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For all of my fellow bookworms, here are my top fifteen summer book recommendations.  

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813) 

This book is a classic story that I can’t imagine ever getting tired of. It’s witty and sweet with silly characters and a perfect chick flick ending. It’s the story of how, through many misunderstandings and difficult social situations, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy fall in love. Despite her ridiculous family and his social awkwardness, they overcome the odds. Honestly, this books reputation speaks for itself. 

2. Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley, (1978)

 I absolutely adore this book. Beauty and the Beast is a phenomenal story anyway, but in this book McKinley gets more in-depth with the emotions of the different characters. The story includes a change that marks Beauty’s family as outcasts after the failure of her father’s business. He and his three daughters move to a remote, rustic village and a cottage that has a peculiar history. As per the usual story, Beauty’s father steals a rose from the Beast’s castle and is forced to send his youngest daughter in exchange for the Beast sparing his life.

3. Graceling by Kristen Cashore (2008) 

I highly recommend this for any Tamora Pierce fans out there. It’s the same sort of story, with a strong, somewhat socially awkward lead female character and a great story. Forced by her cruel uncle, King Rasta, to use her grace for killing, Katsa is widely feared as invincible and deadly. But when a prince from a different kingdom is kidnapped, Katsa teams up with his grandson, Prince Po, to find out who did it and why. Their search takes them across several different lands and in that time their relationship evolves and they both learn things about themselves.

4. The Host by Stephenie Meyer (2008)

I am not a fan of what the “Twilight” series has become but I love this book. Meyer has a way of integrating a threat into her books without spending half the book describing the enemy. She focuses more on the emotions of the characters and their reactions to changes in their situation. When a parasitic species of aliens, called Souls, takes over the planet, Wanderer, a soul in a captured human’s body, finds herself risking life and limb to get back to her resistant host’s brother, boyfriend and their camp of survivors.

5. Capt. Hook: Adventures of a Notorious Youth by J.V. Hart (2005) 

Wrong as it may be, I must admit that Captain Hook is my favorite character from Peter Pan, and simply because of this book. I had never really thought about him beyond his villainous disposition until I read this, and honestly, he seems more interesting than Peter himself. “Capt. Hook” follows the story of James Matthew on his adventure through Eton, his rivalry with Arthur Darling and his eventual escape to sea with his friend, Jolly Roger. It also tells of the beautiful Sultana Annanova and James’ impossible relationship with her.

6. East by Edith Pattou (2003)

 East is a delightfully colorful retelling of the Norwegian folktale and has been one of my favorites since I was 14. I seem to have an affinity for impossible relationships with giant, furry men. Go figure. When a polar bear approaches Ebba’s father about letting him take her away, her father is adamant that it will not happen. But when Ebba discovers the secret of her birth, she agrees to live with the bear in his castle. When the troll queen steals the bear away, Ebba battles her way through frozen landscapes and a few near-death situations to save him.

 7. Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce (2003)

Probably my favorite of Tamora Pierce’s series, and also the shortest. I love that she always has a strong female lead and good love interest. “Trickster’s Choice” is the story of Aly, who is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave to a family who lives in a land in turmoil. The natives have been conquered and suppressed by the mainlanders, and are ready for the prophecy about the “twice royal queen” to be realized. Aly is approached by the local trickster god, Kyprioth, who strikes a deal with her: her freedom for her protection of the prophesied queen.

 8. Valiant by Holly Black (2005)

I love the interaction between the human and faerie worlds. When Valerie catches her boyfriend cheating on her—with her mother— she runs away and ends up living with a few other kids on an abandoned subway platform. She soon learns their big secret, that they deliver bottled magic to faeries who have been banned from their world. When different creatures start showing up dead, Valerie is forced to wonder whether her new love interest, Ravus, is the very one poisoning his own kind.

9. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (2007)

This author has one habit that I don’t appreciate: killing off characters who are about to let you in on majorly important minor details. Other than that, I love this series. When Clary is attacked in her house after witnessing a demon capture at a party, she is drawn into the world of demons and Shadowhunters. With the help of three insanely talented demon hunters, Jace, Alec and Isabelle she sets out to find who kidnapped her mother and what it has to do with the Mortal Instruments.

10. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman (1995)

Despite the religious disputes surrounding this series, it was a wonderful read and I suggest it to any fantasy buffs. Lyra is an orphan living at Oxford College where she is visited by her distant uncle and plays with her friend Roger. But when Lyra is taken away by a mysterious woman, the headmaster of the college gives her a funny-looking golden instrument. Now Lyra must work her way through a confusing world filled with flying witches and talking bears to find her abducted friends and find out what the Gobblers are.

11. I, Coriander by Sally Gardner (2005)

A bit of an easier book, but a charming story that has been a favorite since I was twelve. Coriander starts out telling the reader about her childhood, her parents and her mother’s death. The story then takes a darker turn, when her father remarries a woman who mentally tortures Coriander before locking her in a chest. She wakes up in a world she never dreamed could exist, and must split her time between helping a cursed prince in Faerie and saving her home in her own world.

12. Fairest by Gail Carson Levine (2009)

 I loved “Ella Enchanted,” but I think this is my favorite book from Gail Carson Levine. Aza only ever wanted to be beautiful, but in a society that worships beauty, she is not exactly what you would call exquisite. Her singing cannot make up for that, no matter how ethereal it is. When she is brought to the court as a duchess’ companion, Aza is reluctantly brought into the new queen’s ploy to fool everyone into thinking she can sing. Through all of her troubles Aza learns to appreciate her looks and herself.

13. A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb (2005)

 One of the coolest books I’ve ever read, but the entire time I was reading I was waiting for some bad guy to jump out and say ‘Boo!’ When Helen, a ghost who died over 130 years ago, meets James, a fellow ghost inhabiting a human’s body, she has hope that she may eventually go to heaven… or to hell… or anywhere. With James, she finds a soulless body with overbearing, religious parents. With her new parents and James’ body’s reputation to struggle against, James and Helen fall in love and end up in their own private heaven.

14. Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (2003)

I highly recommend this series, as well as her vampire series (written long before “Twilight”), because they are both beautifully and imaginatively written. The Avian and Serpiente people have been at war for so long that no one even remembers why. Danica Shardae and Zane Cobriana, the heirs to the opposing thrones, have had enough and resort to the one thing that no one believes possible: a marriage of the two kingdoms. Through their own distaste and the prejudices they were raised with, an assassination attempt ,and the better part of both races working against them, will the idea work?

15. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (1990)

 Just recently finished this one, and it absolutely deserves to make the list. Great characters and a fun story. Follow Aziraphale and Crowley from the garden of Eve all the way to Armageddon as they work for their opposing forces (God and the various nobles of Hell). All of their hopes and resolutions rest on a single child, raised with the influences of both good and evil in his life, and as he grows his decisions may alter the fate of the world. Oh, the world will end anyway, but his choices will establish eternal heaven, or eternal hell.

Casey Hockman is a senior at Burlington High School. 

What are you reading this summer? Post your favorite books in the comments below, or send a list of your own to stephanie@fireflymag.com.