In the New York Times best-selling Burke's Harbor Lights, a story collection following the multi-starred Flags on the Bayou, characters range from a father and son watching the sinking of a German submarine to a young woman attacked outside a bar even as her father wrestles with new love and vicious threats from neo-Nazis. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Award-winning mystery writer Burke's (Dave Robicheaux series) eight-piece story collection shines, from the atmosphere found while cherry picking in a northwestern Montana orchard to the smell of summer watermelons in the South. Beneath all the vivid scenery of pewter skies and heavy rainstorms, the tales are full of depictions of the great evil and adult cruelty at work in the world, blending ancestry and history with more recent days. In the title story, set in New Iberia, LA, in 1942, a young son on a business trip with his father witnesses the impact of his father's affair. "The Wild Side of Life" explores the "blood for blood" culture at a Southern prison farm. "Strange Cargo" describes how true Southerners, whether soldiers, professors, or sheriffs, still do business, good or bad, by a handshake. These stories, while filled with dark themes, are bright with descriptive natural features, spanning from before the Civil War to more modern times, offering a look into the battlefield history of the South and how it remains alive. VERDICT For Burke's many fans and those who enjoy Southern tales.—Joyce Sparrow

Burke (Every Cloak Rolled in Blood), best-known for his Edgar-winning Dave Robicheaux mystery series, proves his versatility as a storyteller in this textured collection. The title story revolves around James Broussard, a middle-aged oil and gas engineer in 1942 Louisiana who remains traumatized by his combat duty in WWI France. When Broussard and his young son, Aaron, witness a capsized tanker burning in the Gulf of Mexico, he reports the calamity anonymously without explaining why to Aaron. Later, at a restaurant, two federal agents attempt to intimidate Broussard into keeping silent about the tanker. Instead, he pokes a hornet's nest by telling the local newspaper. In "The Assault," a history professor is outraged after police refuse to investigate his daughter's beating at a bar, which happened while she was drunk. He takes matters into his own hands, and ends up facing a difficult moral choice. Throughout, Burke manages to conjure his characters' worldview in a few artful brushstrokes (Aaron in the title story dreams about "harbor lights that offer sanctuary from a world that breaks everything in us that is beautiful and good"). These impressive stories establish that Burke doesn't need a whodunit plot to catch a reader's attention. Agent: Anne-Lise Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary. (Jan.)