What New Canaanites Are Reading This Summer

Unless she’s buying a gift, New Canaan resident Toddy Turrentine said she generally waits for books to come out in paperback.

Yet one of the very best she read recently—a work of fiction that Elm Street Books manager Kathleen Millard calls “probably the biggest read of the summer”—was Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See,” a Mother’s Day gift from her husband.

“I loved it,” Turrentine said on a recent afternoon while perusing titles at New Canaan’s independently owned bookshop, Elm Street Books.

Generally speaking, Millard said, paperback books do well in the summer “because nobody wants to go to the beach and get suntan cream” on a nice hardcover. It’s been a very good year for books, she said—one telltale sign being that many have lingered in hardcover, meaning they’re selling well—and more very strong releases are due out in September.

Turrentine, who is more apt to read mysteries in the warmer months, said one of the great things about Elm Street Books is that its staff is so good at making recommendations.

So we tapped Millard for a quick list of go-to summer reads for New Canaanites, many of whom will find themselves on a beach blanket somewhere this month.

Here’s a rundown with a few words from Millard herself:

• “Terminal City” by Linda Fairstein: “This is a good thriller. She was a DA in New York, so she knows of what she speaks.”
• “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr: “This is probably the biggest read of the summer. It’s probably the best book of the year, so far. It may reign as that. It’s great.”
• “One Plus One” by Jojo Moyes: “She wrote ‘Me Before You,’ which was a bestseller for a long time, and this is her latest.”
• “The Vacationers” by Emma Straub: “This is a big deal, written up in the New York Times. It’s selling because of the media coverage.”
• “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “Nationally, people are really reading this. We [in New Canaan] are reading it less strongly than the nation, but we’re reading it.”
• “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn: “There are still people reading this, even though it’s been out for a long time.”
• “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption” by Laura Hillenbrand: “This just came out in paperback. It has been a spectacular success. It’s finally in paperback after years, and people are buying it.”
• “The Heist” by Daniel Silva and “Midnight in Europe” by Alan Furst: “These are selling big time.”
• “A Spy Among Friends” by Ben Macintyre: “This is for your nonfiction, historical kind of reader. It’s a book that is starting to take off and will continue to do so.”
• “The Matchmaker” by Elin Hilderbrand: “She’s prolific and she writes beach reads, set in Nantucket. People love her for a summertime read.”
• “China Dolls” by Lisa See: “She’s very good. I wouldn’t call it a ‘beach read,’ it’s more thoughtful. Her books are based on her own personal history, her family’s history in San Francisco.”
• “Under the Wide and Starry Sky” by Nancy Horan: “This one is a great book, about Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny, and it’s a great read.”