Weekend picks for book lovers

• 'Mrs. Queen Takes the Train' is "a delightful escape"
• 'Who Could It Be at This Hour' is a fun vocabulary lesson
• 'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story' is a must-read for fanboys and more

What should you read this weekend? USA TODAY's picks for book lovers include John Grisham's twisty new legal thriller, an entertaining escapade with the Queen of England and a noir mystery for kids from Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket).

The Racketeer by John Grisham, Doubleday, 340 pp., fiction

Let's make a deal isn't a game show -- it's a con game -- in John Grisham's latest legal thriller.

And if all goes according to plan, The Racketeer's Malcolm Bannister is going to game his way out of a federal prison camp in Frostburg, Md.

Halfway through a 10-year term for a crime he did not commit, Bannister, 43, a former attorney for an African-American law firm in Winchester, Va., may have hit the jackpot when it comes to holding all the cards.

A federal judge and his mistress have been found murdered in an isolated mountain cabin. Their bodies are discovered in the basement near a behemoth-sized safe that's now empty.

Investigators have no idea who committed the crimes but Bannister does -- and he knows what was in the safe. He'll tell all if the feds let him walk free.

USA TODAY says *** 1/2 out of four. "The Racketeer is guilty of only one thing: keeping us engaged until the very last page."

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn, Harper, 374 pp., fiction

Everybody, even the Queen of England, needs to get away once in a while. And that's what Her Majesty does in the whimsical Mrs. Queen Takes the Train as she walks out of Buckingham Palace in a hoodie.

USA TODAY says ***. "A delightful escape."

Who Could That Be at This Hour? All the Wrong Questions: Book 1 , by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Seth, 258 pp., fiction, for ages 10-14

First in a four-book mystery series, it's a prequel to the author's best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events; noir for tweens.

USA TODAY says *** 1/2. "Vocabulary lessons were never so much fun."

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe, Harper, 496 pp., non- fiction

A history of Marvel Comics featuring memorable moments, a cast of real-life characters both ordinary and oddball, and the kind of backstabbing and intrigue one usually only finds on a daytime soap opera.

USA TODAY says *** 1/2. "A superpowered must-read for anyone hooked on comics."

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 325 pp., non-fiction

A biography of pioneering photographer Edward Curtis, who beginning in the 1890s took thousands of indelible portraits of vanishing North American Indian tribes.

USA TODAY says *** 1/2. A "fascinating biography … challenges the age-old ratio of a picture's worth to a thousand words."

Contributing: Carol Memmott, Bob Minzesheimer, Brian Truitt and Don Oldenburg