BOOKS | SUMMER READING 'Middle of the Night' By Riley Sager (Dutton) Ethan Marsh feels as if he's caught between adulthood and adolescence, haunted by a childhood tragedy. While backyard camping, his best friend Billy was ripped from their tent and never seen again. When Ethan moves back home, his severe insomnia and nightmares worsen.
To exacerbate matters, strange things are happening in the woods behind Hemlock Circle, where the shuttered buildings of the Hawthorne Institute, once a "private institute doing unknown research," loom. Sager's thriller is packed with the author's trademark psychological suspense and one big "Oh my!" moment. 'Sounds Like a Plan' By Pamela Samuels Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith (Atria, out July 9) This sexy, banter-filled mystery is so much fun you'll lust after a sequel.
Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham are successful private investigators in Los Angeles. He was an "honest cop who snitched on his partner." Now he has clients "wealthy enough to have POTUS on speed dial.
" Mackenzie grew up privileged but in "cultural isolation." She has a "quick wit and a black belt in Krav Maga." Hired separately to find a missing person, they quickly realize they're "mixed up in something big" with the case — and each other.
'Little Rot' By Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead) Nonbinary, Nigerian-born writer Emezi follows up dreamy romance "You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty" with a gritty yet hypnotic novel about a web of loosely connected friends grappl.
