Under Cover #13: Summer Reads

School's just about out, and it's time to dig into our summer reads! Here are some of the titles our resident detectives have on their recommended summer reading lists...

Diana Renn: On my list of summer reads is Angie Frazier's new middle grade mystery: THE MASTERMIND PLOT. This is the second mystery set in the early twentieth-century and starring the young detective Suzanna Snow. (The first book is THE MYSTERY TUNNEL). I love mysteries set in Boston, where I live; this is a city steeped in mysteries, old crimes, and intrigue. I'm excited to see Frazier's depiction of historic Boston, and how her young sleuth will solve the mystery of a string of mysterious warehouse fires that her famous detective uncle is also investigating.

L.R. Giles: Maybe I'm a little late to the party on this, but I'm reading STORMBREAKER, the first Alex Rider novel by Anthony Horowitz. It's a thriller with a sprinkling of mystery about a teenager who's charged with completing his deceased uncle's last job. This might be a boring read if the late Ian Rider was really a banker like everyone thought he was, but since he was actually a covert operative for MI6, well, good times abound. It's a fun, quick read, and the first book in a long running series. Alex is a likeable hero with a strong following that he more than deserves. I highly recommend.

Kristen Kittscher: "Unexplained disappearances. Suspicious deaths. There's something wrong with the woods behind St. Bede's Academy," reads the tag line for THE LITTLE WOODS by McCormick Templeman, coming out July 6th. I have to be upfront: 1) I'll read anything involving boarding school, murder, and woods. 2) I know McCormick personally and we attended the same boarding school as teens, though at different times. Still, you'll have to take it on faith that I'd be showering this fantastically creepy mystery with praise regardless. Reminiscent of Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY both stylistically and thematically, THE LITTLE WOODS is a suspenseful, and deliciously disturbing story about a girl who enrolls at the boarding school where her sister allegedly died in a fire many years earlier, and soon finds herself at the center of a new, but parallel mystery that leads back to her past.  This book pulses with eerieness and has so many gorgeous lines that I found myself wanting to copy them down. It's hard to say too much about its themes without giving away too much, but suffice it to say that it's a very rich, multi-layered mystery with characters that'll burn themselves into your memory.