Opinion

Summer’s hot reads — 21 books for the beach

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CRIME & PUNISHMENT

Carte Blanche

by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster, June 14)

The actors portraying 007 are always changing, so why not the authors? Deaver (“The Bone Collector”) is the fifth to follow Bond creator Ian Fleming. Bond, in his 30s here, is working for a super-secret Brit intelligence outfit called the Overseas Development Group — his MI6 liaison is Ophelia “Philly” Maidenstone. And he has carte blanche to use any mean necessary to keep England safe. With just five days to unravel a massive terrorist plot, Bond’s travels take him to Serbia, London, Dubai and Capetown. Plus, we finally learn a little more about the superspy’s parents.

The Ranger

A Quinn Colson Novel

by Ace Atkins (Putnam, June 9)

Atkins, of Oxford, Miss., has been given the task of continuing the late Robert B. Parker’s Boston-set Spenser series. Meanwhile, he’s written the first book in his own new series. When Army Ranger Quinn Colson returns home to rural Mississippi from Afghanistan, he finds a place he barely recognizes. His uncle, the county sheriff, killed himself, Colson’s told. But the facts don’t seem to add up. And in getting to the truth, he comes across rampant corruption, trailer-park meth dealers, skinheads and more. And this tough, hardened Army vet is just the man to deal with it.

Smokin’ Seventeen

A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Janet Evanovich (Bantam, June 21)

Long before Snooki became a household name, Trenton bounty hunter Stephanie Plum was the Garden State’s best-known Jersey Girl. This time out, Stephanie’s got love and death to deal with. While corpses keep turning up in the empty lot next to Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, her family and friends urge her to chose between her local-cop boyfriend Joe Morelli and her bad-boy security pal Ranger. Meanwhile she fears that she may wind up in the lot next door.

The Keeper of Lost Causes

by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton, Aug. 18)

Billed as Denmark’s No. 1 crime writer, Adler-Olsen is also making his American debut with the first in his Department Q series. After a shooting nearly killed him and left a partner dead, Copenhagen police Detective Carl Mork is depressed and demoted to a basement office where he heads the new Department Q, for cold cases and lost causes. There, Mork takes on an old high-profile missing person’s case.

The Hypnotist

by Lars Kepler (FSG/Sarah Crichton Books)

Elsewhere on the Nordic crime front is the American debut of the Swedish crime-writing couple Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, who use the pseudonym Lars Kepler. There’s been a triple homicide in icy Tumba, Sweden. A young boy who witnessed the murder of his family is the only survivor. Detective Joona Linna brings in Dr. Erik Maria Bark to hypnotize the boy, who is in shock, to get some answers.

SUPERNATURAL

The Last Werewolf

by Glen Duncan (Knopf, July 12)

Jake looks really good for his age, exercise and all. He’s 201, and the last of his kind since a fellow werewolf met a violent death. Despite his remarkable good health, he’s getting lonely and depressed — even suicidal. But there are two different groups determined to keep him alive.

Witches of East End

by Melissa de la Cruz (Hyperion, June 21)

Best known for her mega-selling teen series “Blue Bloods,” de la Cruz brings us a trio of witches, the Beauchamps — a mom and two daughters living on the tip of Long Island, who, until now, have long suppressed their witchy ways. It’s as if Samantha Stevens has joined forces with “The Witches of Eastwick” and the gals from “Charmed.”

The Blow-off

by Jim Knipfel (Simon & Schuster, July 12)

Forget the Loch Ness monster. There’s a beast lurking by the Gowanus Canal, and he may be responsible for a crime wave. At least that’s how crime reporter Hank Kalabander tells it in this fun novel. He pens the crime-blotter column for the weekly Brooklyn Hornet, a pennysaver. Tongue-in-cheek, he blames a large hairy monster for a mugging near the canal. Then, when a local tabloid implicates the “Gowanus Beast” in two more crimes, every incident in the city is lain at his big, fictional feet.

GIRL POWER

Then Came You

by Jennifer Weiner (Atria, July 12)

Jennifer (“In Her Shoes”) Weiner offers an unusual take on family dynamics. Princeton senior Jules Wildgren, on a full scholarship, plans to cash in by donating her “Ivy League” eggs. Working-class mother-of-two Annie Barrow hopes to make some money as a surrogate. India Bishop, 43, marries a rich older man, and when she can’t get pregnant, she gets help from the other two. But when her husband drops dead, his 23-year-old daughter is named guardian of the unborn child.

Groundswell: A Novel

by Katie Lee (Gallery, June 21)

TV food personality, cookbook writer, ex-Mrs. Billy Joel — and now, novelist. So, what does she write about? College dropout Emma Guthrie, a low-level film flunkie. But after a visit to the trailer of movie star Garrett Walker, she’s well on her way to becoming his wife. It’s a swirl of red-carpet openings, Birkin bags and charity bashes. Until Emma finds an incriminating text on her husband’s phone the night of the Met Costume Institute gala. Don’t you hate when that happens?

