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Summer Reading 2024

All summer long, we at Bookreporter.com have been sharing some great summer book picks with our Summer Reading Feature. While our series of 24-hour contests have ended, we encourage you to take a look at our featured titles for some sizzling summer reading ideas.

» Click here to see the winners of this year's Summer Reading contests.

Helen Simonson, author of The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club

It is the summer of 1919. Now that all the men have returned from the front, Constance Haverhill has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. She is sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after rescuing the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy, from a social faux pas. Poppy runs a ladies’ motorcycle club, to which she plans to add flying lessons. She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Week of March 3, 2025

Paperback releases for the week of March 3rd include DARLING GIRLS by Sally Hepworth, a thrilling page-turner of sisterhood, secrets, love and murder; THE FURY, a masterfully paced thriller from Alex Michaelides about a reclusive ex-movie star and her famous friends whose spontaneous trip to a private Greek island is upended by a homicide; Helen Simonson's THE HAZELBOURNE LADIES MOTORCYCLE AND FLYING CLUB, a timeless comedy of manners about a generation of young women facing the seismic changes brought on by war and dreaming of the boundless possibilities of their future; 3 SHADES OF BLUE by James Kaplan, the story of three towering artists --- Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans --- and how they came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time; and Cory Leadbeater's THE UPTOWN LOCAL, a brilliant debut memoir about a young writer --- struggling with depression, family issues and addiction --- and his life-changing decade working for Joan Didion.