Poetry, interviews, short fiction, and novels are on this weekend's reading list.

At Book Hampton in East Hampton the weekend will start tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. when Claudia Dreifus will read from and discuss her book "Interview."

As a New York Times Magazine interviewer, Ms. Dreifus travels the globe to meet and talk with some of the world's most interesting people. The book is divided into categories such as "Saints" (the Dalai Lama and others), "Citizens" (Benazir Bhutto, Barney Frank), "Media Phreaks" (Cokie Roberts, John Sayles, Richard Dreyfuss), and "Poets" (Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller).

The interviews are frank and often controversial, as Ms. Dreifus's questions cover race, sexuality, self-expression, privacy, celebrity, AIDS, and war. The author is a part-time resident of Sag Harbor.

New Jaffe Novel

Rona Jaffe, a best-selling author who has a house in Sagaponack, will be at the bookstore on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. to read from her latest novel, "Five Women." The book tells the story of a group of women, bound by friendships and long-hidden secrets, who achieve independence in the face of apparently insurmountable odds.

Ms. Jaffe has 15 books to her credit, with 23 million copies of her books in print worldwide.

Following that reading, Amy Hempel and Sheila Kohler will read from their short fiction at 7.

In the title story of "Tumble Home," Ms. Hempel's narrator is recovering from a nervous breakdown and reveals slivers of herself through her strange relationshiops to other people. The author of two previous short story collections, "Reasons to Live" and "At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom," Ms. Hempel teaches in the graduate writing program at Bennington College and lives in New York City and East Hampton.

Resembles Author

Ms. Kohler will be reading from a forthcoming novella, "Correspondence." She is the author of two novels, "The Perfect Place" and "The House on R Street," and a collection of short stories, "Miracles in America."

On Sunday at 5:30 p.m. another bestselling novelist, Linda Fairstein, will read from her new novel, "Likely to Die."

As head of New York County District Attorney's Sex Crime Division for more than two decades, Ms. Fairstein is a leading prosecutor of crimes of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence. Her cases have included the "preppie murder" trial of Robert Chambers and the Central Park jogger case.

In "Likely to Die," her protaganist, Alexandra Cooper, holds the same position and otherwise closely resembles her creator, except that she is "younger, blonder, thinner," according to Ms. Fairstein.

Poetry By Appleman

Also on Sunday, at the East Hampton Town Marine Museum on Bluff Road in Amagansett, Philip Appleman will read from his poetry in the weekly Poetry Marathon series at 4 p.m.

Mr. Appleman is the author of seven volumes of poetry, three novels, and several nonfiction books. His awards include a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Humanist Arts Award of the American Humanist Association.

The ads sing an irresistible siren song:

WANNA BE IN A MOVIE?

Well, who doesn't? And who wouldn't want to work for Steven Spielberg, Mr. Dreamworks himself, even if he were producing a remake of "Bedtime For Bonzo" instead of a rock-'em-sock-'em outer-space thrill er?

And then to be able to work on location not on faraway Martha's Vineyard, where Mr. Spielberg shot most of "Jaws," but right here on his own East Hampton summer stomping grounds?

Okay, so the pay won't get you too far along the road to your first million. It's only $75 a day for one or two days' work. But the hordes of wannabe-in-the-movies hopefuls expected to turn up at Guild Hall Sunday in response to the advertisements can be assumed to have other things on their minds.

Call For Extras

According to the "open call" for extras, Hollywood and Dreamworks SKG (Mr. Spielberg, a resident of West End Road, is the "S") are seeking as many as 200 all told for the film, provided they can work during the week of July 27. A spokeswoman for Grant Wilfley Casting, Debbie Sheridan, said people of all "ages, shapes, and sizes" were needed.

They will not need much in the way of costumes. In fact, the scenes to be made here sound pretty much like one big come-as-you-are party.

"Deep Impact" is the name of the film. According to advance publicity, it takes place in a small beach town whose residents are terrorized by news of an impending global catastrophe: an asteroid hurtling toward Earth.

