'The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport' by Carl Hiaasen

'Bright Shiny Morning' by James Frey

Summer's the perfect time for a beach read, even if it's enjoyed in the air-conditioned comfort of your living room. Or maybe you'd prefer something a bit more literary. Or a glimpse into history. Whatever your tastes, there's no shortage of ways to while away a hot afternoon with a book in hand. Here's a browse through the latest arrivals on bookstore shelves:

Fiction

Sundays at Tiffany's

By James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet (Little, Brown, $24.99)

With his ever-growing stable of "co-writers," Patterson is a best-selling juggernaut in the suspense genre. Now he has a new collaborator and a new literary world to conquer. A romance with a twist, "Sundays at Tiffany's" is about Jane, a lonely girl who finds solace in the company of Michael, a handsome, sensitive man with a sense of humor. The catch: Only Jane can see him. So imagine her surprise when, in her 30s, her imaginary friend reappears. It may be a new genre, but that's just the kind of crowd-pleasing twist that has made Patterson the most popular novelist of his generation.

-- Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic

Skeletons at the Feast

By Chris Bohjalian (Shaye Areheart Books, $25)

War is hell -- and not just on the battlefield. Inspired by a diary kept by the grandmother of a friend, Chris Bohjalian ("The Double Bind") re-creates an aristocratic Prussian family's flight on foot toward the Allied lines as the Third Reich crumbles in the winter of 1945. The Emmerichs, who start out as Nazi sympathizers, join thousands of refugees desperate to save themselves from the advancing Red Army. The Russians rape, torture and sadistically murder in ways detailed so graphically that sometimes it's difficult to continue reading. Bohjalian's descriptions of terror and tragedy on the road have just as much impact as seeing newsreels from the end of World War II.

-- Dennis Moore, USA Today

Bright Shiny Morning

By James Frey (Harper, $26.95)

Give the bloodied but clearly unbowed James Frey points for unbridled ambition. His truth-challenged memoir "A Million Little Pieces" may have put Oprah's knickers in a televised twist, but Frey's new novel reveals a massive literary ego in full bloom. Unfettered by traditional grammar, punctuation or even paragraphs, Frey has pounded out a novel that tries to rip open the raw underbelly of modern Los Angeles. His goal: to reveal the booze-soaked, drug-crazed, porn-addicted Sodom with all its corruption, cruelty and occasional moments of transcendent beauty. By the end, "Morning" reads like a saccharine-sweet Hallmark Special that Oliver Stone wrote and Quentin Tarantino directed. Bottom line: If you loved "A Million Little Pieces," you might want to devour this. Like its author, it can be called many things, but never boring. Or timid.

-- Deirdre Donahue, USA Today

Nonfiction

The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport

By Carl Hiaasen (Knopf, $22)

The Florida writer follows up 2005's best-selling comic novel "Nature Girl" with a hilarious memoir about golf. Hiaasen was introduced to the game by his father, but he gave it up when Richard Nixon was president. More than three decades later, though, he returned to the fairway, despite his lack of talent. The resulting narrative won't help his readers improve their scores (the author is usually happy to shoot a 90), but it will answer such questions as how to salvage a golf cart from the bottom of a snake-filled lake. Publishers Weekly says, "His analysis of his lessons, hapless rounds and gimmicky golf equipment is hilarious ..... such as golf balls that are designed to 'run like a scalded gerbil.'."

-- Kerry Lengel

A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties

By Suze Rotolo (Broadway, $22.95)

They were cherub-cheeked kids when each landed in Greenwich Village in early 1961, drawn like moths to the flames of art, music, theater and ideas that burned so brightly in every cranny of the Big Apple's most bohemian quarter.

She was 17. He was 20. An iconic image of the lovers, huddled, walking a slushy New York street, would herald a new generation -- and the arrival of a major talent -- when it appeared on the seminal album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" in May 1963.

By then, Suze Rotolo and Dylan had broken up and gotten back together. And he -- already infused with the lyrics and rhythms of generations of balladry, blues and social commentary -- had stormed the citadel of the great American Folk Revival movement.

