Meg's Picks: August 2016, part 2

Sometimes the best way to survive these scorching summer days is to completely lose yourself in a great story. Here are two, both slated for publication in the next two weeks, that I'm hand-picking as stories I cannot wait to plunge into!

To the Bright Edge of the World, by Eowyn Ivey. Ivey's 2012 debut, The Snow Child, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and continues to be wildly popular among our readers. So I'm guessing that her follow-up effort, due out next week, will be in high demand. In the winter of 1885, decorated war hero Colonel Allen Forrester leads a small band of men on an expedition that has been deemed impossible: to venture up the Wolverine River and pierce the vast, untamed Alaska Territory. Leaving behind Sophie, his newly pregnant wife, Colonel Forrester records his extraordinary experiences in hopes that his journal will reach her if he doesn't return--once he passes beyond the edge of the known world, there's no telling what awaits him.

Bonus? Reading about Alaska in winter might just help you beat the heat!

Good Morning, Midnight, by Lily Brooks-Dalton. (Please note: this title is on order and will be available in our catalog shortly.) Billed as being a great read for fans of fiction like Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven (loved it) and Andy Weir's The Martian (also loved it) as well as Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child (as mentioned above!), Brooks-Dalton's debut is the story of two lonely outsiders, a lone researcher in the Arctic and an astronaut trying to return to Earth, as they grapple with love, regret and survival in a changed world. I am very much looking forward to this!