Can you tell me if Jane Hamilton, author of The Book of Ruth, has a new book coming out soon? I have read everything she has written and eagerly await a new novel.

Korrine Miller
Aberdeen, Washington

Wonderful news, Korrine! After six years of silence, Jane Hamilton returns this September with a new novel to be published by Random House. Currently untitled, the book continues Hamilton's exploration of how families and individuals respond to tragedy. Since the publication of her last novel, Hamilton has been dividing her time between writing, raising her family and working on her Wisconsin farm.

BUCKEYE PRIVATE EYE

I really enjoyed Les Roberts' Milan Jacovich novels, a detective series based in Cleveland. He wrote a lot of them, but I talked to him at a book gathering a couple years ago and he said he was not going to write any more of Milan Jacovich. He said, tongue-in-cheek I am sure, that he had to make some money and was retiring the character. It's been a while now and am curious what he is writing about.

Jim Kittelberger
Mansfield, Ohio

We caught up with Les Roberts, who doesn't recall voicing any plans to retire his detective, at least not for monetary reasons. Instead, he says, "I probably said that after writing 19 private eye novels (13 with Milan Jacovich and six with Los Angeles detective Saxon), I needed to start exercising some long-dormant writer's muscles and do something very different."

To that end, Roberts' first nonfiction book, a memoir called We'll Always Have Cleveland (Gray and Company) will be published this month. "While I don't get as nakedly personal as a lot of people might like," he says, "I am frank about many things that have happened to me since my relocation to Cleveland—rather Cleveland Heights—in the last 15 years."

Roberts has also been working on fiction projects, including the recently completed Black Op, a suspense novel set in Cleveland and other U.S. cities, as well as Iraq. He has also started a historical mystery set in WWII-era Europe, tentatively called A Pound of Sugar. "After that, depending on many things, I might write another Milan Jacovich adventure," he says. Meanwhile, June 17 has been officially designated as Milan Jacovich Day in Cleveland.

NIGHT FEVER

What happened to Thomas Perry's new book?

Sondra Haimowitz
Waretown, New Jersey

The three-year wait for a new book by Thomas Perry ends March 7 with the publication of Nightlife, coming from Random House.

Perry offered this description of the book for BQ: "Policewoman Catherine Hobbes suspects a murdered man's vanished girlfriend isn't a second victim, but a killer who's just getting started." Sounds chilling!

A resident of Southern California, Perry has also written and produced TV series. His very first novel, The Butcher's Boy, won him an Edgar Award in 1983.

UNDER HER SPELL

I'm hoping you can help me out. I just finished reading Inkspell, and as is usual for the second book in a trilogy, it had a darker tone than the first and left me hanging at the end. But it was a fabulous read! Is Cornelia Funke working on the third book? When is the projected release date? Any idea of the title? I can hardly wait for it to come out!

Kathy Keleher
Oak Creek, Wisconsin

Children's author Cornelia Funke has published more than 40 books in her native Germany but didn't become well known to American audiences until The Thief Lord was released here in 2002. Her Inkheart trilogy (Inkheart, Inkspell) has cemented her reputation as a fantasy favorite and left fans eager for the third and final volume.

Funke, who recently moved her family from Germany to Malibu, tells us she has been at work on the third Inkheart book "since May, and have quite a few pages already, but as I always do at least four rewrites, it won't be finished before the end of [2006], which would mean a release date in winter 2007. My working title is Inkdeath but it won't be as dark as the second, as far as I see." An Inkheart movie is also in the works, with "a brilliant script" by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire.

Funke says she doesn't know yet whether her family's move is permanent, "but the main reason that brought us to California is the warmth of its people, the friendliness and the smiles." The warmth of the weather doesn't hurt either!

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