Where is it predicted to land? Why, in the ocean of course, and you probably guessed which one. If the comet strikes, will the tiny town be washed away by a tidal wave from the deep?

Scene From "Jaws"

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, there's a reason: Mr. Spielberg is returning here to time-honored, proven territory. Who can forget the image of the great white shark in the opening scene of "Jaws," moving inexorably toward the blissfully swimming child?

It is not certain if children will be used in "Deep Impact," but they, too, have been encouraged to show up at Guild Hall between 1 and 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Mr. Spielberg comes to the futuristic "Deep Impact" and the Hamptons from out of the 19th century and Mystic, Conn., where he has been filming the soon-to-be-released "Amistad," based on a true story of mutiny aboard a slave ship.

Like "Jaws," which many believe to have been inspired by the exploits of Montauk's Capt. Frank Mundus, who wore a necklace of shark teeth and called himself "Monster Man," "Amistad" has local connections.

The slave ship put ashore, after a roundabout trip from Sierra Leone to Cuba and back north, off a Montauk beach. The film "Amistad" is due out in the fall.

"Deep Impact" marks a reunion for Mr. Spielberg, as executive producer, with Richard Z. Zanuck and David Brown, the producers. The team of Zanuck and Brown gave Mr. Spielberg his first two directing assignments; "Sugarland Express" was the first, followed a year later, in 1975, by "Jaws."

"Deep Impact" has some big-name stars, including Tea Leoni, Robert Duvall, Elijah Woods, Blair Underwood, Maximilian Schell, and Morgan Freeman. Mr. Schell and Ms. Leoni are slated to take part in the Hamptons scenes, but no one expects them to be around for the casting call. The film is expected to be on the screen by next summer.

With Reporting By Jonathan Steinberg

The forecast for this weekend? Expect crowds, really big crowds, and a fair share of man-made thunder as party season on the South Fork reaches the boiling point this weekend. Hot-ticket affairs dot the map all the way from Montauk's Deep Hollow Ranch to the Parrish Art Museum in South ampton and at half a dozen spots in between.

So many parties, so little time.

Preparations for these high-end events, some of the biggest and best-attended bashes of the season, began months ago.

Anniversary Bash

Reader's Digest, which expects upward of 1,000 guests to attend its invitation-only 75th anniversary celebrations at Deep Hollow Ranch and in Napeague at the publisher Gregory Coleman's house, has booked 250 hotel rooms on the South Fork and reserved buses to help transport guests to Mr. Coleman's house on Cranberry Hole Road.

On Monday, Jack Emptage and his crew were running ragged setting up tents for three other events that together will draw a couple of thousand more partygoers. Mr. Emptage owns Hampton Party Tents, a rental business based in Amagansett.

The Music Festival of the Hamptons gets a whole tent complex in the no-fly zone at the East Hampton Airport and another set of tents on Snake Hollow Road in Bridgehampton. Guild Hall's Taste of Summer needs a 6,000-square-foot tent on the opposite side of the airport, and a fund-raiser for the James Beard Foundation at Kay LeRoy's estate in Amagansett will fill yet another 6,000- square-foot big top.

Just The Beginning

The East Hampton Town police will stretch their force of traffic control officers almost to the limit over the next few days. Though this weekend may be the busiest yet this summer in terms of special events, Police Chief Thomas Scott said it was only the beginning of a long chain of taxing summer weekends.

Private security is provided at some of the large parties, but town officers will be needed for the events at the airport and especially for George Plimpton's annual fireworks display for the Harbor for Girls and Boys on Saturday.

In addition to the spectators who gather at Luly and Tony Duke's house off Springy Banks Road in East Hampton for the official party to benefit the Harbor for Girls and Boys, the waters of Three Mile Harbor will be filled with boaters and spectators will line the shores.

Picnic Pyrotechnics

Those who want to go for the full effect can purchase tickets to the benefit evening at the Dukes' house for between $50 (16 to 30-year-olds only) and $1,000. Children's tickets are $25. Proceeds will support the year-round camp for inner city children in East Hampton.

