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Tote This! Ten Great Summer Paperbacks

No one wants to lug a hardcover to the beach, but luckily, there are some literary gems out in paperback and on e-readers; the best news is their digital prices dropped, too

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1. The Patron Saint of Ugly
Marie Manilla
This wildly imaginative novel centers on a young woman who becomes an unlikely and reluctant saint able to heal other people’s skin ailments.

2. The Astronaut Wives Club
Lily Koppel
The wives of the Mercury Seven astronauts became ’60s icons in their own right. Their true stories make for a lovely, nostalgic summer read.

3. Claire of the Sea Light
Edwidge Danticat
In glorious prose, Danticat’s novel brings alive the residents of a coastal Haitian town after a spirited young girl disappears on her seventh birthday.

4. Double Feature
Owen King
Stephen King’s younger son goes for laughs over scares in his first novel, which features a filmmaker struggling to emerge from his father’s shadow.

5. Book of Ages
Jill Lepore
Lepore’s fascinating bio — about the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and his sister Jane — reveals what life was really like for women in the 18th century.

6. She Left Me the Gun
Emma Brockes
In this memoir, a journalist delves into her dead mother’s past. What she finds is shocking and unforgettable.

7. Longbourn
Jo Baker
Pride and Prejudice is retold from the point of view of the servants in this delicious, Downton-y tale.

8. Red Joan
Jennie Rooney
This romp of a historical novel is inspired by Melita Norwood, the British woman who was outed as a KGB spy at the age of 87.

9. The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, pray, what? Gilbert’s novel about a peripatetic botanist reminds us that she?s first and foremost a fiction writer — and a good one.

10. We Need New Names
NoViolet Bulawayo
In her stunning debut novel, Bulawayo tells the story of a young girl immigrating from Zimbabwe to the U.S
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