This memoir is more -- and in some ways less -- than an accounting of life with the man she calls "the mover and shaper of the culture of that era." It is an insider's portrait of Greenwich Village at the cusp of a new era, a place "people like me went -- people who knew in their souls that they didn't belong where they came from."

-- Kristina Lindgren, Los Angeles Times

Suspense

Nothing to Lose

By Lee Child (Delacorte, $27)

Like the mythic hero of a classic Western, Jack Reacher wanders across America finding trouble. This quintessentially American character, created by a British author, now finds himself caught between two remote towns in Colorado, with the symbolic names of Hope and Despair. He just wanted a cup of coffee, but something sinister is happening in a well-guarded industrial compound, a secret the people of Despair are willing to kill to protect. A sensible man would move on, but this former military policeman has, as the title says, nothing to lose.

-- Kerry Lengel

Black Out

By Lisa Unger (Shaye Areheart Books, $23)

Anybody who has cracked open a mystery novel in the past 25 years knows by now there are two Floridas. There's the sunny, pastel-hued Walt Disney Florida. Then there's the Florida teeming with lunatics in trailer parks and bodies in the grass.

Kudos to Lisa Unger for venturing onto such well-trod ground with a novel that takes an especially dark look at the state's underbelly. While "Black Out" doesn't always work, it boasts a largely gripping narrative and muscular prose.

Annie is a woman with a murky past, the monstrous details of which emerge slowly. Gradually, painfully, Annie fills in the blanks. She was somehow involved with a notorious serial killer whose death has been confirmed to her. Her father abandoned her. Her mother was a fragile madwoman.

Yet, despite Herculean efforts to wall off those chapters of her life, Annie's past stalks her.

-- Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Associated Press

Humor

Lamentations of the Father

Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22)

Although our era is awash in comedy, literary humor has dwindled in recent years. This makes Ian Frazier a kind of rara avis and his new collection of essays as welcome as another sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker. No one writing in this genre today hits the mark with anything like Frazier's frequency. The measure of his success is the number of pieces you'll want to read aloud to others -- partly to share the pleasure, partly to explain why you've been making all those strangling noises. What distinguishes literary humor from other forms of contemporary comedy is that, in most instances, you can share it with those around you, even if one of the listeners can't get into a PG-13 film on his own. One of the many pleasures of Frazier's humorous sensibility is that it doesn't deny the distinction between high and low, but integrates the two as equally real and equally worthy of consideration.

-- Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

Sci-fi

The Host

By Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown, $25.99)

The Valley author's Twilight series of vampire romances has made her a literary superstar among teenage girls, and no small number of women, too. It's a good bet that her first "adult" novel won't scare off her younger fans, either. "The Host" is a romantic variation on "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers": The Earth has been conquered by an alien species that takes over the minds of humans. But Melanie Stryder refuses to surrender to her "host." She can't control her body, but she floods the other soul in her head, called Wanderer, with memories of the man she loves until the alien, captured by someone else's obsession, goes off in search of him among the few free humans who live in hiding. Weighing in at more than 600 pages, it's a big beach book that should keep fans satisfied until the fourth Twilight novel, "Breaking Dawn," hits stores in August.

-- Lengela

Local folks offer ideas if you want to pick up a good book

What's the best book you've ever read?

"'The Kite Runner.' I read this when it was released in 2003. I couldn't put it down and finished it in less than two days. This book takes you through all the emotions -- happiness, suspense, sadness. I found myself crying while reading." -- Joy Dumandan, WISH (Channel 8) "Daybreak" anchor

What's on your reading list this summer?

"I'm reading 'The 21st-Century City: Resurrecting Urban America,' by Mayor Stephen Goldsmith; 'The Turnaround: How America's Top Cops Reversed the Crime Epidemic,' by William Bratton; and 'More Than a Dream: How One School's Vision is Changing the World,' by G.R. Kearney." -- Greg Ballard, mayor of Indianapolis

"I'm re-reading 'The Old Man and the Sea.' I'm a Hemingway junkie, and even though some people criticize his writing style, his language is immediate, raw and potent ..... The story is so poignant and just a great metaphor for that unanswered prayer, unclimbed mountain, in everyone's life." -- Andrea Fagan, director of marketing communications for Marian College

