Today I am looking ahead to next month's new release books. I am also looking forward to some spring sunshine to go with them.
There are loads of good-looking books being published in April. I have limited myself to just ten in this post; otherwise, I would probably still be compiling the list when April actually arrives!
Dead Straight Line by Malcolm Duffy
Two unlikely worlds collide as prize-winning Malcolm Duffy explores the life-changing repercussions of a single action in a game gone wrong.
Sixteen-year-old Rory is a rule-breaker, a risk taker, a maverick. As a kick he comes up with a game called Dead Straight Line. The idea is simple – wherever you happen to be, you’ve got to get home in a dead straight line. Across the back gardens of stranger’s houses, locked parks, trespassing on private property – whatever it takes.
One day, Rory pressures his friend Eliot into playing, resulting in a serious accident. Shunned by friends and facing pressure from his furious parents, Rory becomes even more angry and disruptive. When his school suggests helping out a care home, he’s unimpressed. But paired up with Tanker, an eighty-year-old Geordie military veteran, who fought in the Falklands War, things slowly begin to change.
From seeking thrills to finding friends, choosing the right path in life is never a dead straight line. But there is always a way.
A Widow's Charm by Caitlyn Paxson
In this witty fantasy romance, a widow blackmails her rakish necromancer neighbor to bring her husband back to life and save her home . . . only to find herself falling for him instead.
Lady Hildegarde Croft is accustomed to changes in position. After all, she rose from maidservant to lady of the manor when she married Lord Thorgoode Croft. But when he drops dead quite unexpectedly, the plans that would have protected her and the people of Croftholde from her malevolent brother-in-law die along with him. What's a widow to do?
Fortunately, potential salvation arrives in the form of Lord Erol Elmwood, who is fleeing the consequences of using his forbidden Charm to raise the dead and save his own life. Now he's injured, destitute, and miserable, stuck hiding out at the neighboring estate.
For Hilde, blackmailing Lord Elmwood to resurrect Thorgoode seems like the perfect solution. For Elmwood, beautiful Lady Croft seems like the ideal distraction from his troubles. The problem is, all she wants from him is the horrifying power he knows he can never use again.
Preorder Link - Bookshop.org
The Lost Woman by Karen Mulvahill
To reclaim what the Nazis stole, she must face what she tried to forget.
Paris, 1940. Nicole Cassin is a Jewish teenager living above her family’s art gallery when the Nazis occupy the city. Overnight, everything is her home, her security, her future, and Nicole is forced to grow up fast. As Paris sinks deeper into fear and suspicion, she is drawn into the Resistance and into a world where a whispered name or a single painting can mean the difference between freedom and tragedy.
Decades later in New York, Nicole—widowed and running out of time—receives a letter that upends the life she has spent years trying to build. Determined to reclaim her family’s legacy, she hires Robert, an art historian with ties to the wartime efforts to save Europe’s cultural treasures, to trace the fate of her parents’ stolen collection, including a portrait of her mother painted by Picasso.
What begins as a search for lost paintings becomes something far more dangerous. Robert’s investigation leads into a shadowy network of collaborators, ex-Nazis, and art dealers, where fortunes were made in the ruins of war, and where the truth about Nicole’s past has been waiting, buried in plain sight.
Preorder Link - Amazon UK
Margery and Me by Maryka Biaggio
In the 1920s, Margery Crandon captivated both Boston society and psychic researchers with her astonishing seances. At her gatherings, her deceased brother Walter regularly appeared, entertaining the circle with his witty and cheeky remarks. Margery's abilities earned her the admiration of luminaries, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Butler Yeats. But one man stood in opposition: Harry Houdini, the legendary magician, who was determined to expose her as a fraud. Margery and Me tells the true story of the medium who mystified scientists, challenged skeptics, and sparked a sensation across America and Europe. As Houdini and Margery clashed in a battle of wits and wills, the question remained: Could the master illusionist unmask her, or would her extraordinary powers be enough to convert even the most resolute of doubters?
Preorder Link - Amazon
How to Cheat at You Own Death by Kristen Perry
LAURA NEVER MEANT TO LIE. BUT OLD HABITS DIE HARD.
When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Fliss, the budding artist Laura had just taken under her wing.
Annie is no stranger to murder - after all, she's solved a few cases already. And something about the way Fliss died feels familiar. She's seen a case like this before. Or read about it, rather, in the journals of her dead Great Aunt Frances, whose close friend was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way: with her heart surgically removed from her chest.