A buffet picnic dinner will be served from 7 to 9 p.m.; the fireworks by the Grucci family begin at 9:15. Tickets can be purchased by calling the Harbor for Girls and Boys' fireworks office in East Hampton.

Each year the pyrotechnics are choreographed to music and narrated by Mr. Plimpton. This year, he invited four artists - Donald Sultan, David Salle, John Alexander, and Dennis Oppenheim - to use the sky as their canvas for a minute each.

Evanescent Art

The artists' designs were taken to Grucci for interpretation, and they have chosen music to accompany their fleeting works.

Fleeting creative works of the edible variety will be featured in abundance at Guild Hall's Taste of Summer benefit, a culinary extravaganza sponsored again this year by Gourmet magazine. Taste of Summer will hold court in a tent by the East Hampton Aire hangar at the airport on Saturday night.

The annual benefit, popular with a younger crowd, will showcase food from a number of restaurants around the East End and Manhattan and wine from local vineyards and around the world.

Food Purveyors

Among the local food purveyors offering samples at the benefit will be the Art of Eating, Boom Bistro, the Bridgehampton Cafe and Bulls Head Bar and Grill, the Downtown Grille and Wine Bar, Dreesen's Market, the Laundry, Loaves and Fishes, Plain and Fancy, the Maidstone Arms, Tierra Mar, the Southampton Publick House, and the Farmhouse.

The Chris Bishop Band with the Uptown Horns will shake things up with Motown, reggae, rock, soul, and swing music. The party starts at 8 p.m. Tickets go for $125 in advance at the Guild Hall box office and $150 at the door. Funds will go toward the many programs offered at the longtime East Hampton cultural center.

The tent has been filled to capacity for the past two years, so Guild Hall is strongly recommending that those who plan to attend purchase their tickets ahead of time.

Parrish Gala

Also competing for space on the engagement calendar Saturday night is the Parrish Art Museum's annual Midsummer Gala, an evening of music, dancing, and fine cuisine in the arboretum of the Southampton museum.

The event planner and decorator Robert Isabell has given the tent a 19th-century ambiance, with tapestries, street lamps, potted palms, hanging ferns, hurricane lamps, and candlelight, all inspired by the museum's current exhibit on the artists of the Tenth Street Studio Building.

Classic Roaring Twenties speak easy numbers, elegant 1930s tunes by Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter, and lively toe-tappers from the swing era will be provided by Doc Scantlin and his Imperial Palms Orchestra.

Younger Crowd

A cocktail hour will begin at 7:30 p.m. Dinner at 8:30 p.m. will include shrimp in tarragon sauce, herbed loin of lamb, ratatouille, and warm chocolate souffle cake. Dancing and dessert will begin at 10 p.m.

Patron tickets for the full event are $600. A sponsor ticket goes for $350, and associate tickets (for those under 35) will be $250 apiece.

Like the Guild Hall fund-raiser, this benefit tends draws a younger crowd than most, more so after 10 p.m. when those under 35 can buy special tickets for dancing and dessert for a $75 donation. Tickets can be purchased through the Parrish's special events department.

Top Chefs

Some of Manhattan's finest chefs will spend Saturday on the East End at Chefs and Champagne, a fund-raiser for the James Beard Foundation.

Of the 25 renowned chefs who will strut their stuff, just one, Michael A. Castino, has a local base. Mr. Castino is the executive chef at the newly opened Pacific East in Amagansett.

Mr. Castino will join a gathering of some of the true heavy hitters of the Manhattan restaurant scene. Among them are Florian Bellanger and Eric Ripert of Le Bernadin, Erik Blauberg of '21' Club, Ephraim Kadish and Bob Trainor of the China Grill, Waldy Malouf of the Rainbow Room, Eberhard Muller of Lutece, and Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit. Tattinger champagne will flow throughout the benefit.

