I just like the title of Edward Chupack’s new novel, a Chicago attorney who has written his first book: Silver: My Own Tale As Written By Me With A Goodly Amount of Murder. It’s also possible I think too much of pirate stories, but there it is. This one has Long John Silver — he of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” fame — heading for the gallows. But before he hangs, he wants to tell his story, and so writes a journal detailing his exploits. This one has received very favorable early reviews.

In another debut, British travel writer and poet Henry Shukman offers The Lost City, in which a British soldier — consumed by guilt over the death of a fellow soldier (he thinks he is responsible) — decides to search for the lost city his dead comrade had sworn existed somewhere between the Andes highlands and the Amazonian lowlands.

On a very different note, Cathy Pickens returns with another “southern friend mystery,” this one about a woman returning to her small town in Georgia to run a law firm. One of her first cases is looking into a 20-year-old murder mystery, and also getting involved with ghost hunters. The title: Hush My Mouth (writers are going to start running out of Southern phrases to use for titles) I like the cover, too: