FLIPPING AHEAD: McMurtry Says Blame Spillane

Blame it all on Mickey Spillane. The moral rot, the sexual permissiveness, the disintegration of ethics in our modern world. And while you're at it, be sure to pick up his latest paperback at the corner drugstore. That's just one of the observations in "Books" (Simon & Schuster), Larry McMurtry's memoir about his life as a writer, reader, seller and collector of antiquarian books. Although most people know him as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist ("Terms of Endearment," "Lonesome Dove") and an Academy Award-winning screenwriter ("Brokeback Mountain"), McMurtry's fascination with book collecting takes center stage in this wry and often whimsical account.

But let's get back to Spillane. McMurtry analyzes the cover of "I, the Jury," the crime writer's 1947 pulp novel, with the zeal of an anthropologist exploring a lost culture: In the gritty paperback's original illustration, a knockout blonde is peeling off her clothes. She's trying to seduce hard-boiled detective Mike Hammer. But he doesn't buy it and plugs the dame with hot lead. "The famous cover of that 'real blonde' in a sense pointed the way to the vast loosening of sexual morals that occurred in America and Western Europe in the 1960s," McMurtry suggests.

Elsewhere, he criticizes the ambitious Library of America project, which enshrines classic works of U.S. fiction and nonfiction in special black-jacketed editions: "At least half of the books they republish seem to me wholly unreadable, with a few being merely second rate," McMurtry says. "The more of our minor fiction they publish, the more they weaken the national brew."

That lesson seems lost on American publishers, especially as they pump out new and re-released fiction to fill the long summer months. James Lee Burke's "Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel" (Simon & Schuster) is the latest installment in the adventures of the Louisiana lawman. Nora Roberts' "Tribute" (Putnam Adult) tells the tale of a tormented, onetime child movie star who is haunted by the ghost of her movie-star grandmother. Stephen Carter is back with "Palace Council" (Knopf), the tale of a plot to manipulate the president of the United States, the murder of one of the plotters, and the hot young Harlem literary star who finds the body.

If all that seems a tad heavy, check out Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's "Dirty Girls on Top" (St. Martin's Press), the fast-paced, sexy tale of five Latinas looking for love and success in a confusing world. For a different take, there's Madeleine Wickham"s "Sleeping Arrangements" (Thomas Dunne Books), in which two British families forced to vacation together in a Spanish villa stumble upon romance and other unexpected consequences. Or you can take a trip to the dark side: Stephanie Kuehnert's "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" (MTV Books) is a vivid debut novel about chasing your dreams in the punk-rock scene.

Although the Harry Potter literary saga is done, young-adult fantasy remains a fertile field. Christopher Paolini, the prodigious young best-selling writer, is back with "Inheritance Cycle Omnibus: Eragon and Eldest" (Knopf Books for Young Readers). "What If ... All the Rumors Were True" (Delacorte Books for Young Readers) by Liz Ruckdeschel and Sara James chronicles a high school girl's battle with the Gossipmongers.

For real stress, teens can pick up Los Angeles writer Harry Turtledove's "The Valley-Westside War" (Tor Books). The heroes of his latest novel " who time-travel to parallel worlds " explore L.A. in the aftermath of an apocalyptic 1967 nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Soon they become entangled in a conflict between the postwar kingdoms of different L.A. neighborhoods. The cover shows a mushroom cloud rising over a freeway " just the kind of image that makes you nostalgic for Mickey Spillane.