Turn the page, click the link, see the video

But when I click on the chapter's accompanying video, the man is younger, tanner, scruffier. He's dressed like he should be bumming clove cigarettes at a concert, not spying on the Greek Embassy.

What I'm reading is a Vook -- a video/book hybrid produced in part by Simon & Schuster's Atria Books. Interspersed throughout the text are videos and links that supplement the narrative. In one chapter, the Greek ambassador receives a mysterious DVD, and readers must click on an embedded video to learn what's on it. In another, kidnapper Jack ominously tells his hostage that he's going to prove that he means business.

"How are you going to do that?" Kate asks.

"Are you squeamish?" Jack replies.

Below that dialogue, a box encourages readers to "SEE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT" by clicking the play button.

Vooks represent just a few examples of a new genre that has been dubbed v-books, digi-books, multimedia books and Cydecks, all with essentially the same concept: It's a book . . . but wait, there's more!

The first six books of text/Web hybrid "The 39 Clues" have nearly 5 million copies in print, and nearly 700,000 registered users for the site. "The Amanda Project," released this fall, is set to be an eight-book series. Brad Inman, founder of Vook, said his company will release as many as 200 online-only titles next year. "It's very inexpensive in scale. We're talking thousands of dollars, not even tens of thousands of dollars" for each project.

Is a hybrid book our future? "As discourse moves from printed pages to network screens, the dominant mode will be things that are multi-modal and multilayered," says Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book. "The age of pure linear content is going to pass with the rise of digital network content."

Predicting the eventual death of the traditional novel sounds practically heretical. But the genre has actually existed in English for only about 300 years, and experimentation and evolution have always been a part of the way we tell stories.

Perhaps the folly isn't in speculating that the book might change, but in assuming that it won't.

The bells and whistles in hybrid books are endless. In "The Sherlock Holmes Experience" -- one of six books, including "Embassy," published by Vook since the company launched in October -- two classic Arthur Conan Doyle stories are annotated with video clips of historians sharing Holmesian trivia. Hyperlinks send readers to Wikipedia pages explaining old-fashioned terms.

In "The Amanda Project," a young-adult series launched this fall, three teens investigate a friend's disappearance, primarily in a book but also on a companion website where readers are encouraged to upload their own "clues." Some contributions will be incorporated into the second book, due in February.

In "Skeleton Creek," the narrative alternates between the written diary of Ryan, a housebound teen investigating strange occurrences in his hometown, and the video missives of his best friend, Sarah. Ryan, and the reader, access Sarah's transmissions by logging onto a website with passwords given in each chapter.

Myebook, which helps users self-publish books online, allows text to be mashed up with video and applications.

These hybrid books "truly [are] groundbreaking, and I don't use that word lightly," says David Levithan, a Scholastic editor who worked on "Skeleton Creek" and "The 39 Clues," a series involving an elaborate online game. "It's expanding the notion of what storytelling can be."

Hybrid books feel like instant gratification and guided, packaged experiences. What they don't feel like, at least in certain examples, is reading. Picture losing yourself in the fictional world for hours on end -- the way the characters sound in your mind, the way unfamiliar references give you pause. What is a nosegay, anyway?

If you could see the authoritative version of a character right away, without waiting for the movie version, would you?

If a floral dictionary were just a click away, would you interrupt your reading to visit it?

Would these abilities represent the sort of enhanced involvement that book lovers have always dreamed of? Or would they tamper with our imaginations?

Many current hybrid books are aimed at kids, the first generation of "digital natives." "What they really love is staying in that world," says Lisa Holton of Fourth Story Media, which packaged "The Amanda Project." "We as adults can't even begin to understand their relationships with technology."

But what happens to the traditional reading experience involving a fat novel, a fireplace and a cup of tea?