Need to Read: July 2026

June 30, 2026

Tim Ehrenberg, of “Tim Talks Books” and president of the Nantucket Book Foundation, gives his picks for summer reading.



It’s July and everyone on Nantucket will be searching for their favorite beach read of the

summer, and a worthy contender this season is The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson. From the author of Pineapple Street, this book should be packed in everyone’s beach bag and atop every reader’s beach towel. If you are missing an Elin Hilderbrand summer novel this year, The Shampoo Effect is the book for you. It introduces a group of friends with underlying and simmering tensions that build and build and build (aka the shampoo effect) as the summer and plot progress. Every chapter is told from a different perspective in the friend group, and each dramatic event and plot twist keep the pages turning. You’ll see yourself and your own relationships in this story, but ultimately be thankful that the drama isn’t yours to deal with, just yours to soak up and binge on your favorite beach this summer.

The Bidens spend every Thanksgiving on Nantucket, and for that, I feel a connection. How fascinating it was to get into the mind of former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and see through her own eyes her View from the East Wing and her time in the White House. She became first lady at a complicated time in American history, at the height of COVID-19 and right after the January 6 insurrection, inheriting a country perhaps as divided as it ever has been. She made history as the first ever first lady to hold an outside job while her husband was in office, continuing to work as a professor at a nearby community college.


I will be in conversation with former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden discussing View from the East Wing at the Nantucket Dreamland on Saturday, July 18, at 11 a.m. nantucketdreamland.org

I love a good ghost story, and this novel has four of them. Aubrey Lamb inherits her father’s stake in a sizable farm in Tennessee, and when she arrives there, four ghosts are watching and observing her. Meet Aubrey’s ancestors. This is an epic family drama with a twist—the characters driving the narrative are both the living and the dead. I loved the concept of this novel; the writing was witty, fresh and propulsive; and I couldn’t get the ghosts out of my head. Apparently, the dead are relentless gossips, or at least the dead in this book are. For something a little different this summer, pick up The Great Wherever.

In 1997, Alex and Ana vanished for 36 hours. When they returned, the two six-year-olds described what sounded like an alien abduction. From there came instant fame, interviews, TV appearances and a friendship formed by their shared experience, but what really happened? Now it’s the present day and a mysterious transmission being coined “The Signal” is alarming the world at large and reopening old wounds for Alex and Ana. Voyagers is Meg Charlton’s debut novel, and it may sound like a story too far out in outer space for you, but it’s grounded in themes of memory, friendship, identity and forgiveness. It puts the terrestrial in extraterrestrial. For a book that talks of aliens, it’s a very human novel with a lot of heart. Reminiscent of one of my favorite novels, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, this coming-of-age tale is one I will look at fondly years from now on my bookshelf. Reading experiences like these are why I love writing this column, introducing you to a great book by a new voice you can’t stop talking about.

Who would have guessed that a true story about a game of chess could be so thrilling, tension- filled, twisty and page-turning. Ben Mezrich, bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and The Antisocial Network, sets the scene with vigor. It’s September 2022 and 19-year-old American chess prodigy Hans Niemann has defeated world champion Magnus Carlsen. A scandal ignites when Carlsen accuses Niemann of cheating. With classic Mezrich magic, we get a dramatic, well-researched narrative account based on hundreds of interviews, first-person sources and documents. While reading this cinematic story, you feel like you’re already watching the film that is currently in production. But this story dives into much more than just this singular chess game. We learn of this centuries-old game’s evolution into a high-stakes, billion-dollar industry and join in Mezrich’s fascination with brilliant minds who play in the gray area between right and wrong. It’s pure genius.

Take a trip to Italy this summer in Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer. The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Less is back on shelves with a novel about a young man who answers an ad to be an assistant and archivist to the Baronessa. Known as Coco, the Baronessa is an eccentric woman of 92 whom you won’t soon forget. And so begins this charming tale, set in the Italian countryside, where our main character meets a milieu of princesses, handymen, boar hunters, nuns and local wildlife, and does his best to catalog Coco’s possessions, figure out her personality and understand her past. The book is funny and the perfect story to get lost in this summer.

For readers of Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea and David Grann’s The Wager , make sure to check out The Wreck of the Mentor by Eric Jay Dolin. This is the true story of the American whaleship Mentor, which wrecked in 1832 on a remote reef in the western Pacific. It’s a saga of cultural collision as the 11 surviving seamen encounter the Indigenous people of the Micronesian archipelago of Palau. It’s brilliantly researched by Dolin, who is hailed as the “master of the maritime narrative” (Booklist) and an “expert literary steersmen” (The Washington Post). I appreciate Dolin’s approach to history and the passion for his subject matter. You sail away to another time and place to try to understand what really happened, to get the full story from all its real-life characters of this notable shipwreck. It’s the perfect summer read for Nantucket’s sailing and history enthusiasts, of which there are boatloads.

