Beach Reads
1. Joshua Sabey’s novel Ali :The Iraqi is written with the title character on which it is based, Ali Alsamer. An Iraqi citizen, Ali came to the United States and lived with the Sabey family in Colorado. The night before he was scheduled to return home, he ran away. The novel combines the fragmented stories the men shared with each other with a narration about the Iraqi and his American life (By Common Consent Press, 306 pp., softcover) $12.95
2. Legacy of the Corridor is a series of short story collections written by authors writing in and about the LDS western corridor. A collection of speculative fiction, horror, romance, and essays by Lehua Parker (this is volume 4 in the series), she bridges her Hawaiian and Utah pioneer roots. Sharks in an Inland Sea (Hemelein Publications, 340 pp., hardcover) $27.99
3. The first thriller novel by Annette Lyon, who has previously focused on an LDS audience, is Just One More, a suspenseful story of a murdered woman and the best friend who tracks down clues to solve the mystery. Told in parallel devices of flashbacks and first-person narratives, the novel includes the complexities of contemporary life of women (Scarlet, 312 pp., hardcover) $26.95
4. Wineskin: Freakin’ Jesus in the ‘60s and ‘70s is a memoir by Michael Hicks, one of the most influential voices in LDS arts and recent Association for Mormon Letters Lifetime Achievement Award winner. Recently retired from Brigham Young University after 35 years, one imagines that his next decades will include more volumes like this one, which covers his childhood in hippie-era California through his conversion to Mormonism and his undergraduate life at BYU. The film Man’s Search for Happiness used to ask the questions, Who am I?, Where did I come from?, and Where am I going? Hicks riffs on those and adds one more, How did I ever get here? (Signature Books, 223 pp, softcover) $19.95
5. Jeff Benedict is the most celebrated sports biographer of our time (previous books include Tiger Woods, The Dynasty, and The Mormon Way of Doing Business: Leadership and Success through Faith and Family.) His latest book turns to LeBron (“King”) James, the 21st century’s greatest basketball player and in an exhaustively researched volume finds an epic of bottomless resilience and limitless talent. (Simon & Schuster, 576 pp., hardcover) $32.00
6. A settler named Zina in the territory of Deseret 1856 loses an infant to a snakebite, and in her grief hears about a magic coffin that can bring the dead back to life. This begins a dangerous quest. The Resurrection Box is a novel by Declan Hyde, which is a pseudonym of a young filmmaker who specializes in Mormon Horror. Yes, that’s a big thing. (Gypsy Fox Publishing, 140 pp., softcover) $7.99