Stephen King: 7 Great Books for Summer

Still haven't drawn up a reading list for the next few months? Have no fear: your Uncle Stevie comes through with recommendations -- everything from pirates to Jodi Picoult -- for the lazy, hazy, crazy days ahead

By Stephen King | May 15, 2009

SHATTER
by Michael Robotham

Gideon Tyler, the deranged villain of this exceptional suspense novel, is a devil so persuasive he's able to talk his victims into killing themselves. His opposite number, psychologist Joe O'Loughlin, must match wits with Tyler to save his wife and child from deaths almost too horrible to contemplate. Don't get into the second half of this book before that Green Day concert, or you'll end up staying home to see how it all comes out.

QUICKSILVER
by Neal Stephenson

Swashbuckling pirates with candles in their beards, a smart and beautiful young woman liberated from slavery, kinky sex, sword fights, double-dealing...and a stirring account of how rational scientific thought was born. All told with a sense of humor. Very cool. And you can follow Eliza, Daniel Waterhouse, and ''Half-Cocked Jack'' Shaftoe through two more fat volumes in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Lucky you.

THE TOURIST
by Olen Steinhauer

Here's the best spy novel I've ever read that wasn't written by John le Carré. Milo Weaver is a CIA floater agent — a Tourist. His mission is to track down a brilliant hired killer code-named the Tiger. Milo succeeds, but's that's just the beginning of his problems. It's a complex story of betrayal anchored by a protagonist who's as winning as he is wily.

LITTLE DORRIT
by Charles Dickens

His most sentimental, absorbing, delightful novel...and yes, you will like it. Dorrit is as easy to read as any current best-seller, and more rewarding than most. Also, it explains the whole Bernard Madoff mess. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'. While we're on the subject of Dickens

DROOD
by Dan Simmons

Simmons is always good, but Drood is a masterwork of narrative suspense. It's a story of Egyptian cults, brain-burrowing beetles, life-sucking vampires, and an underground city beneath London...or is it? Maybe it's all in the drug-addled mind of Dickens contemporary Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone), whose poison jealousy of the Inimitable becomes more apparent as the story nibbles its way into the reader's head.

DOG ON IT
by Spencer Quinn

Fans of both Marley & Me and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency are going to fall head over heels in love with this hard-boiled detective novel, which is narrated by the PI's smart (if sometimes forgetful) mongrel sidekick, Chet. The story — long on suspense, refreshingly short on bloodshed — is involving, but the real treat here is the point of view. Quinn has invented a new genre — call it canine noir.

HANDLE WITH CARE
by Jodi Picoult

You men out there who think Ms. Picoult is a chick thing need to get with the program. Her books are an everyone thing, and the current offering — about a little girl whose bones are so brittle that they break almost at a puff of wind — is her best since My Sister's Keeper. It's a legal/medical thriller, but at bottom it's a story about the American heart of darkness: a small-town marriage under stress. Picoult writes with unassuming brilliance and never descends into soap opera.

Okay, you're hooked up and booked up for your summer vacation. And hey — don't forget the suntan lotion