Honoring Pepin

The world-famous chef Jacques Pepin will be honored at the party for his outstanding achievements in the culinary world, and the artist Larry Rivers and his band The Climax will provide musical accompaniment for what promises to be a knockout of a meal. The LeRoy estate is on Old Stone Highway in Amagansett.

Tickets for members of the James Beard Foundation are $100; nonmembers can enjoy the party for a $150 donation to the foundation. Proceeds will support the various programs and activities sponsored by the foundation throughout the year.

Reservations are a must and can be made by calling the James Beard Foundation offices on West 12th Street in Manhattan. The party runs from 5 to 8 p.m.

Boys Choir

Tomorrow night in a festival tent at the airport, the Music Festival of the Hamptons will kick off a week of performances with a large family concert by the Boys Choir of Harlem. The show will begin at 8 p.m. and is $20 for adults and free for kids.

The festival has tents at two main venues this year - the airport and a field off Snake Hollow Road in Bridgehampton. An opening party for the festival with music by the pianist Lukas Foss will take place at the latter venue on Saturday night.

The fete will begin with cocktails at 6:30 p.m., followed by the concert at 7:30 and dinner at 9.

Tea Dance

Tickets for the concert only are $50 or $75 for reserved seating. A $175 ticket entitles the holder to V.I.P. reserved seating at the concert and dinner. Details of this and other Music Festival programs appear separately.

An afternoon tea dance for the Empire State Pride Agenda in Sagaponack Saturday is likely to draw big crowds as well. In past years, hundreds of people have come to the annual East End benefit for this lesbian and gay political lobbying group. This year the tea dance will be at 439 Parsonage Lane from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Food and cocktails will be served and St. Peter, a D.J., will keep the music pumping throughout.

General admission tickets, at $70 each, will be available at the door. They are $55 in advance through CircuitTix, a ticket broker, at Mecox Gardens on County Road 39A, or at Drendel Hall on Newtown Lane in East Hampton. Supporter and sponsor tickets begin at $250.

Polo Season

Divet stomping between the chuckers? That's right, it's polo season as well as party season. Some might even say they're one and the same.

The third annual polo tournament begins Saturday at Two Trees Farm in Bridgehampton, and as usual a well-heeled crowd will gather in the V.I.P. tent there to mingle and nosh during breaks in the game.

Cynthia Rowley, a clothing designer with shops in East Hampton and New York, will stage an informal fashion show throughout the reception. General admission tickets are available for $5, but entrance to the V.I.P. tent is strictly by invitation.

Swanky Invitations

One of the hottest tickets this weekend is also an invitation-only affair. Around 1,000 people are expected at celebrations for Reader's Digest's 75th anniversary. The invitations, which were practically gilded, went out in large collaged boxes wrapped in handmade rice paper. Swanky!

The two-part bash includes a huge party Saturday night at Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk. There the comedian Jay Leno, who hosts "The Tonight Show," will entertain the crowd. Paula Poundstone, a comedienne, David Blaine, a magician, and Ronn Lucas, a ventriloquist, will also keep the throng busy.

For part two, celebrants will be bussed to Mr. Coleman's house on Cranberry Hole Road for an intimate barbecue for 800 on the beach on Sunday afternoon.

All told, it will be a weekend to reckon with. Party-goer or not, finding the hot spots should be easy, but avoiding them . . . that's another story altogether.

Manny Quin, the wooden police decoy, has gone bald, a most unfortunate state of affairs for a mannequin. He looks the way he must have looked years ago when East Hampton Town police first unpacked him from his box, before he was issued a regulation blue uniform and cap.

Manny's smooth, round head, lolling back over the seat of his police car or propped thoughtfully up on one wooden arm, as it was when we spied him Sunday afternoon on Route 27, is a dead giveaway. One look at that bald pate and drivers zip on by, chuckling, no doubt, at the quaint ways of the natives.

Either give the dummy back his cap or get him a wig, preferably ash-colored. Oh, and open his car windows, too, before he spontaneously combusts in all this heat.

