Bookmarks: Recently released books

Here are some books that have crossed our desks recently.

HARDBACKS

"AN IMPARTIAL WITNESS (A Bess Crawford Mystery)," by Charles Todd, William Morrow, $24.99 (f)

New series by a mother/son team. Battlefield nurse Bess Crawford in sent back to England in the early summer of 1917 with a convoy of severely burned men. One of her patients has hung onto a photograph of his wife, and Bess sees the photo every time she tends to him. At a railway station, Bess sees the young pilot's wife saying goodbye to a different soldier. A few days later, Bess picks up an old newspaper that has a drawing of the woman and a plea from Scotland Yard asking if anyone has seen her. The woman had been murdered the very day Bess noticed her at the terminal, and Bess reports what she knows and then sets off on a search for the killer that will put her own life in danger.

"MAYBE THIS TIME," by Jennifer Crusie, St. Martin's Press, $24.99 (f).

Andie Miller wants to marry her fiancé and leave behind everything in her past, especially her ex-husband. But before they do that, her ex asks her for one last favor. A very distant cousin of his has died and left him as the guardian of two orphans who have driven out three nannies, and things are getting worse. He needs a very special person to take care of them, and he knows Andie can handle anything. But she finds its not only the kids she needs to deal with, but also ghosts, a parapsychologist, a medium, her Tarot-card reading mother, an avenging ex-mother-in-law, and her jealous fiancé.

More hardbacks recently released:

"Empire: The Novel of Imperial Rome," by Steven Saylor (f): Continuation of saga which covers the reign of Augustus to the height of Rome's empire. "Lucky Luciano: The Real and the Fake Gangster," by Tim Newark (nf): New biography, drawing on government archives to tell the real story of the legendary gangster. "Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language," by Deborah Fallows (nf): Memoir of Fallows' three years in China.

"Somebody Else's Century: East and West In a Post-Western World," by Patrick Smith (nf): Essays chronicling the East's long-standing efforts to adopt all that the West considers modern. "Gary Jennings' The 2010 Codex," by Robert Gleason and Junius Podrug (f): Conclusion to the thriller Apocalypse 2012.

PAPERBACKS

"CLEO: The Cat Who Mended a Family," by Helen Brown, Citadel Press, $15.95 (nf).