NJ Spotlight’s two-week “Summer Reading” series ended with the Labor Day holiday, but the selected excerpts of the year’s best writing by New Jersey authors or with Garden State hooks are still available to revisit, share or read for the first time.

With thanks to our readers for their suggestions, NJ Spotlight posted excerpts from 10 recent books that highlighted New Jersey, its people and places. The final list included an excerpt from “Unsheltered,” Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel and a section from Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” Other fiction in the series included an excerpt from a novel about a baseball Hall-of-Famer from Union Township.

Non-fiction material included a biography of one of New Jersey’s often-overlooked forefathers, William Livingston, a story of shad fishing in Lambertville, and the true history of the Jersey Devil. We ended with a poem by Newark’s Ysabel Y. González.

The full collection can be found here. Feel free to contact us at info@njspotlight.com to comment on our choices and/or nominate books we should consider for next time.