Summer is here again and, like last year, we would like to recommend some books for holiday reading.

The prisoner of heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Barcelona, 1957. Daniel Sempere and his friend Fermín, the heroes of The Shadow of the Wind, are back to face the greatest challenge of their lives. Just when everything seemed to be going well for them, a disturbing character visits Sempere’s book shop and threatens to reveal a terrible secret that has been buried in the city’s obscure memory for two decades. When he learns the truth, Daniel understands that his fate is inevitably taking him to face up to the greatest shadow, one that is growing inside him.

The 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

Minutes before the start of his hundredth birthday celebrations, Allan Karlsson decides that he wants to be no part of it. Wearing his best suit and a pair of slippers, he escapes through a window from the old people’s home where he lives, leaving the mayor and local press waiting for him. Wondering where to go, he ends up at the bus station, the only place where he can go unnoticed. While he waits for the first bus to arrive, a young man asks him to keep an eye on his suitcase. The bus arrives before he returns and Allan, without thinking twice, gets on it with the suitcase, unaware that it is full of money of questionable origin.

The secret letters of the monk who sold his Ferrari by Sharma Robin

Jonathan Landry is increasingly obsessed with his work and his failed marriage. On day, his mother asks him to urgently meet his uncle, Julian Mantle, who he hardly knows. Years ago, Julian, a successful lawyer, sold all his possessions, including his Ferrari, and sought refuge in a Himalayan monastery.

Now Julian needs Jonathan’s help. He asks him to travel around the work to pick up eight charms, each of them accompanied by a letter. The letters contain the extraordinary secrets that Julian has discovered, which can save lives.

The distant hours by Kate Morton

A letter arrives that was posted many years ago and Edie Burchill finds herself travelling to Milderhurst Castle, the mansion that is home to the Blythe sisters, where her mother was housed at the age of 13 during the Second World War. The oldest Blythe sisters and twins and have spent most of their lives taking care of their younger sister, Juniper, who was never the same after her fiancée left her in 1941. Once in the castle, Edie starts to discover aspects of her mother’s past. But the stones of Milderhurst hide other secrets, and Edie is about to discover more than she expected.

The 5 books in the Game of thrones series by George R.R. Martin

A song of ice and fire is set in a fictional medieval setting, primarily on a continent called Westeros but also in a vast eastern continent known as Essos. Most of the characters are human but other races appear as the series develops. The series contains three plots that cross each other: the chronicle of the dynastic civil war between several noble families to obtain control of Westeros, the growing threat of the Others, hardly contained by an immense wall of ice that protects northern Westeros, and the journey of Daenerys Targaryen, the exiled daughter of the kind who was assassinated in another civil war fifteen years ago, who is trying to return to Westeros to reclaim her rights.

The 3 books in the The hunger games series by Suzanne Collins

Every year in the ruins of what was once North America, the Panem nation Capitol makes all its twelve districts send an adolescent boy or girl to compete in the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games, a punishment for a past uprising and a governmental intimidation technique, are broadcast on television, where the “Tributes” combat each other until there is only one survivor.

Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen-year old girl, volunteers for the games instead of her sister, and has to combat other Tributes who have spent their entire lives preparing for the Games. If she is to go back to her home in District 12, Katniss will have to make impossible decisions in which she has to weigh survival against humanity and love.

Enjoy the summer, and your reading!