Grab a cup of decaf before settling down with Goldy Schulz's latest culinary caper. Zippier than a double hit of espresso and filled with the usual array of mouth-watering recipes, Double Shot has more twists than a fresh batch of fusilli. Diane Mott Davidson's 12th culinary mystery begins as Goldy's jerk of an ex-husband, John Richard, is found murdered. No one is more surprised than Goldy when she's framed for the crime. Sure, both she and her best friend, Marla (a fellow ex-Mrs. Jerk), were still seething that he'd been let out of prison, but did they really wish him dead? With a heavy catering schedule serving most of the creme de la creme of Aspen Meadow society, Goldy barely has time to rework the menus, much less commit a murder. Of course, John Richard never had a problem making enemies, including a bushel of jilted women. Socialite Courtney MacEwan, the most recent casualty of John Richard's affections, certainly has reason to top the list of suspects. A few hundred thousand reasons, that is. No one believes for a moment that John Richard Korman could possibly afford his country club estate and all the trimmings without the help of Ms. MacEwan's checkbook. As rumors begin to boil surrounding John Richard's forays into money laundering and unpaid debts, and more of Aspen Meadow's social register comes under scrutiny, another dead body surfaces.

With questions swirling like the inside of a cinnamon strudel, Goldy is torn between investigating the murders and keeping her head off the chopping block. Perhaps worst of all, Goldy and John Richard's son, Arch, seems to be juggling his grief with a secret that could hold the key to his father's murder.

Seasoned with dicey characters from the local strip club, hints of church corruption and a dash or two of unrequited love, Double Shot serves up a mystery that even the most avid of fans won't unscramble until the last bite.

Sheri Swanson enjoys trying new recipes and heartily recommends Goldy's Nuthouse Cookies.

Disparate family histories collide and long-buried secrets resurface in this ingeniously crafted modern-day suspense narrative that combines elements of a traditional detective novel with riveting psychological character studies. Kate Atkinson, award-winning British author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum and two other novels, artfully incorporates her gothic sensibility and keen observations on human nature into a compelling page-turner that explores the fine line between love and obsession, grief and recovery, guilt and redemption.

Case Histories introduces us to a convincing mix of unconventional families and imperfect individuals whose lives are pockmarked by loss, abandonment and regret. Startling connections between them emerge when three different decades-old mysteries are thrust into the lap of private detective Jackson Brodie. First, there's the disappearance of three-year-old Olivia Land, whose aging sisters discover a disquieting clue among their deceased father's possessions; then the inexplicable stabbing of 18-year-old Laura Wyre by a deranged stranger during a routine workday at her father's law office; and finally, the grisly ax murder of a hapless husband ostensibly by his young wife in a fit of despair and rage. The tragedy and horror of these bygone crimes is brought sharply into focus through the use of omniscient narration, which crisscrosses family histories and vividly allows us to examine the three crime scenes in both the past and present tense.

Although decades may have intervened and the tragic headlines are now forgotten by most, the family members affected by these traumas still crave closure, leading them to Brodie's doorstep in a final attempt to lay their ghosts to rest. The emphatic private eye absorbs the burden of their collective grief while attempting to track down new leads and piece together the missing links of the long-unsolved cases. Meanwhile, he struggles with his own host of personal problems including an acrimonious divorce, a daughter growing up too quickly, and the sudden appearance of a mysterious enemy who seems to want him dead. Increasingly, Brodie's own life takes a backseat as he becomes irreversibly entangled in the melancholic lives of his clients the quirky and spinsterish Land sisters, the lonely and grief-obsessed father Theo Wyre, and the enigmatic sister of the convicted ax murderess, who harbors a dark secret. As he begins to unravel the threads of their seemingly incongruous cases, he uncovers subtle connections and painful truths that eventually help heal old wounds as well as bring his own troubles into sharp relief.

