I’ve already read a few of the April book releases, so I know we’re all in for a treat that month. Check out the forthcoming books. And, as always, let me know what I missed, since I”m only talking about the books I have or have read.

Alicia Beckman may be a new name, but it’s just a different direction for Leslie Budewitz. (It says that on the back cover of the book, so I”m not giving away any secrets.) The first Beckman suspense novel, Bitterroot Lake, takes four women back to the scene of a tragedy. Twenty-five years earlier, during a celebratory weekend at historic Whitetail Lodge, Sarah McCaskill had a vision. A dream. A nightmare. When a young man was killed, Sarah’s guilt over having ignored the warning devastated her. Now, when she and the other three women reunite, murder forces them to confront everything they thought they knew about the incident that tore them apart. (Release date is April 13.)

In Risk Factor, Michael Brandman’s latest Buddy Steel mystery, Steel, acting Sheriff of Freedom, California, is called home to investigate a home invasion – at his father’s address. The break-in is just one in a series, perpetrated by ingeniously inventive burglars. When he has to deal with cybercrimes targeting local businesses and individuals, he teams up with LAPD Gang Enforcement’s foremost computer geek, an unconventional braniac. (Release date is April 27.)

In Kris Calvin’s thriller, All That Fall, Emma Lawson, the youngest lead government ethics investigator in California’s capital, takes a day off to help her best friend, Kate, prepare for the opening of her new business, Rainbow Alley Preschool. The morning takes a shocking turn when the school’s most high-profile enrollee, the governor’s granddaughter, is kidnapped at the same time Kate’s teenage son, Luke, goes missing. Over a desperate and harrowing forty-eight hours, Emma races against the clock to solve the most important investigation of her life. (Release date is April 13.)

John Dickson Carr’s The Lost Gallows is the latest addition to the British Library Crime Classics. In the lounge of London’s notorious Brimstone Club, a bizarre tale is being spun for Inspector Bencolin and his friend Jeff Marle. A member of the club has received a model of a tiny gallows, and the word is that the folkloric hangman Jack Ketch has been stalking the streets for victims by night his gibbet in town. That night, Bencolin and Marle are almost run down by a limousine with a corpse behind the wheel. When a message claims the car’s passenger has been taken to the gallows at Ruination Street for hanging, Bencolin and Marle search for the terrifying Ketch and a street that isn’t found on any map. CWA Diamond Dagger Award-winning author Martin Edwards wrote the introduction. (Release date is April 6.)

Although The Drummers is Tricia Fields’ sixth Josie Gray mystery, don’t hesitate to pick it up if you get the chance. Police Chief Josie Gray has trouble on her hands with the suspicions of the people of the small town of Artemis, Texas. A community called the Drummers moves into an abandoned church. Their leader, Gideon, claims they want to live off the grid. However, even the young people taunt the townspeople. Then, when local power substations are sabotaged, and all of West Texas loses power, the evidence points to members of the group. When Gray has to intervene, the standoff turns deadly. (Release date is April 6.)

If you’d like a break from all my crime fiction selections, maybe you want to try Eileen Garvin’s debut novel, The Music of Bees. It’s a heartwarming story that follows three lonely strangers in a rural Oregon town, each working through grief and life’s curveballs. Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family and reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. In the grip of a panic attack, she nearly collides with Jake – a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County – while carrying 120,000 honeybees in the back of her pickup truck. Then, there’s Harry, a twenty-four-year-old with debilitating social anxiety who is desperate for work. The trio are brought together by happenstance on Alice’s honeybee farm, where they find surprising friendship, healing, and maybe even a second chance. (Release date is April 27.)

What You Never Knew is Jessica Hamilton’s debut novel, told in alternating points of view between the living and the dead. When May Bennett dies, her sister, June learns their mother never sold Avril Island, and now it’s hers. Still reeling from the grief of losing her sister, she returns to the island, looking for answers. It’s only then she learns the townspeople believe her father murdered someone before he took off. When strange things start happening, she realizes her childhood summers at Avril Island were not at all what they had seemed to her. (Release date is April 13.)

Katherine Heiny, author of Standard Deviation, now brings us Early Morning Riser. Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome, but unfortunately he has slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees his old girlfriends everywhere. She can come to terms with that, but wishes she didn’t have to share him with his so many people. He still mows his ex-wife’s lawn, although she remarried. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan’s apartment. And, none of the residents hesitate to tell Jane what they think of her choice. But, after a terrible car crash, Jane’s life is permanently intertwined with some of these people. It’s a joyful novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family. (Release date is April 13.)

I really liked M.E. Hillard’s series debut, The Unkindness of Ravens, for so many reasons. Greer Hogan became a librarian, and an avid reader of murder mysteries, because she was fond of Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew as a child. Now, she’s “a girl detective with a laptop instead of a roadster”. After her husband’s murder, she moved to Raven Hill, New York. Of course, she’s a suspect when she discovers her best friend dead on the floor of the library. As the primary suspect who possesses a librarian’s natural resourcefulness, she sets out to find the diabolical killer. (Release date is April 13.)

