DOUBLES

By Nic Brown (Counterpoint Press, 227 pages, $15.95)

There's a lot of tennis in this book. If you are not a fan of the sport, don't let that scare you off. At its heart, Nic Brown's new novel, "Doubles," is a painfully honest and worthy look at personal relationships. Slow Smith is a professional tennis player who is haunted by guilt over an auto accident that left his wife in a coma. He has abandoned competition with his lifelong doubles partner, Kaz. The spark seems to be gone for tennis and everything else.

His friend and business manager, Manny, shows up suddenly to end Slow's tedium. Manny has always been out of control, and now he's on the verge of divorce. When he takes Slow back to New York -- the scene of the tennis duo's early triumphs -- everyone's personal troubles become even more tangled and interesting.

DAVID SHAFFER

BUSINESS EDITOR/REPORTER

SIZZLING SIXTEEN

By Janet Evanovich (St. Martin's Press, 320 pages, $27.99)

Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, her friend Lula and the rest of the gang are up to their old tricks in Janet Evanovich's latest in this series. And by old tricks I mean their escapades are starting to seem very familiar. This time they are trying to save their jobs by rescuing Stephanie's cousin Vinnie, their employer and the manager of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. The sleazy Vinnie has been abducted by mobster Bobby Sunflower, to whom he is deeply in debt. They must find him and pay what he owes or Vinnie will be a goner -- and their jobs will go with him. Stephanie is predictably unprepared for the adventure -- running low on bullets, which she adds to her grocery list. Lula is predictably always hungry, prompting numerous visits to Cluck-in-a-Bucket and the doughnut shop. Ranger and Joe Morelli, Stephanie's two love interests, are predictably mysterious and horny. You get the picture. I knew what was coming, and still I zoomed through this book. (The larger type and roomy margins help.) I've followed the series from the first, "One for the Money," and I like revisiting the characters. Like a corny sitcom, it's mindless but entertaining. Besides, sooner or later our hero will finally have to decide: Will it be the elusive and dangerous Ranger, or the patronizing but charming cop Morelli? And I don't want to miss that!

JUDY ROMANOWICH SMITH

Star Tribune, Star Tribune

NEWS DESIGNER