It is summer time! What does that mean? It means it's time to kick off with a great summer reading list! Here are the books I recommend/plan on reading this summer:

1. Life of Pi
By: Yann Martel
Summary: After the sinking of a cargo ship, a single solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the surface of the wild, blue Pacific. The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, an orang-utan, a zebra with a broken leg, a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger, and Pi Patel, a 16-year-old Indian boy. The stage is set for one of the most extraordinary pieces of fiction in recent years, a novel of such rare and wondrous storytelling that it may, as one character claims, make you believe in God. Can a reader reasonably ask for anything more?

2. The Secret Life of Bees
By: Sue Monk Kidd (I was starting to read it earlier this year, but I got caught up with other things)
Summary: Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother", Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina---a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced toe their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

3. Leonardo's Shadow
By: Christopher Grey (I found it at Chapters, and it looks really good)
Summary: 1497 MILAN. The height of the renaissance. It has been eight years since Giacomo was taken under the wing of the great Leonardo da Vinci. He had no memory of his past or where he came from, but he was quite satisfied to be known simply as Leonardo's servant---until now.
At fifteen, Giacomo's desire to discover his true identity has reached its peak. Leonardo claims to know nothing and wishes his servant would leave such questions alone. Torn between his obligations to his master and his search for the truth, Giacomo is pulled into a whirlwind of events that will threaten not only his own life, but also the fate of the entire city...

4. Eat, Pray, Love
By: Elizabeth Gilbert
Summary: In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want---husband, country home, successful career---but instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she felt consumed by panic and confusion. This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success, and of what she found in their place. Following a divorce and a crushing depression, Gilbert set out to examine three different aspects of her nature, set against the backdrop of three different cultures: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.

5. Firefly Lane
By: Kristin Hannah (I've read this book and let me tell you, it's fantastic! I couldn't put it down!)
Summary: In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable.
So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the every-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.
For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storm of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart... and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.

6. The Book of Negroes
By: Lawrence Hill
Summary: When Aminata Diallo sits down to pen the story of her life in London, England, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, she has a world of experience behind her. Abducted from her village in West Africa as an eleven-year-old child and forced to walk in a coffle--a string of slaves--for months to the sea, Aminata is put to work on an indigo plantation on the sea islands of South Carolina. She survives by using midwifery skills learned at her mother's side and by drawing on a strength of character inherited from both parents. But Aminata remains trapped, narrowly avoiding the violence that cuts short so many lives around her. Eventually, she has the chance to register her name in the "Book of Negroes," a historic British military ledger allowing 3,000 Black Loyalists passage on the ships sailing from Manhattan to Nova Scotia.
This remarkable novel transports the reader from an African village to a plantation in the southern United States, from a soured refuge in Nova Scotia to the coast of Sierra Leone, in a back-to-Africa odyssey of 1,200 former slaves. The Book of Negroes introduces one of the strongest female characters in recent fiction, a woman who cuts a swath through a world hostile to her colour and her sex.
Lawrence Hill has transformed a neglected corner of history into a brilliantly imagined and engaging piece of historical fiction.