September Publications

When two sisters visiting from Texas get their throats slashed in a Manhattan hotel elevator, their husbands hire PI Franklin Novak to go after the killer in Alex Minter's Killing Cousins: A New York Mystery, the fast-moving follow-up to Little Sister's Last Dose (Forecasts, Mar. 24). Franklin's son, Felix, and the daughter of his late partner from his days on the police force, Soraya Novarro, take time off from the hip New York City scene to join the chase. (Pocket, $9.95 paper 240p ISBN 0-7434-6332-3)

The Second Half of the Double Feature, by hard-boiled writer Charles Willeford (1919—1988), collects 25 short stories, vignettes and autobiographical sketches, many previously unpublished. The cloth edition includes a section of Willeford's poems. (Wit's End [www.sendwit.com], $35.95 332p ISBN 1-930997-30-2; $17.95 paper 240p -29-9)

Severn House rolls out three novels from British crime veterans: Peter Turnbull's sixth police procedural to feature DCI George Hennessey and Sergeant Yellich, All Roads Leadeth, in which the unearthing of a female skeleton puts the two Yorkshire cops on the trail of an unrepentant killer (Severn, $26.99 224p ISBN 0-7278-5970-6); Betty Rowlands's Dirty Work, in which Scenes of Crime Officer Sukey Reynolds once again goes beyond her usual duties to investigate a gruesome murder, at the risk of offending her lover, DI Jim Castle ($26.99 256p -5974-9); and Jane A. Adams's sequel to Mourning the Little Dead, Touching the Dark, in which blind ex-policewoman Naomi Blake tries to help the son of old friends who's become obsessed with his celebrity photographer ex-girlfriend ($25.99 256p -5937-4).

August Publication

In Vicky Hunnings's Death on a Cellular Level, the sequel to The Bride Wore Blood, a battle over the possible dangerous side effects of radiation from cellular phones leads to murder. Hilton Head detectives William "Shark" Morgan and Dell Hassler investigate. (Avalon [www.avalonbooks.com], $24.95 304p ISBN 0-8034-9608-7)