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Author Read Alikes: Summer Edition June 2026 |
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If you enjoy reading books over the summer, try these titles that are also accessible through Digital Library of Illinois (Libby) and Hoopla |
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Land
by Maggie O'Farrell
In 1865, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. It is not long since the country was ravaged by the Great Hunger, and the task is not an easy one. Tomás is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a corpse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again.
Scheduled release date: June 2, 2026 - place holds on physical copy or Libby now.
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Marion
by Leah Rowan
A twist on Hitchcock's iconic classic Psycho--where the leading lady doesn't die, but instead turns the knife on Norm, kicking off a crime spree that turns the silver screen victim into a heroine for our times.
Scheduled release date: June 2, 2026 - place holds on physical copy or Libby now.
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Sublimation
by Isabel J. Kim
The border cuts you in two. When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home. Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral. She doesn't know that her doppelganger plans to steal her body and her life.
Scheduled release date: June 2, 2026 - place holds on physical copy or Libby now.
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Whistler
by Ann Patchett
When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn't seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.
Scheduled release date: June 2, 2026 - place holds on physical copy or Libby now.
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Daughters of the Sun and Moon
by Lisa See
In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in Los Angeles. Each woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom, and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined. Brought together by hardship and heartbreak, they must use their bravery, endurance, and ability to eat bitterness to discover their voices, find freedom, and connect through solace and friendship.
Scheduled release date: June 9, 2026 - place holds on physical copy or Libby now.
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The Missed Connection
by Tia Williams
Sasha Cruz, a casting agent who avoids long-term commitments, meets an intriguing passenger on a work flight to Paris but fails to get his contact information. Thinking he may be her ideal match, she emails a colleague for help and mistakenly alerts staff across the company, prompting a widespread search for the traveler in Seat F. As this unfolds, Sasha also hires a detective she once knew, whose involvement adds new complications.
Scheduled release date: June 9, 2026 - place holds on physical copy or Libby now.
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The Someday Garden
by Ashley Poston
The new head gardener at the enchanting Lilymoor House stumbles upon a secret garden . . . with a mysterious man trapped inside, in the next magical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Sounds Like Love and The Seven Year Slip.
Scheduled release date: June 16, 2026 - place holds on physical copy or Libby now.
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The Shampoo Effect
by Jenny Jackson
When Caroline Lash arrives in Greenhead, Massachusetts, she falls head-over-heels for Van Whittaker, a fleece-wearing, litter-collecting, kayak enthusiast with long, floppy hair and the personality of a Border collie. Born and raised in this picturesque coastal village, Van runs with the same crowd he did as a kid: His ex-girlfriend, Bailey, a beautiful girl who attracts men like moths to a flame; Augusta, old money, horsey, and snobbish; and Fran, surrounded by brothers and sons, too fed up with boys to ever consider marrying one. Together, the group runs wild through the marshes, beaches, and bars of Greenhead, drinking on houseboats, spending long afternoons sunbathing with their children, and playing games the way they always have. But when Bailey discovers that she is pregnant with Van's baby, the delicate balance of the group's friendship is thrown off. Soon Caroline is cast out of the circle and what she does next--in a potent mix of fury and heartbreak--exposes long-held secrets and works the entire town of Greenhead into a lather.
Scheduled release date: June 30, 2026 - place holds on physical copy now.
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Heated Rivalry
by Rachel Reid
Nothing interferes with pro hockey star Shane Hollander's game. Now that he's captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, he won't let anything jeopardize that--definitely not the sexy rival he loves to hate. Boston Bears captain Ilya Rozanov is everything Shane's not. The self-proclaimed king of the ice, he's as cocky as he is talented. No one can beat him--except Shane. Publicly, they're enemies. Privately, they can't stop touching each other. The smart thing to do? Walk away, once a few secret hookups turn into a struggle to keep their relationship out of the press. The truth could ruin them both. But for Shane and Ilya, secrecy is soon no longer an option.
Physical copy available. Also available on Libby and Hoopla.
