Critics share their picks for this summers most anticipated reads

Maureen Corrigan, NPR Book Critic:

One novel that I think really is perfect for summer is Luis Alberto Urrea's novel "Good Night, Irene."

Usually, he's writing about issues of the U.S.-Mexican border. But here he's drawing on a story that derives from his mother's experiences during World War II. She was a volunteer with the Red Cross. She was a so-called Donut Dolly. She and another woman rode around in a truck delivering coffee and donuts to servicemen.

I had no idea — my dad was in World War II, and I had no idea that these women did more than just meet soldiers at the railroad station. His mother followed Patton's Army behind the lines in Battle of the Bulge. I mean, so we're kind of getting a Herman Wouk-type big history, but also with a lot of twists and turns, and very affecting.

So, "Good Night, Irene" is one of my recommendations.

And then Lorrie Moore's "I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home." Lorrie Moore, there's nobody like her, the way she plays with language, her kind of warm, but absurdist view of life. She's telling a double story here. One is a story set in the 19th century, and it has something to do with Abraham Lincoln.

So anybody who's read George Saunders' "Lincoln in the Bardo," this kind of has that feel to it. And then the other story she's telling, it's very up to the minute about a young man who's lost his lover. And it plays into that fantasy of, if only I had a few more hours with this person I have loved. And they go on a road trip together, he and his dead lover.

(LAUGHTER)

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