Summer reads \ 5 page-turning titles

Nos. 1-5 appeared last week. These are recommended by Tom Beer of Long Island Newsday:

6. “LABOR DAY”

by Joyce Maynard (William Morrow)

Genre: Fiction

On sale: July 28

Opening: “It was just the two of us, my mother and me, after my father left.”

The story: Awkward, 13-year-old Henry lives in a small New Hampshire town with his anti-social, divorced mom, but their self-contained world is transformed when they take in an escaped convict.

The scoop: Maynard, a journalist and fiction writer, is famous for the affair she had with J.D. Salinger in the early ’70s; here she herself channels the voice of a misfit teenage boy.

7. “INHERENT VICE” by Thomas Pynchon (The Penguin Press)

Genre: Fiction

On sale: Aug. 4

Opening: “She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to. Doc hadn’t seen her for over a year. Nobody had.”

The story: 1960s Los Angeles is the setting for this psychedelic noir starring Doc Sportello, a private eye drawn by an ex-girlfriend into investigating a kidnapping plot involving a millionaire, surfers, ex-cons and rock stars.

The scoop: The Glen Cove native and author of postmodern classics such as “The Crying of Lot 49” is back with his own stab at detective fiction — a slim 400-some pages, after the doorstopping 1,000-plus pages of “Against the Day.”

8. “THE MAGICIANS” by Lev Grossman (Viking)

Genre: Fiction

On sale: Aug. 11

Opening: “Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed.”

The story: A geeky Brooklyn teen enrolls in a college for wizards, then discovers he can actually visit Fillory, the land described in the beloved fantasy novels of his childhood.

The scoop: Grossman, the author of “Codex” and book critic at Time magazine, pays homage to C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling in this novel for grown-up Narnians.

9. “SOUTH OF BROAD” by Pat Conroy (Doubleday)

Genre: Fiction

On sale: Aug. 11

Opening: “It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River. He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he was a native son, peacock proud of a town so pretty it makes your eyes ache with pleasure just to walk down its narrow, spellbinding streets.”

The story: Leopold Bloom King (son of a James Joyce devotee) comes of age amid the colorful characters of Charleston, S.C., during the 1970s, haunted by the suicide of his golden-boy older brother.

The scoop: The crowd-pleasing author of “The Prince of Tides” hasn’t published a novel in 14 years; he’s back in the game with this tribute to the city of churches and Southern manners.

10. “A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL” by Rebecca Solnit (Viking)

Genre: Nonfiction

On sale: Aug. 20

Opening: “Who are you? Who are we? In times of crisis, these are life-and-death questions.”

The story: A look at how people respond to disasters — from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina — and the powerful sense of community and purpose that often arises, briefly, in the moment.

The scoop: Solnit, who won a National Critics Book Circle Award for “River of Shadows,” was inspired to write about disasters after experiencing the 1989 San Francisco earthquake.

Source: McClatchy Newspapers