As the later days of summer sneak by and the weather keeps getting hotter, it’s the perfect time to grab a good book and lounge by the pool, in a park, or your lovely, air-conditioned home.

That said, here are a few book recommendations:

1. Emma by Jane Austen

Emma is truly a sun-drenched read. The atmosphere is bright and airy with beautiful descriptions of an English village. The novel tells the tale of the precocious Emma, a young, spoiled socialite who spends her days “match-making” for those around her. After her success in pairing up her governess, Mrs. Taylor, she turns her focus on Harriett Smith. The rest of the novel tells of the various successes, failures, and repercussions of Emma’s meddling and obsession with social distinctions.

2) A Room With a View by E.M. Forester

A Room With a View is a relatively short, Edwardian novel that follows the young upper-middle class English Miss. Lucy Honeychurch as she discovers a world outside of the rigid social formalities that governed her childhood. The novel begins in Florence, Italy where Lucy and her older cousin are vacationing. Lucy spends the trip longing to escape from her far more traditional cousin and explore the city independently. While exploring, she continuously runs into Mr. Emerson and his son George. As she grows closer to the duo, she begins to discover more about herself and the world around her. This part romance, part social satire captures, and holds the reader’s attention with its wit and tension. Best yet, its depiction of an Italian and English summer makes Forester’s novel a great seasonal read.

3) Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid

Lucy is a short but vulnerable novel telling the story of Lucy; a nineteen-year-old from the West who moved to the United States as an au pair. The novel follows Lucy’s experience as an American immigrant trying to find her way in a new place while grappling with increasingly complex feelings of homesickness. When she first leaves her home, she feels relief and excitement at the prospect of escaping from her social and familial oppression. However, upon arriving, her relationship with her home shifts as she comes to understand more about herself and the world.

4) To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse is a fiction work embedded with philosophical undertones. The novel is primarily set in a coastal home near, as expected, a lighthouse. The novel takes us down a road of exploration into the lives of the Ramsey family. It deals with introspection on the meaning of life, a woman’s right to independence in early twentieth-century society, and how the small, seemingly meaningless intricacies of life add up to something extremely powerful.