If you ask us, running around frantically under a hot sun is for the birds.

Take a breather, find some shade. Then slip away from the daily grind and make a great escape - into the imagination of a skilled writer.

Today we offer our annual guide to summer reading. Inside, you'll find a preview of the notable books coming out over the summer months, including this season's blockbuster, Bill Clinton's memoir, My Life.

In addition, critics and local celebrities offer their favorite titles of recent months - high-profile books that have enjoyed their share of press, and quieter titles that you might have missed.

In other words, there's something for everyone in these pages. For a bookworm's bonanza, read on.

Some of our reviewers' favorites:

Fiction

Antonio's Wife

by Jacqueline Dejohn (Harper/Collins, $24.95).

• Plot in a nutshell: This historical novel follows two women: operatic diva Francesca Frascatti, who travels from Italy to America in search of the daughter she gave up years earlier; and Mina, a poor seamstress working for the diva. Love, hate, lust, intrigue and vengeance erupt in grand operatic style as Frascatti continues her search.

•Best reason to read: Enough reality to involve readers, but enough swashbuckling action to entertain.

•Type of read: Moderately serious.

Joan Hinkemeyer

Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z

by Debra Weinstein (Random House, $23.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: When undergraduate Annabelle finds herself assisting her favorite poet, the mysterious Z, she can hardly believe her good fortune. But as fate will have it, working for this world-famous poet exposes Annabelle to the least glamorous side of the academic poetry world. Still, she hones her own craft and in the end gets revenge in this roman-a-clef.

•Best reason to read: Weinstein captures perfectly the reality of research assistants who labor long hours for little reward. For all its cynicism, the novel evokes much laughter. It's brain candy for aspiring poets everywhere.

•Type of read: Light

Geoffrey Bateman

Bad Men

by John Connelly (Atria Books, $25).

•Plot in a nutshell:The island of Sanctuary off the coast of Maine has provided just what its name implies - until a young, single mother arrives attempting to escape a truly villainous spouse. Approaching evil awakens a long dormant need on this storm-swept island for retribution of centuries-old murders.

•Best reason to read: Irishman Connolly has a sharper and keener view of the gothic aspects of isolated Maine than native son Stephen King, and he manages to tell a gripping story without resorting to King's marketing tricks. As frightening as this tale is, it has more to offer as a morality play for those willing to dig a little deeper.

•Type of read: Light

The Book of Flying

by Keith Miller (Riverhead Books, $23.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: Librarian Pico is the only person able to read in the City by the Sea. The orphaned son of a winged couple, he was born wingless and, thus, is forced to live in the city, while others, including the love of his life, soar in the clouds. Pico sets out on a life-threatening odyssey to Morning Town, where he hopes to read the fabled Book of Flying and earn his wings.•Best reason to read: For its adult fantasy - Through the Looking Glass meets Arabian Nights - perfect to read in a hammock, drifting off every now and again to dream about Pico's quest. •Type of read: Light

Ed Halloran

The Burglar on the Prowl

by Lawrence Block (Morrow, $24.95).

• Plot in a nutshell: Lovable second-story man and bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr is breaking and entering again, but his victims always deserve what they get. In this caper, Bernie targets a Bronxville plastic surgeon who stole his pal's gal. But before he can grab the cash the doctor is reputed to keep on hand, a little impulsive burgling sets off a hilarious series of coincidences.

• Best reason to read: To tour Manhattan's bars with Bernie and friends

•Type of read: Light

Jane Dickinson

Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather

by Gao Xingjian (HarperCollins, $17.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: A slim collection by Nobel Prize winner Gao, who mourns the damages wrought by the Chinese Cultural Revolution in stories that experiment with language and form.

•Best reason to read: Readers who prefer tightly focused plots may lose their patience with Gao's work, but the elegant simplicity of his meditations on memory, loss, and love ache beautifully with a melancholic desire to understand the past. Immensely rewarding and enriching.

Type of read: Serious

Geoffrey Bateman

Cadillac Beach

by Tim Dorsey (William Morrow, $24.95) .

