1. Chasing Harry Winston
by Lauren Weisberger
(Simon & Schuster, May 27)
“The Devil Wears Prada” writer drops another brand name into her new New York story. The cast includes pals Emmy, whose boyfriend just left her for his young personal trainer; rising publishing star Leigh, who finds her perfect life isn’t; and Adriana, a Brazilian supermodel’s daughter. All are approaching 30 and having trouble dealing with it. Start casting the film parts now.
2. The Summer of Naked Swim Parties
by Jessica Anya Blau
(Harper Perennial, May 27)
Blau has written about what she knows, basing her debut on her own family. It’s a coming of age story for 14-year-old Jamie in 1970s Southern California at the height of its excesses, where she deals with her pot-smoking mom and clay pot-spinning dad. If nothing else, we love this one for its title (yes, her parents threw such parties).
3. Summer Blowout
by Claire Cook
(Voice/Hyperion, June 3)
The “Must Love Dogs” author opens her new book with the tease from heroine Bella, “Lipstick is my drug of choice.” With her stepsibling-heavy Irish family, she runs a string of Italian salons in Massachusetts. The family is so close, one younger sister snatches Bella’s husband. And when the whole family gathers in Atlanta for a wedding, it’s chaos and laughs.
4. Queen of Babble Gets Hitched
by Meg Cabot
(William Morrow, June 24)
In No. 3 of Cabot’s “Babble” series, wedding gown restorer Lizzie Nichols readies herself for the “Wedding of the Century” – her own, in the South of France. But the dream nuptials, of course, are anything but smooth, thanks in part to a best man and maid of honor, who are anything but supportive of Lizzie and Jean-Luc’s marriage.
5. Whacked
by Jules Asner
(Weinstein Books, June 3)
E! personality and wife of Steven Soderbergh sets her chuckle-inducing chick-lit tome in Tinseltown, where Dani Hale writes for TV crime series “Flesh and Bone.” On discovering her director-boyfriend is cheating, she uses her investigative-reporter skills on him. Best of all, Asner gets a blurb from Guilty Pleasure Queen Jackie Collins.
6. Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill
by N.M. Kelby
(Shaye Areheart Books, June 3)
A Hiaasen-esque mystery in Florida, where a couple of deaths at a retirement community are anything but natural. Mix in a campy slasher film actress, Barry Manilow impersonator and his pet pooch Mandy and a Baptist-turned-Buddhist blues singer and you get a perfect beach read.
7. Breaking Dawn
by Stephenie Meyer
(Little, Brown, Aug. 2)
Will teen blood-sucker (in a good way) Edward sacrifice his love for beautiful Bella by refusing to make her a vampire so she can look the same age as him – forever? Or will he give in to her desire to join his world? And what of werewolf Joseph, who also loves Bella? Find out in the fourth and final book of Meyer’s best-selling “Twilight” saga.
8. This Year’s Model
by Carol Alt
(Avon, Aug. 26)
Supermodel Carol Alt takes us inside the wild and sometime brutal world of her profession with her first novel – a roman a clef starring Melody Ann Croft, an 18-year-old waitress at Morristown, NJ’s Porter House restaurant where a fashion-photographer diner leaves his card.
9. Devil May Care: The New James Bond Novel
by Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming
(Doubleday, May 28)
Ian Fleming’s estate commissioned the Brit author to mark the centenary of Fleming’s birth. Of Bond, in the new Cold War thriller, Faulks says: “He has been through a lot of bad things. He is slightly more vulnerable than any previous Bond but at the same time he is both gallant and highly sexed.” Hmm, sounds a little like the same old Bond is us.
10. Tan Lines
by J.J. Salem
(St. Martin’s, July 8)
Sex, scandal, murder and the Hamptons. Add a trio of beauties: Liza, a 21st-century Gloria Steinem; actress/mistress Kellyanne; and self-destructive indie rock goddess Billie, and you got yourself a timeshare.