Featuring an engagingly offbeat private detectives and an equally intriguing cast of complex and lovably eccentric characters, Case Histories propels the reader forward with a rare intensity and compassion. With an unerring eye for domestic detail, Atkinson peels back the cozy trappings of family life to expose the imperfections that often lie beneath the favoritism, selfishness and jealousy that can form dangerous fault lines. Expertly laying bare human frailties and failings, the novel exposes the indelible bonds that connect individuals and the power of emotions to alter the course of family histories. Atkinson has conjured a wonderfully inventive take on the classic detective novel that jolts readers out of complacency by combining ordinary settings with macabre twists. The result is a highly original and entertaining novel that is the author's best to date, successfully blending elements of comedy and tragedy with rich insights into the human heart.

Joni Rendon writes from Hoboken, New Jersey.

What's it about?
Best-selling author Rita Mae Brown is launching a series that introduces two new animal sleuths—but this time, they're of the canine persuasion. In A Nose for Justice, Mags moves in with her great-aunt Jeep after losing her Wall Street job, bringing her dachshund Baxter, who clashes with Jeep's German shepherd mix King. But Baxter and King have to put their differences aside when a killer targets their small Nevada town and Mags teams up with local Deputy Pete Meadows to solve the mystery.

Bestseller formula:
Talking dogs + romance + murder mystery + Nevada history

Favorite lines:
Baxter lifted his head, sniffed deeply. "Something's in the creek bed." . . . Transfixed, the two animals stared at the human corpse stashed there. One wouldn't see it from the road. Coyotes had eaten some of the best parts—including the nose and lips—but since it froze at night what wasn't chewed was well enough preserved.

Worth the hype?
Should be another winner for dog lovers and fans of Brown's Mrs. Murphy series.

It is something of a literary tradition to portray the small town as a breeding ground for dark secrets that emerge to shatter its innocuous facade. In his gripping new novel, Lost Souls, Michael Collins effectively depicts the sinister underside of an unnamed, economically depressed Midwestern town coping with the aftermath of a horrific tragedy. As the story unfolds, long-buried secrets about the town's residents and leaders come to the surface, with ultimately ruinous consequences.

The tale opens on Halloween night, when three-year-old Sarah Kendall is reported missing. Local police officer Lawrence, the novel's narrator, is the one who discovers the child's lifeless body buried beneath a pile of leaves by the side of the road. Fittingly dressed in an angel costume, little Sarah appears to be the victim of a hit-and-run accident.

When high school football star Kyle Johnson, the struggling town's bright shining hope, is named as the prime suspect in the accident, Lawrence becomes the key player in a cover-up designed to absolve Kyle of any wrongdoing. Promised a promotion to police chief by the crooked mayor, Lawrence initially goes along with the scheme. But as his unease intensifies, he is determined to discover the truth about what happened. In Lawrence, Collins has fashioned a complex character who struggles with demons of his own. Divorced and dealing with the remarriage of his wife and custodial loss of his young son, Lawrence leads a solitary and booze-soaked existence. With his spare and haunting prose, Collins skillfully creates parallels between the undoing of the town and Lawrence's own emotional downslide. The Irish-born Collins, whose past works include the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel The Keepers of Truth, writes adeptly about a corrupt American culture. You may not want to live in Collins' version of small-town USA, but this literary visit is a dark, page-turning pleasure.

Rebecca Krasney Stropoli lives in New York City.

Sassy, Irish-Jewish PI Tess Monaghan, protagonist of Laura Lippman's popular series, returns in the suspenseful By a Spider's Thread. This time out, Tess takes on a referral from her Uncle Donald (of the Weinstein side of the family) and finds herself getting in touch with her Jewish side. Hired by Mark Rubin, a devout Orthodox Jew, to find his wife and three children, Tess spars with tradition, treachery and of course Tyner, her former employer and soon-to-be uncle-in-law. She works this case without help from any of her usual companions: boyfriend Crow, former roommate Whitney, former client-now-friend, Jackie. However, ex-nemesis Gretchen O'Brien reappears as the leader of a whole new web of support for Tess and other women PIs. Rubin's penchant for privacy and naiveté regarding his wife and the state of his marriage make for an initially unsympathetic client. His oldest son, Isaac, however, instantly wins our hearts as a scrapper an instinctive survivalist. Without his beloved books to keep him company, Isaac spends his time concocting new ways to escape, or at least contact his father. Through him, we see a softer side of Mark, that of a father who wishes "first and foremost that you would be a virtuous man" but who also uses Advanced Mission Battleship to teach his son that he need not be the smartest one to win.