•Plot in a nutshell: Florida's most famous fictional manic-depressive serial killer Serge A. Storms is back - this time researching his grandfather's role in a decades-old jewel theft. Serge's historical searching puts him in the path of the feds, the mob, assassins, and obnoxious telemarketers. •Best reason to read: There isn't a book out this season that can bring more fun to the beach.

•Type of read: Light - as in pie-in-the-face obnoxious!

Peter Mergendahl

Dead Pawn

by Richard Peck (University of New Mexico Press, $24.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: Set up to take the fall for construction fraud he didn't commit, Albuquerque builder Bob Wince is just out of prison and ready to start life again. He sets out to renovate an Old Town adobe and help Navajo friends sell a lovely collection of dead pawn (heirlooms of silver and turquoise whose age and provenance give them great value). Events seem to conspire against him, but Wince and friends hang tough and give readers something to crow about.

•Best reason to read: For a side of Albuquerque tourists never view.

•Type of read: Light

Jane Dickinson

Death of a Poison Pen

by M.C. Beaton (Warner Books, $23.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: In the misty Highlands of Scotland, lanky red-haired Constable Hamish Macbeth works to discover the author of the poison pen letters that have frightened the villagers of tiny Lochdubh so badly that murder results.

•Best reason to read: For its lovely local color, well-drawn, lively cast of characters, delicious snippets of humor and satisfying ending.

•Type of read: Light

Joan Hinkemeyer

The Dew Breaker

by Edwidge Danticat (Alfred A. Knopf, $22).

•Plot in a nutshell: The daughter of Haitian immigrants learns that her father was employed by a prison in Haiti as a torturer or "dew breaker." In careful prose rife with melancholy beauty, Danticat introduces us to several of the dew breaker's former victims.

•Best reason to read:Danticat sets her novels and stories amid fraught times, without once losing focus on her characters.

•Type of read: Serious

Jenny Shank

Eventide

by Kent Haruf (Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95).

• Plot in a nutshell: A continuation of the story Haruf began in his bestseller Plainsong, Eventide explores the intersecting lives of townspeople of fictional Holt, Colo., including: the elderly, laconic ranchers Harold and Raymond McPheron; social worker Rose Tyler; the repellent Wallace family that lives in a fetid trailer; and orphaned 11-year-old D.J. Kephart, who forges a friendship with neighbor girls when their mother psychologically disintegrates after her husband leaves.

•Best reason to read: For its bountiful pleasures, including Haruf's flawless high-plains-folk dialogue, several surprising plot twists, and the absorbing atmosphere of the town of Holt.

•Type of read: Serious

Jenny Shank

The Facts of Life

by Graham Joyce (Astria, $24).

•Plot in a nutshell: In post-World War II England, young Cassie Vine is impregnated by a U.S. GI and gives birth to son Frank. Since Cassie is given to "blue" periods and has a tendency to wander for days at a time, Frank is raised mostly by his grandmother and Cassie's six sisters - no ordinary group. Some of them can speak to the dead and foretell the future. What's more, Frank's dead grandfather's spirit frequents the house, and Frank, it seems, is the most gifted of all.

•Best reason to read: Joyce won the 2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for this story. He seamlessly weaves the supernatural with the mundane in this novel of love, loyalty and the far-reaching effects of war.

•Type of read: Moderately serious

Mark Graham

Holy Fools

by Joanne Harris (William Morrow, $24.95).

• Plot in a nutshell: Set in 17th century France, the novel revolves around Juliette, a gypsy tightrope walker, and her villainous lover, Guy LeMerle. LeMerle wreaks havoc by masquerading as a priest and manipulating the religious zealotry of the Catholic Church as Juliette attempts to stop him.

•Best reason to read: For its old-fashioned revenge and redemption story, punctuated with superstition and high drama.

• Type of read: Moderately serious

Ashley Simpson Shires

Ironfire

by David Ball (Delacorte, $24.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: Pirates separate a Maltese boy and his sister when they capture and enslave the boy. Ball independently traces their lives, as the European and Muslim worlds battle each other for supremacy.

•Best reason to read: For its combination of swashbuckling action, historical significance and timely insights. Fantastic characters and vivid descriptions add even more spice.

