6 Guilt-Free Pleasures to Read at the Beach

You won't want to put these books down, and you won't need to hide them

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS SARA GRUEN JACOB JANKOWSKI has never had fantasies about joining the circus. But when his parents die suddenly, he freaks out, drops out of vet school, hops a freight train and winds up tending to the menagerie of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a third-rate Depression-era traveling circus. What goes on under the big top is nothing compared with the show backstage. In a sawdust-and-tinsel novel reminiscent of Robertson Davies, Jacob nurses giraffes, bunks with a surly dwarf, falls in love with a sexy horsewoman, gets life lessons from a singularly intelligent elephant and learns...

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