Who can afford to get out of town this summer? A more budget-friendly option is to bring a book (or three) to the beach and spend your time traveling in your imagination. Here are some options to fill the season's days.

•  Mercury in Retrograde. Paula Froelich. Atria. 260 pages. $24.

Chick lit almost always revolves around a guy. Heroines are trying to land a man, keep a man, survive without a man or get over a man. So we are relieved to meet Penelope Mercury, Lena ''Lipstick'' Lippencrass and Dana Gluck, three New York City women who are too busy working to trifle with relationships.

Penelope is a workhorse at a bustling tabloid until she accidentally sets part of the office on fire and quits at the same time. Lipstick, a socialite who must abandon her life of luxury when Daddy cancels the credit card, toils at an elite fashion magazine for an editor who could give The Devil Wears Prada's Miranda Priestly a run for her money. Dana, 32 and divorced for a year, is the youngest junior partner at her law firm and on the way to full partnership.

The novel traces their adventures in careers and eventual crushes and brings the women together for yoga classes in the SoHo building where they live. The author has the most fun with Penelope, who lands a Bridget Jones-esque TV job and covers such stories as ''Firesluts: What Pole Won't These Women Slide Down?'' Poor little rich girl Lipstick is far more likable and creative than any airhead that Plum Sykes or Lauren Weisberger has ever put on a page. And ambitious Dana, who struggles with her weight and the stress of her job, is a welcome dose of reality in a genre that tends to gloss over the issues that real women face.

Froelich, deputy editor of the Page Six column in The New York Post, knows her way around gossip, society and the inside of a newsroom -- though at her fictional New York Telegraph, reporters still get cost-of-living raises. She drops plenty of names (Matthew McConaughey attends the Met Gala ''in board shorts, a black jacket, and nothing else'') and has a good bit of fun doing it. Just when you thought the world couldn't possibly need another frothy tale about single women in New York, this novel comes along to change your mind. Breezy and sunny, it's the perfect summer reading getaway.

• The Bride Will Keep Her Name. Jan Goldstein. Shaye Areheart. 272 pages. $24.

So many things can go wrong for a bride in the week before her wedding. Dress alterations go haywire. The flower girl gets pink eye. The colorist turns her hair a wrong shade of something.

Goldstein adds a few new (although seriously farfetched) items to the long list of potential bridal nightmares with his hurly-burly novel. Manhattan art gallery manager Madison Mandelbaum is six days away from marrying the man of her dreams, dashing TV reporter Colin Darcy, who sits on the precipice of a grand career in muckraking.

But then a flurry of anonymous messages begins, and Madison must question whether Colin, whose job is to uncover unsavory truths, is hiding a big secret involving a dead call girl.

The plot careens from there and crams in too much shrieking and fainting and recoiling from shocking new revelations. From just one page: ``I let out a small gasp and my legs buckled. . . . I stared back in disbelief. . . . I turned and bolted from the room.''

As the drama unfolds, and the countdown to wedding day continues, trips to forensics labs and crime-solving organizations are interspersed with awkward future-mother-in-law teas and riotous dress fittings.

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