Read on Arrival: A Bookmobile Mystery

Page’s splendid sequel to 2018’s Better Off Read finds 75-year-old librarian Cleo Watkins, “the longest serving biblio-professional” in Catalpa Springs, Ga., ready to try again to get her nemesis, 65-year-old Dixie Huddleston, to return an overdue book, Luck and Lore: Good luck, death lore, and deadly omens of the Deep South, on which the fine is now approaching $800. Selfish and mean-spirited Dixie has promised Cleo for decades that she’ll return Luck and Lore but has never followed through. Superstitious Dixie now believes that signs are pointing toward her impending demise and plans to make things straight with Cleo. When Cleo and her supportive gentleman friend, Henry Lafayette, go to recover the great white whale of overdue library books, they discover a dead Dixie at her house. It looks like murder, and since everyone in Catalpa Springs knows that Dixie was a thorn in Cleo’s side, the police regard her as the prime suspect. Skillful plotting and lively prose elevate this well above the average cozy. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (May)