When I saw the title of Liz Tuccillo's novel, How to Be Single, I scoffed. "Yeah, right," I thought; I sneered! "As if anyone has perfected that or if being single even needs to be perfected." I assumed the book was a self-help guide, so I don't even know why I picked it up.

No, wait. I remember. The cover reminded me of a 30 Rock episode, the one in which Jack puts the fear of choking to death alone in her spinster apartment in Liz Lemon. That's why I picked up the book, opened it to a page at random, and read "Ruby thought about all the men she thought she was in love with, with whom she had fantastic sex, and with whom it didn't work out. They all meant nothing to her now. Serena was right. It is an illusion."

Still thinking this was a self-help guide, I thought with some embarrassment, "This book is for me." Divorced and statistically-more-prone-to-being-killed-in-a-terrorist -attack-in-New-York-City-(even though, heh, I live in California)-than-to-get-married me.

And even though it isn't a self-help book -- I mean, thank goodness it isn't -- I had a hard time remembering it was a NOVEL; it read more like a memoir -- an hilarious, painful, sharp truth, slap in the face, wonderful perfect story.

Julie is the hub for her friends Ruby, Serena, Alice, and Georgia. They are all smart, attractive, funny, single women in their late thirties (Georgia is divorced with two small children). When the five of them get together for a girls' night out (more like "man-hunting" (tip: go to a steak restaurant; avoid sports bars)) so that the newly-single Georgia can get her date on, an Incident sparks Julie's interest in finding out how single women around the world regard their single status, men, relationship, and love.

There are two important lessons for women especially to take from this informal survey which covers France, Brazil, Bali, China, India, Iceland, and, of course, New York. Julie realizes one, the one lesson she'd tried to resist -- and when she has her epiphany, I burst out laughing and crying at the same time, just like a woman. Thank goodness I wasn't at the gym.

The second important lesson, the one that Julie talks about but doesn't stress, is this: Women, have your pride.

I love this book; I love the women in it (I know they are based on real women or composites of real women); and I love Liz Tuccillo for writing it.

Sunny McCloskey, walking home from a party late one night, thinks she sees something unusual hanging from a tree in a vineyard. Is it... can it be... a body? A truck leaving the area passes her, and curiosity pushes her to take a closer look. She finds a young woman intricately bound by rope, shibari-style, dead.

Thus begins Nadia Gordon's third mystery, Murder Alfresco, featuring the restaurant owner and chef Sunny McCoskey who finds herself once again in the middle of a murder investigation – and this time, she's also a target.

Readers familiar with Napa Valley and Marin County should be delighted with the descriptions, as well as readers who appreciate fresh writing and a well-told mystery. Sunny and her friends are believable and likable characters, and their interaction will draw fans deeper into their circle. In fact, I read the McCoskey books as much for these characters as for the mystery.

Now the hard part – waiting for the fourth novel.

A boy's corpse in a makeshift coffin washes ashore in Brooklyn's Red Hook, the letters "G.I." written in marker on his forehead, and Jack Leightner, a detective with the Brooklyn South Homicide Task Force, back at work after recovering from an injury sustained in the line of duty, is assigned to the case in The Graving Dock by Gabriel Cohen.

This is Red Hook, a neighborhood that was cut off from the rest of Brooklyn by the construction of freeways and thereby deteriorating into gritty inner-city (read: impoverished, abandoned) noir charm that appeals to the imagination of people who don't live there. Cohen weaves the two main threads -- the mystery of the murdered boy and the challenge and surprises of new loves -- seamlessly through Det. Leightner, a character who, with Cohen's careful and deft hand, transcends the usual two-dimensional detective of crime novels and is believable as a human being with a tough job and the same kinds of internal conflicts as most folks.

The last paragraph, the last sentence, easily could have erred on the side of sentimentality and cliché; instead, it is perfect.

The Graving Dock is Cohen's second novel featuring Det. Jack Leightner. His first, Red Hook, was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

A spy is called out of retirement either to bait or to track -- and neutralize (to use a word Sallis does not) -- a former colleague who had been quiet for ten years until six months ago in James Sallis's "novel about spies," Death Will Have Your Eyes. David (that's his latest name) was trained as part of an elite group of spies during the Cold War, only three of which are "still undocumented (agency code meaning not dead)," and one of them seems to have become very busy.

Sallis doesn't write a genre spy novel. The spy elements are almost incidental to the real story that takes place inside David's head as he remembers details about his various pasts and ruminates on his current mission, his colleague-cum-nemesis, the lover that he had to leave abruptly, telling her to pack what she could carry and go, now.

David is on the road. He thinks, "The road gives us release, reaffirms the discontinuity of our lives, whispers to us that we are after all free, that (around this curve, when we reach the next town, if we can only make it to California) things will change." If you have ever given in to wanderlust, then maybe that sentence reverberates hard for you, too.

And then he notices that he is being followed. And the chase is on.

