Here’s the first installment in our new video series, Open Books, in which we ask PBC authors to tell us about the books they love. This week, Rinku Sen, the co-author of The Accidental American, recommends two novels about characters trapped “between the oppressed and the oppressor,” and tells us why these books speak to her. (Related Title: The Known World by Edward P. Jones)

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons

To all PBC members and friends: Happy Fourth of July! 

And to mark the day, here’s a sampling of recommended reading for true patriots everywhere!

Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries
By Naomi Wolf
The best-selling author of The End of America lays out a blueprint for the active citizenship.

 The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country 
By William Greider
How America strayed from its founding ideals—and how We the People can bring the nation home.

The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
By Jonathan Hennessey (Author) and Aaron McConnell (Illustrator)
An information-packed, graphic-novel treatment of pivotal moments in the history of the Constitution.

America America
By  Ethan Canin
A remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate.

A People’s History of the United States
By  Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn’s classic work of populist history, updated for a new generation.

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
By Harvey Kaye
The best portrait yet of “the greatest radical of a radical age”

Rights of Man and Common Sense
By Thomas Paine
The classic pamphlets that inspired a nation to revolution.

Unruly Americans
By Woody Holton
Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution

We asked Maureen Corrigan, book critic for Fresh Air with Terry Gross, PBC editorial board member, and serious genre fiction buff, to recommend some favorite mysteries, thrillers, and police procedurals for summer reading. Here’s what she came back with.

The Way Home by George Pelecanos

If you don’t know of him, Pelecanos has been writing crime novels for years about the “other” Washington (i.e., not Capitol Hill or Northwest DC) He’s socially and racially conscious and a terrific writer.  Also wrote for The Wire.  The working class “hero” of this novel works for his family’s remodeling company.

Small Crimes by Dave Zeltzerman

I really really loved this noir that came out last year.  A police officer newly released from prison tries to put his life back together in a small town in upstate NY and only proves himself to be one of fortune’s fools.  Pure, updated James M.Cain.

The Moe Prager mysteries of Reed Farrell Coleman

My find of the year.  Coleman is superb but relatively unknown.  Hailed by Michael Connelly and most of the Big Guys in Hard Boiled Detective fiction. His Moe Prager series is terrific (Jewish ex cop detective) and one of them, Redemption Street, is my favorite because it’s set in the crumbling Catskill resort area.  A perfect summer setting! [Listen to Maureen Corrigan’s

The Adamsberg series of Fred Vargas

Terrific, psychologically dense police procedurals set in Paris.  Reminiscent of the classic  Per Wahloo/Maj Sojwall police procedural series. This series stars Inspector Adamsburg and a recurring cast of police detectives and considers all the big questions about the nature of evil.  Vargas is one of the biggest names in crime fiction in Europe but, again, not widely known here except to real crime fiction fans.  (And, yes, she’s a she.)

Death of a Nationalist by Rebecca Pawel

Came out in 2003 and is set in the Spanish Civil War but its political story loops around in unexpected ways.  Pawel spun a series out of it but this was her debut book (she was a young Spanish teacher at the time) and it’s really smart and politically inflected.

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin

This one is probably not in print (1958 is the date on my first edition) but I’d love to make a pitch for it.  It’s the first mystery that I know of in which a woman who’s recently given birth and is sleep deprived as a result sees things she shouldn’t see in the small hours of the evening.  Proto-feminist in its politics.