Richard Bausch — chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and all-around fabulous writer (and a Memphis boy) — offers a new, slender novel, Peace, which already is being called a “compelling meditation on the moral dimensions of war” (by Publishers Weekly). It’s about three American soldiers in the Italian countryside during the winter of 1944. The three are on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a mountain, and soon find themselves in a tense battle situation and under sniper fire. Expect a terse, thrilling book.

On the other end of the fiction spectrum, there’s Zapped, the latest Regan Reilly Mystery from author Carol Higgins Clark, daughter of Mary Higgins Clark and now a prolific and popular author all on her own. In this one, Jack Reilly is called in to investigate an art theft, while Regan Reilly must search for a disturbed young woman on the streets of Manhattan.