Holidays are a time to switch off, break with the routine, forget the alarm clock, stop checking the phone, take a nap, enjoy outdoor meals, and read books. Which is why today we’re bringing you some top recommendations from the bookshop Llibre Idees, located on the 2nd floor at d’illa Carlemany, to help you get some titles lined up for this summer.

In Catalan, Xavier Bosch’s La dona de la seva vida (The Woman in his Life) is a novel about wavering feelings, troubled lives, and a sense of the obligation to rewrite the past. The plot revolves around a journalistic investigation into one of the three Estrada brothers – the protagonists of the story – and how it threatens to reveal facts about historical events that unite them.

There is also the intriguing Esclaus del desig (Slaves of Desire), by Donna Leon, set in Venice. In the style of a police procedural, the author touches on the topical issue of human trafficking. This is revealed as Brunetti investigates two young men suspected of a crime of omission for not helping two girls who appear, unconscious and seriously injured, at the entrance to the Venice civil hospital.

In Spanish, our first recommendation is La anomalia (The Anomaly), by Hervé Le Tellier, which is a brilliant, smart and masterful novel in which logic and the impossible seem to merge: a plane lands in New York from Paris after a terrible storm and, three months later, another flight lands in New York with the same occupants and the same crew.

Also recommended, especially for its imagination and ingenuity, is at Lo que la marea esconde (What the Tide Hides), by María Oruña, an addictive and elegant thriller that focuses on the death of a powerful woman from Santander, in unlikely circumstances, and the subsequent investigation by Valentina Redondo.