(Giga-light)
Sparkle Life
By Kara Lindstrom
Three women, their lives split between New York and L.A., are ascending from pampered hipness to true adulthood—which here means the dubious rewards of Hollywood as well as that storied quest for the ideal husband. It’s high-IQ chick lit.

(Mega-light)
Anybody Out There?
By Marian Keyes
Keyes also breathes new life into chick lit—no small feat considering that this is her eighth in the pastel-colored genre. In the story of Anna Walsh, a New York PR princess whose breezy life is derailed by a gruesome accident, Keyes cuts down on the froth but leaves the fun and romance intact.

(Super-light)
Learning to Kill
By Ed McBain
The 25 lightning-paced stories collected here cover the apprenticeship of the late, great crime writer. Written before 1957, each tale anticipates McBain’s wildly successful “87th Precinct” novels in a different way.

(Very Light)
The Foreign Correspondent
By Alan Furst
Summer’s best spy novel follows an unusual double agent: a journalist. In 1938, Reuters stringer Carlo Weisz comes to Paris to replace the murdered editor of an Italian resistance paper. An exhilarating read.

(Light-ish)
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
By Charles J. Shields
An impressively unauthorized biography of the famously reclusive author: Ever wonder how much she helped on Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood? (A whole lot.) Or why she never wrote another book? (Fame doesn’t become her.)

Summer Stuff for Last-Minute Planners, Students, Workaholics, and the Jitney-Averse
• Agendas for Hipsters and More
• How to Pretend You’re In Brazil
• Ten Thermometer-Tested Cool Escapes
• The Best Summer Reading
• Ten Great Nano-Vacations
• Rent a Summer Place After All

Related:

• Archive: “Features”
• Articles by Boris Kachka
• Table of Contents: Jul 10, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!