March Publications

Fans of cozies with a supernatural twist will welcome Nancy Atherton's Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday, the eighth in this whimsical series after 2001's Aunt Dimity: Detective. When a family gathering at the earl of Harrisford's country estate, Hailesham, provokes all sorts of mischief, from threatening letters to torched topiary, Lori Shepherd must once again call on the spirit of her dead aunt to prevent worse from happening. 5-city author tour.(Viking, $22.95 224p ISBN 0-670-03200-X)

Agatha Award—winner Rhys Bowen (Death of Riley) presents her good-natured Welsh policeman with a painful personal challenge in Evan Only Knows: A Constable Evans Mystery, the seventh entry in this winning series. A visit to his mother in Swansea leads the constable to a meeting with the young man convicted of murdering Evan's father, now released and charged with a second murder. The fellow claims he's innocent—and Evan is inclined to believe him. (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 256p ISBN 0-312-30113-8)

In Christine Green's (Fire Angels) latest Kate Kinsella mystery, Deadly Echo, the Longborough PI and her terrier, Jasper, take home a disoriented young Welsh woman, Megan Thomas, whom they stumble across on a riverside walk. Clearly someone has it in for Megan, but will that person go so far as to resort to murder? (Severn, $25.99 224p ISBN 0-7278-5916-1)

February Publications

Those for whom the Oxford University Press edition (1993) was not the final word on the canon won't want to miss the latest volume in the Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and edited by Leslie S. Klinger. As David Stuart Davies notes in his introduction, Klinger provides annotations at once "scholarly, instructive and enlightening," as well as chronologies for the individual stories and a bibliography of secondary works. (Gasogene [P.O. Box 68308, Indianapolis, Ind. 46268], $29.95 paper 347p ISBN 0-938501-35-6)

G.K. Chesterton's Sherlock Holmes, edited by Steven Doyle, the third title in the BSI Manuscript Series, reproduces Chesterton's 19 illustrations for a never-published edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes. Appreciations of GKC, Chesterton's own writings on detective fiction and Holmes, and a series introduction by general editor Leslie S. Klinger round out the volume. (Baker Street Irregulars [www.bakerstreetjournal.com], $35 81p ISBN 0-9648788-4-4)