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The Vault Shines, 10 Years On

By brianbushard • August 6, 2026
Written by Brian Bushard Photography by Kit Noble For the past 10 years, Katherine Jetter has been selling her jewelry at her shop on Centre Street, The Vault. But unlike most jewelry stores, she is not only selling her own jewelry, but the earrings, bracelets and rings of 30 other couture jewelers. This month, she is showcasing those jewelers at a residency at Ten Easy Street, which runs through August 15. “The purpose is to celebrate our community and create a place to bring all of our clients into a social environment where they can get to know each other and experience all the things I love and curate on a deeper level in a social environment,” Jetter said. “I love bringing people together and curating, so I have curated some incredible experiences.”  How did you get into the world of jewelry making? I didn’t come from a multi-generational jewelry house where I had the privilege of growing up with a safe full of gems and access to everything. I’m completely self-made, and the only way that I could shine in a very saturated industry was to really teach myself to be an expert on specific subjects, so that I could really come from a place of knowledge. What did that process look like for you? I studied and studied books on the history of jewelry making. I went to every possible trade show I could find. I’ve been going to the Tucson Gem Show since I was 24 years old and I ask 10,000 questions. The thing that really made me learn was that I was never afraid to say what I didn’t know—why is this amethyst a $10 per-carat stone, and why is this amethyst a $200 per-carat stone? I found allies and friends in the industry that would help teach me and educate me. As a young 20-year-old, I found people who loved their craft who were excited to teach a young person what they knew. I would do everything from finding the rock to going to the mines. That is what I think really is different about me. I made it my business to be an expert and to study what I’m selling, so that I’m not just a designer who’s taking pretty objects and putting them together. I’m being very thoughtful about everything from the ground up—where it starts, how it’s made, the engineering of the piece and the execution. When you’re selling a product, if you don’t understand from the ground up the integrity of the piece, it’s a very different sales process than if you’re coming at it from a place of workmanship. Even though I specialize in certain avenues, I also recognize that there’s something for everybody, and if it’s not something that I’m making, I still want to find you. I love doing that; it really is what excites me. I’ve never had an ego around it being my way or the highway. If I don’t make what you’re looking for, I will find the expert that does.

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The Double Life of Beverly Hall

By Paige Martino • August 4, 2026
Interview by Paige Martino Photography courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association Long before Greater Light became one of Nantucket’s most beloved historic houses, it was an aging 18th-century cow barn tucked away on what was then Bull Lane. Where others might have seen a weathered farm building, Quaker sisters Hanna and Gertrude Monaghan envisioned something extraordinary, transforming the humble barn into an exuberant home and art studio layered with salvaged architectural treasures, handcrafted furnishings and original paintings. They called it Greater Light . A hundred years later, Beverly Hall keeps HannaMonaghan’s spirit alive, putting on period clothes and performing as Hanna at Greater Light. “My feeling when I walked inside [Greater Light] for the first time was almost visceral,” Hall said. “One day during the process, I just got so immersed I said, ‘That house just needs someone to bring it alive.’ I just said it. I blurted it out. ‘Someone needs to be Hanna.’ The whole group turned around and said, ‘Beverly, why not you?’” Becoming Hanna meant immersing herself in Hanna’s memoir, filling pages with underlined passages, colorful notes and thoughtful observations tucked into the margins. She interviewed people who had known Hanna and spent countless hours researching both the Monaghan sisters and Greater Light itself. Along the way, she began recognizing unexpected parallels between their lives, particularly in their shared devotion to faith and the arts. “The attraction was immediate,” Hall said. “[Hanna] really sparked something within me, so I took it and ran with it.”

The Hidden Hollywood of Nantucket

By brianbushard • August 3, 2026
Written by Brian Bushard Photography by Kit Noble While they may not be household names in the true Hollywood sense, Nantucket’s summer population includes powerful producers, screenwriters and editors who are behind the scenes on the movies we all recognize. Indeed, Nantucket has an underground entertainment community that is in effect a hidden Hollywood.“I got involved in the Nantucket Film Festival before we bought a house on the island,” said Marc Resteghini, a producer with Amazon MGM Studios who executive produced the series Young Sherlock. “As I started to learn a little bit more about the festival itself, I started to realize there were a lot of people who either lived on the island or vacationed here from the entertainment industry.” Resteghini was named the new chair of the film festival this June. While Nantucket has a reputation for attracting politicians and Wall Street titans, lesser known is the fact that dozens of leaders in the entertainment industry have also found Nantucket as their summer refuge, just not the names you might know. “It’s like Sergeant Pepper Lonely Heart Club Band,” actor John Shea said. “We see each other but the last thing we want to do is talk about the film business. It’s more of a quiet acknowledgement of a fellow traveler thana fellowship.” “The Vineyard is where all the actors and the writers go, the creatives,” documentary film producer Annabelle Dunne added. Dunne summers on Nantucket. “I think a lot of people that work in Hollywood come here to be with their families, relax and enjoy Nantucket, not to network. But it is a small island, and sometimes when you take away the work component and you say we’re just getting together to get together, then things can happen.” 
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