The Village Voice asked some authors to name their favorite obscure book, so vacationing Manhattanites won't have to read the same best-seller that everyone else is reading this summer. Might be a good conversation-starter, at least. Here are a couple of recommendations from the Voice's list, and one of my own:

Donna Tartt (author of The Secret History): Blood in the Parlor, by Dorothy Dunbar. "Each of the 12 stories is an account of a 19th-century murder told with a light, macabre sense of humor."

Nathan Englander (author of The Ministry of Special Cases): Gob's Grief, by Chris Adrian, "a dead-brother novel and a fantasy novel and a thousand other things."

Here's my recommendation: The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., by Robert Coover. Before there was fantasy baseball, there was J. Henry Waugh and his surreal game.

And Nancy recommends a book one of her friends wouldn't stop talking about until she picked it up: Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. It's the Cupid and Psyche myth retold, focusing on the special bond between sisters, the meaning of beauty and the endurance of love in all forms.