•Type of read: Moderately serious

Eric J. Blommel

The Laying on of Hands

by Brenda Rhodes Miller (Harlem Moon, $19.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: A black woman living in rural Mississippi at the turn of the century looks back on her life and her gift of "laying on hands," and tries to understand why she was often unable to heal those she loved most.

•Best reason to read: For the same reason one listens to and loves gut-bucket, Deep South blues music - this is a tale that brings all the lushness, warmth and true heart of the South immediately and powerfully to anyone who reads it.

• Type of read: Moderately serious

Cathie Beck

The Lucky Ones

by Rachel Cusk (Fourth Estate, $24.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: A story of parenthood and marriage told through the lens of five disparate lives: a young incarcerated mother about to give birth; a new father whose ski vacation is clouded by worries of his new life at home; an unnamed narrator who longs to find a place for herself as a stepmother; a society woman in her 60s who prefers proper appearances to truth; and another young mother who watches her marriage turn sour but who loves her two young sons desperately. •Best reason to read: For its quiet, refreshing reverence for the ordinariness of life, particularly motherhood.

•Type of read: Moderately serious

Jennie A. Camp

Odd Thomas

by Dean Koontz (Bantam, $26.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: Odd has the ability to prophesy and change future events, and to see and communicate with ghosts. After finding the killer of a local girl, Odd attempts to prevent a psychopath from wiping out most of a small desert town.

•Best reason to read: In a rare first-person narrative, Koontz has written his best novel in years. Like sitting in the audience of a well-produced melodrama, readers will find themselves hard-pressed not to cheer aloud for the hero and boo the villain.

•Type of read: Light.

Mark Graham

The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Penguin, $24.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: A boy coming of age in Barcelona is initiated into a secret by his father. The secret involves a book that transforms his life, as he must solve a mystery posed by it.

•Best reason to read: The hypnotic blurring of the line between fiction and reality, as well as the post World War II setting, create a compelling atmosphere - and readers will feel as if they can reach out and touch the lively and lovable characters.

•Type of read: Moderately serious

Eric J. Blommel

Sweet Land Stories

by E.L. Doctorow (Random House, $22.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: Five new stories from a major American writer, including the masterpiece "A House on the Plains," the story of a teen-age boy who's a junior partner in his mother's crafty conning of a single, moneyed, Midwestern man.

•Best reason to read: Doctorow moves his pen across these stories with a master's touch, and they become both original and deeply affecting. In each case, they surprise with unexpected turns that bring us back to a familiar place, always viewed from a different angle.

•Type of read: Serious

Mary J. Elkins

True North

by Jim Harrison (Grove, $24).

•Plot in a nutshell: David Burkett struggles with the source of his family's wealth - destructive logging and mining in Michigan's Upper Peninsula - while battling the legacy of his father's crime that drives the story to a mythic, fateful ending in Mexico.

•Best reason to read: For its mix of profound, bawdy, spiritual and humorous events. While Harrison's big themes here are environmental destruction and greed, he also explores the wonders of the natural world, travel, the United States' heavy history and, as the main character paraphrases a forgotten philosopher, "the miracle that life exists at all."

•Type of read: Serious (but funny, too)

Tyler D. Johnson

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

by Louise Murphy (Penguin, $13).

•Plot in a nutshell: Near the end of the Nazi occupation of Poland in 1943, two Jewish children re-named Hansel and Gretel for their safety are abandoned in a dense forest. They are rescued by an old Polish woman who is determined to save the children from the suspicious Nazi officer in the village.

•Best reason to read: This powerful tale of kindness and survival poignantly depicts the all-pervasive fear of war and its effects on children and their families.

•Type of read: Serious

Joan Hinkemeyer

What Happened to Henry

by Sharon Pywell (Putnam, $19.95).

•Plot in a nutshell: Cold War America serves as backdrop for a moving and witty tale of a family grappling with a son who is either blessed or crazy - not unlike the political climate in which they live.

•Best reason to read: For its lively voice and the devilishly good time the author has poking fun at Catholicism.

•Type of read: Moderately light

Cathie Beck

The Winemaker's Daughter

by Timothy Egan (Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95).