Sallis's philosophical undertone, his visceral intellect, resonates throughout his novels, and his narrative can often feel strangely personal. David observes about struggling to focus images from his memory: "Given paper and crayon, the ape draws, laboriously, precisely, only the bars of its cage, again and again." And I wonder... what is my cage?

Chapter 16, a memory about a woman David knew once upon a..., could stand alone as a short story.

The novel is a road trip, a cat-and-mouse game, a reminiscence, and it is written damned well.

Sharpshooter is the first of Nadia Gordon's three (so far) Sunny McCoskey mysteries set in Napa Valley, and it is the second one I've read. (I read Death By the Glass first and reviewed it here.)

Sunny McCoskey is the owner and chef of a small restaurant, Wildside, in a small Napa Valley town. When one of her closest friends is arrested for the murder of a young wine baron, she turns sleuth, investigating the terrain and asking questions that, frankly, might be considered pushy and slightly unbelievable. But the story and the characters pulled me in such that I was willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of finding out who did kill the arrogrant Jack Beroni.

The title is a play on words: the sharpshooter killed a man at night with a rifle from about a hundred yards, and the glassy-winged sharpshooter is an insect that could destroy the vineyards -- and becomes a political issue that underlies the murder.

More than the characters and the setting, I enjoy Gordon's details, what she has McCoskey noticing about the quality of the night air, the scents of vineyards, the feel of water. I also like the dynamics of the friendships in that small Napa Valley town that bring these characters to life.

I have already checked out Gordon's latest Sunny McCoskey mystery, Murder Alfresco. I recommend these mysteries as hearty and satisfying side dishes to your more serious (or heavy) reading.

Warren Adler creates a well-imagined setting - the Catskills resorts of the late 30's and the mafia that populated them - with his historical novel, Funny Boys.

The story ostensibly centers on Mickey Fine, a tumler - or entertainer and activities director - at the Gorlick resort whose job is to keep the guests laughing and amused. Since the guests throughout the week are primarily the wives and girlfriends of the mafia (who come up on weekends after a tough week of breaking kneecaps and teaching lessons), Fine is constantly reminded to keep his shmekel in his own trousers and out of trouble.

Ya don mess wid da goils of mobstas, to employ Adler's sometimes excessive use of dialect for dialogue.

And the jokes, the clichés! Did these ever sound fresh and new? It's hard to imagine these zingers ever eliciting a genuine snort of laughter much less a guffaw, but I'm giving Adler's historical perspective the benefit of the doubt, mostly because I enjoyed the story of the naïve Brownsville goil wid da cinematic fantasies. Instead of accepting the given fate, the usual path of marriage right out of high school - "You're 18! Marry the decent but boring Henry already! Ya wanna end up a spinsta?!" - Mutzie Feder transforms herself into a Jean Harlow replica and catches the eye of the handsome sociopath, Pittsburgh Phil Strauss, or Pep as he's known in certain circles.

As Pep's numbah one goil, Mutzie is treated to status and presents and a summer at the Gorlick Resort where, on weekends, obediently accompanying Pep, she studiously ignores the conversations she overhears and all the other signs that maybe the company she's keeping ain't too good faw huh healt, ya know whaddye mean?

The title is Funny Boys, but the story really gets going when Mutzie realizes that she needs to escape Pep and enlists the tumler's help. Turns out Mickey Fine had fallen in love with the young beauty from da day he laid eyes on huh, and now he gets to play knight in shining armor.

It's easy to imagine this story as a movie, especially with the heavyhanded use of "da dialeck" and with the usual actors playing the usual mob roles. Tip: I found the book easier and more fun to read if I read the dialogue out loud.

Overall, I recommend Funny Boys, cos it's a good Summer weekend read with sufficient suspense and entertainment to keep you turning the pages.

I saw this movie, Bagdad Cafe, about 20 years ago, and like its theme song, it has haunted me in a subtle way. The movie starts out like the song:

A desert road from Vegas to nowhere
Some place better than where you've been
A coffee machine that needs some fixing
In a little cafe just around the bend.

A marital argument ends with a German tourist couple giving up angrily on each other, the wife, Jasmin (played by Marianne Sägebrecht), grabbing her suitcase and walking down a hot, lonely highway; her husband driving off in the other direction.

Nearby, another argument splits another married couple, and the husband takes off in his car, leaving his fed-up, yelling wife, Brenda (CCH Pounder), on her own to run the Bagdad Gas & Oil Cafe, a faded and dusty outpost in the Mojave Desert that's already a beat-down relic 20 years ago when the movie was new.

That's when Jasmin shows up, face glistening from the hot desert sun beating down hard and the exertion of pulling her suitcase on its little wheels. She's wearing a skirt and jacket, low-heeled pumps, and a hat -- definitely not from around here. She rents a room for the night... and ends up staying a while.

