Aftermath by Levar Burton-Yes. This author is the actor who played Jordy on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Set in the near future, this science fiction book is bound to become a classic. If you ever thought that you didn't like science fiction, or that there was not a new type of sci-fi that could push the limits in meaningful ways, this is the book for you. (DeJoy)

Carnal Acts by Nancy Mairs. This book is a collection of essays written by a teacher, writer, wife and mother who is struggling with Multiple Sclerosis. Mairs is neither self-pitying nor morose in her descriptions of what it means to be a handicapped person in an able-bodied world. In this collection, Mairs aware of her diminishing vision and mobility, talks what it's like to speak to a roomful of people just after taking a fall that knocked out her three front teeth or work up the energy just to get out of bed and write for two hours. Honest, brutal, funny and horrifying, her essays give the reader a powerful view of her life with MS. (McKenna)

Chasing Redbird by Sharon Cheech. Newbery-winner young adult novel,Sharon Creech's writing is honest and powerful in this coming -of -age book as we watch a young girl, Zinnia, as she journeys into her family's mysterious past. Watching Zinnia bloom will warm your heart. (Dwiggins)

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. A Dickensian-style novel in a contemporary setting that was nominated by Oprah for her book club, before the author himself repudiated the honor-and Oprah herself. Read it to find out why. This is easily the most important novel of the last year. (Guillory)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Margaret Forster. A biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning written by the same author who wrote the fictional (though extremely factual-perhaps one of our first non-action novels?) account of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (Shepherd)

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins. "Cowgirls" is a funny, whimsical social satire that pokes fun at everything from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to gurus and feminine hygiene products. Robbins writing is rich with outlandish metaphor and freakish characters. From whooping cranes on peyote and a teenage girl with outsized thumbs, Robbins implores his readers to reject the dull and the ordinary and rejoice in the richness and diversity of a life lived to the fullest. Summer allows time for full appreciation of Robbins experiments with words. (McKenna)

Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike. Ever wonder how much blame Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, bears in the death of Old Hamlet? Read Updike pre-quel for an interesting answer. Updike spins his yarn not just out of Shakespeare's play, he also utilizes the old Ango-Saxon tale which was the source for Shakespeare. It's a fun read. (Detmer-Goebel)

A Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. An old favorite that touches me as both a woman and a writer. I enjoy Lindbergh's use of the various sea shells as metaphors for the stages in a woman's life and maturity. The section on the dance of love contains some of the best wisdom I have ever read about staying free and whole in the context of marriage. A book to savor and ponder one section at a time under a white summer sun. (McKenna)

Great Boys: An African Childhood by Tanure Ojaide. According to the author, the book is his "personal account of a happy childhood, of a lost idyll as a result of modernization, politics, oil exploration; and above all of changes in morality and ethics and human relationships. The mechanisms of traditional culture for environmental conservation, morality, respect for others, and working have been discarded without new ones in their places to keep society cohesive. The current agitation of Ogun people, and also of the Niger Delta, makes more relevant this story of how things used to be and how they have turned to the present condition." (Alabi)

The Great Movies by Roger Ebert. One hundred personal essays on classic movies-witty, enlightening, and informative. (Guillory)

The Guns and Flags Project by Geoffrey O'Brien. A weird-aren't they all?-book of contemporary poetry which deals with the edges and limits of events, like sunset, and also with the general themes of work and political news as obstacles to any personal aesthetic life. This collection might give you a different slant on 9/11, as well as budget crises, political campaigns, etc. (Guillory)

Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling. Just read them! (Shepherd)

Hiroshima by John Hersey. I had the opportunity to reread John Hersey's non-fictional Hiroshima this spring. On this, my fourth time through the book, it carried a whole new depth of meaning after the events of September 11 in this country. On so many levels, this is a book that captures the experience of the struggle and recovery of innocent civilians after a holocaust too horrible to imagine. It recollects the events of six individuals who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, both immediately after the blast and in the months and years that followed. But mostly, it teaches deep lessons about coping with the consequences of conflict and war in ways other than though a savage need to seek revenge. (O'Conner)

