Cornelia Read, Jacqueline Winspear

Cornelia Read: Crazy School

Madeline Dare, acerbic ex-debutante sleuth of the wonderful A Field of Darkness ($13), has escaped the rust belt of Syracuse for the lush Berkshire Mountains. Now that her husband’s job has fallen through, she signs on as a teacher at Santangelo Academy. The boarding school for troubled teens puts students and teachers alike through a bizarre “therapeutic” regime. Realizing that the faculty is more likely to turn on each other than protect the kids or challenge the administration, Maddie suspects the school harbors a dark secret, one that only the most rebellious students may help her flush into the open. And is that wise?

Jacqueline Winspear: Incomplete Revenge

Private enquiry agent Maisie Dobbs, survivor of the WWI killing fields, isn’t as self-assured as usual in a situation where her first love, tragically wounded in the war, may be dying, and where a rural community in Kent seems under some kind of siege by arsons and petty crimes during the hop picking season when East Enders from London hire on to harvest the crop. Another excellent example of traditional British crime and one to read with John Boyne’s 1936 crackerjack Next of Kin ($25).