysterious woman whom Gabriel found in a watery grave. The action moves from the galleries and auction houses of London to an enclave of unimaginable wealth on the French Riviera — and, finally, to a shocking climax in St. Peter’s Square, where the life of a pope hangs in the balance.
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie
On the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, theater critic Alex Lyons doesn’t deliberate over the rating for Hayley Sinclair’s show, nor does he hesitate when the opportunity presents itself to have a one-night stand with the struggling actress. Unaware that she’s gone home with the critic who’s just written a career-ending review of her, Hayley wakes up at his apartment to see his scathing one-star critique in print on the kitchen table. She revamps her show into a viral sensation critiquing Alex Lyons himself — entitled son of a famous actress, serial philanderer and, by all accounts, a terrible man. As his reputation goes up in flames, he insists on telling his unvarnished version of events. After all, there are always two sides to every story. SP
Sally Brewster is the proprietor of Park Road Books, 4139 Park Rd.
