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When Peter Bienstock, Michael Aaron and Kevin Zraly agreed to host a dinner party to benefit the New York Public Library, it was understood that the meal would focus on extraordinary wines. Aaron is the president of Sherry-Lehmann Wines & Spirits Merchants, one of New York City's leading wine dealers; Zraly is the wine director of Windows on the World, which has one of the largest restaurant wine cellars in New York, and Bienstock, in whose comfortable Fifth Avenue apartment the dinner was held, is well known for his interest in good food and drink. Moreover, Bienstock had recently purchased the contents of a remarkable wine collection in Wilmington, Del., that had been kept in a walk-in safe early this century by S. Hallock duPont, a distant relative of Bienstock's wife, Anne Bienstock, and a direct descendant of Eleuthere Irenee duPont, the founder of the Du Pont Company. ''Cousin Hallock died in 1974,'' Bienstock said, ''but he stopped buying wine in the early 1950's. He gave up drinking and literally locked the safe.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LET IT BE SAID RIGHT FROM the start: the midnight supper is not your everyday sort of feast. There are few people in this world - actors, Spaniards and workers on the night shift spring immediately to mind - who regularly sit down to eat at midnight. For the rest of us, the midnight supper is an inversion of the natural order of things, dinner at 8 and so to bed at 10. Like all such inversions, midnight suppers have the potential to challenge, excite, charm, seduce and delight us, and this they accomplish whether we approach them as hosts or as guests. The midnight supper, then, is a very special sort of encounter. This is decidedly not the time to introduce one's intended to his or her prospective in-laws, nor is it wise to use the occasion as a foundation for business or political decisions. Seduction is really what it is all about - and by that I do not necessarily mean seduction with a romantic goal in mind. The midnight supper is a rare chance to present a dashing and exciting image, to impress two or three people (never more than six) with the wild, extravagant heart that throbs beneath one's workaday exterior. It is, above all, a time for the grand gesture, for eccentricity and flair - a time, quite frankly, for showing off. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ALONG THE EASTERN SHORE of Bucks Harbor, dark points of spruce and hemlock are silhouetted against the apricot flush of dawn. The silky surface of the water, reflecting the shoreline, seems to sigh a little with the slackening tide. A loon calls softly, and the fragrance of wood smoke rises from the Charlie Noble, as the smokestack is called, over the Timberwind's galley where Naomi Kokonnen is preparing another wonderful breakfast: Shall it be French toast or blueberry pancakes? Shirred eggs or apricot muffins? Last night, I swore I could not eat another mouthful -ever. But such boastful claims evaporate in the appetite-building atmosphere of dawn on a sailboat off the coast of Maine. Timberwind is a graceful, white, two-masted schooner, a former Portland harbor pilot boat converted some years ago to the passenger trade. Now, under Capt. Bill Alexander, she sails out of Rockport, Me., taking as many as 20 passengers on weekly cruises of Penobscot Bay and beyond. The morning stillness is broken by a lobster boat's coughing engine as the first fisherman moves out to tend his traps. Then the brass ship's bell dings smartly for breakfast. In the combination galley and saloon, cinnamon coffeecake is emerging hot from the oven to accompany scrambled eggs and ham. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This should be an all-American weekend,'' Giorgio said over the phone from Torino, shouting because of the bad connection. ''Nothing Italian, niente di italiano - especially the food.'' Giorgio is a friend from many years ago, known in different countries and in various incarnations. New York, the city where life is work and work is life, is an aberration as far as he is concerned - for him, work is simply what he does to make a living - and he has always wanted to spend as little time here as possible. Nonetheless, since we had last met, an important transfiguration had taken place in Giorgio's life: He had finally married Francesca, a slightly younger woman who had successfully resisted Giorgio's marital intentions for some years before she succumbed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]