Also in Your Beach Bag
Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (Knopf)
Going the Philip Roth route, Ellis is the seriously flawed narrator in his new novel.
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf)
A resourceful Texas hunter flees rival drug gangs in a spare, exhilarating adventure.
Until I Find You, by John Irving (Random House)
The Garp-like son of a quirky tattoo-artist mother becomes a Hollywood actor but still feels lost.

Gossip Hound
Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion, by Jennifer Saginor (HarperEntertainment)
A trashy beach read with soul, this tale of growing up in the Playboy Mansion is packed full of the kind of deplorable depravity you can’t tear your eyes away from. Courtesy of her father’s status as Hugh Hefner’s—and, by extension, all of L.A.’s—Doctor Feel Good, Jennifer Saginor had her own bedroom in the mansion. Her first exposure to sex, at age 6, was the sight of John Belushi having his way with a Playmate in a secret grotto—enough to scar anyone for life. From there, she graduated to high-school partying, a tragic love affair with Hefner’s girlfriend, and a twisted role as her father’s wingman. Dad is a monstrous figure (Hef, on the other hand, is curiously benevolent), and the heart of the story is Saginor’s pain at being abandoned. But the therapy-speak is leavened by an appealingly tough side: The mansion messed her up, but it’s also where she felt most at home, and the book serves as a 25-year history of a quintessentially American fantasyland.

Also in Your Beach Bag
The Perfect Manhattan, by Leanne Shear and Tracey Toomey (Broadway Books)
Class warfare with a twist: the chick-lit-ized confessions of two Hamptons bartenders.
Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs & Classical Music, by Blair Tindall (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Who knew oboists could be so bitter and so lusty?
Bliss: A Novel, by Danyel Smith (Crown)
A diva’s-eye view of the music industry from the former editor-in-chief of Vibe.

Illustrations by James Taylor.

Related:

• Archive: “Features”
• Table of Contents: Jul 4, 2005 issue of New York | Subscribe!