For many New Yorkers the summer season brings with it the promise of invitations to share houses and country homes. While trips to the Hamptons, Nantucket, and other destinations offer opportunities for leisurely activities or festive dining, these weekend engagements and parties can stir up deliberation on what gift to bring.

A host worth her thread count in bed linens will probably not expect a gift from invited guests, but the right token can ensure a positive, lasting impression — and a future spot on the guest list.

“I’m always surprised when I get gifts,” the senior vice president of public relations and communications for the LVMH group, Katherine Ross, who entertains at homes in Los Angeles and Amagansett, L.I., said.

Nonetheless, she appreciates the gesture. “A gift I loved is drawer sachets filled with flowers from Santa Maria Novella,” Ms. Ross said, referring to the Italian apothecary in SoHo. “Often I get candles or flowers. It’s nice to be introduced to something new.”

Whether considered mandatory or optional on the part of the host or hostess, gifts are a way to properly express gratitude. Still, the pressure to find the perfect present can be intense for various reasons. Some find themselves the guest of hosts with wealth that eclipses their own (think of poor Lily Bart from Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth”). In such an instance, a guest can feel compelled to match the extravagance of the gift with that of a host’s furnishings and amenities. Others can get tripped up by the need to reciprocate or indulge in one-upmanship if the hosts have already visited.

The key is not to approach gift- giving as a way to “repay” hospitality, but instead to focus on showing the same kind of thoughtfulness one has been shown as a guest.

Avoiding the customary flowers, wine, chocolate, and candles, one can make a memorable gesture by finding personal and creative gift selections.

“I bring art books of artists and exhibits I think they’d enjoy,” the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Thelma Golden, said of the gifts she buys — at her museum’s bookstore — for the collectors who invite her into their homes. “Monographs, catalogs, I often look for something that I think might provoke some new and different ideas. I love art and I like to share it. It’s about sharing.”

The chairwoman of the New York City planning commission, Amanda Burden, also likes to bring books, pointing out an important advantage over gifts of food or wine: “The hosts don’t have to serve it,” Ms. Burden said.

Moreover, non-perishable gifts can also be shared during a stay: a book read aloud, a board game played.

“I bring music I think they’ll like, and we may wind up listening to it together,” a young patron of the New York Philharmonic, Elizabeth Belfer, said.

The season of entertaining is an obvious entry point for gift-buying options: Summer calls out for flowers to plant, a selection of marinades for the barbecue, a beach tote, or berries from the local farmers’ market.

Some guests make a gift of social coordination, taking some burden off the host by planning an afternoon of golf for the men, for example, or organizing an outing for the children.

Some visitors use the time at their hosts’ home to determine a gift: a vase that matches the host’s tableware, or the kitchenware that couldn’t be found during the preparation of a meal.

Of course, flowers, wine, chocolate, and bath soaps will always have their virtues, though there are some caveats.

The style director of Gotham and Hamptons magazines, Jason Oliver Nixon, cautioned that guests should always present flowers already in a vase. “It causes turmoil for the host or hostess to hunt down a suitable vase to put them in,” Mr. Oliver said.

Candles remain popular, but make sure the host likes to burn them. “I’ll never run out of candles,” a wealth management entrepreneur, Alexandra Lebenthal, said of the stockpile she has accumulated.

A gift she liked more? Monogrammed cocktail napkins.

Gillian Hearst Simonds packs her Smythson stationery so that she can leave a thank-you note.

“What’s important is showing them that what they did meant something to you,” Ms. Simonds, an editorial assistant at Town & Country, said.

On a recent weekend, she and her husband, Christian Simonds, brought a bottle of Cristal for their hosts, her aunt, Anne Hearst, and Ms. Hearst’s husband, Jay McInerney.

There are some general rules to follow when it comes to selecting hostess and host gifts: “Always buy something you’d like for yourself,” the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg said.

“Never regift,” a vice chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts, Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, said.

Perhaps the most appreciated gift, according to the chairman, chief executive, and founder of the real estate company Related, Stephen Ross?

“Know when to leave.”