Recalling the New England summers of her childhood, food and travel writer Linda Dannenberg says, she thinks of blueberries.

"I can still smell my mother's lattice-topped blueberry pies cooling on our screened back porch, and taste the plump and tender sugar-topped blueberry muffins that we bought every August morning at Humphreys bakery on Martha's Vineyard," she writes.

Years ago, she adds, "We just loved them for themselves - tiny, perfect wash-and-ready fruit with lovely, thin indigo skin, very few seeds, a delicate balance of acidity and sweetness, and dainty, ruffled crowns."

Dannenberg's new book, "True Blueberry" (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $22.50) is a trove of blueberry lore and background, summarizes her research, and features a variety of recipes, including favorites she collected from chefs and home cooks.

You can find blueberries these days in a wide variety of products, first among them fresh blueberries, both cultivated and wild, she says.

- Wild blueberries, commonly called "low-bush" blueberries because they grow low to the ground in the sandy barrens of New England and eastern Canada, are generally quite small, often no larger than a baby pea, and range in flavor from tangy and sour to exquisitely sweet.

- Cultivated, commercially grown blueberries were developed as hearty hybrids from wild high-bush blueberry plants in the Northeast that were able to thrive in areas where blueberries were not originally grown.

As well as fresh berries, there are air- or heat-dried blueberries, sometimes called dehydrated blueberries, that resemble raisins; freeze-dried berries that are light and crunchy; canned blueberries; and blueberry juice.

Researching and testing recipes for her cookbook, Dannenberg says she discovered blueberries' versatility, whether used cold, hot, whole and pureed. Her book offers a variety of recipes, for soups and salads, for main-course meat and fish combinations, as well as many traditional sweet dishes and breakfast specialties.