Wandering after-hours one day last week into a local Post Office that shall remain nameless, an eavesdropper overheard, through the lobby wall, a thought-provoking conversation between two postal workers. One employee was apologizing profusely to another, telling her he realized that what he'd done was wrong and promising he would not do it again.

It seems that just before 5 p.m., as the offended party was locking up for the day, a man had come running up with a large package. Told that the window was closed, he became incensed and shoved the package inside the still-open door, making it impossible to shut it. He had come a long way, he yelled. The next day was July 4, when the Post Office would be closed. He wanted service, dammit, and would not leave until he got it.

The postal worker stood her ground, saying that if she bent the rules for one customer, there would be no end to the working day. Into this impasse, apparently with a few people looking on, stepped her co-worker, who told the angry man to come ahead, he would take care of him.

Now, an hour after closing time, the two employees were still talking it out. An isolated act of incivility had come between them and ruined the day for both.

That surly latecomer could, perhaps, be cousin to another, the weekender heading home who drives by the recycling center after closing hours every Sunday and leaves the weekend's garbage by the locked gates. In that person's defense, timing one's departure to the dump's closing may be a little too much to expect; there are better things to do with the long daylight hours of summer than fight the Long Island Expressway.

Perhaps recognizing that, or maybe just bowing to the inevitable, Southampton Town has decided to extend the Sunday hours of its four dumps from 5 p.m. until 6, through Labor Day. It's something to think about. Won't help the Post Office, though.

Two weeks ago, we editorialized in this space about the need for multifamily housing, urging local officials to take this need to heart and commenting that it was inappropriate at best to expect workers to labor here by day and disappear from the area at night.

It was perhaps with tongue in cheek that one reader subsequently suggested putting the stylishly renovated Bridgehampton Motel to such use. Another told us that those in need of temporary housing could be bused back and forth from Riverhead. Riverhead?

Riverhead recently enacted a law that requires safety inspections of group housing and limits the number of unrelated persons living under one roof. The problem is that Riverhead is still largely agricultural and there are dozens of farm workers, including adults with children, living in what once had been single-family houses.

Mark Kwasna, a Riverhead Town Councilman, is quoted in the article saying that health and safety were the primary concerns in enacting the law, following a fire in January that killed a Guatemalan worker. Be that as it may, the Councilman also seemed to have some other concerns.

"These illegal aliens wouldn't be homeless if they went [back] to where they came from," he is quoted saying. "There's plenty of people looking for work."

We don't know whether that is true, but on the South Fork we know it isn't. Our own college kids, green-card holders from Ireland and Poland, as well as Latin and Carribbean countries, all come here because the local work force cannot fill the demand. An effort to provide them with adequate housing, perhaps a combined public and private one, must be made.

Sorrow over the TWA Flight 800 catastrophe has continued over the course of the year. It started among the Coast Guard crews and fishermen who realized early in a ghastly search of the ocean off East Moriches that all was lost. That search was followed by another - for somewhere to place the blame.

In the weeks and months that followed, conspiracy theories flew about, although the measured words of Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Transportation Safety Board personnel suggested the unbelievable: that 230 lives had been lost to an undetected flaw. A conclusion that some insidious enemy was responsible for the explosion would have been more palatable. Random culpability is hard to comprehend, much less accept.

Extraordinary efforts to determine a cause were still continuing this week, testimony to a society that won't take no answer for an answer. An unmarked plane with empty seats re-enacted the flight of the doomed craft - a ghostly reminder.

We should be reminded, and proud of, the way the extended community, Coast Guard, police, religious leaders, and just plain folks, rose to a terrible occasion. They brought dignity to that short, tragic flight.

Woven through the year since the Flight 800 disaster has been the unimaginable grief of the families, including several in our own community. They have not been the same since the night of July 17, one year ago today.

When Edwin L. and Peggy Sherrill first met in 1984 at Home, Sweet Home, the East Hampton Village museum, he had been widowed four years and she was in the process of a divorce.

