Under The Lamplight

There's still time to hit the beach -and the books

By Caroline Leavitt
Published: Dec 01, 2007

Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside
by Bridget Kinsella
Harmony Books $24

Visiting Life
Think your significant other’s a handful? Well, what if you were in love with someone in prison? Kinsella was a book editor in California whose beloved husband announced he was gay and promptly left her. Adrift and depressed, she began corresponding with a talented male writer, who just happened to be a murderer serving life in maximum security. Kinsella’s one true love might have been locked up, but he somehow gave her the keys to free herself—and as some snippets of his letters in the book attest, he’s a damn fine writer to boot. Hypnotic, strange, and altogether dazzling.

A Good and Happy Child
by Justin Evans
Shaye Arehart Books $24

This knockout punch of a debut begins with 30ish George Davies, so scared of his baby son that he can’t be in the same room with him. Consulting a shrink, he’s catapulted back to his boyhood, where shortly after his father’s mysterious death, he began experiencing terrifying visions. Was he simply mad with grief, truly crazy or could he, as some suspect, actually be demonically possessed? A literate, psychological ghost story that’s as smart as it is terrifying and so unsettling that you can forget about sweet slumber all summer.

The Last Summer (Of You and Me)
by Ann Brashares
Riverhead $24.95

thelastsummer
Yeah, yeah, Brashares is the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants cultish mega seller, but this is her first adult novel, and sometimes in the summer what you want is a read that’s no more substantial than your swimsuit. Here, things heat up on Fire Island as two devoted sisters and the male friend they grew up with reunite during one long, hot summer to grapple with the ache of unrequited love, serious illness, and of course, the required deep dark secrets. The novel’s remembrance value may be minimal, but before it’s melts away, it’s as cool, sugary and delicious as that last popsicle.

Caroline Leavitt is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. Her latest novel is the Booksense selection, Girls in Trouble. She has books in every room in the house and when she's reading, even aliens could land and she wouldn't stop. She can be reached at http://www.carolineleavitt.com or http://carolineleavittville.blogspot.com. She lives with her writer-husband Jeff Tamarkin and their son in Hoboken, New Jersey.

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