Kyrie O'Connor.

Reading in summer is a delicate thing. I've never understood the concept of "beach book"--I don't suddenly lower my literary expectations in summer. But it's true that it's not the right moment for Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities either. So the trick is to find intelligent books that are the literary equivalent of good white wine. Here are a few that qualify.

In his third collection of short stories, At the Jim Bridger (Picador USA, $23, 208 pp.), Ron Carlson shows himself to be a master of understanding what a short story does: lead the reader, through a keyhole, into a roomful of people. His voice is clear and gentle, and he has great affection for his characters.

The first story, "Towel Season," follows a mathematician, Edison, working out an exceptionally thorny higher-math problem over the course of a summer. At the same time, this shy, awkward man becomes enmeshed in the social life of his suburban neighborhood. But is this newly sociable fellow able to keep his laser focus on higher math, or is he losing his genius? The beauty of the story is not so much in the plot but in the conversations Edison and his wife have in bed. In them he metaphorically describes his math to her as a hike in the woods--sometimes frightening, sometimes dark--and she tells him she'll be waiting at the other side in a silver bus. And she does, almost.

In the title piece, a man off on a fishing trip with his mistress runs into the one man who knows the truth about a night he spent in the wilderness in a snowstorm. In only fourteen pages Carlson compresses multiple lives and lies and the hard nut of pain at the center of all of them.

But there's a tiny piece, not even three pages, nestled in the middle of the book, called "the disclaimer," which should be read by everyone who ever dreamed of writing. It appears to be a standard disclaimer but very soon shows how carefully the writer has intertwined his life into his work, perhaps to make the life come out right, at least in print. "This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to actual events..." it begins, and proceeds to show the net of fact and fiction the writer is weaving. Here is how it ends: "If you want the coincidence where some character based on me gets the amazing girl back and has his heart start again after so many years, you're going to have to look in a book."

Chris Bachelder's first novel, Bear v. Shark (Scribner, $23, 251 pp.), may well completely irritate a reader, at least at first. It is everything people said they would never be again after September 11: snarky, arch, ironic, trivia-obsessed, and self-referential. It is also, in its own way, ingenious.

The story takes place in a dystopian near-future, or perhaps a skewed version of the present. Las Vegas has become a separate country, televison off-buttons have been deemed superfluous, and people talk at rather than with each other. Larry Norman's young son Curtis has won an essay contest, and the Norman family is in its SUV heading for Las Vegas to claim its prize. That prize is tickets to the biggest entertainment event ever: "Bear v. Shark II: Red in Tooth and Claw." The premise is simple. Given the right amount of water, who would win a fight between a virtual bear and a virtual shark? The country is roiling with this idea. Bear and shark paraphernalia everywhere, media consumed by it, serious scholars weighing in. (Anyone who saw "Celebrity Boxing" on TV must believe this is roughly a week from coming true.)

But no matter how many show-offy tricks Bachelder pulls out of his bag, the human story comes through. Larry Norman understands, or halfway understands, that there's a spiritual bankruptcy to this hyper-modern life. Eventually the Bear v. Shark experience helps him fumble toward meaning.

John Burnham Schwartz's third novel, Claire Marvel (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $25, 315 pp.), couldn't be more different from the Bachelder. It is a love story played out over a dozen years in which Schwartz's risks are in the realm of conventionality. Happily, they are risks he is skillful enough to know and avoid. Claire Marvel and Julian Rose meet in a rainstorm at Harvard, and serious, earnest poli-sci grad student Julian tumbles headlong for the beautiful future art historian in front of him. She, however, is far more cautious. This is Julian's story, and Claire lights down on it at odd intervals. But his love for her is unwavering, even when a bullyboy Reaganite government professor comes between them.

The story sounds terribly trite when told in shorthand, but in the unfolding it is not. Schwartz builds, in Julian, a man of real feeling and flaws who takes the broken bits of himself and becomes a man of substance.

Schwartz's writing is luminous, especially when he writes about his beloved France, to which Julian and Claire return twice. Here is the remarkable thing: He even has new things to say about love.

Kyrie O'Connor is assistant managing editor for features at the Hartford Courant.