With summer in full swing, you might be wondering what books to take along on vacation or enjoy right at home.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown talks with two news hour regulars who have answers to that question.

It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

And for ideas for your summer reading, we have two of our favorite readers and recommenders.

Maureen Corrigan, a professor at Georgetown University, and book critic for NPR's Fresh Air.

And Anne Patchett, acclaimed author most recently of the novel, Tom Lake, and owner of Parnassas' books in Nashville, where she joins us.

Maureen and Ann, it's really nice to talk to you both again.

Anne, you want to start with maybe two or three novels, fiction?

Yeah, absolutely. All right, I'm starting off with a book called The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.

This is an epistolary novels. Epistolary novels usually don't work, but this one does.

It's about a grouchy, older woman who lives alone, who in the course of the book makes more and more connections to neighbors, to friends. It's a really beautiful, beautiful book,

a debut, Way to Go, Virginia. And it says, A Cause for Celebration by Anne Patchett on the cover.

Yeah, right? Exactly. Everything. That's the thing about owning a bookstore and being an author my name winds up on a lot of books

kathy wangs the satisfaction cafe just came out um and again it's a very quiet funny smart book

in which you don't think a whole lot is going on and then more and more and more happens.

It follows one woman over the course of her life in the Bay Area. Think Ann Tyler. Just

beautifully written, quiet, simple, and very, very smart, very entertaining.

Maureen, what do you have?

Oh, gosh.

Summer to me is mystery and suspense fiction.

So S.A. Cosby, who is one of the greatest crime writers alive today,

his latest book is called King of Ashes.

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