You all know from our many reviews of the Hogarth series and others (read reviews here) how much we love a Shakespeare adaptation. So when I saw Lady Macbeth at the checkout of a bookstore in Stratford, Ontario, it wasn’t just the hot pink-edged pages that caught my eye.

Continuing with my all-Irish-author reviews this month, I want to praise Tana French’s The Hunter, which is absolutely riveting.  French’s genre is entirely different from Williams’: The Hunter is a mystery that may or may not involve a murder.  Where she and Williams are alike is in setting their books in small Irish towns and creating memorable characters who are so authentic and believable that they add to the sense of place the authors so expertly develop.

My husband Rufus and I just took an amazing trip to Ireland—a place I have wanted to visit my entire life.  Given how I fell in love with the country and my current fascination with Irish authors, it makes sense that I keep reading Irish books. Niall Williams’ This Is Happiness (read review here) and The Time of the Child are two of the best books I’ve read in the past few years.  So, I decided to dip into some of his earlier books.  History of the Rain (2014) is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read.

Let me start by saying this was definitely not the right book to read a week after I signed up my daughter for her first-ever sleepaway camp. Yet despite the circumstances, I couldn’t put it down.

The much anticipated sequel to Fortune’s breakout hit Every Summer After (read review here), One Golden Summer is the sentimental, sexy summer read we all needed this year. And rather than just extending the story of her first protagonists, she introduces Alice, a lonely photographer taking care of her grandmother for the summer in Barry’s Bay, Ontario. (Lily)

Perhaps not a completely typical beach read due to its darker subject matter, I nevertheless found myself unable to put The Pilot’s Wife down for the three days it took me to binge read it. The story begins with a knock at the door in the middle of the night, which is never good news for anyone, but especially not for the wife of an airline pilot.