Books: Loose Ends, L.I.

THE SUMMER LOVERS (307 pp.) — Hollis Alpert—Knopf ($3.95).

This first novel portrays the summer season at what might be called Loose Ends, Long Island, where there is plenty of sun, sea, sand, sex and susceptibility. Through the dazzle of hot days and perfervid nights moves Sally Pierce, a golden-glowing, nubile 19-year-old whose life is complicated by the fact that her divorced mother has remarried. Stepfather Andrew Wells is the sort of pipe-smoking, tweedy adult to make a Radciiffe girl's heart do nip-ups. To complete the idyl, there are two other men: Chris, a...