By Frank Tallis

Random House, $12.95 (softcover)

Originally published in 2005, this intellectually suspenseful tale has just been issued in softcover. The author is a clinical psychologist who lives in London — and a specialist in obsessions.

Set in Vienna in 1902, when many new ideas dominated life, the story centers on a homicide with ties to science and the supernatural.

Two sleuths combine talents in working the case — Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, a police officer who is on the cutting edge, and Max Lieberman, a follower of Sigmund Freud and the main character in the book. Using both evidence and intuitive analysis, the two try to solve the case with the understanding that "it could not have been committed by anyone alive."

'The Sun Kings'

By Stuart Clark

Princeton, $24.95

This book, subtitled "The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began," focuses on circumstances in England in 1859 — when the Earth was engulfed in a cloud of gas.

The result was a "blood-red aurora" from the poles to the tropics. Telegraph systems crashed, machines burst into flames and electric shocks rendered operators unconscious.

This is where the amateur astronomer Richard Carrington came in. He suspected a mysterious explosion on the surface of the sun, suggesting that the sun's magnetism directly influences the Earth.

Generally, Carrington's arguments were rejected — but a small group of scientists were starting to believe that the Earth could be influenced from outer space.

'Shakespeare and Co.'

By Stanley Wells

Pantheon, $26

Wells, a Shakespeare scholar, is determined to make Shakespeare — and the other writers of his time — better understood.

The setting is Elizabethan England, when theatre was "a growth industry." All the writers knew each other, and they were not averse to learning, borrowing or stealing from one another. Wells writes, "To see Shakespeare as one among a great company is only to enhance our sense of what made him unique."

The author also studies the actors of the time and the ways they influenced Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare's contemporaries and anecdotes about them help the reader to understand this celebrated writer.