Two years later, when they married, Mrs. Sherrill and her two daughters moved from their ranch house on Conklin Terrace in the village to Mr. Sherrill's large house at 5 Hither Lane.

The Hither Lane house had been built in 1962 to serve not only as home for the Sherrill family, which included two boys, but as an office for Mr. Sherrill's wife, Dr. Doris Zenger, a pediatrician who died in 1981. It sat on four acres once owned by Mr. Sherrill's father, Edwin L. Sherrill Sr., a dairy farmer.

"The Sherrills had farm lots all over the place - on Fireplace, Egypt. Even the Evan Frankel house up the road was once part of the Sherrill estate," Mr. Sherrill said.

Too Much

"The thought of living there seemed kind of surreal because we'd been there so often to visit Dr. Zenger," Mrs. Sherrill said recently. "But it was a wonderful large home that accommodated both of our families, and Ed let me put my mark on it," she said.

Soon, though, all the children were gone and the house and grounds proved too much.

"I guess you could say the place outgrew us," said Mr. Sherrill, a mild-mannered man who will be 75 this summer.

Referring to the surrounding properties on Hither and Amy's Lanes, Mrs. Sherrill said, "All the places around us were groomed to the nines and we were doing all the work ourselves. Ed would start mowing and trimming Monday morning and by the time he'd finish he'd have to start all over again. It consumed our lives," Mrs. Sherrill said.

Compact But Flowing

In 1992 they put the house and some of the land on the market, and made plans to build on a half-acre parcel next door, one of three he kept for himself and his sons.

Mrs. Sherrill pored through shelter magazines, and found a design for a shingle-style cottage they both liked. They hired Ernie Dayton as contractor, started building in 1993, and moved in 1994.

The new house is compact at 1,473 square feet but the space flows remarkably well.

The entrance foyer, for instance, is minute, but, because it has a cathedra-height ceiling, it is not cramped. The off-center placement of the front door, adjacent to the second floor staircase, allowed this.

Open Plan

The 17-by-14-foot living room has built-in bookcases, a fireplace, and French doors that lead outdoors to a deck used for dining. The room connects to a kitchen and dining area in an open-floor plan. The master bedroom suite is downstairs and has a spacious compartmented bathroom with a linen closet.

Two more rooms upstairs flow off an open landing, an area Mr. Sherrill uses as an office. A naval architect and model boat builder, Mr. Sherrill has filled the space with nautical artifacts. Most treasured are models of two fishing trawlers that he owned in his early days as a commercial fisherman.

A two-car garage and a studio over it have replaced the workshop Mr. Sherrill had in the other house, where he once built furniture and overhauled boats. The couple shares the double-height studio, which was not in the original plans.

Shared Space

Mr. Sherrill builds his model boats here, and Mrs. Sherrill, a student of the American decorative arts, works on reverse paintings on glass and carefully stenciled trays. Her work requires a dust-free atmosphere, so Mr. Sherrill does all his sanding in the garage.

Spacious, sunny, and informal, the couple call the studio the FROG, (Favorite Room Over Garage). When children and grandchildren visit, everyone congregates here. Mrs. Sherrill misses the large living room of the old house, but says the studio makes up for it.

One of the reasons the scaled-down house is successful is that it is uncluttered.

Of the furnishings, Mrs. Sherrill said, "Everything was too oversized and there was too much of it so we gave almost everything to the children and started from scratch." This included a rare Dominy tall clock.

Family Matters

But many things remain to give the house character. Old photographs, drawings, plates, other things with a family connection hang on a wall. There is an old Dominy candlestand and a rope bed from Mrs. Sherrill's side of the family, Grandma Zenger's high chair is in the dining area, and old Sherrill Dairy milk bottles are in the mud room.

The kitchen has a special touch too. Mrs. Sherrill, who studied quilting, designed the tile work over the stove following an 18th-century basket pattern with a sawtooth edge. Old working decoys from both families sit on cabinet tops.

