Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast is back for a 15th outing, and here's a quote to whet your appetite, evidently tossed by Pendergast at a small-town police chief who lacks class: "I commend you on your poesy. But you seem to forget that a lady is present. Perhaps your mother should have applied the soap treatment more frequently to your rather orotund mouth." With a 250,000-copy first printing.

Agent Pendergast is back! Taking on a case involving a stolen wine collection would seem to underutilize his superior detective wizardry, but the pay is a bottle of priceless wine. How can he resist? He and his ward Constance head to the tiny town of Exmouth on the rocky Massachusetts coast. Examining the scene of the crime shows that more than wine was stolen from that particular cellar. As Pendergast and Constance investigate the theft, a visiting historian is murdered. Odd symbols linked to witchcraft are carved in unusual places, including the historian's body. A village legend of witches escaping Salem in the 1690s is only one of the puzzles deepening the mystery. Preston and Child's (Relic, Blue Labyrinth) famous agent believes the legends are red herrings. Even when the mystery is solved, it seems that some small-town secrets are deeper than even Aloysius Pendergast had realized. VERDICT Anyone who enjoys deep intrigue with a historian's viewpoint or a touch of macabre or gothic horror will love this adventure. New readers will be hooked and scrambling to catch up with the first 14 books. Die-hard fans will add this to their must-read lists. [See Prepub Alert, 5/11/15; November LibraryReads Pick.]—Elizabeth Masterson, Mecklenburg Cty. Jail Lib., Charlotte, NC

At the start of Preston and Child's solid 15th thriller featuring FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast (after 2014's Blue Labyrinth), Pendergast, unusually for him, agrees to accept a private case. Someone broke into the lighthouse where sculptor Percival Lake lives in Exmouth, Mass., and cleared out his wine cellar, except for one case of a very rare vintage. For reasons that are unclear to Pendergast's ward, Constance Greene, Pendergast agrees to travel from his Manhattan home to Exmouth, where his inquiries reveal that Lake's wine cellar contained a hidden chamber and human remains. The truth behind the crime may be connected to local legends regarding a witch colony and a demonic figure known as the Grey Reaper. Meanwhile, Pendergast looks into the stabbing murders of a local attorney and a historian researching Exmouth's past, whose bodies were marked with the so-called Tybane Inscriptions. The genuine scares take a while to come, but when they do, readers will be reminded of the violent horror of Relic, Pendergast's debut. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Nov.)