Dear BookBrowsers,

It's a booklover's midsummer dream: to spend a whole day at the beach or in your backyard hammock, reading. Summer's necessary indulgences include chugging through a fast-paced novel or two, so we have included an entire lineup of gripping books that you simply won't be able to put down. Even better, they make for great discussion and come with reading guides, so you can be confident recommending them to your book club as well. Make sure to pack a couple of these in your beach bag. After all, every lazy day deserves page-turning action!

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Summer might not seem like the time to visit desert sands, and sure, there's more than just desert in the Middle East. But the subject is always topical.

To make sense of the geopolitics, it helps to be steeped in a place, to try to understand the people and their motivations. These books won't make you an expert but maybe they will clarify the murk somewhat, allowing you to see varying parts of the Middle East through the eyes of people who live there.

Best of all, they are great to read for their own sake and also well suited for discussion. If you're ready for some armchair travel to a region of the world that's often terribly misunderstood, buckle your seat-belts and join us for the ride!

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There has been much talk in recent years about why women need friendships with other women. According to a much referenced 2000 UCLA study, friendships between women not only "soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are," they're also good for women's health. These nine books explore the various aspects of women's friendships in all their complexities.

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How do you take something as sprawling and all-encompassing as the environment around us and make it one of the primary players in fiction? These fascinating and compelling novels show us how it's done. What's more, they fulfill the basic premise of fiction, which is to make the story universal, to drive home the impact and maybe shed light on something we might not have heard about before. Just in time for Earth Day, these dramatic novels will doubtless give you plenty of fuel for discussion as we face the daunting challenge ahead of us.

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History and sociology are always intriguing but when presented together, they can create a revelatory portrait of our times. Such explorations feel ever more pressing these days in our raw and polarized landscape. These recommendations offer nuance, something that is often missing from the public discourse and invite readers and book club members to learn more about the American experience from where we have been to where we are headed. We hope this stokes some healthy debate and sheds new insights into aspects of the United States--in all its colorful, messy and sprawling glory. Which books would you recommend? Share them with us by posting in the comments section at the bottom!

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Debut novels are always great fun to keep an eye on. They are full of promise and if a book demonstrates ability there's a certain heady joy in realizing that you are among the first to recognize a new talent in ascendance. BookBrowse loves debut authors because we know how much book lovers value the thrill of a find, in seeking out that special talent and getting in on the action with a ringside seat. In this edition, we feature half a dozen outstanding debuts, all of which are now released in paperback. To make things even better for your book club, these selections also have reading guides to kick-start discussions. Happy reading!

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