Suggested Reads for July 2025

Millstadt Library
3 days ago
8 min read

Looking for some book inspiration? Here are some suggested reads for July!

These books have been on the New York Times Bestseller List and at the top of the Millstadt Library's most circulated list. At the end of these lists, Nichole picks a book or two that she personally recommends.

We just reviewed Beach Vibes by Susan Mallery and are reading The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner for our next Senior Center Book Club meeting on Monday, August 18 at 11 a.m.

Without further ado, here are this month's picks!

Cheesecake by Mark Kurlansky

From New York Times-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky, a delectable novel following an ancient recipe for cheesecake as it spreads through the Upper West side-from the restaurant of a conniving landlord to the kitchens of the old-school New Yorkers he's trying to force out-and to the parties, feasts, and apartments they're not willing to give up that easily.

The Katsikases have found a home in New York. A Greek cheesemaking family who immigrated in hopes of opening a restaurant, they've found the perfect storefront on the up-and-coming Upper West Side. They decide to call it The Katz Brothers. (Close enough, they think.) The diner becomes a neighborhood favorite-until Art Katsikas begins buying up all the real estate he can, forcing out their old “regulars” and scheming to replace the neighborhood's strudel shops and artists with ritzy boutiques and the nouveau riche.

Meanwhile, at The Katz Brothers, the Katsikases rush to prepare for this new clientele by introducing a new “modern classical cuisine,” changing the diner's name to “Mykonos,” and deciding to serve “Cato's Cheesecake,” an ancient Roman recipe known to be the oldest ever found. Sure enough, the enigmatic recipe is a hit, even minted by the New York Times restaurant critic. Soon the cheesecake is all over the Upper West Side, and wild interpretations of Cato's vision appear at the parties, feasts, and bakeries of old New Yorkers struggling to keep their withering community alive. Sometimes laced with green M&Ms, sometimes with sage and spite, the cheesecake becomes a herald of change as the Upper West Side-and New York's food scene-are transformed for good.

Genres: Fiction | New York | Foodie

240 pages, Hardcover | Published July 15, 2025

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby

A son returning home.

A dangerous debt.

Secrets about to ignite . . . and a family consumed by flames.

Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family's crematory business behind in his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia. He is enjoying a life of shallow excess as a financial adviser in Atlanta until he gets a call from his sister, Neveah, telling him their father is in a coma after a hit-and-run accident. When Roman goes home, he learns the accident may not be what it seems. His brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous, ruthless criminals.

And Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family. Anything.

A financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, Roman must use all his skills to try to save his family while dealing with a shadow that has haunted them all for twenty years: the disappearance of their mother when Roman and his siblings were teenagers. It's a mystery that Neveah, who has sacrificed so much of her life to hold her family together, is determined to solve once and for all.

As fate and chance and heartache ignite their lives, the Carruthers family must pull together to survive or see their lives turn to ash. Because, as their father counseled them from birth, nothing lasts forever.

Everything burns.

333 pages, Hardcover | First published June 10, 2025

Wayward Girls by Susan Wiggs

From New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs, a wrenching but life-affirming novel based on a true story of survival, friendship, and redemption when six girls come together in a Catholic reform school in 1960s Buffalo, NY. Perfect for fans of Before We Were Yours, Orphan Train, and The Berry Pickers.

Mairin’s breath caught in her throat as comprehension crept over her. This place was the one mentioned in scandalized whispers from the older girls at school. It was the one people gossiped about when a girl suddenly stopped showing up to class. It was the place angry parents—like her own mother—threatened their daughters “I’ll send you to the nuns, just you see if I won’t.”

Amid the turbulence of the Vietnam Era, in the all-American city of Buffalo, New York, teenage girls were condemned to forced labor at the Good Shepherd, a dark and secret institution controlled by the Sisters of Charity nuns.

In 1968 we meet six teens thrust into confinement at the Good Shepherd—merely for being gay, pregnant, or simply unruly.

