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25 Books You Can't Put Down

Go on, take what you need. A perfect mystery, a mouthful of poetry…O serves up a smorgasbord of the summer's best reads.


A Pearl in the Storm by Tori Murden McClure

A Pearl in the Storm by Tori Murden McClure

304 pages; Collins

Maybe it was the snacks: Who wouldn't row alone across an ocean for the chance to eat like a teenager? Whatever it was that propelled Tori Murden McClure to the far side of the Atlantic in her homemade barge, the American Pearl, she muscled through 12-hour days of rowing, capsizing (she rescued the M&M's), being eyeballed by a hammerhead shark and clobbered by a hurricane. In A Pearl in the Storm (Collins), McClure tells how, on land and sea, she exuberantly bucked the tide.

First chapter: Read an excerpt from A Pearl in the Storm
Reader's Guide: Get discussion questions for your book club  
Photos: Charlotte Jenks Lewis/Studio D