HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

FANFAIR

Don't kick sand in anybody’s face— the bad boys of the beach books are here. Patron saint of ne’er-do-well nice boys Nick Hornby finds religion in How to Be Good (Riverhead), in which a liberal London mom struggles to save her family after her husband suddenly undergoes a spiritual awakening. Where Dead Voices Gather (Little, Brown) captures VF. contributing editor Nick Tosches's 20-year odyssey puzzling out the life of the long-lost Emmet Miller, a yodeling blackface performer whose music foreshadowed jazz, country, and blues. And pugnacious wrestling aficionado John Irving goes for the pin and the bloody hand in his 10th novel, The Fourth Hand (Random House), which gets off to a riproaring start with a journalist’s paw being devoured by a lion on live TV (oh God, I see a fall pilot . . . ).

Also this month: From Renaissance sky gazers to astronauts bobbing on the moon, Rinker Buck lives out our enduring dream of flight in the interactive If We Had Wings (Crown). Among the collected essays in reasoned intellectual Edward Said'sPower, Politics, and Culture (Pantheon) are those on the Oslo peace accord, Saddam Hussein, and the author's ardor for Glenn Gould. Media icon Walter Cronkite tours our magnificent coastline in Around America (Norton). Keith L. Eggener offers a panoramic view of modern Mexican architect Luis Barragdn’s Gardens of El Pedregal (Princeton Architectural Press), a wonder of Latin America. Michael Azerrad's rock-out Our Band Could Be Your Life (Little, Brown) is a mosh pit of 80s indie I’ve-gota-garage-let’s-put-on-a-show bands such as Black Flag, Minor Threat, and Sonic Youth. First arrested at age eight (for 27 counts), novelist Sandro Meallet debuts with the Edgewater Angels (Doubleday), a crushingly honest tale of a poor kid growing up in the violent, gang-ridden projects of San Pedro, California. In The Map That Changed the World (HarperCollins), geologist Simon Winchester digs up the dirt on William Smith, a 19th-century canal digger who became the paterfamilias of modern geology, despite a nymphomaniac wife and a stint in debtors’ prison. Ahmet Ertegun's "Wluitd / Say’’ (Welcome Rain) puts his own spin on his life and times as founder and chairman of Atlantic Records. Caleb Crain'sAmerican Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation (Yale University Press) breaks through the he-man-writer’s wall to expose how literary friendships between men inspired their work. In a voice both zingy and knowing, short-story wrangler Bobbie Ann Mason is back with Zigzagging down a Wild Trail (Random House). Nancy Schoenberger'sDangerous Muse (Doubleday) introduces us to Lady Caroline Blackwood, writer and inspiration extraordinaire to artistic gents such as Lucian Freud and Robert Lowell. Lovely Elizabeth McCracken'sNiagara Falls All Over Again (Dial), set during the golden age of Hollywood, is the tale of a charming straight man in the mode of Stan Laurel who finds a friend and mentor in a charming but utterly self-destructive Oliver Hardy. Want to be invited back? Then banish the guest soaps in the shape of seashells and give your hosts Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright'sChanging Stages (Knopf), a thrilling view of British and American theater in the 20th century, and the quintessential house gift for that special Fire Island host(ess). Oh, bury me at sea!