THE BOOK BEAT: A look at Orange...

THE BOOK BEAT: A look at Orange County books and authors has to begin with best-selling novelist Judith Krantz (above), the latest to discover the county. Much of “Dazzle,” her just-out sex-and-glitz novel, takes place in South County. . . . She researched the old O’Neill Ranch and South Coast Plaza and made her heroine a top celebrity photographer whose family home is a huge cattle ranch. . . . Krantz calls the county “the hottest new part of California to watch--economically boiling and authentically exciting.”