What beats sinking into a good book in an easy chair by the fire, feet up and a dozy cat on your lap? Not much, except maybe languidly dipping into a frothy paperback poolside, piña colada at the ready, soaking up the sun and half-registering the nearby shouts and splashes as you indulge in some literary escapism. Beach reads are a special breed of book—ideally, they are all about pleasure and distraction (no one in their right mind reads Gravity’s Rainbow within 1,000 feet of a SpongeBob-themed waterslide or a snack bar selling corn dogs). Some recent starred Indie titles fit the bill splendidly; when you crack open one of the following volumes, you can practically smell the cocoa butter.
Dan Reiter’s surfing memoir, On a Rising Swell, will inspire more sedentary beach bums to give hanging 10 a whirl…or at least vicariously thrill to the author’s vivid accounts of riding the waves of Florida’s magnificent Cocoa Beach. The text is a feast for the senses; when Reiter describes “the coconut smell of surf wax, a wetsuit drip-drying in the sun, coffee vapor mingling with salt mist, the gleam and crackle of an outside set on a windless morning,” even the most sea-phobic readers will yearn to commune with the ocean as euphorically. Our reviewer notes that the “author does a thrilling job narrating the action of surfing big waves” and compares the book to surfing classics such as John Long’s The Big Drop and William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days—cowabunga!
A great beach read takes you somewhere far away from everyday concerns—how does medieval Camelot sound? In Paula Lafferty’s reimagining of the Arthurian myth, La Vie de Guinevere, contemporary Englishwoman Vera finds herself transported (like a certain Connecticut Yankee) back to King Arthur’s court; it transpires that Vera is, in fact, the reincarnated Queen Guinevere, and she’s needed to secure the future of England. As Vera adjusts to courtly life, she shakes things up by compulsively swearing and teaching the knights poker (that’s what the Round Table is for). The novel is pure fizzy escapism, replete with intrigue, comedy, and romance. Our reviewer raves, “the fresh takes on legendary characters and propulsive plot twists make this a page-turner that will leave readers hoping for a sequel.” Vera rocks the Renaissance, anyone?
Sometimes, life’s a beach and then you die. That’s the case in Death at Bound Brook Pier, Rick Cochran’s Cape Cod–set mystery that finds the Mafia encroaching upon the storied getaway in the 1950s. In this third installment of the author’s series about nefarious doings on the Cape, police consultant and retired basketball legend Rob Caldwell is drawn into a murder investigation after his grandfather, the most influential resident of Bound Brook, is killed (“the Mafia didn’t like witnesses and tended to take a scorched-earth approach to their problems”). “Cochran evocatively captures the feeling of a bygone Cape Cod at season’s end, and he fills his story with characters readers will want to cheer,” writes our reviewer; it’s the perfect complement to a lobster roll and a gin and tonic as the sunset paints the shoreline scarlet.
Arthur Smith is an Indie editor.
