9 Minnesota Book Recommendations

Minnesota books to read on the beach, a boat, or in your air conditioned bedroom

Here is an eclectic list of books I’m excited about. Heavy on the short fiction, the perfect form for my summertime attention span. When the sunlight lasts past nine o’clock, my ability to concentrate seems to shrink!

Novels

The Lake Club by Lina Patton

Lina Patton based her buzzy new novel The Lake Club, in part, on her experience working a service job on Lake Minnetonka, so I know it’s going to contain an enjoyable amount of upstairs-downstairs intrigue and Midwestern passive aggressive dialogue. As someone who doesn’t own lake property, who has publicly declared my disdain for cabin culture, and will never pay for a membership to a place more exclusive than Costco, I am so excited for this book. I’m saving my copy to read on a Lake Superior beach on an upcoming (anti-elitist) long weekend camping trip.

Ada by Mark Haber

Out next week from Coffee House Press, Ada by Mark Haber promises absurd hilarity in this first-person narrative about a petty tyrant in a fictional European country, written in Haber’s signature style.

Short Fiction

Again, Harder by Alice Stoehr

This recommendation is from katherine packert burke, who I interviewed about All Us Saints back in May. Again, Harder is a collection of Alice Stoehr’s short fiction about a community of trans women living in a Midwestern town, published by Feminist Press this spring. If you enjoyed Stag Dance by Torey Peters, Again, Harder should be the next book you read.

July Sun by Aamina Ahmad

In this new collection by University of Minnesota creative writing professor, playwright, and award-winning author Aamina Ahmad, the short stories take place in Pakistan. Described as “searing” and “atmospheric,” some of the stories in this collection were previously published in prestigious literary journals like The Missouri Review, One Story, and Ecotone.

The Extra and The Other by Annie Neugebauer

Here’s the creepy premise of The Extra, Book One in horror author Annie Neugebauer’s The Outsiders Sequence series:

Ten people head out on a backpacking trip, but the first night eleven set up camp. Everyone remembers everyone else. Who is the extra?

And Book Two, The Other, is ready when you’ve recovered from The Extra!

These are books I have to read in broad daylight! But if you’re braver than me, they’d be perfect for spooking yourself on a dark, stormy night, or for reading aloud around a campfire.

And if you want even more scary stuff, read Neugebauer’s debut short story collection You Have to Let Them Bleed published by Bad Hand Books earlier this year.

Local History

Minnesota’s Phoenix: From the Ashes of Braniff to Sun Country Airlines by Karyn Fernandes, Jennifer Kimball Gasperini, and Maggie Hill

With the recent Allegiant Air purchase of Sun Country and with summer travel at its peak, now is a great time to read up on local aviation history and the scrappy, homegrown origins of MSP’s biggest budget airline.

STRIKE! Twenty Days in 1970 When Minneapolis Teachers Broke the Law by William D. Green

An illegal teacher’s strike! I first read about this fascinating episode in Minnesota labor history when Racket published an excerpt from Green’s latest, recently published by University of Minnesota Press. Of interest to anyone who follows the neverending story of Minneapolis Public School’s budget crisis. (And for extra credit, listen to my episode with Shannon Gibney, Minneapolis author and School Board candidate.)

Pop culture

What Would Ken Do? by Kara Nesvig

I’ve been enjoying writer Kara Nesvig’s newsletter Oh I Love That so I was delighted to come across her fun romp into Barbie culture, What Would Ken Do?, on a shelf promoting local authors at Acorn Bookshop in St. Paul. Read this if you’re nostalgic for simpler times, like the summer of 2023.