If you like literature with a considerable local context here are two novels worth a look.

A long, sweltering hot and dry Yorkshire Dales' summer sets the scene for Peter Robinson's latest and compelling crime mystery novel In a Dry Season (Macmillan 16.99). Reservoirs run low and one near Grassington empties, exposing the remains of a village flooded in the 1950s.

Sadly not just stone walls surface. A local lad is drawn to the ruins, falls through the roof of an outbuilding and sinks into mud. His hand grasps a skeleton's.

DCI Alan Banks (making his eleventh appearance), has irritated the powers that be, and is sent out to the Dales as a supposed punishment. Here he meets and teams up with DS Annie Cabbot who knows the area.

There is someone from 'Hobbs End' village who knows about the skeleton but isn't telling, a successful novelist living in London who has spent most of her adult life abroad.

So we get the comings and goings of the police investigtion mixed with her secret monologues. She remembers her childhood and teenage years in the village, running the shop, and the way her life changed forever with the arrival of a vivacious Land Girl, Gloria, in 1941, "the day it all began". And how the Yanks took over the nearby RAF base and blackout-nights and books gave way to frocks, music, parties.

Her tale has a realistic nostalgia, after all Peter Robinson, our Yorkshire-born and bred author, now lives in Canada. Considering the content and the locations this could safely be left by the bedside at B&B's or holiday cottages.

Another local author Helene Wiggin first moved to the Dales over 20 years ago, and has stayed put living and working near Settle. Her latest novel The Stone Rainbow is the story of an unmarried mother, the unfortunate but romantic Netta, who reluctantly gives up her wartime baby to her childless stepmother and leaves the family farm in Galloway, Scotland, for a new life in the south, Ilkley that is (Piatkus £6.99).

Fortunately for Netta she can sew, has a keen eye for fashion, and a flair for design - abilities realised despite wartime restrictions. Mainly she makes party frocks.

Rose Elliot is high-up in the mass-production cookery book league and even this fan is finding it difficult to keep up with her output of new work, renamed editions, compilations and so on.

Out of the three latest arrivals, Low Fat, Low Sugar is new, Cheap and Easy has been around, and The Bean Book dates back over 20 years (Thorsons £8.99).

I am dubious about the fat-free ratatouille, but am prepared to try her technique of peeling peppers with a potato slicer before cooking them as perhaps it will be easier than trying to peel them hot after grilling.

Every summer you get a nice little book on sundaes etc. This year's suitably slurpy treat is Soda Fountain Classics by Elsa Petersen-Schepelern (Ryland, Peters & Small £8.99)