"Do you know what we did when we first met each other?" Mrs. Sherrill asked a visitor. "We both went home and consulted our copies of Jeannette Rattray's 'East Hampton History and Genealogies.' "

Simpler Life

Mrs. Sherrill is a 13th generation Edwards, a family which, like the Sherrills, was among the village's early settlers. Her husband is of the ninth generation of Sherrills here.

What delights the couple most is that Mrs. Sherrill's grandfather, Herbert Nathaniel (Captain Bert) Edwards, was a friend of Mr. Sher rill's father.

"Isn't that wonderful?" she asked.

"We're very happy here," said Mrs. Sherrill, who is 55 and recently retired from her part-time job at the East Hampton Main Street clothing shop Mark, Fore and Strike, where she designed the windows and interior displays.

"We wanted a simpler life."

Two errors crept into a prior column about the Seegal family's house in the Tyson compound on Further Lane, Amagansett. Perla Gray was a close family friend, not a niece, of Caroline Tyson and the name Baker was used inadvertently rather than Simons in one reference to the house.

The sentence should have read: "In 1991 the Simons house came back on the market and the Seegals leapt for it."

AMAGANSETT

Balasses to Alan Grotheer and Kathleen Lee, Hedges Lane, $372,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Topham to Joshua and Lisa Pickard, Merchants Path, $372,000.

Croll Dev. Group to Shlomo Angel, Casey Lane, $210,000.

Thompson to David Kaplan and John Michell, Bull Head Court, $425,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Mirick to Mark Field and Greg Ventra, Woods Lane, $560,000.

Connelly to Maureen, Timothy, and Leslie Hartzell, Wildwood Court, $315,000.

Stewart to Sharon Strassfeld, Marley Lane, $360,000.

Ginsberg to Francis Watson and Edwina LeMaistre, Jones Cove Road, $932,000.

McGriel to Paul Boocock and Peggy Grawiviler, Accabonac Road, $230,000.

MONTAUK

Zihlmann to Peter and Angela Muscat, Soundview Drive, $159,000.

Brydon to George Hadjipopov, North Shore Road, $205,000.

NORTH HAVEN

North Haven Acquisition Corp. to Paula Michtono, Fairlea Court, $232,000.

NORTHWEST

New Sunshine Realty to Evans Nelson, Cordwood Lane, $325,000.

J&P Son Inc. to John Campbell, Barclay Court, $650,000.

Cardamone to Ira Bergman, Beechwood Court, $378,000.

Siska to S.S.T. Foundation, Bull Path, $200,000.

DeGennaro to Harve Fine, Hedges Banks Drive, $154,000.

Meyer to Janet Finkel, Spread Oak Lane, $300,000.

NOYAC

Harwood-Stotz Bldrs. Inc. to Frank Bruttomesso, Wildwood Road, $240,000.

SAG HARBOR

Adams Jr. to Joan Benedict, Clearview Drive, $222,000.

Greenbaum to Alice Mayhew, West Henry Street, $163,000.

Yardley to Randall and Nandrea Courts, Hampton Street, $217,000.

Huba to Janet Fuersich, Hampton Road, $275,000.

SAGAPONACK

Pfeifle to Gary Sherman, Sagaponack Road, $580,000.

St. Ann's Episcopal Church to Ocean-Quimby Trust, Ocean Road, $1,485,000.

Guhman Sr. to Victoria Sharp, Greenleaf Lane, $180,000.

Rectory Realty Assoc. to Vicarage Realty L.P., Parsonage Pond Road, $206,500.

Rectory Realty Assoc. to Jeffrey and Susan Goldenberg, Parsonage Pond Road, $1,665,000.

SPRINGS

Corvino to Doug Naidus and Ruth Katz, Long Woods Lane, $260,000.

Hines to Lawrence and Randi Melzer, Isle of Wight Road, $257,000.

Zimmerman to James Levinsohn and Kathleen Kearney, Talmage Farm Lane, $298,500.

WAINSCOTT

Earl to Rosario and Antonella Acquista, Windsor Lane, $450,000.

WATER MILL

Kaye to Marcia Mintz, Mill Pond Lane, $575,000.

