Vitamin Daily

Just because you're not budging from the chaise longue or Muskoka chair this season doesn't mean you can't escape the here and now – and summer reading doesn't (always) have to mean fluff. Take a mind trip with these three historical fiction picks, two-thirds of them CanCon.

All That I Am by Anna Funder

An expert in East German history (her first book, Stasiland, is also excellent, though nonfiction), here Funder takes a creative approach to the lives of both real and fictional characters in 1930s Germany, who opposed Hitler from the earliest years in a little-known (to me, at least) rebellion. $18.80 at Amazon.ca

The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak

We love to see a woman making it to the top – and this chronicle of Catherine the Great of Russia's rise to power (told from the perspective of one of her spies) will have you unable to put it down – and impatient for the follow-up the author is currently working on. $15.64 at Amazon.ca

Above All Things by Tanis Rideout

Hot weather getting you down? Cool down with this tale of English mountaineer George Mallory's 1924 expedition to Mount Everest and attempt to reach the summit – and alongside, an agonizing day in the life of the wife he left behind in Cambridge. $17.99 at Amazon.ca

—Kat Tancock