Vanessa "Michael" Munroe returns in Taylor Steven's "The Innocent"

(CBS/AP) Fans of Taylor Stevens' first novel, "The Informationist," will be happy to know that its sequel, "The Innocent," is on store shelves today.

Both books feature Vanessa "Michael" Munroe, a freelance espionage agent whose survival skills and intellect were wrought out of a violent past, and who shows an uncanny ability to extract herself from harrowing situations in which she is heavily outnumbered.

She has been described as the female equivalent of Lee Childs' fictional crime-stopper, Jack Reacher.

In "The Innocent," published by Crown, Munroe agrees to rescue a child who was abducted eight years earlier and brought into a secretive and well-protected cult known as The Chosen, based in Argentina. The people who have hired her are survivors of that cult.

Munroe is also plagued by nightmares in which she relives the violence from her last mission, and she's turned to self-medicating to combat them.

The thirty-something author knows what she is writing about: Reared in communes around the globe, she broke free from the Children of God cult when she was in her 20s, according to her website. She now lives and works in Texas, where she already has begun a third Munroe mystery.