With summer looming like a lover's promise you scoot for the backyard and peaceful respite. Your favorite chaise lounge, or maybe a hammock. A gentle breeze. The cold beverage of your choice.

What's missing from this picture?

A. Mosquitoes.

B. Rain.

C. Someone running a leaf blower.

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D. None of the above.

And the answer is "D.," of course.

What's missing is a book. Add a book to the picture above and you might broaden your mind and deepen your understanding of the world for, oh, ten or fifteen minutes before you doze off.

Some people will tell you the good books are published in the fall. Pay them no mind. Here's a quick view of the some of the new books in our 2006 summer book bag.

"The Dead Fish Museum," by Charles D'Ambrosio Alfred A. Knopf, cloth, 236 pages, $22, is that perfect fit for the hammock for those who still read literary fiction, a collection of short stories. On a hike in the Pacific Northwest, a son must face his need for connection and his father's madness. A screenwriter struggles for his sanity in a mental ward. In the title story, some carpenters build sets for a porn movie as we drift toward racial violence.

D'Ambrosio's stories are set in remote cabins in the Northwest, or on Indian reservations, the Midwest, mental wards. His people struggle to make connections and to find meaning.

These are stories that cut to the bone about people like people you know, people facing chaos yet occasionally able to find a dark humor, and even something like beauty, in the tragedy of their lives.

D'Ambrosio grew up in Seattle. Many of his stories appeared in The New Yorker.

"Dream Golf: The Making of Bandon Dunes," by Stephen Goodwin, Algonquin, cloth, 277 pages, $24.95 is a Man-With-A-Dream story about golf courses and Mike Keiser, whose dream it was to transform a large chunk of the Oregon Coast into not one but three — count 'em — golf courses.

Keiser is an amateur golfer and the man who founded the profitable Recycled Paper Greetings company. At bottom, his dream was a golf course like the old "links" courses in the British Isles that fit their rugged coastlines. That's in contrast to sleek American courses that look as if they've been drawn up and shaped by bulldozers. As is usual in these stories, the man with a dream must overcome obstacles.

Those who cheer the proliferation of golf courses will likely applaud the results, which are beautiful and challenging by all accounts, while those who worry about disappearing wildlife habitat may be forgiven for asking why maybe one course wasn't enough.

"The State of Jefferson," by Bernita Tickner and Gail Fiorini-Jenner, Arcadia, trade paperback, 128 pages, $19.99 is a collection of historic photographs of its subject, which is simultaneously a mythical state comprising portions of Southern Oregon and Northern California, and, the authors insist, a state of mind. The notion is traced back to miners in the 1850s wanting to screw the government out of taxes. It runs through the armed protesters that stopped traffic on Highway 99 in the 1940s and includes the broadcasting region of a public radio station. It's all a bunch of folderol, of course. But it you like regional history, this stuff goes to the heart of it.

"God Laughs and Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right," by David James Duncan Triad Books, cloth, $22.95 is the award-winning writer's shot at the religious conservatives he contends are betraying the very gospels they claim to revere. He would seem to be on firm-enough ground when he points out that policies that serve the wealthy, make war and demonize opponents are often supported by religious conservatives even though the New Testament asked us to scorn riches, embrace the poor, bless peacemakers and turn the other cheek.

Duncan is the author of "The River Why" and "The Brothers K." He was in the Rogue Valley last month as the culmination of the months-long Jackson County Reads program, which based a series of community events on "The River Why." He also popped up as the writer of "Trout Grass," an award-winning documentary film on bamboo fly rods that was shown at the recent Ashland Independent Film Festival.

He writes that he grew up in a church that taught him he was "saved," while many of his friends and relatives were going to Hell. There is a strong strain of mysticism in this book, and love for the Earth, and a certain cosmic humor. Author Bill McKibben called it "the book for everyone who is allergic to what often passes for Christianity but is attracted to Jesus."

Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail bvarble@mailtribune.com