For all my readers on Valentine's Day, I offer a bouquet of recently discovered books that celebrate love in its infinite variety.

Puppy Love: `` Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog'' by John Grogan

Like its furry, fun-loving hero, this book leaps gleefully into your heart with the look, and the lick, of love. For anyone with even the slightest affection for dogs `` Marley and Me'' will capture your heart and fill it to overflowing with both laughter and tears.

Surely one of the reasons the book is prancing about on the bestseller list is Marley himself -- a prodigious, bounding, blundering, yellow lab with the biggest heart and smallest brain imaginable.

We know we are in for the romp of our lives early on, when Marley's owner, author John Grogan, describes a split-second glimpse of his new puppy's father, crashing through the brush, breathing like `` something you might hear in a slasher film.'' `` Its tongue hung out wildly to one side, and froth flew off its jowls as it barreled past. I detected an odd, slightly crazed yet somehow joyous gaze in his eyes. It was as though this animal had just seen a ghost -- and couldn't possibly be more tickled about it.''

Evicted from obedience school by a dog-training `` dominatrix,'' Marley has a `` default setting stuck on incorrigibility.'' He shreds couches, gouges walls, and eats doors, especially in a thunderstorm. Throughout his life, he indulges a hearty appetite for bath towels, Handi-wipes, socks, and jewelry; and in Florida's mango season, Marley's poop takes on `` the radiant fluorescence of orange traffic cones.''

Yet Marley is a `` gentle giant'' around baby Patrick, slipping into a `` Pampers-induced trance'' as he lies protectively by his side. He keeps vigil long and faithfully during the enforced bed-rest of Jenny Grogan during her pregnancy; and throughout his waning years Marley's valiant devotion, optimistic personality, and courageous struggles to cope with his bodily infirmities, inspire admiration and tears -- lots of tears.

John Grogan is the kind of writer who makes me want to read every newspaper column he has ever written. Not only does he write with warmth, humor and gusto about Marley, but he chronicles in tandem the sweetly tender love story of his own marriage and family. His book is guaranteed to unleash a flood of memories for any reader who has loved and been loved by a dog.

Crazy Love: `` The Man Who Ate the 747,'' by Ben Sherwood

J.J. Smith desperately seeks a record-breaking event to hold on to his job at the Guinness-like `` Book of Records'' based in New York City. Meanwhile, in Superior, Neb., a farmer named Wally Chubb is into his l0th year of chomping and swallowing an abandoned, crash-landed 747 -- just to prove his love for the willowy Willa Wyatt.

Chubb, who as a boy wrote Willa's name in crop circles in the wheat fields, now grinds up plane parts and mixes them with milk shakes, cheeseburgers and other edibles to signal his undying love.

When these two worlds collide in middle America, and romance crops up between Willa and J.J., we are not only lured by the novelty of such an outrageous premise, but soon discover beneath this `` flight of fancy'' a cast of credible and endearing characters, a reverence for the land, and a message firmly grounded in the values of small town America.

The `` The Man Who Ate the 747'' is a whimsical `` Our Town'' that provides laugh out loud scenarios, memorable insights about recognizing `` majesty'' in the less newsworthy moments of life, and a wake-up call to anyone `` looking for love in all the wrong places.''

Selfless Love: `` We Are All The Same,'' by Jim Wooten Recommended to me by local businessman Peter Ottmar, `` We Are All the Same'' is the heart-wrenching and true story of Nkosi Johnson, a South African boy born with AIDS who by the time of his death at the age of 12 had become for millions `` an icon of the struggle for life,'' in the words of Nelson Mandela.

On the verge of death herself in 1991, Nkosi's desperate mother, Daphne, leaves 2-year-old Nkosi at The Guest House in Johannesburg, a recently opened haven/hospice for victims of AIDS. Gail Johnson, a white South African woman of some privilege, had been inspired to create the refuge after a traumatizing visit with an AIDS victim -- a dear friend's brother, dying alone and abandoned.

When the Guest House runs out of money shortly thereafter, Gail offers to take Nkosi into her own family. Here, Nkosi not only receives unconditional love and the best care available, but he joins Gail in her struggle to force the government to recognize the enormity of the AIDS crisis in South Africa.

Eventually, Nkosi becomes a keynote speaker at international conferences on AIDS, reminding the world that `` We are all the same. We love and we laugh, we hurt and we cry, we live and we die.''

Nkosi is described after his death as `` an angel dispatched from paradise to Earth to teach human beings the lessons of love and courage.'' Wooten, a New York Times journalist, has clearly been `` touched by an angel,'' and has written the most compelling story of his career.

So, choose one, or read them all. Love, like life, IS like a box of chocolates -- rich, varied, and ultimately deliciously satisfying. Happy Valentine's Day!