• Plot in a nutshell: Brunella Cartolano is a passionate Seattle architect fighting to save the city's dying independent fishing fleet as well as her father's hard-won winery. When her brother is killed fighting a forest fire near the family winery and an investigation ensues to determine who is at fault for the deaths of the firefighters under his command, Brunella finds herself embroiled in an ever more complicated battle for water rights and land ownership. •Best reason to read: The novel is a fast-paced page-turner that manages to avoid the trite and, instead, embrace truthful contemporary issues in the American West.

•Type of read: Moderately serious

Jennie A. Camp

Nonfiction

Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow (Penguin $35).

•Book in a nutshell: The biography of an unlikely statesman: a child born in 1755 into hardscrabble poverty who grew up to become George Washington's treasury secretary and to pen the Federalist papers, which helped pave the way for the U.S. Constitution.

•Best reason to read: Chernow brings Hamilton to full and varied life — all while providing a richly textured picture of the America that was emerging from the turmoil of the Revolutionary War.

•Type of read: Serious

Duane Davis

The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession

by Mark Obmascik (Free Press, $25).

•Book in a nutshell: Three men ditch their everyday lives to participate in one of the quirkiest competitions on Earth: spotting the most species of birds over the course of a single year.

•Best reason to read: The Big Year is just big fun. Plus, it lets us dream of ditching our everyday lives for a year.

•Type of read: Light

Karen Algeo Krizman

Blinded by the Sunlight

by Matthew McAllester (HarperCollins, $25.95).

•Book in a nutshell: Newsday reporter Matthew McAllester gives a chilling account of the opening campaign of the U.S./Iraqi war and the eight days of imprisonment he and several other journalists suffered in Abu Ghraib — Iraq's biggest and most feared prison (and now the setting of American abuses, as well).

•Best reason to read Sitting in the cross hairs, McAllester offers a view of the war, the Iraqi people and the workings of the Iraqi secret service and its interrogation methods that's impossible to get on the nightly news.

• Type of read: Serious

Laurence Washington

Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000

by Martin Torgoff (Simon & Schuster, $27.95).

•Book in a nutshell: Torgoff attempts the near impossible: a one-volume cultural, social, and legal history of drug use in America from just after World War II to current times. It's a fascinating, if tangled, narrative that includes a well-known cast of characters: Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Jerry Garcia, Timothy Leary, Charles Manson, Oliver Stone, Terrence McKenna and many others.

•Best reason to read: This book is as addictive as its subject matter, and even when the story turns dark and harrowing, Torgoff doesn't flinch.

•Type of read: Moderately serious

Duane Davis

The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

by James Traub (Random House, $25.95).

•Book in a nutshell: Times Square's history, warts and all, from the days of Diamond Jim Brady to the present, is carefully chronicled by a man who knows New York City inside out.

•Best reason to read: For Traub's first-rate writing and the fun of Times Square.

•Type of read: Light

Ed Halloran

Fault Line

by Laurie Alberts (University of Nebraska Press, $21.95).

•Book in a nutshell: When the former love of her life is found dead on the Wyoming prairie, the author enters into a brutally candid investigation of their deeply flawed relationship, asking what role she played in his alcoholic death.

•Best reason to read: Alberts writes with the language skills of a poet, and her insights into herself are vivid, original, and fierce. Her brave memoir shows how even the darkest story can be redeemed through its own artful telling. •Type of read: Serious

Len Edgerly

Flyboys

by James Bradley (Little Brown, $25.95).

•Book in a nutshell: The story of a group of World War II pilots, tied into a much broader context of the history of U.S.-Japan relations.

•Best reason to read: While some history, particularly that concerning World War II, is sloppy, rehashed and devolves into jingoism, Bradley isn't afraid to reveal the hypocrisy that one often finds in wartime. In addition, George H.W. Bush is one of the pilots whose story here represents a microcosm of the war in the Pacific.

•Type of read: Serious

Dan Danbom

Goat

by Brad Land (Random House, $22.95).

•Book in a nutshell: Land's memoir recounts the brutal hazing he endured pledging a fraternity at Clemson University in South Carolina.

•Best reason to read: For Land's mesmerizing prose, which achingly reveals his vulnerability and never lets you forget that the frat hijinks he describes are nothing short of savagery.