Sisterhood Everlasting

by Ann Brashares (Random House, June 14 )

Those traveling pants are gone, but the four girls who shared them in the original “Sisterhood” are all grown up (in their late 20s) and getting ready for a reunion! Carmen is an actress in New York, Lena teaches art in Rhode Island, Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend Eric in San Francisco. They miss each other, so when Tibby sends them all plane tickets, they can’t wait to get together.

Untold Story

by Monica Ali (Scribner, June 28)

A few years back, Philip Roth wrote an acclaimed novel, “The Plot Against America,” imagining that pro-German Charles Lindbergh defeated FDR in the 1940 election. Now, Monica Ali has created a new alternate reality, in which Princess Diana did not die in a car crash in the Paris tunnel — she would have turned 50 this July. Believing she’s targeted for assassination by the establishment, Ali’s princess stages her own death and begins a new life, in a small Midwestern American town where “Lydia” works in an animal shelter and makes a small circle of friends. Unfortunately for her, an old paparazzo turns up — and she fears he may recognize her despite her surgically changed looks.

Summer Rental

by Mary Kay Andrews (St. Martin’s, June 7)

Men get to have midlife crises. Why not women, suggests novelist Andrews. Her 30-something women are Ellis, Julia and Dorie, pals since Catholic grade school. Ellis has just lost her job. Julie is too insecure about everything. And Dorie has been betrayed by the love of her life. Nothing a month together in a beach-house rental in North Carolina’s Outer Banks can’t cure, right? Throw in landlord Ty Bazemore and add another woman who needs a respite to the group, and find out what happens.

MEMOIRS

Season to Taste

How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way

by Molly Birnbaum (Ecco, June 21)

Birnbaum dreamed of becoming a chef. She was about to begin classes at the Culinary Institute of America when she was hit by a car. Her skull was fractured, pelvis broken, knee shredded. But perhaps worst of all, her sense of smell was gone. Determined, she sets out to learn about her condition — seeking out experts like Oliver Sacks, visiting a New Jersey flavor lab, even enrolling in a perfume school in the South of France.

Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far

by Bristol Palin and Nancy French (William Morrow, June 24)

Let’s see. At 20, Bristol Palin has already campaigned for vice president for her mother, become a single mother and an ambassador for abstinence, nearly pulled off an upset on “Dancing with the Stars,” bought a house in Arizona and had plastic surgery. What else do you need for a memoir?

“There Are Things I Want You to Know” About Stieg Larsson and Me

by Eva Gabrielsson (Seven Stories, June 21)

The fascination with the late Stieg Larsson continues, with his girlfriend/partner of 32 years weighing in with her own story about the author of the Millennium series. She writes that Larsson did leave 200 pages of a manuscript for a fourth book about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. She also writes, “I can simply say that we often wrote together.” Gabrielsson is embroiled in a legal feud with Larssons’ family over the rights to his work.

Starting Over

by La Toya Jackson and Jeffré Phillips (Gallery, June 21)

La Toya was the first of Michael Jackson’s eight siblings to reach the hospital the day he died. And she was the one who demanded a second autopsy. Here, she’ll reveal what went on behind the scenes. We can’t wait for what the publisher calls “an account sure to send shockwaves around the globe” in which La Toya “sheds new light on the dynamics of the Jackson family . . .”

The Way of Baseball

by Shawn Green (Simon & Schuster, June 7)

Met fans may recall Shawn Green’s days at Shea with a frown, but when it comes to writing about baseball, he’s an all-star. With a thoughtful and introspective look at the game, Green thinks outside the batter’s box. Making his way around the bases becomes “a journey.” His is a Zen journey, reflected even in the book’s cover, which mimics the great book about baseball in Japan, “You Gotta Have Wa.”

A Stolen Life

by Jaycee Dugard (Simon & Schuster, July 12)

In one of the most horrifying kidnap cases in recent memory, 11-year-old Dugard was snatched from a California street on her way to school. She was held captive for 18 years. Repeatedly raped, she gave birth to two children by her monster kidnapper. Last week, Phillip Garrido was sentenced to life, and his wife 36 years to life. This is Dugard’s chilling but ultimately redemptive story. She gets the final word while they rot in prison.

TRUE LIFE

Sex on the Moon

The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History

by Ben Mezrich (Doubleday, July 12)

Mezrich, whose “The Accidental Billionaires” was adapted for “The Social Network,” is back with another real-life adventure. NASA’s Thad Roberts, a romantic, wanted to do something special for his girlfriend — give her a piece of the moon; priceless rocks astronauts brought back from the lunar surface. Breaking into NASA’s elaborate security system to swipe the rocks is a thrill ride you can imagine Danny Ocean engineering.

Bowie: Starman

by Paul Trynka (Little, Brown, July 18)

With more than 300 interviews of Bowie intimates, acquaintances, fellow artists, schoolmates and more, the former editor of Mojo magazine looks at Bowie’s many re-inventions, his influence on other musicians and his personal life.