Read This is a new Scout column that details book selections by authorities, luminaries, institutions, and locals that share deep affections for the written word. This week, we asked Ann McDonell (Director of Marketing & Development), Arielle Spence (Marketing & Development Assistant), and Clea Young (Artistic Associate) of the Vancouver Writers Fest to give us four titles to sweeten our summer…

1. The Girl on the Train / Paula Hawkins (Toronto: Doubleday Canada)

CY  “How many times have you passed a couple on the street and speculated about their lives, charmed or otherwise? It’s impossible not to; the imagination is a uniquely human gift. In Paula Hawkins’ runaway bestseller, The Girl on the Train, the narrator does just this, imagines the life of a couple she regularly sees from the train window on her daily commute. Of course Hawkins’ narrator has her issues, as do the people she conjectures about, and as soon as she ventures off the train and onto the residential street where she believes bad things are happening, an ultimate summer read is born.”

2. Get In Trouble / by Kelly Link (New York: Random House, 2015)

AM – “Kelly Link’s new collection of short stories, Get In Trouble, is definitely weird, but in a good way. Link is a master practitioner of the “new weird” or slipstream subgenre. These darkly funny stories lure you into bizarro worlds, strangely familiar but disorienting, and populated by a raft of uneasy characters: demanding yet insubstantial summer guests (who may or may not exist), superheroes, swamp-dwelling nudists, teenaged girls with a boyfriend-in-a-box, evil twins. Link’s genius lurks in the subtle and almost imperceptible shifts that take the reader from the ordinary to the fantastical, and the effortless ways in which she drags you through a doorway to what just might be a parallel universe, in the next room.”

3. An Untamed State / by Roxane Gay (New York: Grove/Atlantic, 2014)

AS – “Provocative, dark and truthful, Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State is an exploration of what it means to survive the unthinkable. During a trip to Haiti to visit her parents, Mirielle Jameson is kidnapped by a group of men. As the days pass by and her father refuses to pay the ransom, Mirielle is tortured by her kidnappers and forced to sacrifice her sense of self in order to survive. But this is only half of Mirielle’s story. By probing the intersections of nationality, class, gender and mental illness, An Untamed State asks readers to think critically about her villains, her heroes, and the society that has created them as such.”

4. Boo / by Neil Smith (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada 2015)

CY – “With his debut novel Boo, Montreal-based author Neil Smith has written a new classic. It isn’t a spoiler to say that the book’s 13-year-old narrator, Oliver Dalrymple, nicknamed Boo for his ghost-like pallor, dies within the first pages of the book—outside his locker, in his Illinois high-school. The rest of the story, told from “Town,” a heaven populated entirely by thirteen-year-olds, is a feat of imagination and a marvel to explore along with Boo as he tries to uncover the mystery of his death. Smith has written a beautiful book for adults and young people alike, one that begs to be talked about in the here and now.”

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The Vancouver Writers Fest is a celebration of story, told by authors, poets, spoken word performers, and graphic novelists. Each October we present 6 days of events on Granville Island for readers of all interests – readings, interviews, discussions and performances –with 100+ acclaimed and emerging writers from around the world.