It may be the summer of “Sookie” and “Twilight for beach readers who Kindle them to the sandy shore, but these home-grown Michigan books will work at the beach or on the back deck.  This list covers everything from tender coming of age novels to mysteries with a thriller bent and from essays to short stories which can easily be read while waiting for coffee at a local diner.

Harry Dolan put some killer magic in Ann Arbor this last year with his mystery, “Bad Things Happen”, set in the city. It was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award finalist and is a story of a classic outsider confronting a literary crowd in Ann Arbor. It’s out in paperback and has been blurbed by Stephen King.

If you think summer is about baseball then there’s Lansing area writer and baseball historian Peter Morris’ book “A Game of Inches” on baseball innovations and oddities. It is now out in paperback.

And as you linger over a cold glass filled with amber liquid read “Last Call” the history of Prohibition in this country. The author, Dan Okrent, is a U-M grad and has assembled an interesting history of one of America’s most failed attempts at controlling society’s evils. It contains many references to Michigan’s key role in providing demon rum to the rest of the country.

Former Michiganian Bryan Gruley draws upon his love of hockey and his newspaperin’ days in Michigan small towns to write riveting stories about small town politics, corruption, hockey and of course, murder. His first book, “Starvation Lake” has been nominated for several top mystery awards and his newest book, “The Hanging Tree”, featuring a small-town newspaper reporter, is out in August.

A summer without Joe Heywood’s “woods cop” is like a summer without lemonade and his newest “Shadow of the Wolf Tree” only adds to his reputation as Michigan writer with his heart in the woods and his fishing pole in the water.

Michael Federspiels’ nostalgic look at Michigan’s most famous author Ernest Hemingway and his childhood and teen summer haunts in northern Michigan are front and center in the book “Picturing Hemingway’s Michigan”. The Hemingway’s popularized Up North and the notion of cottagers like no others.

Traverse City Author Doug Stanton’s one of a kind look at America’s Special Forces in Afghanistan, “The Horse Soldiers” is now out in paperback and If you are in the Traverse City area this summer be sure to check out his National Writer’s Series.  (July 15 is Audrey Nifenegger (“Time Traveler’s Wife”) now of Chicago, but hailing from Western Michigan).

Don Chaon isn’t from Michigan, but you wouldn’t know it from the opening of his dark thriller “Await Your Reply” which draws you deep into a Michigan woods. Chaon is a short story writer who has moved into longer fiction and “Await Your Reply” was a finalist for a National Book Award.

Northern Michigan writer Ann Marie Oomen will make you wane for simpler times in her collection of essays, “An American Map”, from Wayne State University Press.

Bonnie Jo Campbell, a National Book Award finalist this year, will jack you up with her collection of short stories. These are not for the timid and Campbell draws from her experiences in southwest Michigan and her active imagination in her award winning “American Salvage”.

 Robert Traver’s “Anatomy of a Murder” may be more than 50 years old now, but what a tale and one that is permeated with UP lore. It will make you want to take a tour of Marquette and the nearby Big Bay sites where the book is set. Writing as Traver, former State Supreme Court member John Voelker set the standard for legal thrillers with this book.

Tom Bissell makes a case that you should be inside playing video games this summer in his book, “Extra Lives” on the culture of gaming. Bissell is a Yooper and MSU graduate and his writing is off the charts. Bissell makes the case that videos are a new art and literary form.

Another Yooper Ander Monson has one of the most talked about memoirs in some time. Monson is one unusual character and his memoir, “The Available World” is unlike any you will read. Read more

And speaking of the UP pick up Jim Harrison’s new book, “The Farmer’s Daughter”, if only to read the “Brown Dog” installment. Word is that a collection of Harrison’s Brown Dog stories will be offered in the next few years. Brown Dog is an irascible, no holds barred mixed blood-Chippewa who in addition to being a womanizer and drinker is a loyal and determined step father.

Loren Estleman and Elmore Leonard books need to be in any beach bag. Read any of Estleman’s detective novels featuring Detroit Private Investigator Amos Walker and look for Leonard’s Detroit based novels such as “City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit”. They will make you yearn for the perfect coney.

John Smolens who was recently named author of the year by the Michigan Library Association has a historic thriller “The Anarchist” based on the assassination of President McKinley that is reminiscent of Erik Larson’s “Devil in the White City”. Smolens is a writing professor at Northern Michigan.                         

Michael Zandoorian will take you to a Detroit that exists only on the fringes of your memory with his collection of short stories, “The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit”, and his novel “The Leisure Seekers’ is an American road trip book that will leave you in tears.

On the other end of the spectrum National Book Award finalist Tom Lynch –the writing undertaker- has one of the most touching short stories you will ever read in his new collection of short stories, “Apparition & Late Fictions”. Naturally, his books are about death and loss, but the visit to the infamous  Windsor Ballet is a hoot. Lynch makes his home in Milford.

Jeff Vande Zande, who must teach an amazing writing class at Delta College, writes with a tenderness befitting a young boy, his dad and the lingering shadows of a divorce on their last Michigan camping trip in “Threatened Species”. The tension is like heat lightning before a thunderstorm.

And you need to know what’s next –well there’s James Hynes’ “Next” which follows a transplanted Ann Arborite to Houston on one of the most surrealistic business trips ever. It will get your blood pumping and keep the pulse up until the end.

Michael Delp of the Interlochen Arts Academy has put together a collection of short stories that can only be called “inspired by Raymond Carver”. Retribution strikes when you least expect it in Delp’s “As If We Were Prey” and his short stories are pure Michigan.

But what’s a summer without a coming of age story. Here’s two: “The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott” by debut novelist Kelly McNees O’Connor and “The Art Student’s War” by former Detroiter Brad Leithauser.

Both are historical fiction and are stunning reads. O’Connor, originally from Lansing, tells what might have happened to Alcott the summer she dropped out of sight before reemerging to become a famed novelist and Leithauser takes us to the home front to follow a young woman who grows up in Detroit during World War II.