•Type of read: Serious

Patti Thorn

Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media...

by John Stossel (HarperCollins, $24.95).

•Book in a nutshell: The story of a stuttering-nerd-turned-crusading-reporter-turned-outcast-of-the-liberal-media, Stossel's book recounts much of his life , including his work challenging many of the assumptions on which mainstream media relies.

•Best reason to read: To learn the inner workings of network news (hint: never underestimate the power of a breast angle in a story). Also, to learn about how Libertarians think from a guy who is so Libertarian that he hates being called a Libertarian.

•Type of read: Some serious topics, but a light treatment

Scott C. Yates

Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies

by David L. Robb and Jonathan Turley (Prometheus Books, $28).

•Book in a nutshell: Gaining the Pentagon's cooperation for use of its military equipment and personnel in a movie often means compromising the integrity of a filmmaker's vision. Through candid letters, interviews and anecdotes from Hollywood icons, authors Robb and Turley examine the issue.

•Best reason to read: For its behind-the-scenes revelations into moviemaking and governmental influence.

•Type of read: Light

Laurence Washington

Rats

By Robert Sullivan (Bloomsbury, $23.95).

•Book in a nutshell: After picking out a dirty downtown Manhattan alley, Sullivan spent a full year studying the rats that inhabited it. The result is an up-close look at these reviled rodents stuffed with entertaining rat trivia, including the fact that they take six seconds to drink a thimble-size puddle of water and love noshing on chicken pot pie.

•Best reason to read: Sullivan takes what is normally an unpleasant topic and makes it intriguing, with plenty of fun factoids and amusing anecdotes.

•Type of read: Moderately serious

Kim Castleberry

Scribbling the Cat

by Alexandra Fuller (Penguin, $24.95).

•Book in a nutshell: A Wyoming writer returns to her childhood home in Zambia, where she befriends a troubled Rhodesian War veteran. The two take a road trip to Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique, the battlefields of his past where he recalls the horrors of war.

•Best reason to read: Fuller, author of the best-selling memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dog's Tonight, is at her prosaic best here. And the message she delivers about the evils of war packs a memorable punch.

•Type of read: Serious

Karen Algeo Krizman

Swimming to Antarctica

by Lynne Cox (Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95).

•Book in a nutshell: This amazing autobiography offers the experience of distance swimming like you've never seen it before, as Cox traverses nearly impassable bodies of water around the world, battling tides, sea life, ice-cold water and glaciers. Risking shattered teeth and eardrums, hypothermia and even death, Cox perseveres to fulfill deep emotional and spiritual needs.

•Best reason to read: For its remarkable, almost mystical view of the swimming experience, as well as for the adventure aspects.

•Type of read: Moderately serious subject, entertainingly written

Verna Noel Jones

These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory

by Thomas A. Desjardin (Da Capo, $26).

•Book in a nutshell: The story of how the self-promoting, blame-avoiding and memory-impaired of yesteryear created the myths of the great Civil War battle.

•Best reason to read: Besides telling a fascinating story about how Gettysburg became more than just another Civil War battle, Desjardin offers fascinating insights into how we make history.

•Type of read: Serious

Dan Danbom

The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw

by Michael Sokolove (Simon & Schuster, $24.95)

•Book in a nutshell: Today, Strawberry is considered one of the best players in the history of the game, but most of the players on his high school team thought of him as only second- or third-best. Sokolove follows every member of this team — considered one of the best high school teams in history — detailing the role the game played in their lives. (Includes a great story of the now-historic game against a high school pitcher named John Elway.) •Best reason to read: This book is simply journalism at its best: illuminating a topic so well that readers have a deeper understanding of the players, and of baseball, as well.

•Type of read: Moderately serious

Scott C. Yates

When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School

by Sam Kashner (HarperCollins, $25.95).

•Book in a nutshell: From his first hilarious meeting in 1976 with Allen Ginsberg (who greets Kashner wearing nothing but boxer shorts), to his graduation three years later, Kashner recounts his time at the newly established Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute.

•Best reason to read: For its funny, gossipy, over-the-back-fence airing of Beat poet laundry.

•Type of read: Light

Duane Davis

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