Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Fun on the Beach

Looking for the reading equivalent of a summer cocktail? Legendary comic Don Rickles’s Rickles’ Book (S&S, May 15) gets the nod from Amazon’s Parsons. "His expert timing makes almost all of the short, James Pattersonesque chapters of his memoir land on the page like a rimshot zinger," he says. "It doesn’t dive too deep but delivers the goods."

Alyson Beatrice’s true tales of trolling the Internet and planning events for obsessive TV fans, Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? (Sourcebooks, Aug.), could also be a winner. "I’m a sci-fi geek, a genre television geek and an Internet community geek," says Halley, "plus I love any author who can bring on the funny, so this one is right up my alley."

For stressed-out parents, actress Christie Mellor calmly explains how to harness the energy of toddlers-gone-wild in Three-Martini Family Vacation: A Field Guide to Intrepid Parenting (Chronicle, June). "Her first book [The Three-Martini Playdate] was hilarious, in an ’I know I shouldn’t be laughing at this, but heee!’ kind of way," says Halley, "and we did very well with it."