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If you’re setting sail this month, which happens to be the most popular cruising time among yacht owners and charterers, don’t forget to bring the ideal companion for long, lazy afternoons on the water. No, it’s not a relative or beloved pet, who will no doubt be on board, but that book you’ve been meaning to read since the beginning of summer.
The season’s hottest releases feature art heists, $100 million apartments, murder mysteries, and underwater civilizations, as well as a scientific exploration into the importance of water, Oprah’s latest book club pick, and a revealing biography of Jackie O.
From thick historical tomes to page-turning potboilers, Robb Report’s top picks with seafaring connections will submerge you into tales of life, murder, luxury, and love. Happy reading.
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‘The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession’ By Michael Finkel
Image Credit: Random House Inspiration for voyagers making landfall in European art capitals, this thrilling account of master thief Stéphane Breitwieser delves into the insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any price. Breitwieser, who made more than 200 heists in museums and cathedrals all over Europe over nearly eight years, stole not for money but to quench an aesthetic desire. Unlike most thieves, he kept his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them—until one final act of hubris sends it crashing down.
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‘Billionaires’ Row’ By Katherine Clarke
Image Credit: Penguin Random House For real-estate afficionados or landlubbers at sea alike comes the story behind the ruthless real-estate impresarios who converted a run-down strip along Midtown Manhattan’s 57th Street into the most exclusive street on the planet, a collection of sleek high-rise residences known as Billionaires’ Row. Based upon extensive accounts from New York’s power brokers, this fast-paced narrative cracks open the cutthroat world of $100 million apartments for the global one-percenters, including many who leave them empty as a place to park their money.
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‘The Covenant of Water’ By Abraham Verghese
Image Credit: Grove Atlantic The latest pick from Oprah’s Book Club follows a Christian family in southwestern India through three generations as they seek a solution to a strange medical ailment: at least one person drowns each generation—and in Kerala, on the Malabar Coast, water is inescapable. The saga begins in 1900 with the wedding of a 12-year-old girl and follows the future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi, through three-quarters of a century full of joy and triumph, hardship, and loss, during a tumultuous chapter in India’s history.
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‘Jackie: Public, Private, Secret’ By J. Randy Taraborrelli
Image Credit: St. Martin’s Press Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was no stranger to the sea. The glamorous outdoorswoman sailed as a child in Newport, Rhode Island, and Easthampton, New York; water-skied as a newlywed at the Kennedy family Cape Cod compound; and dropped anchor in the Mediterranean as second wife to the world’s leading shipping tycoon. Based on hundreds of interviews and previously unreleased material from the JFK Library, this far-reaching biography paints a portrait of America’s most famous First Lady as a bona fide thalassophile, showing how a life on the water shaped her adventures and her legacy.
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‘Obelists at Sea’ By C. Daly King
Image Credit: Alfred A. Knopf The latest reprint of this 1932 fictional tale of murder, travel, and psychiatry set aboard a luxury ocean liner is a whodunnit for the Golden Age of transatlantic travel. Not long after leaving New York, the Paris-bound Meganaut’s genteel crowd descends into Clue-like chaos when the lights flicker in the smoking room and a gunshot leaves a passenger dead. The discovery that the man had ingested cyanide seconds before the bullet hit pits a pair of detectives against four psychiatrists on board as they race to solve the riddle before the killer strikes again.
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‘Underjungle’ By James Sturz
Image Credit: The Unnamed Press The yc, an intelligent life form and apex predator among fish, dwell blithely beneath the ocean until the discovery of a sunken corpse throws their fantastical maritime underworld topsy turvy. The arrival of the land-dwelling body calls the future of the species, split long ago into seven tribes, into question, unleashing an inter-generational epic 3,000 feet below sea level. The journey is buoyed by humor, tinged by loss, and bound to foster greater appreciation for what lies beneath.
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‘Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge’ By Erica Gies
Image Credit: University of Chicago Press Science journalist Erica Gies explores our efforts to control water in this book about climate change and extreme weather. Amid calls for higher levees, bigger drains, and longer aqueducts, Gies introduces the leaders of the “Slow Water” movement—innovators in hydrology, restoration ecology, engineering, and urban planning—who are now asking a revolutionary question: What does water want? The answer, Gies posits, is key to our survival.