Wayward Girls is a haunting but thrilling tale of hope, solidarity, and the enduring strength of young women who find the courage to break free and find redemption...and justice.

400 pages, Hardcover | Published July 15, 2025

The Woman in Suite 11 by Ruth Ware

In this follow-up to #1 New York Times bestselling author Ruth Ware’s multi-million copy mega-hit The Women in Cabin 10, Lo Blacklock returns to attend the opening of a luxury hotel, only to find herself in a white-knuckled race across Europe.

When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.

What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman…and if she can even trust her?

400 pages, Hardcover | First published July 8, 2025

Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations by Sam Kean

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Disappearing Spoon, a romp through the entire history of humankind—from 75,000 B.C. to the dawn of the modern age.

From the mighty pyramids of Egypt to the majestic temples of the Aztec, we have a good idea of what the past looked like. But what about our other senses: The tang of Roman fish sauce, and the springy crust of Egyptian sourdough? The boom of medieval cannons and clash of Viking swords? The breathless plays of an Aztec ballgame, and the chilling reality that the losers might also lose their lives?

History all too often neglects the tastes, textures, sounds, and smells that were an intimate part of our ancestors’ daily experience, but a new generation of researchers is resurrecting those hidden details, pioneering an exciting new discipline called experimental archaeology. These are scientists gone They make human mummies. They carve ancient spears and go hunting, then knap their own obsidian blades to skin the game. They build perilous boats and plunge out onto the open sea—all in the name of experiencing history as it was, with all its dangers, disappointments, and unexpected delights.

Beloved author Sam Kean joins these experimental archeologists on their adventures as they resurrect the lives of our ancestors, following in their footsteps at exotic locations across the globe, from remote Polynesian islands to forbidding arctic ice floes. He fires medieval catapults, tries his hand at ancient surgery and tattooing, builds Roman-style roads—and, in novelistic interludes, spins tales of the lives of people long gone with vivid imagination and his signature meticulous research. Lively, offbeat, and filled with stunning discoveries, Dinner with King Tut sheds light on days long past and the intrepid experts resurrecting them today, with startling, lifelike detail and more than a few laughs along the way.

464 pages, Hardcover | First published July 8, 2025

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

Some murders can’t be solved in just one lifetime.

Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old, they’re frozen—or so their inside joke goes. Nobody knows that her team has a secret: they can travel back in time to look for evidence.

The latest assignment sees Ali venture back farther than they have dared before: to 1850s London to clear the name of Cain Templeton, an eccentric patron of the arts. Rumor has it that Cain is part of a sinister group called The Collectors. Ali arrives in the Victorian era to another dead woman at her feet and far too many unanswered questions.

As the clock counts down, Ali becomes more entangled in the mystery, yet danger lurks around every corner. She soon finds herself trapped, unable to make her way back to her beloved son, Finn, who is battling his own accusations in the present day.

Could the two cases be connected? In a race through and against time, Ali must find out before it’s too late.

304 pages, Hardcover | First published July 8, 2025

NICHOLE'S RECOMMENDATIONS

Looking for a short novel with a good shot of horror? Try this.

I've been on a horror kick lately and thought this might be a good fit. It was. There's some gore and very descriptive passages of how eyeballs pop. But the characters were difficult to get behind and the sotry itself felt too shallow to get any deeper meaning, especially as to why the main character wanted to start eating people's eyes. Allegorically, it made sense, but realistically, not so much.

The other disappointment was that as I have read from other culturally-rooted novels lately, the book was edited too harshly to try to make the reader understand what the author was saying. For instance, they speak a lot about Korean cuisine and instead of letting the reader do research, they amend everything with a description after a comma. It gets a little tiring.

Over all though, it was a short, easy read with a fun twist at the end.

The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.

278 pages, Hardcover | First published June 25, 2024

*all descriptions of the novels and the book covers are from GoodReads.com

Suggested Reads for July 2025

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