11 Great New Beach Reads, Written by Terps

Ice-cold beverage in a crab-themed koozy, check. Big ol’ hat from Terp-founded NogginBoss, check. Red, black and gold towel to lounge in the sand, check.

Now all you need is a great book to make your vacation complete. Whether you’re in the mood for flirty fun, a nail-biting page-turner or a trip down memory lane, University of Maryland alums have you covered. We’ve selected a range of titles that Terps have had published in the past year for you to tuck into your beach bag:

Three Flavors of Summer

Crash a wedding (complete with a fake beau) in the latest installment of the Fire Island trilogy from prolific novelist Jane L. Rosen ’87. Thirty-year-old Maggie May Wheeler looks for her birth family—and gets more than she bargained for in “Songs of Summer.” Stroll the boardwalk with a copy of “Welcome to Seagull Street: That Summer in Ocean City, Md.” by Alissa Arford ’94, MBA ’10, which follows three strangers navigating friendship and fresh starts in Maryland’s most popular beach town. Transport yourself back to the 1960s and ‘70s in “All the Summers In Between” by Brooke Lea Foster '98 for a Hamptons coming-of-age story as an unlikely pair of women find their lives intertwined.

Twists and Turns

If a terrifying gothic thriller is your speed, check out the latest from Sarah Pekkanen '90. “House of Glass” kicks off with the mysterious murder of a nanny and the unraveling of a seemingly perfect family. Father-and-son hikers enter the longest slot canyon in the world just as raindrops start falling in “The Sorrows,” a tale of survival and courage by Brian Ullmann ’92, deputy athletics director and chief strategy officer for Maryland Athletics. Or pick up the debut novel by Amanda Eisenberg ’16, “People Are Talking,” about a secret society, revenge and broken relationships, named one of Bustle’s “Best New Books” this spring.

Nonfiction

Revisit Baltimore baseball’s glory days in “Death of a Childhood: A Memoir of 1989 and the ‘Why Not?’ Baltimore Orioles” by Ryan Basen M. Jour. '05, which explores his anxious pre-teen years struggling with family and school troubles and how he finds solace in baseball. Or look back at your favorite TV shows like “Girls,” “Fleabag” and “Insecure” with fresh eyes in “Broads, Sisters, Exes: Feminist Millennial Television” by Vincent L. Stephens Ph.D. ’05.

For Future Terps

Pop these options in your kids’ backpacks: Young adult novel “Dust” by Allison Stine '02 is set in a dry, barren future in Colorado, where a partially deaf teen secretly learns to sign—and finds new possibilities outside of her parents’ protective bubble. Swashbuckling adventure “Kwame Crashes the Underworld,” written by Craig Kofi Farmer M.Ed. '20, winner of the John Steptoe New Talent Award from the Coretta Scott King Awards Committee, throws readers into Ghanaian myths as a 12-year-old boy struggles with the death of his grandmother. And in “The Girl in the Walls” by Meg Eden Kuyatt ’12, MFA ’16, a neurodivergent girl encounters a ghost that could be an ally or an enemy.