Best Beach Books

MYFOXNY.COM - A summer day spent at the beach or pool side calls for a good read. Essence magazine is out with the best books for the summer covering all sorts of genres from horror to sex and shopping.

Patrik Henry Bass, the books editor for Essence Magazine , stopped by Good Day to talk about good summer reading. These are the books he recommends, with a synopsis for each.

If you like books about sex and shopping you'll love:

ONE FLIGHT UP (Atria) by Susan Fales-Hill
A multi-cultural Sex and the City, this debut novel from a talented New York author and society staple is an irresistible comedic romp through the ballrooms and bedrooms of contemporary New York featuring four dynamic female characters getting into love and trouble.

If you like fun detective stories you'll love:

IT ALL BEGAN IN MONTE CARLO (St. Martin's Press) by Elizabeth Adler
In this follow-up to There's Something About St. Tropez, Sunny Alvarez boards a Christmas Eve flight from L.A. to Paris, along with her pet Chihuahua, angry that her fiancé, PI Mac Reilly of TV's Mac Reilly's Malibu Mysteries, has once again postponed their wedding. On the plane, Sunny meets Eddie Johanssen (aka Prince Charming), who suggests another destination: Monte Carlo's Grand Hotel. After arriving alone in Monte Carlo, Sunny improbably befriends an aging Lithuanian prostitute, Kitty Ratte, who hangs out in the Grand Hotel bar-and turns out to be a psychopath. Sunny is thrilled when both Eddie and Mac show up, but the jealous Kitty soon creates trouble.

If you like "Breakfast at Tiffany's" you'll love:

FIFTH AVENUE, 5 A.M. (HarperStudio) by Sam Wasson
Sam Wasson's "Fifth Avenue, 5 AM takes a fond and incisive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, including "the contrivances that kept it so frothy, the weirdly backhanded feminist message (Holly was certainly free spirited) and the unusual place occupied by this sprite, her evening gown and her 5 a.m. Fifth Avenue Danish in the history of American film."

If you're a fan of horror you'll love:

TELL-ALL (Doubleday) by Chuck Palahniuk
Palahniuk's rude send-up of name-dropping and the culture of celebrity worship revolves around the fate of Katherine Kenton, a much-married star of stage, screen, and television, living in obscurity and searching for a comeback vehicle. Her story is told by Mazie Coogan -- her Thelma Ritterish, straight-shooting confidant and protector -- whose warning system sounds when Miss Kathie meets Webster Carlton Westward III, who quickly seduces his way into her Manhattan townhouse. It's soon revealed he's working on a memoir about his affair with Miss Kathie, the last chapter of which ends with her anticipated death, the details of which keep changing.

If you like shocking true stories you'll love:

JENNIEMAE & JAMES: A Memoir in Black and White (Crown) by Brooke Newman
Growing up, Newman witnessed how an amazing affinity for numbers formed the basis of an enduring and unlikely friendship between her father, a brilliant and erratic white mathematician, and Jenniemae, the illiterate black housekeeper who held their fragile family together through the 1940s and 1950s. This is not one of those noble stories of how a poor black woman rescues a dysfunctional white family, though there is plenty of dysfunctionality. James and Jenniemae respect one another's abilities and rely on one another through life's vicissitudes. James' chronic womanizing threatens the family, while his egomania and his work with Albert Einstein and others to urge peaceful use of atomic energy during the 1950s threaten his career. His wife, Ruth, plagued with borderline schizophrenia and a tortured acceptance of her husband's philandering, adds to a household where the children "saw too much and understood too little." Newman is unsparing yet loving in this complex portrait of her father, author of the classic The World of Mathematics, and the woman essential to her childhood.