OFFBEAT MYSTERY features an elderly Japanese-American gardener sleuth, a complex crime involving antique dolls. B PLUS

BLOOD HINA: A MAS ARAI MYSTERY
Minotaur Books
2010

CRYPTIC, FASCINATING dystopia is a change of pace for Jasper Fforde; as inventive as always, but much bleaker. B PLUS

SHADES OF GREY
Penguin Group (USA)
2009

POETIC, GENTLE baseball novel is also a meditation on love and art and parenting and the culture of celebrity. B PLUS

THE MAN WITH TWO ARMS
Overlook Press, The
2010

STYLISH, SEXY women’s fic with a mostly black cast is like a more sophisticated “Sex and the City”. Great fun! B PLUS

THE EX CHRONICLES
Penguin Group (USA)
2010

SPLENDID ADDITION to the Peculiar Crimes Unit series combines police procedural with ancient English mythology. B PLUS

BRYANT & MAY ON THE LOOSE: A PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT MYSTERY
Bantam
2009

PLENTY OF PUNCH and style in tale of a dystopian future where movie extras literally risk their lives for cash. B PLUS

THE EXTRA
Tor Books
2010

ANOTHER JUICY SAGA of England’s crumbling upper crust by Julian Fellowes tracks the fallout of a 1960s scandal. B PLUS

PAST IMPERFECT
St. Martin’s Press
2009

RICHLY DETAILED account of the murders, and trials, of Burke and Hare paints a vivid picture of 1820s Edinburgh. B PLUS

THE ANATOMY MURDERS: BEING THE TRUE AND SPECTACULAR HISTORY OF EDINBURGH’S NOTORIOUS BURKE AND HARE, AND OF THE MAN OF SCIENCE WHO ABETTED THEM IN THE COMMISSION OF THEIR MOST HEINOUS CRIMES
University of Pennsylvania Press
2009

FASCINATING GROUP BIO looks at French social change via lives of three heirs to 19th century literary eminences. B PLUS

GILDED YOUTH: THREE LIVES IN FRANCE’S BELLE EPOQUE
Farrar Straus Giroux
2009

TENSE, GRIM THRILLER finds German PI Bernie Gunther in Argentina, in 1950, solving a murder amid exiled Nazis. B PLUS

A QUIET FLAME (BERNIE GUNTHER SERIES #5)
Penguin Group (USA)
2010