Top10 books for the beaches /Jennifer Weiner's selections:

'Best Kept Secret' (Washington Square Press) By Amy Hatvany Moms who drink are usually a punch line. This novel tells a much more serious story about what happens to a single mom when her take-the-edge-off glass of wine at the end of the night turns into addiction.

'Maine' (Knopf) By J. Courtney Sullivan Three generations of an Irish Catholic family reunite, as they do each summer, in the family’s cottage in Maine, in Sullivan’s second novel, which has a compelling title and a godawful cover. Secrets are kept (will Maggie tell her slacker Brooklyn boyfriend about her pregnancy?), booze is consumed (will eldest daughter Kathleen fall off the wagon?), and judgments are rendered (a mother comments acidly to her daughter that “it looks like you’ve lost a few). In a book crammed with memorable women, it’s Alice, the family’s prickly, proud, haunted matriarch, who will stay with you the longest.

'The Red Thread' (W.W. Norton & Company) By Ann Hood In Rhode Island, infertile couples start down the path that will lead them toward the babies that were meant to be theirs. First-world stories of infidelity and unhappiness can’t compete with the heartbreaking tales of how the girls who will come to America came to be orphaned in the first place.

'Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self' (Riverhead) By Danielle Evans Short stories can be the perfect choice for summer – each tale the perfect length for an afternoon at the beach. Evans’ stories deal with the Questions of Race, parsed by characters who are smart, sarcastic, occasionally bitter and always funny.

'Exposure' (Ballantine Books) By Therese Fowler Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Boy, at girl’s urging, texts nude pictures of himself to her phone. Girl’s father finds phone…and all hell breaks lose, with the arrest of both parties as just the first in a series of things that go wrong and get worse. Compulsively readable and a timely, cautionary tale in our age of TMI.

'The Nobodies Album' (Anchor) By Carolyn Parkhurst Is it a murder-mystery? Is it the tale of a woman learning – reluctantly and belatedly – to be a mother? Or a character study of how novelists manipulate truth to suit their purposes? Parkhurst’s third novel is all of the above…and it’s accompanied by a sly, tongue-in-cheek promotional effort (seriously. Look her up on YouTube).

'Faith' (Harper) By Jennifer Haigh Combines the best descriptive writing of literary fiction with the plot twists of a thriller. A priest in Boston is accused of molesting a young boy. The truth –as revealed by his sister, his brother, his accuser and the father’s own father – is a lot more complicated than that.

'Silver Sparrow' (Algonquin) By Tayari Jones Dishy, twisty, secrets about two daughters: one from her father’s public family, the other from the family on the side.

'The Magician King' (Viking) By Lev Grossman Lev Grossman’s "The Magicians" was billed as Harry Potter for grown-ups – call it ‘Dirty Harry,’ or Hogwarts with hook-ups. In the sequel, published in August, teenage magician Quentin Coldwater – now a king in the Narnia-esque land of Fillory – goes on a hero’s quest, with wondrous, and tragic, results.

'The Story of Beautiful Girl' (Grand Central) By Rachel Simon On the proverbial dark and rainy night in 1968, two strangers show up at a widow’s doorstep. They’ve got a secret – they’ve escaped from an institution for the incurable and “feeble-minded” – and a baby. Their story, by the author of "Riding The Bus With My Sister," is a compelling and heartbreaking read, in part because this country’s treatment of the disabled and the different, not so very long ago, was so tragic.