Looking for a good beach read or an excuse to cuddle up with a good book while enjoying a summer's breeze?

Whether you're into drama or suspense, thrillers or romance, there are many books to be found at your library.

One enjoyable book is Patty Jane's House of Curl by Lorna Landvick. When her husband, Thor, disappears on the eve of the birth of their first child, Patty Jane is philosophical. Her sister Harriet and mother-in-law stand by and offer support. After the baby is born, Patty Jane opts for beauty school as a way to make a living and establishes the House of Curl. Over the next 30 years, the House of Curl becomes a cultural centre in the suburbs where customers can get a perm, hear a lecture, drink coffee, catch up on news, learn a new skill, find a babysitter or just hang out. The cast of eccentric characters makes life at the House of Curl both amusing and enjoyable.

The Friday Night Knitting Club and Knit Two by Kate Jacobs are cozy, warm reads peopled with characters you would like to know. It's easy to lose oneself in the story and feel very much a part of the group. The creation of a knitting club just happened as members gathered, chatted with one another and picked up where they had left things the week before. And then, one Friday, it became sort of official. Jacobs is a deft storyteller and along with the laughter and tears, she has surprises in store. These books are affectionate, engaging stories of female friendship.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri has a new book out with eight dazzling stories that take the reader from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. This book is about lost old-world parents and the shaky modern marriages that can't quite replace them. In the title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends her garden, where she later unearths evidence of a love affair he is keeping to himself. Lahiri writes about the dislocation of upwardly mobile Bengali-Americans. But strip away the exotic trappings and her urban professionals could be any anxious, overachieving North Americans adrift from their cultural moorings.

CORRECTION

I would like to make a correction to a previous column where I mistakenly called the book The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor by Sally Armstrong a non-fiction title. The Armstrong novel is not a biography but a work of fiction and based on a true character in history. My apologies.

A Good Read is a column by Tri-City librarians that is published on alternating Wednesdays during the summer. Pat Rorick works in the Fraser Valley Regional Library system.