Select University of Nebraska Press titles that lend themselves well to lazy afternoons of summer reading are on sale through August 15. Titles on sale include novels Jackalope Dreams, Because a Fire was in my Head and The Plain Sense of Things, as well as adventure and travel memoirs including Kayaking Alone, Bicycling Beyond the Divide and Searching for Tamsen Donner. Also on sale is How to Cook a Tapir, a book I’ve been meaning to blog about all summer. How to Cook a Tapir is the story of author Joan Fry’s year in Belize. Fry was a 20-year-old newlywed who didn’t know how to cook when she agreed to a working honeymoon with her anthropologist husband. Off they went together to a remote jungle village, where Fry’s husband studied the language, religion and customs of the people there, and Fry was the lone teacher at the local school. She also learned to cook unfamiliar foods on an unfamiliar stove, starting with instant oatmeal and working her way up to things like chile verde, chickpea soup with cilantro and pasta, and a traditional soup called caldo. Fry includes a recipe at the end of every chapter, and when I read this book late last winter while there was still snow on the ground, I couldn’t help but think that many of these dishes would be perfect for summer barbecues.

A full list of summer sale titles is here, along with instructions for applying the discount.