It looks as though John Sandford is on his way to establishing another franchise—this chart veteran's 14 Prey novels, starring Minneapolis police detective Lucas Davenport, have earned stellar reviews and racked up an impressive hardcover in-print total of four million-plus. Back in 1989, another Sandford crimebuster was introduced in The Fool's Run; now Kidd ("artist, computer whiz, and professional criminal") returns for a fourth outing in The Hanged Man's Song. Published by Putnam on November 10 (300,000 copies in print), the novel was called by PW an "intelligent and exciting thriller [with] action as hot and twisted as a Mississippi back road." Sandford, the pseudonym for Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist John Camp, is doing signings in the Twin Cities.

—With reporting by Dick Donahue