Chick-lit beach reading

It's springtime: A few more degrees Fahrenheit, and we'll be hitting the beach.

Not without a novel in hand, however. Here are some recent fledglings in the chick-lit genre (with their ratings in chicks), for your pre-beach consideration.

{Three Chicks} "Where Mercy Flows" by Karen Harter (Center Street, 294 pp., $12.95). First-time Northwest novelist Karen Harter sets this story of love and redemption in a family home on the Stillaguamish River. That's where troubled single mother Samantha Dodd returns to her long-estranged, judgmental father and mother, illegitimate biracial child in tow, seven years after she stormed out to make her own life.

A persistent illness is the spur that sends Samantha home, but there are more than health issues troubling her: her long-absent husband may want a divorce, her childhood friend may want a relationship and her father has a serious problem of his own. Heavy on the symbolism but a great sense of place.

{Three Chicks} "Don't Look Down" by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (St. Martin's, 373 pp., $24.95). Here's a novel idea for a novel: romance/action, with romance author Jennifer Crusie providing the former and former Green Beret/best-seller writer Bob Mayer the latter.

The story line, in which babe Lucy Armstrong is finishing up an action-movie shoot with hunky J.T. Wilder as military consultant, features a one-eyed gator, a sniper and some deeply troubled characters. Even though the story doesn't track very well, it's highly entertaining because someone is always either being seduced or blowing something up.

The book shifts gears almost audibly between the two authors, but both are masters at what they do. This might actually be one of those beach reads that is suitable for both sexes: Half the readers can flip right past the "are we in a relationship" pages to the explosions and the gore, and the other half can do the reverse. Just keep away from that one-eyed gator.

{Three and a half Chicks} "After the Rice" by Wendy French (Forge, 252 pp., $12.95). Wendy French announces the central dilemma of Megan Ismore in her first sentence: "I was late, and not for the bus."

"Late" as in quite possibly pregnant, of course, and while normally this would not be a serious crisis for a happily married couple, Megan and her husband, Matt, are swamped by crises. Matt's rude Uncle Tony, unemployed and evicted, is camping out in their basement; Megan's soap-making hippie sister has taken up residence on their couch; the family dog has not yet learned to quit pooping on the rug; and worst of all, the Pink Tyrant has come for an extended stay. (The Pink Tyrant is the overindulged 6-month-old daughter of Megan's perfectionist older sister, who is having a crisis of her own.)

Things aren't going so well for Matt at work, or for Megan at college, and their unbelievably contentious families aren't helping much.

What makes all this both entertaining and thought-provoking is French's great comic ear for dialogue, her snappy prose and her knack for turning this comedy of errors into something really poignant. The details that pop up from the book's Victoria, B.C., setting — place names, weather, etc. — add an enjoyable local angle to the fun.

{Three and a half Chicks} "Vanished" by Karen Robards (Putnam, 369 pp., $24.95). One of the best novels yet from the prolific Karen Robards, this one has a plot that turns on every mother's worst nightmare: the unexplained disappearance of her 5-year-old daughter. Seven years later, Sarah Mason is still grieving, still punishing herself over that moment at the picnic when her little girl vanished.

Now an assistant district attorney, Sarah is nearly driven mad when she gets mysterious phone calls from her daughter, and then is nearly murdered by an unexplained gunshot. Even investigator Jake Hogan can't protect her as the plot takes a darker turn, with an ending that will keep readers up at night.

{One Chick} "The Debutante Divorcée" by Plum Sykes (Miramax/Hyperion, 250 pp., $23.95). The author of "Bergdorf Blondes" provides another fictitious saga of lifestyles of the impossibly trendy and chic, this one focusing on New York socialite "newly unwed girls" who have shed recently acquired husbands because they just can't be bothered to stay married.

As one of them puts it, "Christopher's probably off somewhere ghastly like Cleveland selling something. I can't possibly remember. What does it matter anyway?"

Our narrator, the newly married Sylvie, is agog at the goings-on of newly divorced heiress Lauren, who smiles her "mischievous smile" and intones, "I'm really appalled at my own behavior. I've never met anyone as terrible as me."

We haven't, either, and though Sykes' prose is amusing, this cast of characters is shallower than a minus tide at Useless Bay.

{Three and a half Chicks} "Second Sight" by Amanda Quick (Putnam, 390 pp., $24.95). Amanda Quick is the pseudonym used by Seattle's Jayne Ann Krentz when she writes historical novels, and "Second Sight" is the first in a projected series of Victorian-era psychic thrillers about the fictitious, secretive Arcane Society.

Spunky heroine Venetia Milton is a photographer who is trying to support her family, left penniless after the death of her father. Venetia, whose psychic gifts allow her to see auras, is contracted to photograph Arcane Society artifacts, but runs into danger when a determined killer sets out to find some of the secrets she has photographed.

She also runs into hunky society member Gabriel Jones, who has some secrets of his own. And the reader, in turn, runs into lots of interesting background about early photography and Victorian mores in the course of this highly entertaining romance.

{Three Chicks} "Conversations with the Fat Girl" by Liza Palmer (5 Spot, 319 pp., $12.95). This searing first novel is about two "fat girls," Maggie and Olivia, best friends since grade school. Now 27, Maggie is still obese, but Olivia has had gastric bypass surgery, and is now a thin, size-2 blond fiancée of a perfectionist doctor.

Despite her graduate degree, Maggie is in a dead-end job and lives alone with only a dog for company. But she is excited for her best friend, and is happily planning the bridal shower. Of course Maggie will be the maid of honor — won't she?

As the wedding approaches, we get a remarkable lesson in the contempt and intolerance our society heaps on the overweight, and Maggie learns how to stop hating herself and how to get healthier (physically as well as emotionally). This one will make you think, and think again.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com