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Margo's Got Money Troubles
by Rufi Thorpe
After 19-year-old Margo gets pregnant by her English professor and ignores his request for an abortion, she starts a successful OnlyFans to pay the bills. With her former pro-wrestler dad helping with the baby, she's managing...until the professor reappears.
Available on Hoopla.
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Sunrise on the Reaping
by Suzanne Collins
As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.
Physical copy available. Also available on Libby and Hoopla.
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Love by the Book
by Jessica George
Remy’s debut novel made her a star—but now her friends have drifted away, her inspiration is gone, and a reckless fling only deepens her loneliness. Simone, a devoted teacher with a lucrative secret side hustle, loses her family’s support when the truth comes out. When the two women collide in a bookstore, it’s far from instant friendship. Yet, as secrets unravel, they may be exactly what the other needs to heal—and to rediscover the power of platonic love.
Physical copy available. Also available on Libby.
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Spy X Family, Vol. 1
by Tatsuya Endo
Master spy Twilight is the best at what he does when it comes to going undercover on dangerous missions in the name of a better world. But when he receives the ultimate impossible assignment--get married and have a kid--he may finally be in over his head! Not one to depend on others, Twilight has his work cut out for him procuring both a wife and a child for his mission to infiltrate an elite private school. What he doesn't know is that the wife he's chosen is an assassin and the child he's adopted is a telepath!
Physical copy available only.
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Best Offer Wins
by Marisa Kashino
Eighteen months and eleven lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC, suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake is desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband--and, in turn, fix their marriage, have a baby, and get their life started. With some (harmless!) stalking and a bit of (very light!) trespassing, she worms her way into the lives of her dream homeowners. But just when she believes she's won them over, they find her out. Undeterred, Margo will prove again and again that there's nothing she won't try--no tactic too unhinged--to finally kickstart the dream life she's worked so hard to achieve.
Physical copy available. Also available on Libby.
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It Rhymes with Takei
by George Takei
In a moving, emotional graphic memoir, the Star Trek actor, activist and social media star shares his personal journey from a closeted youth in the 1950s to coming out at 68, revealing how love, fear and activism shaped his identity.
Available on Libby and Hoopla.
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Whidbey
by T. Kira Madden
Birdie Chang didn't know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it, only that it was about as far away as she could get from her own life. She's a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend's eyes--and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and who's now resurfaced. On her way, she has an unnerving encounter with a stranger on the ferry who offers her a proposition, a sinister solution and plan for revenge. But Birdie isn't the only girl Calvin harmed back then. There's also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir. Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book's spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, on the other side of the country, Calvin's loving mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered. Calvin's death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers.
Physical copy available. Also available on Libby.
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Vagabond: A Memoir
by Tim Curry
From his breakout part as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show to movie, Broadway, and West End roles, Tim Curry redefined what it meant to be a "character actor," portraying heroes and villains alike with complexity, nuance, and a genuine understanding of human darkness. In his memoir, Curry takes readers behind-the-scenes of his rise to fame from his early beginnings to when he hit the stage for the first time, and goes in-depth about working on some of the most emblematic works of the 20th century. He also explores the voicework that defined his later career and provided him with a chance to pivot after surviving a catastrophic stroke in 2012 that nearly took his life.
Physical copy available. Also available on Libby.
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A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
by Sophie Elmhirst
Maurice and Maralyn couldn't be more different. He is as cautious and awkward as she is charismatic and forceful. It seems an unlikely romance, but it works. Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maralyn has an idea- sell the house, build a boat, leave England -- and its oil crisis, industrial strikes and inflation -- forever. It is hard work, but finally they set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway there, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the Pacific Ocean. On their tiny raft, their love is put to the test. When Maurice begins to withdraw into himself, it falls upon Maralyn to keep them both alive.
Physical copy available only.
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London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth
by Patrick Radden Keefe
From the bestselling, prize-winning author of Say Nothing, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface.
Physical copy available only.
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Kin
by Tayari Jones
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a whole new world. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
Physical copy available. Also available on Libby.
