9 Books for Father’s Day

Athena McKenzie | June 9th, 2015

Still looking for the perfect Father’s Day gift? There’s something for every paternal figure on your list among these dad-approved titles.

We all know that Dad contributes more than genes to the family. In Do Fathers Matter? What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We’ve Overlooked, Paul Raeburn pulls together and examines the research from the “new” science of fatherhood.

Legendary author Clive Barker’s The Scarlet Gospels is the epic finale in the Hellraiser mythos, drawing Pinhead into battle with Harry D’Amour, familiar to Barker fans from Lord of Illusions. If Dad is a horror fan, this is the one he’s been waiting for.

Harmless by James Grainger is an unflinching look at the lengths two fathers will go to find their teenage daughters, who are missing in the wilderness. Fair warning: don’t expect to see dad for awhile after he cracks the cover.

Marina Endicott’s Close to Hugh follows a week in the life of gallery owner Hugh Argylle after he suffers a head injury in a fall from a ladder. Circling around issues of youth, age, love, loss, friendship, family and community, it examines the meaning of modern life.

As with his classic Misery, in Finders Keepers — the highly anticipated follow up to Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes — the author once again plays with the terrifying notion of a reader obsessed with a writer. The perfect summer suspense read.

*Win a copy of Stephen King’s Finders Keepers, the new suspense novel about a reader whose obsession with a reclusive writer goes too far.

Get dad on his feet. By combining reporting, research and his own personal discoveries, Dan Rubinstein explores the act of walking as the path to a better world in Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of A Pedestrian Act.

With Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania Erik Larsen brings his fascinating touch to history — as he did with Devil in the White City — humanizing the story of one the 20th Century’s great disasters and bringing it back to life.

Considered the must-read of the season by the literary set, A Little Life by Hana Yanagihara follows three decades in the life of four former college roommates — Malcolm the architect, JB the artist, Willem the actor and Jude the attorney —through their successes and setbacks in New York.

Have a dad who loves a project? Get him started on Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle, his epic memoir as fiction, an unflinching account of what it means to be a father, son, friend, partner, lover… Dancing in The Dark, the fourth of six volumes was published this spring.

*Win the first four books in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle, his epic memoir as fiction: A Death in the Family, A Man in Love, Boyhood Island and Dancing in the Dark.