Chicago - June 02, 2009

Just Your Type

Best New Summer Books

The more brain cells, the better. Sharpen your noggin with these new summer reads.

Think Tanks
A high school dropout becomes a grade-A con man after joining his brother’s jewelry business in Clancy Martin’s tautly crafted How to Sell.

Art imitates life? Perhaps in The American Painter Emma Dial, the story of a gifted painter whose potential fame may cost her the love of her longtime mentor, written by School of the Art Institute of Chicago grad Samantha Peale.

Smart Comedies
Mishna Wolff grew up in Seattle with a white father who believed he was black. She explains it all in her hilarious memoir, I’m Down.

Steve Hely’s witty How I Became a Famous Novelist (available July 8) follows a deadbeat office worker scheming to become a best-selling author in time for his ex’s wedding.

Criminal Minds
In Laura Caldwell’s Red Hot Lies, a lawyer confronts her boss’s death and the disappearance of her fiance. The catch: Her job is on the line. And so is her life.

New novelist Stefanie Pintoff’s In the Shadow of Gotham gives us a grisly murder in 1905 New York. It’s up to a university criminologist and a jaded detective to solve it.

Now you’re ready to really get a head.

Not enough? Check out the DailyCandy bookshelf.