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American Fantasy
by Emma Straub
When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous, nineties-era boy band and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them since childhood. Feeling slightly out of place amid this crowd is Annie, here on a lark to appease her sister. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing, something is unlocked. Call it memory. Call it nostalgia. Call it the chemical reaction of hormones, hope, and sexual reawakening. Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the familiar music, and the throngs of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she meets one of the band members--not just a celebrity but someone in need of a friend--she has accessed a new sense of possibility.
Physical copy available. Also available on Libby.
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Go Gentle
by Maria Semple
Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City's Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she's applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past--which she has worked so hard to bury--lands like a bomb in her present.
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Libby now.
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Dungeon Crawler Carl
by Matt Dinniman
You know what's worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what's worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That's what face Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world--or just get to the next level--in a video game-like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon.
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Libby now.
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The Shippers
by Katherine Center
After a whole lifetime of being bad at love, JoJo Burton decides to solve her intimacy issues once and for all at her sister’s destination wedding on a cruise ship. With the help of a little pop psychology, she diagnoses herself with a fixation on the neighborhood guy who was her first crush and first kiss (and who just happens to be a newly-divorced wedding guest), and she decides to woo him during the cruise for some long-delayed closure. The only problem is, her sister’s a little busy being a bride at the moment—so JoJo ropes in her childhood bestie, Cooper Watts, to be her wing man.
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Libby now.
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Mad Mabel
by Sally Hepworth
They called it murder. She called it justice. 'In 1959, at just fifteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder.' In 2025, on a quiet Melbourne lane, an elderly man is found dead by his neighbour, 81-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick. No one suspects any foul play. Until they discover Elsie's past. In the 1950s, her name was not Elsie. It was Mabel. When the police open a new investigation and the media descend upon her, the elderly Mabel decides it's time to set the record straight.
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Libby now.
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Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
by Belle Burden
In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha's Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together--building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume. In Strangers, Belle revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal.
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy now.
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The Things We Never Say
by Elizabeth Strout
Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He goes about his days teaching American history to high schoolers, correcting their casual ignorance, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He spends his free time sailing the beautiful Massachusetts Bay, or with his adult son and his wife of more than three decades - and as Artie does these things, he plans the event that will forever change the world he inhabits. But when a startling accident awakens a new perspective in Artie, and he realizes that life has its own secret it's been keeping from him - along with a lot more to say on the weighty matters of fate and freedom in his home and his country - he charts another course full of grief, hilarity, and heart, to a place where the end marks the beginning.
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Libby now.
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The Calamity Club
by Kathryn Stockett
Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Now one of the unadoptable "big girls" at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, she fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she's left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers her sister's charmed life is a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates--and Meg's--converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan to claim what's rightfully theirs.
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Libby now.
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Yesteryear
by Caro Claire Burke
A social media celebrity, a wife and mother who sells her fantasy pioneer lifestyle of sourdough and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of followers, suddenly wakes up cold, dirty, and hungry in the year 1805 and must uncover the nature -- hoax, reality show, test from God -- of her terrifying new existence.
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Libby now.
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The Night We Met
by Abby Jimenez
In everyone's life, there's a split-second decision that can change everything... For Larissa, it came when choosing who to ride home with after a concert. That night, she had no idea she'd met the perfect man. She and Chris are great friends, co-parenting a slightly unhinged rescue Yorkie, sharing their favorite books, and judging bread (pumpernickel for the win ). For the first time amid all her side hustles to scrape by, things finally feel easy. But she didn't choose Chris to drive her home all those months ago--she went with his best friend, and he became her boyfriend. All Chris wants is for Larissa to be happy. Standing by on the sidelines is slowly killing him, but making a move would destroy someone else. How can something that feels so right be absolutely impossible?
Waitlist - place holds on physical copy or on Libby now.
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Prospect Heights Public Library District
12 N. Elm St., Prospect Heights, Illinois 60070
847-259-3500https://www.phpl.info |
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