Murder--Investigation

The original Twin Peaks series really was original — one of the most inventive, unprecedented, sometimes thrillingly unique TV series ever presented. David Lynch directed several episodes, including the very best ones: the mood-establishing pilot and the dreamy and nightmarish third episode with the Tibetan rock toss and the dancing, backwards-talking dwarf in the Red Room.

Noah Hawley says his FX series, now in its third season, explores the central premise of the Coen Brothers' iconic 1996 film. Hawley is also the creator of the FX series Legion.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters is Emil Ferris' debut graphic novel, about a ten year old girl who sees herself as a werewolf. Ferris always loved monsters, and also wanted to be one as a child. Her love of monsters is what helped her get thru some of the darkest periods of her life.

These days, almost every new movie, TV show, album or book feels so anticipated and pre-packaged that we're already tired of it by the time it's released. This makes it especially thrilling when something dazzling just appears like that alien spaceship in Arrival, startling even those whose business it is be in the know.

Fresno native Mark Arax has written about the war over water in his state for decades. "It used to be the farmers against the delta smelt fish, and now it's the urbanite against the almond," he says.

Price says that in every precinct there's one cop who just can't let go of a case. "They all reminded me of Ahab ... looking for their whales," he says. Price's latest is called The Whites.

Nina Borg, the heroine of Death of a Nightingale, is a Red Cross nurse on a mission to save the dispossessed. But she neglects her own family as a she rescues those in need in Agnete Friss and Lene Kaaberbol's elaborately plotted page-turner.

In the new FX series, Bichir plays a Mexican detective who teams up with an El Paso cop to solve a series of murders. He tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies that The Bridge aims to give equal treatment to both sides of the border.

Enter Me

Tana French's latest novel follows Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, a police detective with a rage for order, as he investigates a young family's murder in a suburban Dublin development gone bust. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Broken Harbor is as much social criticism as it is whodunit.