Aaron Elkins does it again!  His Gideon Oliver books have long been favorites of mine, anticipated and collected.  The worst thing, his newest, has some of the same characteristics that make the others great, but it is completely independent and takes place in a new setting with a new character's job informing its pages.  The main character, Bryan Bennett, designs hostage negotiation programs for a world-class security risk company based in Seattle.

    Following on her NY Times' bestseller, Wicked plants, Stewart shows us more monsters and menaces of the natural world in Wicked bugs: the louse that conquered Napoleon's army & other diabolical insects.

    If you aren't completely anti-vampire, A discovery of witches might be one to take to the lake. Written by a history professor, it is rich in European history and settings. Harkness chooses to begin this book, the first in a trilogy, in Oxford at the Bodleian Library--pure joy for Tolkien or C.S. Lewis fans!

    Cat lovers, here's a mystery series for you!  If you love Lillian Jackson Braun, you just might like Shirley Rousseau Murphy.  Equally cozy, the Joe Grey series is enchanting in many of the same ways as the Braun's series. While Braun's settings vary, the main locale, Moose County, is "400 miles north of everywhere." Usually acknowledged as Bad Axe, Michigan, Braun lived there for years.

   New genre graphic novels has been expanded lately to include graphic nonfiction. If you are still thinking that graphic means "sexually explicit," it is time to adjust.  Rather like the job title "graphic designer" for someone who designs publications and visual images, a graphic novel is a story told in pictures.  The old term was "comic book."  Not really sure why the new term took over, but language is like that. Nobody is shot with a "heater" anymore, now the perp is "packing," usually a "nine," that is, a nine-millimeter weapon.