There are no car crashes, no chase scenes, no huge spectacles here. There are just these two women, circling each other.... Brenda, whose life is rooted in Bagdad and whose children are out of her control, becomes suspicious of Jasmin, and Jasmin has nothing in Bagdad and  nowhere else to go. Jack Palance plays Rudi Cox, an artist from Hollywood (where he used to paint scenery) who falls for the stealth charm of Jasmin. The characters are treated with warmth and a compassion infused with humor. And there's even magic. This is one of those quirky movies that gives "quirky" a good reputation.

If you've ever suffered from either a rut or felt the tug of wanderlust calling you, see if you don't end up longing for a little Bagdad Cafe in your life. You can get a taste of it from the South San Francisco Main Library's DVD collection.

The Tree of Death, love potions, and rare wines are all elements in Nadia Gordon's second Napa Valley mystery, Death By the Glass, featuring small-restaurant owner and chef, Sunny McCoskey. It doesn't surprise too many people when one of the owners of the popular Vinifera restaurant dies of an apparent heart attack. Nathan Osborne was known to have lived passionately, as his closest friends say. But Sunny, who had not even met the dead man, was puzzled by the broken bottle of rare wine found near his body, and it's this curiosity that drives her to find out how Nathan Osborne really died.

What the reader will enjoy as Sunny dons her amateur sleuth cap is the snappy yet believable dialogue and insight into the wine industry. This was a page-turning mystery that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did. (Yes, that is an endorsement!)

I did not read Gordon's first mystery, Sharpshooter, but I already have placed a hold on it and on her third Sunny McCoskey mystery, Murder Alfresco, and look forward to reading them and getting to know Sunny McCoskey better.

Full disclosure: I know Greg Nagan. We are friends. However, even if I didn't know Greg Nagan, I would consider The 5-Minute Iliad one of the sharpest, funniest treatments of some of the Western Canon's most revered literary classics.

The full title of Nagan's book is The 5-Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics: Great Books for the Short Attention Span, which is funny right there, because the title for a book about condensing "great books" is not very condensed.

Nagan begins the book with a "Five-Minute History of Western Civ," which neatly summarizes everything you need to know about... Western Civilization. Here is a snippet from the middle:

After all the excitement of the Big Scary Monsters, Hell, and the Crusades, things slowed down for a while and Western Civilization became bored. Whole centuries passed while people tried to think of something to do. Finally they decided to chuck it all and start from scratch, resulting in the Renaissance, which was a Very Good Idea.

Following this enlightening and context-providing introduction, Nagan gives us fifteen Great Books distilled through his brilliant filter of humor and intelligence.

Instead of translating Dante's Divine Comedy: Part I in Dante's invented and complicated form of "terza rima," Nagan chose the more accessible and venerably American form of limerick. And "where it was hard to rhyme," he writes, "I made up words." No other translation does this! (Which is a point Nagan makes clear in a footnote about translating the entire Inferno into one canto.)

His version of John Milton's Paradise Lost is inspired; his take on Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol will make you laugh out loud (if you're like me); his "translation" of James Joyce's Ulysses is enough to make English majors cheer; and his Jack Kerouac's On the Road is eight pages long... and one sentence. If you're a Kerouac fan, as I am, Nagan's homage might give you gooseflesh at the end.

The blurb on the back cover sums it up nicely: [T]hese fifteen parodies provide a riotous romp through Western civilizaton... from Homer to Kerouac, from Ancient Greece to Postwar America, from the Lyrical Epic to the Breathless Gush.

If you aren't familiar with these Great Books before you read Nagan's deft handling of them, you will be after you've read this book. And it'll be painless, I promise.

I picked up James Sallis's Cypress Grove when I went into the Mystery stacks looking for books by Georges Simenon. I can't explain what about the title or the spine or maybe the author's name compelled me to pick the book off the shelf and read the blurb on the inside cover. But I did. And the following sentence tugged on my imagination: "The small town where Turner has moved is one of America's lost places, halfway between Memphis and nowhere."

Turner, an ex-cop, an ex-psychotherapist, and an ex-con, is a quiet man looking for peace in a small, unnamed Tennessee town. When a particularly gruesome murder occurs, Sheriff Lonnie Bates shows up with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a request for help.

Although this novel is found in the mystery genre at our library, Sallis has revealed more about the mystery of an individual human being, and I found myself more interested in how prison affected Turner than in solving the murder (and then there was a second murder). Sallis writes from Turner's point-of-view:

Doors slamming shut and locks falling: you never forget that sound, the way it makes you feel. That was something waiting in my own future, something I'd get used to, inasmuch as one ever does. Looking back even now, a familiar horror clutches at my throat, squeezes my heart in its fist.

If you've ever been haunted by a person or an event, you might appreciate what Turner has described about sound.

Being a city gal, I am sometimes pulled to the mystique of small towns, which, probably folks from small towns would laugh at, probably say that there is no "mystique," that the whole point of a small town is that there is no such thing as a secret. Even so, I enjoyed Sallis's story, and if Turner becomes a series character, I will read those books.

I liked Cypress Grove -- and, in particular, James Sallis's prose -- so much that I am going to check out his other books. I did a search of his titles in the PLS catalogue, and you can see those results by clicking here .