"I am currently reading Barack Obama's memoir, 'Dreams from My Father.' This is a matter of doing my homework both as a voter and as a student of politics and the media. The book offers important insights into a unique political figure about whom we all need to know more, regardless of political persuasion." -- Steve Bell, former ABC-TV reporter and Ball State University broadcasting professor

"These days I've been reading a lot of pregnancy books, with my favorites being 'What to Expect When You're Expecting,' by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel, and 'The Happiest Baby on the Block,' by Dr. Harvey Karp." -- Cheryl Parker, WXIN (Channel 59) anchor, who's expecting twins with her husband, Kenneth Parker

What literary character do you most admire?

"Charlotte, from 'Charlotte's Web'" -- Lin Dunn, Indiana Fever coach

What books have stirred you most deeply?

"They include Wallace Stegner's 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain,' 'Angle of.Repose' and 'Crossing to Safety,' and Jim Harrison's 'Dalva,' 'True North' and 'Returning to Earth.' I've also been re-reading Chekhov's stories, for the sake of his broad social vision and his compassionate treatment of characters, and I've been reading for the first time story collections by Charles Baxter." -- Scott Russell Sanders, Indiana University professor of English

If you could be any fictional character for a day, who would you be?

"I'd be Alex Cross from the James Patterson series. I love how Patterson weaves being a detective and a psychologist into the character." -- Chris Wright, WTHR (Channel 13) meteorologist and author of several novels

"Scout Finch (from 'To Kill a Mockingbird'). She was a smart cookie, had the coolest father and grew up in interesting times, not unlike our own." -- Elizabeth Houghton Barden, owner of Big Hat Books

"Archie Goodwin, from the Nero Wolfe books. He gets to eat Wolfe's gourmet food, enjoy Wolfe's beautiful orchids, be about as sharp and witty as any fictional character could ever hope to be, not weigh one-seventh of a ton like Wolfe does and still have the time to enjoy a night out on the town with a beautiful lady." -- Travis DiNicola, executive director of IndyReads

"I would be the Pokemon Butterfree. Our children Luke, 7, and Grace, 5, are really into Pokemon. I would be a very cool mom if I could change into Butterfree for a day." -- Angela Buchman, WISH (Channel 8) meteorologist

"Bernard Samson, British intelligence operative in Len Deighton's Cold War trilogies, the first of which consisted of 'Berlin Game,' 'Mexico Set' and 'London Match.' What better escape than a life of international intrigue that lands you in various European capitals? Samson's an un-Bond-like character who spends as much time figuring out who his true friends and enemies are as he does foiling the plots between East and West." -- Jon Barnes, communications specialist for the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library

What's the best book you've read in the past year?

"I had missed it when it was first published in 2004 ..... as part of HarperCollins' Eminent Lives Series, but Michael Korda's 'Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero' has been a revelation. I thought I knew all there was to know about this famous American general, but Korda has a real feeling for Grant's beginnings and his dogged rise from failure to glory. It took a former British soldier to teach me more about an American icon than I ever knew before." -- Ray E. Boomhower, senior editor, Indiana Historical Society Press

Finish this line: "My fellow Americans need to read the book ....."

"'The Next Form of Democracy,' by Matt Leighninger. Communities should empower themselves to organize their own destiny, and one way is to get involved in public life." -- Olgen Williams, deputy mayor for neighborhoods, City of Indianapolis

Author/NPR commentator coming to Big Hat Books

David Sedaris writes books so funny, reading them around other people runs the risk of turning you into a public nuisance thanks to the constant guffaws his observations induce. "Naked," "Me Talk Pretty One Day," "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" -- all comic gold. His hot-off-the-presses book "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" is cry-with-laughter hilarious.

The essayist and NPR commentator will be in town June 10 for a special evening at Big Hat Books, 922 E. Westfield Blvd. You just need to buy a copy of the book and RSVP to the store at (317) 202-0203. Space is limited for the 6:30 p.m. event.

"It'll be like a party," says owner Elizabeth Houghton Barden. There will be a red carpet, drinks, snacks and, yes, a reading and book signing.

- Kelly Kendall, The Star