Let Us Entertain You

Call it Martha Stewart withdrawal. Suddenly there's a flurry of guidebooks on how to entertain with flair. Lilly Pulitzer offers tips for the perfect twilight campfire with her signature preppy style in Essentially Lilly (Harper Resource). Kate Spade's Occasions (Simon & Schuster) walks would-be hosts through the nuts and bolts of the mise-en-scene of the party before tackling gatherings like tailgates and barbecues. And publicists Lara Shriftman and Elizabeth Harrison bring their expertise in planning bashes for clients like Mercedes-Benz and Cartier to the rest of us with Fete Accompli! (Clarkson Potter) in September. But the best advice of all may be from Elsie de Wolfe's 1913 classic, The House in Good Taste, to be reissued by Rizzoli next month. "The color of [the dining room] should be selected with due consideration of its becomingness to the host or hostess," she writes. "Everyone has a right to look their best in their own dining room." Martha couldn't have said it better.