Introducing Our 2024 Summer Book Bundles: the Summer Novels 5-Book Collection and the Summer Mysteries 5-Book Collection to maximize your downtime, and your reading time, on these long summer days.

Summertime and beach reads go hand in hand, even when you’re not at the beach—a good book and a cool drink always says summer to us.

And because we know that your summer reading time is precious (as is all reading time, of course), we’ve created two collections for Summer 2024—one of novels and one of mystery books—that we think you’ll love (we sure do!). It’s a quick way to stock up on a bunch of titles you can be sure are well worth your precious reading time this summer.

Lose yourself in a great story with our Summer Novel Collection, an exciting round-up of fiction books: Spend time with Martin Embry, a film student who, after learning that silent filmmaker Claude Ballard hasn’t seen a film in decades, befriends him. Ballard shares his remarkable life stories with Martin, leading up to Ballard’s greatest achievement, a film called The Electric Hotel, in this book of the same name by Dominic Smith.

Are you a Jane Austen fan (just kidding, aren’t we all)? Writer Jude Morgan is often hailed as the “new Jane Austen.” His novel, A Little Folly, throws siblings Valentine and Louisa into a newfound independence when their overbearing father dies and they open their Devonshire estate of Pennacombe to cousins and friends alike.

Spend a few evenings with cousins Hannah and Lily in Code Name Sapphire by Pam Jenoff. These brave young women join the underground resistance to save British airmen downed in Nazi Germany, but an action Hannah takes ends up with Lily and her family being sent to Auschwitz. Read along as Hannah desperately tries to save them.

Revisit a classic (or read it for the first time, lucky you!) with Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea. Charles Arrowby’s dark obsession with his old flame, Hartley, leads to deception and murder as he attempts to reconcile his present with his past.

Finally, we’ve included The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride’s gorgeous tale of a couple attempting to save a deaf boy named Dodo from a terrible fate. Our 2024 Summer Book Bundle includes all five of these books, so you will have plenty to read during these long, hot days.

Solve a mystery (or five) while you’re sunning yourself when you dive into our 2024 Mystery Book Bundle. We at Bas Bleu love a good whodunnit and we know the rest of you Bluestockings do too. We’ve bundled five mysteries we’ve been trading amongst ourselves so that you can experience them too. The Search Party by Hannah Richell grabbed us by the title and wouldn’t let us go until the very end. The Kingsleys arrange a reunion of university friends and their families at a remote Cornwall retreat. Throw in old secrets, simmering rivalries, a freak storm (of course!) and a missing child and you’ll be up reading all night.

Alias Emma by Ava Glass gives us James Bond vibes with heroine Emma Makepeace, whose challenge is to walk through London with the adult son of Russian dissidents while avoiding CCTV and assassins the whole way. Did we mention she has no phone?

When the temperature’s high, this next one will send a chill right though you: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox. Bookish Ivy Radcliffe unexpectedly inherits an ancient abbey in Yorkshire that contains a library that just may house evil spirits. Part Gothic novel, part supernatural thriller (and a dash of Rosemary’s Baby), it adds up to an inventive, magical mystery.

Luxury and suspense team up in The Vacation House by Jane Shemilt, where Sofie is an employee at a posh retreat in Greece in 2013. Ten years later, high-society Julia is trying to reconnect to the woman she once was. What dark secret connects these two women? Bet you won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough.

Finally, Alex Michaelides, king of the unexpected twist, is back with The Fury, a thriller that combines a reunion of old friends with a gorgeous Greek destination (see how our mystery bundle is all coming together here?). It’s atmospheric, intriguing, and, yes, contains a plot twist we did not see coming.

Plow through one book bundle back-to-(paper)back or alternate between novels and mysteries—it’s up to you, of course. But we can assure you, these two collections will make this summer one for the books. Happy reading!

And when you’ve finished all these, find more at Bas Bleu. We’ve got many more novels and mysteries to recommend, and we’re always adding more.