Bridgehampton Homes Inc. to Ronald Phillips, Goose Glen Court, $452,000.

Head of Pond Assoc. to Hector Torres and Frank Gemino, Head of Pond Road, $945,000.

Nold to Edward Kush Jr., Head of Pond Road, $182,000.

Caribbean-like weather and a strong supply of fish of many species have the retail fish business booming. Roger Tollefsen, president of the New York Seafood Council and owner of the Indian Cove Seafood Shop in Hampton Bays, said the Fourth of July weekend saw the busiest retail trade in over 10 years.

The 15 percent, per year, rate of increase in demand seen throughout the 1980s - until the stock market crash in October of 1987 - looks to have taken a giant leap upward if the weekend of the Fourth was any indication, Mr. Tollefson said on Monday.

He said the free-spending of the 1980s was reflected in the retail fish business - "I don't know if we'll ever see that again."The market stayed flat after "black Monday," however, until last year, "a building year," with a substantial increase this year, Mr. Tollefsen said.

John Haessler of the Seafood Shoppe in Wainscott, Dick Gosman of Gosman's Seafood Market in Montauk, and Charlotte Klein Sasso of Stuart's Market in Amagansett agreed the Fourth of July weekend was aces, much better than last year. The overall supply of fish was good. Swordfish and tuna were in especially high demand, they agreed, because of excellent grilling weather.

Bass Supply Slow

While the striped bass season opened for commercial fishermen on July 1, the supply has been a bit slow, according to market owners, probably because fishermen want to hold back their tags for the larger fish that come later in the season.

The season quota, set by the state in cooperation with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, is the same as last season's: 590,000 pounds.

The quota is broken down between full-time commercial fishermen and part-timers. The former are allocated 88 tags each, and one tag must be attached to each bass sold. Eligible part-timers receive 14 tags each. A total of 500 full-time bass fishermen are participating this season, and 140 who fish in their spare time. In the commercial bass fishery, a full-timer is one whose income comes at least 50 percent from some kind of fishing, including running a charter boat.

Large Steamers

Whether they harvest bass by rod and reel or by net, not all commercial bass fishermen run out and use up all their tags. On the one hand, prices are good now during the busy summertime restaurant season. On the other, larger bass (worth more money per tag) are often caught later in the season. Striped bass fillets are selling in the range of $9 to $12 per pound.

Last month, baymen asked and received permission from the East Hampton Town Trustees to use the powering method of digging soft (steamer) clams from a section of Napeague Harbor. Unfortunately, it seems the clams in the set are large. Most consumers prefer smaller steamer clams, which has decreased demand for the Napeague Harbor steamers. Smaller steamers from other local areas are making it to market, however, and selling for about $3.50 a pound.

Efforts are afoot to sell the larger steamers to processors who shuck them to be used as "fryers."

Sushi Lovers

The supply of yellowfin tuna looks as though it will pick up with a large body of fish about 50 miles south of Montauk. These days markets can buy fish caught almost anywhere in the world. A local supply can, but doesn't have to, result in lower prices.

Ms. Sasso of Stuart's explained that "number-one" grade tuna used for sushi always commands a high price, while there is more play in the lesser grades used for grilling. The range at Stuart's is between $9 and $15 per pound, she said.

"Sushi is so popular. I sell the stuff that goes with sushi, the wasabi, the seaweed, and it sells fast. And, a lot of people are eating tuna lean and ask for it cut a little thicker so they can get that pink color in the middle," Ms. Sasso said.

Burgers, Too

Like other markets, Stuart's also offers tuna "kebabs," chunks of good-grade tuna for $7 to $8 per pound. But Ms. Sasso might have the corner on the tuna burger market. She makes them herself out of ground tuna chunks, ginger, teriyaki, scallions, and other spices. They sell for $7.99 and are ready for the grill.

The first half of the commercial weakfish season ended on June 24, stemming the best supply of weaks from pound nets in some time. The season reopens on Aug. 28.