Whether you’re swinging in a hammock, lounging on a beach chair, or digesting a chapter or two along with your sandwich in the middle of a busy workday, summertime is reading time. There’s always a fresh list of new books, including the quintessential “beach reads,” but for a Sparkling Vintage summer, why not delve back into a classic, maybe one you read years ago, or one that somehow escaped your attention “back in the day”? Here, in no particular order, is a list of 8 of my fiction favorites from summers past:

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l’Engle

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster