Lisa Howorth is a former librarian and the author of the novel Flying Shoes. She has written on art, travel, dogs, and music for the Oxford American and Garden & Gun, among other publications. Howorth and her husband, Richard, founded Square Books in 1979. John Grisham writes of her latest book, “Summerlings (Doubleday) is a story rich in local color, humor, outrageous characters, and with a wicked plot.” It’s the summer of 1959. For the families who live on Connors Lane in Washington DC, life is still defined by what one did during WWII. Behind each door lives a possible spy or Nazi sympathizer, the family of a foreign diplomat, or someone who escaped the conflagration in Europe just in time. But it is also the summer of an inexplicable spider infestation–surely evidence of “insect warfare” by the Russians, thinks our young narrator John, and his best friends, Ivan and Max. When a rare, scorpion-like vinegaroon is discovered and sequestered for museum study, the boys, along with their tomboy accomplice, Beatriz, hatch a risky midnight plan to steal the poisonous creature for their own devious purposes. What happens next will change John’s life forever.
