As many of you know, I teach creative writing at a small college. Many of my students asked me for a list of books that I would recommend as "summer reading." Here is what I put together.

I know that college is stretching the boundary for "kids," but many of the books listed here are also appropriate for high school, and even advanced middle school readers. 

These are all books that I have loved. I offer them up as potential "summer" reads. I hope there's a little something for everyone here. 

 The Reader by Fragonard

Fiction:

Last year, I discovered a writer named Dan Simmons. Since then, I've read three of his novels. They are:

The Terror: In the 1840s, two British ships set off to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic ice. Both ships get stranded for over two years. Based on journals kept by the men, Simmons details the lives of the sailors stranded in the middle of an arctic desert, and then, to add "terror" to the novel, he infuses the story with an Inuit legend of a man-eating monster.

Drood: Wilkie Collins was one of the first mystery writers. He was also great friends with Charles Dickens. But, stuff comes between Collins and Dickens after Dickens is nearly killed in a train accident. Collins becomes obsessed with Dickens, and follows his friend through the opium dens of London and other sordid places. Is Collins attempting to kill Dickens?

Black Hills: Simmons' latest. A young Indian boy "counts coup" by touching Custer on the battle field right before Custer dies. With his last breath, Custer transfers his spirit into the boy, who carries Custer's ghost within him for the rest of his life. A wonderfully weird novel, Black Hills (the boy's name) eventually becomes a worker on Mt. Rushmore, which he plots to blow up.

Geraldine Brooks: The Year of Wonders. Set in the 1600s, this is the story of a village in England that quarantines itself to avoid having any contact with the Bubonic Plague that is ravaging the rest of the country. How does it sit with the village's inhabitants to forcefully turn away their neighbors, who are dying and need their help?

Geraldine Brooks: March. The other half of Little Women, that is, the story of what Mr. March was doing while his girls were growing up. For those of you who have read LW, you know that March was off fighting in the Civil War. This is Mr. March's telling of the horror of that war that ripped this country apart.

Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall Are you a fan of the Showtime series "The Tudors?" Then this is the book for you. The story of Thomas Cromwell, who rose to power in the court of Henry VIII, Cromwell orchestrated the fulfilling of Henry's desire: his divorce from Katherine of Aragon so that he might marry Anne Boleyn.

P.D. James: Children of Men: In a not-too-distant future, men and women are no longer able to reproduce due to ecological disaster. In that vein, Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale is a riveting read with a different, and more chilling take, on the same subject.

John Edgar Wideman: Fanon: Wideman's imagined visit of Frantz Fanon to Pittsburgh, and what may have happened if the man who predicted the uprising of the Third World against its colonial oppressors, had seen the state in which, in America, "the other half lives."

Two young adult novels that I would highly recommend are Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian about a high school basketball player who makes the decision to play basketball off the rez, at the white high school, and what that costs him among his Indian friends. And Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. Young Bod is a toddler who wanders from his bed while his entire family is being murdered. He seeks shelter in the local graveyard where the ghosts decide to raise him. A sort of modern-day Jungle Book, with the ghosts serving the roles the Kipling had given the animals.

NON-FICTION

Dave Eggers: Zeitoun: The story of a Lebanese immigrant who stays behind in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina to help his neighbors. He is arrested by the FBI as a suspected terrorist. Eggers details Zeitoun's travail, and the bravery of his wife in her search for her missing husband.

David Cullen: Columbine:  Cullen details what happened that April morning in Littleton, Colorado when Klebold and Harris decided to murder as many of their high school classmates and blow up their high school.

Terry Tempest Williams: Refuge: Williams, a naturalist, intertwines the story of the year that the Great Salt Lake flooded its banks and threatened bird sanctuaries with the domestic tragedies unfolding in her own family: the cancers that were killing her mother and grandmother. An amazing book. I would also recommend Leap, a book that is hard to describe, but which is Williams' analysis of one of the works of Hieronymous Bosch, and the details of her own panic attacks.

Julia Scheeres: Jesus Land:  Scheeres' memoir of growing up in a fundamentalist Christian family in Indiana. When she and her adopted African-American brother, David, are determined by their parents to be "slipping" as Christians, they are sent to a re-education camp in the Dominican Republic. A truly remarkable read with multiple layers of meaning.

Kate Braestrup: Here if You Need Me: When Braestrup's state trooper husband is killed on-duty, she decides to carry out his dream of becoming a pastor. Her studies lead her to pastoring for Maine Search & Rescue, where her job is to sit with families while loved ones may or may not be found. Tender, beautiful writing.

Jennifer Brice: Unlearning to Fly: Brice's memoir of growing up in Alaska where she learned to pilot a plane, drive big truck rigs, and write, all in pursuit of things that were out of reach. A tremendous memoir about learning to put one's feet on the ground.

Nikki Stern: Because I Say So: Stern, a 9/11 widow, examines the concept of "moral authority," that is, the idea that anyone in our culture has, by virtue of some kind of experience, the authority to claim moral clarity on decisions that affect us all. Stern attained that status after the death of her husband in the World Trade Center, and, in carefully reasoned prose, she takes apart the claim that anyone has claim to moral authority in a true democracy.

Douglas Preston: The Monster of Florence: For over a decade, the hills outside Florence were the killing grounds of a serial killer who stalked lovers in cars parked in lovers' lanes. Preston details the crimes, but also the bungled police work in the case, which, at one point, led to Preston himself being a suspect.

I could go on and on, but I hope that I have brought to your attention some potentially interesting reads for your summer.