Trapped with a mother not acting herself and a man posing as his father who clearly considers him a threat, Isaac reminds us of both the resilience of children and their sometimes overlooked maturity beyond their years.

With her usual bullheadedness, Tess bends rules, interferes where she's not welcome and experiences a handful of near-death experiences. In the process, she attains a new level of self-perspection, and takes what fans might hope is a first step in the right direction. Acclaimed author Lippman knows how to keep the reader guessing: the only thing we know for certain is that in this case, the butler didn't do it.

Like Tess, Sheri Swanson has a grandmother Weinstein.

Lee Child's improbable odyssey from British television executive to best-selling American novelist began in London in 1989. With businesses downsizing, he found himself at a cocktail party with colleagues from work discussing what they'd all do after the ax fell. Child told his friends, I'm going to write novels, but not while I'm working full-time. It was 1995 before he was finally fired, but by then Child was more than ready to move on. Seven years later, with the publication of his latest book, Without Fail, Lee Child finds himself well into a successful career as a novelist.

Without Fail is the sixth appearance for Child's appealing lead character, Jack Reacher, a downsized military police major. Reacher, a man in early middle age who grew up as a well-traveled Army brat and subsequently spent 18 years overseas in the military police, has a parochial view of the country he served. Now a rootless and reluctant civilian, he finds himself back in America, seeing his country for the first time with an immigrant's eye, much like his creator, who moved to the U.S. in 1998.

As a very young boy in England in the late 1950s, American popular culture consisted mainly of fragmentary artifacts left over from World War II, Child explains from his home in suburban Westchester County, New York.

Child's love affair with American popular culture continued and, by the time he went to work in British television in the mid-1970s, he was deeply immersed in it. He married an American woman and began devouring American mystery/suspense fiction and noticed a paradigm shift in the genre that disillusioned him. Except for the works of authors like Robert B. Parker and John D. MacDonald, the protagonists of many novels seemed to have figurative, if not literal, bullets near their hearts, Child says. Damaged people with a lot of self-doubt and even self-loathing. He was determined that any protagonist of his would not be one of those wounded souls.

At the same time Child committed himself to becoming a novelist, he was reading MacDonald's Travis McGee novels. He found McGee, a physically imposing man of action who never hesitated to do what he thought was right, tremendously appealing. Inspired by that model, Child created Jack Reacher, very much his own man of action, albeit one who has broad-based appeal to men and women alike.

According to the fan mail Child receives, many male readers admire the fact that Reacher isn't afraid to take drastic and sometimes deadly action, always on the side of the underdog and always for the right reason, while a significant number of female readers find his combination of physical strength and fundamental decency attractive. Men want to be him, and women want to be with him, Child explains. Reacher is heroic without being a caricature. I've often been asked to categorize Reacher, Child says. And I really can't call him a private investigator, because he doesn't have any real structure to his life. Child finally decided that Knight Errant, a wandering knight seeking adventure to prove his chivalry, was the only appropriate category for his character.

Without Fail finds Knight Errant Jack Reacher enlisted by the Secret Service to help its agents protect the vice president-elect against a credible threat on his life. Reacher assists the Secret Service in tightening up its protective tradecraft while seeking the identity of the potential assassins.

While the novel's many Secret Service personal protection details have an authentic feel to them, they aren't the result of agency cooperation, Child reveals. Anyone who says they've gotten official Secret Service cooperation regarding personal protection isn't being truthful. As its name implies the Secret Service doesn't divulge trade secrets. Finding no useful secondary sources to work with, Child decided the best way to create a believable setting for his novel was to accurately portray the institutional memory of the Secret Service. The thing that haunts the Secret Service is the JFK assassination, and virtually everything they do is predicated on making sure nothing like it ever happens again, Child says. Toward this end, he fabricated details of how they might go about protecting someone. Add the able assistance of Jack Reacher, and it all makes Without Fail a convincing and compelling read. British writer Lee Child features a uniquely American man of action in his Jack Reacher series.

Michael Grollman is a freelance writer in New Jersey.