Beach-Blanket Reading

Authors' choice

Winston Groom: "C": The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, by Anthony Cave Brown (Macmillan). "This history of the British secret service has more intrigue than a boatload of Borgias could cook up."

Judith Krantz: The Last Lion,by William Manchester (Dell). "I became fascinated with Winston Churchill's character while researching my new book. "

Martin Amis: Transparent Things, by Vladimir Nabokov (McGraw-Hill). "The wonderful late novella: very funny, very poetic, and intolerably sad. "

Joyce Carol Oates: Chaos Making a New Science,by James Gleick (Viking). "I have been writing a sequence of experimental stories having to do with the 'new science.' "

Tom Hayden: Star Warriors,by William J. Broad (Touchstone). "It's about the cultlike group of young scientists working in secrecy on exotic new weapons. It has in part inspired my investigation of the weapons labs at Los Alamos and Livermore. "