Three local librarians share their top summer reading picks

<p>Summer 2023 is upon us, and we're ready to bury our faces in a book we can’t wait to read. As bestselling author Stephen King notes, “books are a uniquely portable magic,” and they're often on the move during the summer months: jammed into jean pockets, lining beach towels, and stacked up on vacation bedside tables. <br> <br> For our annual summer reading special, three local librarians return with their curated lists from 2023’s best offerings — from thrillers to young adult novels, to romance and science fiction. <br> <br> “The book opens right here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1910, where Agnes Carter, a wealthy donor to a university, which is presumably Harvard, hires a naturalist and glassblowing phenom from Bohemia to create a collection of glass botanical models,” said Susannah Borysthen-Tkacz, senior librarian at the Cambridge Public Library, about one of her summer reading favorites, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/glassworks-9781635578782/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Glassworks</a> by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith. “Meanwhile, Agnes is struggling with her own suffocating marriage and becomes increasingly enmeshed in this glass artist's life. … And the common thread through all of it is glass. And it sort of is a metaphor for the delicate structure of the family. We see their families shatter and sort of rebuild itself over and over again.”<br> <br> Robin Brenner, teen librarian at the Public Library of Brookline, chose <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Malcolm-Kid-and-the-Perfect-Song/Austin-Paramore/9781637152232" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Malcolm Kid and the Perfect Song</a> by Austin Paramore in part because it is written for younger teens: “It plays on the idea of making a deal with the Crossroads Devil, for music, which is something I've always enjoyed as a trope and certainly comes from true jazz mythology and jazz history. And in this case, it's a young man who is trying to prove that he wants to be a musician and, specifically, playing piano, but cannot affor