Unwind and Explore: Top Reads for Your Holiday Retreat
- Robert Polli
- Apr 8
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
As the season for relaxation and retreat approaches, there’s no better companion than a good book. Whether you’re sunbathing on a sandy beach, curled up beside a crackling campfire, or savoring the tranquility of your own backyard, the right story can transform your leisure time into an adventure of its own. In this special section, we’ve curated a diverse collection of must-reads perfect for your holiday escapade. From thrilling mysteries that will keep you on the edge of your sunlounger to heartwarming tales that complement a cozy evening under the stars, our recommendations are designed to cater to every reader’s taste. So, grab your sunglasses (or your blanket), a refreshing drink, and prepare to be whisked away by these handpicked literary gems. Happy reading, and more importantly, happy holidays!
The childhood of poet Patricia Lockwood was unusual in many respects. There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange riddles and warnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing, frequently semi-naked father, who underwent a religious conversion on a submarine and found a loophole which saw him approved for the Catholic priesthood by the future Pope Benedict XVI, despite already having a wife and children.
When an unexpected crisis forces Lockwood and her husband to move back into her parents’ rectory, she must learn to live again with the family’s simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of her religious upbringing. Pivoting from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the serious, Priestdaddy is an unforgettable story of how we balance tradition against hard-won identity—and of how, having journeyed in the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.
336 pages, Hardcover, 2017, Paperback £10.99, Amazon Kindle/kobo £3.99
