One thing that's always been true about Elmore Leonard is that he takes his world with him. With "Tishomingo Blues," his 37th novel, Leonard's traveling road show pulls into Tunica, Miss.

Ten years ago, that would have seemed an odd setting for Leonard, whose modern novels have never strayed too far from the street. But when you consider that Leonard began No. 36, "Pagan Babies," in Rwanda, maybe it's not that far after all.

To read "The Professional," the fabulous first novel of writer W. C. Heinz, is to visit a world that no longer exists, even to wonder whether it ever did.

What's it like to live at the right hand of greatness and then to have it taken away? One answer might be found in the life of Ray Manzarek, who helped make the whirlwind that was the '60s band the Doors and who continues to ply its wake, better than three decades after Jim Morrison died in a Paris bathtub.

When Andy Caspar, the good guy in Po Bronson's second novel, has maxed out his credit cards but still needs cash to bring his revolutionary computer ideas to market, he finds it in his closet.

For years he's been buying from the L.L. Bean catalog, and he's just remembered that Bean wear comes with a lifetime money-back guarantee. Sweaters, shirts, every pair of pants he owns and, bingo, he's got three months' rent.

It's tough to imagine a cookbook that brings together such dishes as masoor dal, buffalo gourd mash, and scrambled eggs and brains.

But Ric Lynden Hardman has done it in "Sunshine Rider" by making the recipes just one ingredient in his novel, which is also a happily-ever-after saga from the Old West, a satire on modern times, a treatise on vegetarianism, and a coming-of-age yarn.

Elmore Leonard has long had an irresistible formula for his grit-and-polish crime novels: flawed heroes, strong women, rich or powerful people who abuse their privilege, reasonably clever mob bosses, and not-so-swift crooks - all entangled in stories that are set (at least in part) in Detroit or South Florida, and that undergo plot twists that are surprising yet plausible.

If Robert Ludlum ever had a notion to write something like "When Harry Met Sally," he might end up with something like "Just Friends," the novel by Londoner Robyn Sisman. Like so many of Ludlum's books, "Just Friends" is far more a pleasure to read than to complete.

When pieces of Dean Cranston Fessing are discovered in a dumpster behind the gender-studies center at Wainscott University, having been roasted, sauteed, or baked in one delicate sauce or another, it is the best thing that ever happened to Norman de Ratour, mild-mannered recording secretary at the Museum of Man.

Dean Fessing, you see, was laying the groundwork to have the university swallow the museum, threatening not only to end the museum's sacred mission but also to downsize de Ratour out of the job he has held for more than 30 years.

You can't tell a book by its cover, but author and title can reveal a lot. For example, who thought, when they heard that Eric Bogosian had written a book called "Mall," that it would be a celebration of American happiness, or a gift guide perhaps?

Of course not. Anyone familiar with "Talk Radio," or "Suburbia," or his latest version of "Wake Up and Smell the Coffee" would have expected a rant, and one more temple of mindless consumerism is just the sort of place where Bogosian would shop for literary material.

Think of "Eat Fat," Richard Klein's screed about what's wrong with fat in America, as a deceiving devil's food cake. The first glance is enticing, but a few bites reveal an unpalatable concoction whose good ingredients have been compromised by the unhealthy ones.