Here is a bakers dozen of new stories in our top-circulating genre. The stories include puzzles and procedurals, cozies and noirs, and suspense, either of the romantic or the white-knuckle variety. In White Fire by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, a routine thesis topic uncovers murder most deadly.  In The Gods of Guilt by Michael Conneoly,  Mickey Haller defends a pimp accused of murdering a former client. In  Dust by Patricia Cornwell, there is personal meaning in a body found on a campus rugby field. Arkady Renko investigates the apparent suicide of a muckraking journalist in Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith. The spymistress by Jennifer Chiaverini is a bio-fiction based on Elizabeth Van Lew, Union sympathizer and spy living in the Confederate capital of Richmond.  In  King and Maxwell by David Baldacci, the title characters investigate a soldier’s disappearance.  Sycamore Road by John Grisham revisits the site and themes of A Time to Kiill.   Rasputin’s shadow by Raymond  Khoury ties the  death of a Russian attaché to an intrigue with links back to Tsarist Russia.  In The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith, Precious Ramotswe must find out if someone sabotaging the opening of a new salon. Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich offers more shennaigans from Stephanie Plum. Doing Hard Time by Stuart Woods, provides more daring-do from Stone Barrington. Silencing Eve  by Iris  Johansen is the latest installment in the Eve Duncan series.   And The Christmas Hope by Anne Perry  is “as delicious as mince pie and plum pudding”