CREAM PUFF MURDER

By Joanne Fluke (Kensington Books, 310 pages, $24)

Don't worry if you haven't read any of the previous books in this Hannah Swensen series. Jump right in; you'll catch on. This 11th visit to fictional Lake Eden, Minn., is entertaining and sprinkled with 22 tempting recipes. Swensen owns the Cookie Jar bakery and solves murders in her spare time. In this installment, she is trying to lose weight and shape up when she stumbles upon a body in the hot tub at the club. Her love interest, police detective Mike Kingston, is one of the suspects. Actually, since the dead woman was very popular with the men in town, there are many people with motives to kill her, and Hannah has her work cut out for her. Her other love interest, dentist Norman Rhodes, her sisters and even her mother lend a hand. Of course, the case is solved, weight is lost and many dozens of cookies are eaten by the end. It's a sweet treat of a novel, and the recipes -- including Triplet Chiplet Cookies, Candy Bar Bar Cookies and Minty Melts -- look good, too.

JUDY ROMANOWICH SMITH, NEWS DESIGNER

The music teacher

By Barbara Hall (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 292 pages, $22.95)

I judged it by its cover. "The Music Teacher," a purse-friendly novel, pictures a woman holding a violin. So she must look like Meryl Streep, right, and this must be a feel-good tale? Maybe I should just skip the book and go rent "Music of the Heart" instead. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This music teacher has dead dreams, a potty mouth and an occasionally bawdy life. She introduces herself this way: "I am that cranky woman you remember from your youth, the one whose face you dreaded seeing, whose breath you dreaded smelling as I leaned over you, tugging at your fingers. ... Here is why your music teacher was so mean: She didn't want to teach. She wanted to be a musician." And so we meet Pearl and her music-store colleagues, and then Hallie, a troubled prodigy who shows up in Pearl's life for lessons. Pearl tries to scoop up the girl's dead dreams, her battered violin and her broken world, only to get inspired -- then wounded -- along the way. The book isn't a dot-to-dot "teacher inspires student" tearjerker. It's an exploration of the role and limits of a teacher, the burden and mystery of talent, and more than anything, the idea of what music truly is. Pearl uses the language of religion to talk about music, sometimes excessively so, but there are lines that are profound: "Music is like Communion or something. You don't do it because you're perfect. You do it because you glimpse perfection. You realize it can take you a step closer. You move toward it because you're hoping it can make you better." The book is a quick read, and it might not necessarily make you better, but Pearl's thoughts are worth pondering, and her attitude and her discussions about talent aren't soon forgotten.

HOLLY COLLIER, NEWS COPY EDITOR