Mainers must be adventurous diners, because we now have many wonderful opportunities to enjoy ethnic foods. At Lemongrass in Brunswick, we discovered delicious Vietnamese cuisine.

London may have had Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson prowling its foggy streets in 1893, but Portland also had an equally adroit pair of detectives battling arch-villains that year — Perceval Grey and Archie Lean.

Harlan Coben has mastered the family thriller in which ordinary people are caught up in an out-of-control situation, a la Alfred Hitchcock. This approach has landed most of Coben’s 24 novels on best-sellers’ lists.

“No Way Back” is the latest high-octane thriller from Andrew Gross, the best-selling author of “15 Seconds.”