As threats pile up on Laura's doorstep, it soon becomes clear that she's next, and that she's hiding something . . . With her mother's life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it's too late?
From the gritty streets of 1960s Soho to the lofty galleries of present-day West London, follow Annie and Frances as they race to bring a killer to justice.
Preorder Link - Bookshop.org
The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer
Rainy March is a proud third-generation book witch, sworn to defend works of fiction from all foes real and imaginary. With her magical umbrella and feline familiar, she jumps into and out of novels to fix malicious alterations and wrangle characters that go off-script.
Book witches live by a strict code: Real people belong in the real word; fictional characters belong in works of fiction.... Do not eat, drink, or sleep inside a fictional world, lest you become part of the story. Falling in love with a fictional character? Don't even think about it.
Except Rainy has fallen hard for the Duke of Chicago, the dashing British detective who stars in her favorite noir series. After their illicit romance is exposed, Rainy is forbidden from ever seeing her fictional lover again, lest she be expelled from her book coven-and forced to give up the magical gifts that are as much a part of her as her own name.
When a priceless book is stolen from her home, there's only one person she trusts to help her get it back: the Duke. Thus their shared quest begins through the worlds of Alice in Wonderland, The Great Gatsby, and other classics that will reveal hidden enemies and long-buried family secrets.
Preorder Link - Bookshop.org
The Name Game by Beth O'Leary
Who's playing who?
The Isle of Ormer: population 500, soon to be 501.
Charlie Jones has landed on the island to embark on her brand new life. As the manager at Ormer's only farm shop, this job will be her perfect next chapter. Good riddance to the mainland, this is it - fresh air, and a clean slate.
Except there is one small issue . . .
Charlie Jones has also just arrived on the Isle of Ormer, to embark on his brand new life. His job at the farm shop feels like fate, and could not have come at a better moment. On Ormer, Charlie has promised himself he'll escape old friends, bad habits and heartbreak.
This second chance is the best thing that could have happened to Charlie . . . and Charlie.
That is, until they are introduced . . .
Preorder Link - Bookshop.org
The Enemy's Wife by Deborah Swift
1941. When Zofia’s beloved husband Haru is conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army, she is left to navigate Japanese-occupied Shanghai alone.
Far from home and surrounded by a country at war, Zofia finds unexpected comfort in a bond with Hilly, a spirited young refugee escaping Nazi-occupied Austria.
As violence tightens its grip on the city, they seek shelter with Theo, Zofia’s American employer. But with every passing day, the horrors of war and Haru’s absence begin to reshape Zofia’s world – and her heart.
Can she still love someone who has become the enemy?
Preorder Link - Bookshop.org
Lochbound by Rebecca Templeton
There is no happily-ever-after . . .
Kilmara, Scotland. 1725. For fifty years, Iris has accepted the curse that blighted her life. By night, she is a heartbroken woman, destined to walk the misty shores of Kilmara without growing older. By day, she is Moireach, a terrifying monster imprisoned in the murky depths of Loch Moine.
When bodies begin appearing on the shore, the villagers are convinced Moireach is responsible. So a hunter - the rugged, ruthless Henry Carver - is summoned to slay the monster of the loch.
Iris must break her curse before she is killed for crimes she cannot believe she has committed. But as Kilmara's hunt for the monster becomes ever more fevered, she and Henry are drawn together in a dangerous game of impossible attraction.
And when a figure from Iris's past suddenly reappears, she must choose what - or who - she is willing to sacrifice to win her freedom.
. . . when you are the monster.
Fruit Fly by Josh Silver
Anyone can write a bestseller. Here’s how.
GO GAY
It’s been seven years since Mallory shot to fame as a literary sensation. But after years of struggling with writer’s block, she’s desperate to resurrect her career before it spirals into obscurity. She needs inspiration to strike – and fast.
GO SAD
Enter Leo – a young struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.
GO DARK
Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. Authenticity sells, and there’s nothing more authentic than real life. She’s the perfect person to tell Leo’s story. Gay, sad, dark – just what the world needs right now. But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide: just how far will she go to pen the perfect story?
Preorder Link - Bookshop.org
(header photo courtesy of Karolina Bobek/Unsplashed)
(all opinions are my own)
(Bookshop.org affiliated)
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