You could squander your summer plowing through a pile of trashy paperbacks. You could spill iced tea or margaritas on their pages and never mind the damage. No one would even question your choice of reading matter, because the weather is just too hot or rainy for you to get worked up much.

However, if summer brings you more than your usual quotient of time to relax, why not delve into books with a little more meat on their bones? Here are some of summer fiction's best bets.

The Family Man. Elinor Lipman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 305 pages. $25. Out now.

''Henry Archer did not attend his ex-wife's husband's funeral,'' Lipman writes in the opening line of her witty, warm new novel, ''but he did send a note of condolence.'' Of course he did. Lipman's characters are intelligent and urbane, and they do not behave with incivility, even if their ex-wives have dumped them for crass, wealthy businessmen. And Henry, who is gay and therefore fortunate to have been rejected, is nothing if not civil. But the fact that Denise, his pushy ex, has been pre-nupped out of her fortune changes his life, leading him to reconnect with Denise's grown daughter Thalia, the stepchild with whom he had lost touch after the divorce.

Complications arise when protective Henry learns that Thalia, an aspiring actress, has been hired to boost the profile of a B-list sitcom star by posing as his love interest. Meanwhile, Denise tries her hand at matchmaking for Henry, an act that turns out a lot more happily than you'd expect, considering ''[e]ven the most amicably divorced, scrupulous gay men can hold a surprising quantity of marital bitterness in their hearts.'' But not forever, Lipman says. Hilarious, literate and unnervingly accurate in its observations of the quirks of human nature, The Family Man proclaims that whatever bizarre sort of family you have, you're better off with it than without.

The Secret Speech. Tom RobSmith. Grand Central. 403 pages. $24.99. Out now.

The sequel to last summer's riveting Child 44 has a lot to live up to: Smith's debut novel, about an investigator who chases a serial killer through the bureaucracy and terror of Stalin's oppressive government, was one of the best thrillers of the year. The Secret Speech does not quite match Child 44's breathtaking audacity or relentless pacing, but Smith continues to provide fascinating history lessons, a strikingly original setting and quality storytelling.

Former state security officer Leo Demidov, eyes now wide open to Soviet excess, is struggling to forge a new life. His heroism in Child 44 earned him a job in the newly formed Moscow homicide bureau, but his efforts to create a family with his wife Raisa and two orphaned girls are a struggle, mainly because the elder, Zoya, rightly blames Leo for her parents' deaths. Other things have changed as well: Stalin is dead, and a widely distributed, once-secret letter denouncing his actions -- from his successor Khrushchev -- acts as a catalyst for those seeking revenge against Stalin's oppressors. Like Leo.

Based on real events, The Secret Speech is jam-packed with action -- the near-sinking of a prison ship, a violent takeover at a Kolyma gulag, and a rebellion in Hungary -- and Smith explores pertinent questions of revenge, morality and responsibility.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. Reif Larsen. Penguin. 374 pages. $27.95. Out now.

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