By Beth Goehring

You’ve been invited for a summer weekend and you’ve packed your sunscreen, your cover-up, and your cocktail dress. Wait! Haven’t you forgotten something? Your host and hostess will have ordered the wine, arranged the flowers, and probably have a linen closet packed with scented soaps. Want a gift they’ll really enjoy? Bring a book! Here are four that will surely get you invited back.

Hollywood aficianados will have to read this delicious novel twice: once for Evelyn’s alluring voice and her riveting career and second to play the “Who is that, really!” game. Might be worth getting a dozen copies to play with everybody who gets stuck inside on a rainy Sunday.  Get the book.

Silva’s series character, Gabriel Allon, a suave art restorer and death-defying undercover agent, is a favorite of men and women. Here, he’s out to get an ISIS terrorist with the reluctant help of a husband and wife whose lavish life depends on activities they’re rather not know much about.  Get the book.

If your hosts’ property is the envy of the neighbors, this gorgeous look at rarely-seen National Trust gardens in England will up their game big-time! Get the book.

And of course, every weekend away should including dining al fresco. Chris Bianco is a James Beard Award winning chef and his flavorful pizza dough is his canvas. He shares his tricks and recipes for baking a masterpiece the guests will be talking about for months! Get the book.

Beth Goehring believes, with apologies to Lorelei Lee, that rather than diamonds books are a girl’s best friend…and a boy’s, a man’s and a woman’s. For more than twenty-five years, through Book-of-the-Month Club and its related clubs, she’s sold popular fiction, mysteries, romances, cookbooks, children’s books, play scripts, behind-the-scenes tales of the movies and theatre, and lifestyle books. She lives with her husband and corgi in Manhattan.