The 10 Best Cookbooks for Summer
This year's collection of bright, colorful, can-do summer cookbooks issues a rallying cry: How long can you go without turning on the oven?
Arts
Recipes: 'Summer Gatherings'
Rick Rodgers works with familiar warm-weather flavors and tweaks them just a bit. Try it yourself with Spaghetti with Roasted Summer Vegetable Sauce or Grilled Chicken with White Rosemary Barbecue Sauce.
Recipes: 'Grill It!'
This book streamlines strong flavors into bold, relatively simple recipes. Our recommendations? Easy Memphis-Style Barbecued Pork Spareribs or Smoke-Roasted Chicken Thighs with Maple Barbecue Sauce.
Recipes: 'Screen Doors and Sweet Tea'
This wisecracking, story-telling treasury of Southern cooking offers a variety of delicious dishes. Some, like Apricot Rice Salad, have an elegant, dinner-on-the-porch feel. Others (All for Okra and Okra for All), are resolutely egalitarian.
Nine First Books that Make a Lasting Impression
While there's definite comfort to be had in the familiar authors, sometimes what you really want is the spark and thrill of a chance encounter — that's where first books come in.
Better than Sliced Bread: Summer's Best Nonfiction
Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan presents her nonfiction summer reading list — three true tales, plus one book of fiction she just couldn't resist.
Great Opening Lines to Hook Young Readers
If you're interested in getting your child or teen to keep reading during a hot, long, lazy vacation, offer them these cool summer books. Librarian Nancy Pearl's picks all have great first lines, three-dimensional characters and strong finishes.
Excerpt: 'Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman?'
It's 1875 in London and the police have captured career criminal Montmorency. In the process he has been grievously wounded and it is up to a young surgeon to treat his wounds.
Excerpt: The Sherwood Ring
In this book originally published in the 1950s, young Peggy Grahame meets ghosts and gets involved in a mystery as she explores her family's ancestral estate.
Excerpt: Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds
Written with elementary school students in mind, this book tells the story of Sammy Lee, a Korean-American kid who discovered competitive diving when he was a kid. But he couldn't practice much: His Fresno, Calif., hometown was segregated, and "colored" people were restricted to one day a week at the public pool — which was then drained, cleaned, refilled and off limits until the following week.