The Hours by Michael Cunningham. You know from the start that The Hours has something to do with Virginia Woolf, but the connection among the three distinct narrative threads remains mysterious for much of the book. When the three threads begin to converge near the end, you realize that this novel is a tour de force meditation on Woolf's themes and Woolf's style-a compelling story in its own right, and a must-read for any fan of Virginia Woolf. (Gunzenhauser)

Killing Rage/Ending Racism by Bell hooks. As always, hooks presents us with new ways to think about race in America in what is perhaps her best book to date. The essays dare to explore academia, popular cultural, and habits of mind that impair our ability to think creatively and compassionately about history. If you are going to read one contemporary book about race written for a general audience, this is the clear choice. (DeJoy)

Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster. A novel from the perspective of Elizabeth Wilson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's maid, which focuses on the great love story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. The novel provides a side of Elizabeth Barrett Browning not found in her biographies. I suggest reading Lady's Maid first. (Shepherd)

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. My Sci-Fi pick for this summer is an old favorite, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. This novel imagines a world in which Germany and Japan won World War II and are in control of a divided United States in the early 1960s. Mostly set in San Francisco, it explored the Japanese culture, Eastern mysticism through the I Ching, and issues of racism. Well written, well structured, and entertaining, Dick's book demonstrates the excellence that may be achieved in this genre and has much to say about our own world of today. (O'Conner)

Mao II by Don DeLillo. DeLillo's novel about the intersection between art and terrorism is an absolute must-read in today's climate of uncertainty and war. The protagonist, a reclusive, Salinger-esque novelist named Bill Gray, wonders whether there is a place for art at all in a world where a lone suicide bomber commands more rhetorical power than a writer. Layered with pop culture references and a deep meditation on the cult of personality (Warhol to the Ayatollah to the Reverend Moon), Mao II is an important, disturbing book that is also beautifully crafted and entertaining. (Hancock)

The Middle Passage : White Ships Black Cargo by Tom Feelings. Middle Passage is a children's picture book about the horrific transatlantic journey that brought enslaved Africans to the land of their imprisonment. Though the book has no text, the emotions conveyed are heartfelt. The Horn Book asserts his "drawings engage eye, mind, and heart as they speak eloquently of the infamy and suffering of the Middle Passage through his story in." After experiencing this book you will never be the same. (Dwiggins)

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Mark Twain defined a classic as a book that people praise but don't read. This definition seems especially apt for the classic novel that almost no one has actually read all the way through, Herman Melville's Moby Dick. However, I advise this as a novel a reader can sink her teeth into during the long hot liquid days of July and August, when the time exists to contemplate chapters that one has read, afterward. Yes, this is a long, long book, complete with detailed descriptions of the whaling industry that could be taken out of a National Geographic magazine. However, the wait is worth the wit and wisdom that Melville delivers through Starbuck's observations of the maniacal Captain Ahab and his singular obsession. This is high art at its best and it is a shame so few take advantage of it. (O'Conner)

Moving Beyond Words by Gloria Steinem. Here is Steinem at her finest. From Freud, to Women's bodybuilding, to advertising and beyond, Steinem critiques are humorous, compelling, and inspiring. As if that weren't enough, she also presents her subjects in ways that illustrate some of the most important invention strategies for writers of the twentieth century. (DeJoy)

Other Voices, Other Vistas by Barbara Solomon, ed. (1992). This anthology of short stories from Africa, China, India, Japan, and Latin America (in translation) gives a wonderful range of writing by some of the world's best authors—Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Narayan, Desai, Mishima, Kawabata, Borges, Fuentes, Marquez—to name only a small portion. It's a great introduction to world fiction of the past fifty years and, through engaging stories of human experience, an introduction to people of non-Western cultures. Available at most good bookstores for only about $8.00, it's the perfect book to pick up if you have limited funds and limited reading times (airports, beaches, waiting for friends). (Mihm)

Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik-Gopnik is New Yorker writer who spent five years in the late 1990s living with his family in Paris, and Paris to the Moon is a wonderful collection of essays from this five-year sojourn. The book includes reflections on being an expatriate, essays on the strangeness of ordinary matters in a foreign country (buying household appliances, eating at restaurants, renting an apartment), and an underlying narrative thread that beautifully tells the story of what it's like to transplant yourself to a foreign place and to live there long enough, and fully enough, to make it not so completely foreign in the end. (Gunzenhauser)

The Power Book by Jeanette Winterson. A potentially erotic novel about finding your soulmate by writing your own computer program and then living it. (Shepherd)

Prodigal Summer : A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver. Amazon.com states that "her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal." This is so true! Written in the voices of four different characters, Kingsolver's character development is superb as always. If you liked Poisonwood Bible you'll love this. (Dwiggins)

Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom. A sweeping, articulate overview of the Bard's life work by one of America's most original-and controversial-critics. (Guillory)

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingxian. This journal of some 500 pages won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000 and covers the wanderings of a writer who went into self-exile in the mountains near Tibet after being hunted by the infamous Red Guards. Witty, meditative, and sumptuously written, the book features a three-part narrative voice (I, you, & he) which are all aspects of Gao's personality as he encounters folk magic, pandas, Daoist temples, and mountain scenery. (Guillory)

Sweet Machine by Mark Doty. If you read only one book of poetry this summer, this should be the book. The follow-up to Doty's National Poetry Award winning

My Alexandria, Sweet Machine chronicles the amazing resiliency of the human spirit in the face of unbearable loss. While the first book describes Doty's experiences as his partner dies of AIDS, this is a collection of cautiously, sometimes deliriously, hopeful poems about living. He writes, describing watching a bowl of small turtles, "Hey. I looked into that shiny cup / of ambulant green and I thought / Somebody's going to live through this. / Suppose it's you?" These are the beautiful poems the world needs to hear as we all deal with some sense of survivors' guilt, as we all wonder what it means to keep living. (Hancock)

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston-Alice Walker writes of Hurston's novel, "There is no book more important to me than this one," and for good reason. While capturing the complexity and difficulties of African-American life in the Reconstruction south, Hurston simultaneously offers us (perhaps for the first time) a strong, Black, female protagonist who undertakes the kind of self-exploration and life quest that had previously been reserved for male characters. The fact that Janie "tells" her story through yet another female character underscores both the tradition of storytelling from which the two women emerge and the absolute necessity for that tradition to be represented in literature. Janie is someone who has never had a voice; her life (love, pain, adultery, fear, hardship) had never been told until Hurston decided to write her. This is one of those novels you return to again and again. (Hancock)

A Vermeer Interlude (Crowe)

Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland. If you've read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, this should be your next selection; if you haven't read Chevalier, they're both great summer choices. Girl in Hyacinth Blue, told Pulp Fiction-style, is the story, or stories, of a Vermeer painting as it travels backwards in time from its current home to the easel upon which it was created, revealing along the way the meaning it had for each of its various owners. Vreeland's respect and awe for the timelessness of art and its impact on our lives is clearly evident and wonderfully depicted.

The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber. A quick yet rich summer read, Weber, through the diary of main character Patricia Dolan, tells the story of the 41 year old art historian who, along with her 25 year old lover and IRA radical, becomes involved in the kidnapping and ransom of a small Vermeer painting belonging to the Queen. While the IRA itself is involved in the intrigue and much is learned about Irish politics, the story is really about Dolan herself and, most importantly, the little Vermeer painting that she becomes attached to which ultimately affects the fate of them both.

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier. So now that you've read Girl with the Pearl Earring (and Girl in Hyacinth Blue), Chevalier's most recent novel would be the next logical choice. Set in London almost exactly 100 years ago, Falling Angels follows the lives of two women who as children met at their families' adjacent gravesites. Using multiple first person perspectives, Chevalier reveals the effects of a vanishing Victorian England and dawn of a new millennium on the lives of two sometimes disparate, yet nevertheless closely bound main characters and their families. Good escape reading!