The last thing the Minnesota farmer sees is not the strange man burying a body in his cornfield, but the knife that delivers the fatal blows to the suspicious farmer. Called in to investigate when authorities discover a total of 16 bodies buried in the same cornfield, Lucas Davenport uncovers a plot to kill one person every summer for the past 16 years. 416pp., 750K, Auth res: Santa Fe, NM

At 1:15 a.m, a Minnesota political fixer answers his doorbell. The next thing he knows, he's waking up on the floor of a moving car, lying on a plastic sheet, his body wet with blood. When the car stops, a voice says, "Hey, I think he's breathing," and another voice says, "Yeah? Give me the bat." And that's the last thing he ever knows. Lucas Davenport is investigating another case when the trail leads to the man's disappearance, then--very troublingly--to...