Tired of politics dominating the public spotlight? Feel like lying in a lounge chair and burying your head in a steamy romance?

The good news is that the biggest book of the summer should have enough sizzling sex to meet your requirement.

The bad news is that it's all about politics.

Bill Clinton's much-anticipated memoir, My Life, is due out June 22. And if you think his wife, Hillary, made a splash last summer with her mega-seller Living History, Bill's book will be more like a tidal wave, according to all indications.

Bought by Knopf for a record-breaking $10 million ($2 million more than Hillary's contract with Simon & Schuster), the book will undergo a massive first printing of 1.5 million copies, the largest initial print run in the company's history.

With so much invested, expect to see Clinton on every talk show from here to Bangladesh.

So what will he have to say about a certain blue dress? Not much we haven't heard already, if early rumors can be believed. One editor recently told Vanity Fair the prose "veers too often into trademark blame and self-justification."

But at least there'll be a lot of it: The book is reported to be around 900 pages.

If that's likely to be the biggest fish in this summer's sea of books, there's an ocean of others to meet all tastes.

Here's a rundown: JUNE

• One of the most anticipated books of the summer is David Sedaris' new collection of humorous essays, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Little, Brown, $24.95). Sedaris' previous book, released four years ago, spent 73 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list, so look for another solid run on the charts this time.

• Likewise for Helen Fielding's new novel, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination (Viking, $24.95). The author of the hugely popular Bridget Jones's Diary is bound to attract readers with this catchy title - even if Olivia has no relation to Fielding's previous hapless heroine.

• Also of note, Peter Mayle - the man who took us to Provence for one year - brings us his novel, A Good Year (Alfred A. Knopf, $24), the story of a failing London banker who moves to, you guessed it, Provence after inheriting a vineyard.

• If Mayle's book is bound to be a breezy read, expect more complicated fictional fare in David Foster Wallace's new story collection Oblivion (Little, Brown, $25.95). In his first release in five years, Wallace "conjoins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite convolutions of self-consciousness," according to Little Brown. We have one word: Huh?

Other books of note in June: The Great Divide: The Rocky Mountains in the American Mind,(WW. Norton, $24.95) by award-winning nature writer Gary Ferguson; Resistance (Alfred A. Knopf, $18), a new novel from National Book Award winner Barry Lopez; The Mother Knot (Random House, $19.95), a memoir from Kathryn Harrison; and Obliviously On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme (Random House, $12.95), a slim volume of poems from Calvin Trillin.

And let's not forget the blockbuster names in suspense: Lisa Scottoline offers Killer Smile (HarperCollins, $25.95), and James Lee Burke brings us In the Moon of Red Ponies (Simon & Schuster, $24.95). JULY

• Fans of Carl Hiaasen will be salivating for his new novel, Skinny Dip (Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95), the story of Chaz Perrone ("the only marine scientist in the world who doesn't know which way the Gulf Stream runs") who has begun doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the Everglades.

• Suspense guru Jeffery Deaver offers more serious fare with Garden of Beasts (Simon & Schuster, $24.95), set in 1936 Berlin. And Ward Just brings readers his trademark mix of intrigue and social history with An Unfinished Season (Houghton Mifflin, $24), a story of politics, business, family and love in 1950s Chicago.

• Finally, Alice Hoffman pens Blackbird House (Doubleday, $19.95). The story was inspired by Hoffman's summer cottage, which was reportedly haunted, on the outermost reaches of Cape Cod. According to press material, Hoffman "re-imagines more than a dozen of the house's previous inhabitants and how love transformed them." AUGUST

• As the season winds down, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler brings us A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain (Grove Press, $23). Butler creates fully imagined stories based on real messages from the backs of postcards written from the early 20th century that he's collected throughout the years.

No doubt there's more to come.

But first, there's Bill.

There'll be no escaping the hype - not even in Bangladesh.

Patti Thorn, books editor

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