Read Like a Local this August

For a perfect summer day, grab some snacks, a beach chair and an easy read. Pick a spot along the Rhode Island shore and enjoy. Photograph Adobe Stock/Gerson San Vicente Larrechi/Wirestock Creators

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Crime Fiction

The Great Houses of Pill Hill by Diane Josefowicz

An interior decorator who makes miniatures of murder scenes becomes drawn into a whodunit when her client — and lover — turns up dead in this locked-room mystery set in a fictional New England town. Along the way, readers discover a needling therapist, a suspicious textile empire and a secret room swathed in campy Egyptian designs. Josefowicz, a historian, editor and translator, lives in Providence.

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Nonfiction

Cats of Rome by Traer Scott

Rhode Island-based photographer and author Traer Scott travels to Rome to bring readers striking portraits of the many feral cats who inhabit the streets of the Eternal City. She also includes the gattaras, the local women who care for and feed the felines, who, by law, are allowed to live in Roman parks, ruins and neighborhoods. Scott is the author of fourteen animal photography books.

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Travel

Book Lovers’ New England: A Guide to Literary Landmarks by Sheila Moeschen

Travel to sites inhabited by Thoreau, Poe, Lovecraft, Dickinson, King, Frost, Jackson — and even Dr. Seuss — in Sheila Moeschen’s new book, Book Lovers’ New England: A Guide to Literary Landmarks. The Boston-based author and photographer journeys from the Fleur de Lys building in Providence (home to Henry Anthony Wilcox in H.P. Lovecraft’s iconic work, The Call of Cthulhu) to Shirley Jackson’s haunts in Bennington, Vermont, and dozens of points in between. Get ready to add more classic works to your TBR pile.

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Fiction

Burnt Cove by G. Wayne Miller

G. Wayne Miller has created a crackerjack of a character in his twenty-second book, Burnt Cove. Rose O’Reilly White, when she died at ninety-seven, left many secrets: a first love who happened to be her teacher; her long involvement with an African-American woman; and the poisoning of a Catholic priest and serial pedophile. When her filmmaker son, Jack, sets out to document her life he’s reunited with his first love and a daughter he didn’t know existed. Miller, a longtime reporter at The Providence Journal, is co-founder and director of Salve Regina University’s Story in the Public Square.

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Thriller/Mystery

The Lost Hours by Lynn Tavernier

Lynn Tavernier’s debut novel is a result of tenacity. She always wanted to write a book, so after long stints owning Chez Pascal in Providence and selling real estate, she embarked upon a third career: author. The Lost Hours follows police detective Andrea Stuart’s attempts to learn more about socialite Hope Philbrick’s suspicious death at her lavish Jamestown home, with plenty of familial intrigue, Ocean State drama and long-lost secrets simmering throughout. Tavernier, who lives in Saunderstown, grew up above The Bocce Club in Woonsocket, where her family served family-style chicken dinners to countless generations of Rhode Islanders.

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Horror

Traverse by E.J. Myers

The lines between horror and science fiction blur in Rhode Island author E.J. Meyers’ debut book, Traverse. Cy Warren, who works at Drayman Mental Hospital, has been plagued with nightmares about an alien world and blames them on childhood trauma. But when a new patient arrives claiming to be a nineteenth-century butler from Bellecliff, an infamous mansion in Newport, Warren finds himself plunged into a world of dark secrets and unseen forces. A sequel to Traverse is planned for 2028.