The second Victorian Book Club Mystery by Callie Hutton is The Sign of Death. She returns readers to Bath, England in 1891 for another amusing historical mystery. Lord William Wethington knows his man of business did not drink, so when the police say he drunkenly fell to his death in the River Avon, Lord William is suspicious. However, when he’s accused of murdering the scoundrel who stole from him and may have ruined his good name, he turns to his friend and fellow book club member, Lady Amy Lowell, for assistance in the investigation. (Release date is April 13.)

Swashbuckling opera singer Ella Shane returns in Kathleen Marple Kalb’s latest historical mystery set in Gilded Age New York, A Fatal First Night. Her production of The Princes in the Tower concludes its first performance to thunderous applause. But, she finds disaster when basso Albert Reuter is found lurched over a bloody body in his dressing room. Ella isn’t certain Albert is the one who belongs behind bars, but she has to sort out a wild series of puzzling mishaps and interlocking mysteries. (Release date is April 27.)

Thomas Kies’ first Geneva Chase mystery, Random Road, is being reissued in a special first-in-series edition. It includes a new introduction by the author, a reading group guide, a conversation with the author, and an excerpt from Darkness Lane, the next Geneva Chase Crime Reporter Mystery. I wrote the Library Journal review in 2007. I also reviewed Random Road on my blog, this story that introduces Geneva. She’s almost forty, back on her hometown newspaper on Connecticut’s Gold Coast. And, she’s back because Geneva has almost hit bottom. She’s an alcoholic whose choices are disappearing, just as newspapers are. She’s the only reporter covering a mass slaying at an exclusive compound. Here’s my original review, http://bit.ly/3r3xgYt. Release date for the new edition is April 13.)

Jenny Lawson’s fans know she suffers from depression. In Broken (in the best possible way), she explores her experimental treatments with brutal honesty. But, her humorous topics also cover the frustrations of dealing with her insurance company, how her vacuum cleaner almost set her house on fire, how she was attacked by three bears, and why she can never go back to the post office. (Release date is April 6.)

I always make a distinction between “Best Books” lists and my list of favorite books read. Madeline Martin’s The Last Bookshop in London will be on my favorites list at the end of June, and probably the end of the year. It would not make a Best Books list, but, oh, this story made me sob, and my best friend said the same thing. London is on the verge of war in August 1939 when Grace Bennett moves there. Her landlady, her late mother’s best friend, pushes a local bookshop owner to hire her for his dusty store, although Grace isn’t a reader. As she cleans and finds her way around, then as London suffers during the Blitz, Grace learns to discover, love, and share books. This is a story for booklovers. We already know books can take us away. Grace, and a number of others, come to know that. (sniff) (Release date is April 6.)

Paula McClain, author of The Paris Wife, takes a chance with a departure, a suspense novel, When the Stars Go Dark. Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, she flees to northern California to Mendocino to grieve. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna’s childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl in Mendocino and changed the community forever. It isn’t long before Anna becomes obsessed with the missing girl. (Release date is April 13.)

Jeffrey Siger brings back the wonderful cast of his Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series in A Deadly Twist. When journalist Nikoletta Elia disappears on the island of Naxos after breaking a headline-grabbing story, her editor calls Kaldis. Kaldis sends his deputy, Yanni to investigate, and Yanni uncovers a murder that could be connected to Elia’s original story, disputes between environmentalists and advocates for tourism. Then, a violent accident sends Kaldis, his wife, and friends to the island. It’s another excellent book is this series. (Release date is April 1.)

Following a terrible storm in Door County, Sheriff Dave Cubiak assesses the damage in Patricia Skalka’s Death Washes Ashore. His dispatcher sends him to a beach where a man and his dog found a body under a boat. Neither of them expect the man to be dressed in armor. Cubiak has a complex case on his hands in this excellent police procedural. (Release date is April 20.)

The Dictionary of Lost Words is Pip Williams’ debut novel, based on actual events. As a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, one of their daughters collects the words that have been discarded or collected by the men. Eventually, she begins to search out words for her own dictionary, The Dictionary of Lost Words. Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement with the Great War looming, the novel reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. (Release date is April 6.)

Don’t forget to check out these titles as well.

Ames, Jonathan – A Man Named Doll (4/20)

Axelrod, Xio – The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes (4/6)

Bluestone, Gabrielle – Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet – and Why We’re Following (4/6)

Chapman, Clay McLeod – Whisper Down the Lane (4/6)

Johnstone, Carole – Mirrorland (4/20)

Kepnes, Caroline – You Love Me (4/6)

Longworth, M.L. – The Vanishing Museum on the Rue Mistral (4/13)

Marashi, Nasim – I’ll Be Strong for You (4/6)

Osworth, A.E. – We Are Watching Eliza Bright (4/13)

Ramsay, Caro – On an Outgoing Tide (4/6)

Sathian, Sanjena – Gold Diggers (4/6)

Shin, Ann – The Last Exiles (4/6)

Simone, Naima – The Road to Rose Bend (4/27)

Sutanto, Jesse Q. – Dial A for Aunties (4/27)

Zauner, Michelle – Crying in H Mart (4/20)