Dear Burning Questions,
Will there be another historical novel in the near future from Susan Howatch? What is she doing now?

Helen Coats
Plantsville, Connecticut

Susan Howatch returns to her perpetual themes of human frailty and mysticism with her new novel, The Heartbreaker, which Knopf publishes on April 27. While not exactly historical fiction, The Heartbreaker explores London's financial district, the City, in the 1990s. Gavin Blake, a male escort, is trying to break free of his sordid lifestyle. He seeks refuge at St. Benet's, a church in the City, and meets Carta Graham, a volunteer with whom he develops a strong connection. But escaping his past is more complicated than Gavin had foreseen, and he and Carta become ensnared in a life-threatening drama.

FLAPPER FUN

Dear Burning Questions,
Could you tell me if Marion Meade is writing anything lately? Stealing Heaven is still my favorite of her works, but she gets high marks from me for her other historical biographies.

Bonnie Ellis
Mount Vernon, Ohio

Marion Meade is heading back to her favorite era in May with Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties (Doubleday). This social history focuses on four literary stars of the flapper era—Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna Ferber—and the trappings of their hedonistic lives. Though all four broke new ground for women with their literary success and liberated lifestyles, challenging social mores often came with a cost. Meade's well-researched study charts the breakdowns and broken love affairs that lurked beneath the glittering lifestyles with the sympathy and style she's shown in her previous books, including the acclaimed biography Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?

FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE

Dear Burning Questions,
Boris Akunin is a master. The last pages of The Winter Queen breathe heartbreak. Please, when will the remaining novels in his Erast Fandorin series be published?

Mary Martinez
Ronkonkoma, New York

Boris Akunin's next Erast Fandorin novel, Murder on the Leviathan, will be published in May, and Random House has plans to translate and publish a book a year by the Georgian author, whose real name is Grigory Chkhartishvili. In this installment, Fandorin is involved in the investigation of a mysterious murder while en route to a diplomatic post in Japan. To date, 10 books in his mystery series starring amateur detective Fandorin have been published in Russia, and all have hit the bestseller list.

FOWL PLAY

Dear Burning Questions,
I'm 13 years old, and a very fond reader of the series Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer. I just finished the third book, The Eternity Code, and thought it was excellent! I really hope he writes a fourth book just as good or even better!

Karina Bresnahan
Turners Falls, Massachusetts

Irish novelist Eoin Colfer will publish a stand-alone tale, The Supernaturalist (Hyperion), in May. Set in the near future, it chronicles the adventures of a 14-year-old orphan, Cosmo Hill, who escapes from the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys and falls in with a strange group of children, the Supernaturalists. Hyperion confirms that Colfer is also working on a fourth Fowl novel that could appear as early as next year.

CURTAIN CALL

Dear Burning Questions,
I have been a big fan of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series. In the most recent installment, The Remorseful Day (2001), Morse dies. Clearly the series has ended but I am wondering if Dexter has retired also. Any idea of his plans?

Guy Warrick
Fountain, Florida

We're sorry to report that the end of the Morse series marked the beginning of retirement for Colin Dexter, who developed his famous protagonist during a rainy holiday in North Wales in the mid 1970s. While authors are notorious for announcing retirement and then turning up with a new book years later, it seems that Dexter is serious about spending his 70s at home in Oxford, England, with his wife. In an interview for the official Inspector Morse website, Dexter says, "Certainly, in the last few years, I have found it increasingly difficult to pursue the lonely and demanding discipline of writing. It was time for me to finish, too."

FAMILY TIES

Dear Burning Questions,
I would really like to know if the English author Joanna Trollope has anything coming up. The last book I read of hers was Marrying the Mistress.

Pauline Nolan
Las Cruces, New Mexico

In her 17th novel, Brother and Sister, which Bloomsbury publishes on April 24, Joanna Trollope takes on the tricky subject of adoption. David and Nathalie were brought up by the same adoptive parents. As they approach 40, the two set out on separate quests to find their birth mothers. Their journeys are fraught with unexpected repercussions for the two siblings and their family and friends.

A direct descendant of 19th-century English writer Anthony Trollope, Joanna Trollope is known for her insightful tales of the intricacy of human relationships. Her upper-middle class upbringing, glamorous persona and highly publicized marriages and divorces have drawn attacks from the British press, but it's hard to criticize the bankability of her books, which have topped bestseller lists in Britain as well as in the U.S.