Living-Books

Encourage your kids to read all summer with an add-a-bead bookmark.

Rankings for hard-cover books sold in Southern California, as reported by selected book stores:

Rankings for hard-cover books sold in Southern California, as reported by selected book stores:

Here are the best sellers for the week ending Saturday, July 2, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.

Headed for a vacation this summer? Given the economic malaise, it may just be the Oceanfront or the hammock in your backyard. Still, you might be tempted to spend a lazy day with a good read. Here are five new books, along three older ones, that will satisfy the urge for a great summer read.

Every gardener has a tome to which she turns. It's the most dog-eared, mud-smudged book on the shelf, the one that through the years has answered every garden puzzle, every curiosity, or perhaps provided the pick-me-up, the inspiration, that's so essential on the days when the peonies go kerplop.

CHICAGO Facebook wants your computer to ring off the hook. And it just might happen now that the social networking giant has turned on video calling for its 750 million members.

"Cooking for Gracie: The Making of a Parent From Scratch"

PALO ALTO, Calif PALO ALTO, Calif. - Finally you can see your kids again - if you're on Facebook.

"The Secret Mistress" by Mary Balogh; Delacorte Press (2011), 309 pages, $24 (hardcover)

Whether you've never set foot below the Mason-Dixon or take serious offense to the mispronunciation of "pecan," everyone can use a little Southern hospitality at their next party.

"Against All Enemies" by Tom Clancy with Peter Telep; Putnam (756 pages, $28.95)

What if there were a government conspiracy to create an "Internet 2.0" by exploiting the unused memory space of older people?

"The Hypnotist" by Lars Kepler; Sarah Crichton Books (512 pages, $27)

"Witches of East End" by Melissa de la Cruz; Hyperion (274 pages, $23.99)

PHILADELPHIA - She had to kill off Precious.

Nick Heller, the hero in Joseph Finder's new novel, "Buried Secrets," is a "private spy."

"Andy Warhol's New York City: Four Walks Uptown to Downtown" by Thomas Kiedrowski; The Little Bookroom (144 pages, $14.95)

For much of the 1980s, beginning when I was in college, I used to read a Hemingway book a year. The point was not self-improvement but rather a kind of exploration: What was it, exactly, about his writing that I'd missed? I had read "The Sun Also Rises" in high school and had admired its spare portrayal of 1920s expatriate life. But I'd also thought of it as more than a little stilted, even melodramatic in its way.

"The Kid" by Sapphire; Penguin Press (376 pages, $25.95)