Summertime, and the reading is easy. Alderman Library has replaced the New Books display around the bust of Edgar Allan Poe in Memorial Hall with a selection of Summer Reads and invites you to check them out for your enjoyment. These are titles for people who love to read, screened by library staff who love to read. Any similarity to books containing dry, scholarly matter is purely coincidental.

The eclectic selection of titles ranges from works of popular authors like Jane Austen, T.H. White, John le Carré, Rita Mae Brown, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, and Toni Morrison, to authors whose work will be familiar to genre devotees:

• Mysteries by P.D. James (A Certain Justice, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman);
• Supernatural fiction by Peter Straub (Floating Dragon, Ghost Story);
• Historical romance by Diana Gabaldson (Lord John and the Private Matter);
• Science fiction by Philip José Farmer (The Lovers, Night of Light, To Your Scattered Bodies Go)—a favorite of University Librarian John Unsworth!

Explore Intriguing possibilities:

Wicked weeds: a Zombie Novel, by Pedro Cabiya, translated by Jessica Powell. Not about flesh-eating ghouls, the author instead recaptures the essence of the zombie of Caribbean folk tradition, and tells the story of a Dominican zombie, a pharmaceutical executive obsessed with finding the formula that will reverse his condition and allow him to become “a real person.” With help, the scientist must navigate his way through “the playful maze of jealousy and amorous intrigue that a living being would find easy to negotiate [but] represents an insurmountable tangle of dangerous ambiguities for our ‘undead’ protagonist.” The result is what Amazon calls “a precise combination of Caribbean noir and science-fiction, Latin American style.”

Invasive, by Chuck Wendig. On the isolated Kolohe Atoll in the middle of the Pacific ocean, a charismatic billionaire employs a team of scientists to conduct cutting-edge research that he hopes will change the world. In a cabin on a remote lake in the Adirondacks, FBI futurist Hannah Stander finds a barely recognizable human body, which appears to have been skinned alive by thousands of genetically engineered ants. Hannah’s investigation leads to Kolohe, where the scientists vehemently deny any connection to the body. But the more Hannah studies the group, the more she suspects their research has sinister applications, and the more she realizes no one may get off the island alive.

Come to Alderman Library, browse the collection, and find find out what new discoveries await you!