For the car trip… Anyone growing up within a 400-mile radius of Niagara Falls has likely endured family trips to the “natural” wonder. In Ginger Strand’s meticulously researched history, Inventing Niagara (Simon & Shuster, 352 pages, $28.99), she details the area’s transformation from sublime nature to mediated kitsch stuck between two different countries. Strand uses the falls as a way into topics as diverse as North American relations, Love Canal, mass graves of radioactive mice and the dashed hopes of park visionary Frederick Olmsted. While it’s not covered in the book, I also heartily recommend you never do House of Frankenstein on mushrooms after eating at the Golden Griddle.

For those looking for a new hobby… In Andrew Pyper’s upcoming novel, The Killing Circle (Doubleday, 336 pages, $29.95), Patrick Rush is a tarnished journalist demoted from the heights of “The National Star” to the gutter aesthetics of reality TV. Like many, Rush foolishly turns to fiction writing as a way of coping with tragedy and he joins a writing group. But among the wannabes is a young woman whose startling fictions bear an eerie resemblance to real murders. Don’t worry; despite that eerie similarity to The Eyes of Laura Mars, Pyper — fast becoming Canada’s gentlemanly answer to Chuck Palahniuk — is quite capable of tweaking masterful plots and original turns out of genre chestnuts.

For flying… The last time I flew, the security lineup was so long a guard took it upon himself to try his abysmal stand-up comedy routine on us uncleared masses. (And they wonder how terrorists are made?) In this milieu Jonathan Miles sets his first novel, Dear American Airlines (Houghton Mifflin, 192 pages, $24.95). Taking the form of a book-length letter to the eponymous airline, the letter writer is a frustrated poet and translator whose flight to his estranged daughter’s wedding has been cancelled. From his plea for a refund, the letter quickly moves into a searing confessional. It’s a simple and bold framework that allows Miles to riff, just as John Cheever did with his experiments like “The Swimmer,” on self-delusion and the vague cruelties of contemporary life. Also, at a 192 brisk pages, Dear American Airlines’ length is red-eye perfect.

For those who really want to rough it… I don’t know what — besides possibly the recent writer’s strike — inspired Rob Kutner of The Daily Show to pen this combination how-to and self-help gag book on surviving the apocalypse but Apocalypse How (Running Press, 170 pages, $13.95) has been in my bathroom for two weeks and continues giving. While a chunk of the material is Planet of the Apes–derived laughless jokes, Kutner’s capacity for neologisms and puns is formidable. One chapter advises us to lighten our mood by realizing “It’s just an A-pocalypse. Not THE-pocalypse” while “From Bunker to Bungalow” gives tips on Cape-Codifying your refuge. The book’s inventive peak is the “The Armageddon Shopping guide,” which shows you how to scavenge for the best clothing “left behind” by teleporting Christians. Summer goes away every year. The world goes away but once. Be prepared. Be stylish.