PAPERBACK PICKS

BRIGHTNESS FALLS Jay McInerney (Vintage, $12, first published in 1992) What McInerney did to a distinguished magazine resembling The New Yorker in his celebrated first novel, Bright Lights, Big City, is done here to the book business. A-

TRUMAN David McCullough (Touchstone, $15, 1992) An immensely detailed, immensely readable biography that rescues the real Harry S Truman-earthy, blunt, combative-from being the plaster saint his would-be inheritors would like to make of him. A

POMONA QUEEN Kem Nunn (Washington Square Press, $10, 1992) Nunn's third novel is a blackly funny apocalyptic thriller. Set in L.A. County's Pomona Valley, once a hub of the citrus industry ''before the burning of the groves,'' the book focuses on outlaw bikers. B

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