The Impossible Dead, by Ian Rankin. Little, Brown. 384 pages.

Malcolm Fox of "The Complaints" returns to dig into more accusations of police malfeasance, this time in the coastal Scottish town of Kirkcaldy where the hostility that meets his Internal Affairs team is even more pronounced than back home in Edinburgh.

One cop has been convicted of coercing sexual favors from women he arrested; Fox's team is looking into whether the man's colleagues covered up for him. Soon Fox finds links to a 25-year-old crime and evidence that his own family is connected somehow.

Ian Rankin gives fans of police procedurals everything they could want, and also supplies plenty of family drama and team camaraderie for those who like the human element.

Three-Day Town, by Margaret Maron. Grand Central. 288 pages.

Here's a treat for fans of North Carolina's most prolific homegrown author. Margaret Maron introduces the heroines of her two separate series to each other when fictional Colleton County, N.C., judge Deborah Knott and her husband, Dwight Bryant, take a belated honeymoon trip to New York City and end up investigating a murder with NYPD Lt. Sigrid Harald.

They meet because Deborah has been given a package to deliver to Sigrid's mother. It turns out to contain a strange, erotic statuette, which is stolen before Deborah can hand it over, and apparently at the same time the building superintendent is killed in the apartment where the Bryants are staying.

The Betrayal of Trust, by Susan Hill. Overlook. 368 pages.

Isn't it great to find a new author you enjoy who already has a good-sized bibliography? This is the first Susan Hill I've read, and I loved it from the atmospheric opening (rain and thunder rattling the tall windows of a supremely British flat) through the quite human characters and subplots delving into various moral issues of assisted suicide, to the satisfying ending.

The storm that rattled the windows has also brought a mudslide down onto the highway and uncovered two bodies. One is quickly identified as that of a teenage girl who went missing 20 years ago, but the second is a puzzle for Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler, Hill's series character.

The town of Lafferton and its inhabitants are modern but with a touch of the British cozy that will make for perfect November reading.

11/22/63, by Stephen King. Simon & Schuster. 859 pages.

This is one of Stephen King's grand, sprawling journeys, taking time and space to build a believable alternate universe and move you in lock, stock and barrel.

Schoolteacher Jake Epping's favorite diner, it turns out, has a secret portal to the past - always to the same day in the past - and the diner's owner wants Jake to take over the job he's too sick to finish: derailing Lee Harvey Oswald from his appointment with fate on Nov. 22, 1963.

King has packed the book with authentic period detail and a well-researched exploration of Oswald's path to infamy. Take your time and enjoy the trip with him.