It's All Astronaut Wives Tales at Books & Books This Summer

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Welcome to Beach Reads, the series that delivers page-turning picks for the dog days of summer.

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• Image via Books & Books
• Silver Star by Jeanette Walls: This is her first novel. Set in 1970, two sisters who are 12 and 15 are abandoned in California by their mother. The girls bravely board
• The Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King: This won King the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. It is the horrific account of four young black men (referred to as "The Groveland Boy
• Fin and Lady by Cathleen Schine: This novel is a romp, a modern day "Auntie Mame". An eleven year old boy living in the country is suddenly orphaned. He is then whiske
• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin: Set in a small and charming New England island, Fikry owns and lives alone in a book store where he is grumpy and grieving severely over the death of his wife. One day he neglect
• The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel: The author has intimately interviewed the Mercury Seven wives and discloses lots of juicy secrets and the emotional trials the

You want to talk about Miami's best bookstores? You can't without mentioning Books & Books, and for this edition of Beach Reads, we've headed to their Coral Gables shop. Positioned right off of Miracle Mile, this particular location has crave-able dishes prepared by Irving Fields of Granny Feelgoods, which is a notable Downtown eatery, a courtyard bar manned by a friendly man named Raul and a rolling list of celebrity authors who pop in for book signings.

Spilling her favorite beach reads this week is Darby Collins-Smith, who works at Books & Books in the Gables. "Ever since I learned to read, I've read at least a book a week, which amounts to a stack that would rival Mount Everest, but I refuse to divulge my age..." she claims. She also doesn't discriminate against genres. "I require imaginative, well-executed prose. I want my books to give me the experience of 'walking in another person's shoes,' to take me to a place unknown in both a geographical and psychological way," she states. In a way, that's kind of what you're doing right after the jump.
· Books & Books [Official Site]
· Find Tales of Stiltsville at The Bookstore in the Grove This Summer [Racked Miami]
· All Beach Reads Posts [Racked Miami]