I have some terrific events happening in March, one musical and two concerts, so I”m not rushing through that month to April. However, there are some good books coming out in April. I hope you’re ready to check out a few Treasures in My Closet for that month. I have a number of books listed this month, but I hope you let me know what I missed. I don’t get everything to pile up in my closet!!
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Let’s start with Claire Booth’s sixth Sheriff Hank Worth mystery, Home Fires.. The story begins with a bang that affects everyone in Boone County when a fireworks warehouse explodes. Although fire departments and other law enforcement teams show up to help, Hank feels it’s his responsibility to find the truth behind the explosion. However, he’s sidetracked by personal matters when there are problems with the local coroner’s office. (Release date is April 2.)
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Murder, She Wrote: Murder Backstage by Jessica Fletcher and Terrie Farley Moran sends Jessica Fletcher and her friends, Dr. Seth Hazlitt and Sheriff Mort Metzger, to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Jessica’s actress cousin is appearing in a revue there, and Seth and Mort jump at the chance to see their childhood idol, Derek Braverman, in his retirement show. But, when a member of the stage crew is murdered, Jessica is dragged into the investigation. (Release date is April 2.)
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Daryl Wood Gerber’s fifth Fairy Garden Mystery is A Twinkle of Trouble. Courtney Kelly is the owner of a fairy gardening and tea shop in Carmel, California. Courtney has booked a booth at the annual Summer Blooms Festival, but the murder of Courtney’s friend, Genevieve, casts a pall over the festival. In her new role as an influencer, Genevieve became surprisingly vicious. That’s landed several of Courtney’s friends on the suspect list. She’ll have to overturn every rock to get the dirt on the real killer. The mystery includes recipes with Gluten Free versions. (Release date is April 23.)
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Kerri Hakoda’s Alaska thriller is Cold to the Touch. When the body of a barista is found in the once-pristine Alaskan snow, Anchorage homicide detective DeHavilland Beans recognizes the young woman, Jolene. He’d bought coffee from her every morning and knew her as a bright college student working her way through school. Beans vows to find the killer. Since scavengers damaged the body, obtaining any usable evidence is impossible, even with the assistance of wildlife expert Raisa Ingalls, Beans’s ex. When the body of another woman is found, a serial killer is suspected and the FBI joins the hunt. Before they can find the killer, a third body turns up, and another young woman goes missing. (Release date is April 9.)
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According to the back cover, Libby Fischver Hellman’s novel, Max’s War, is a tribute to her late father-in-law, who was active with the OSS and interrogated dozens of German POWs. When the Nazis swept across Europe, Jewish teen Max and his parents fled persecution in Germany for Holland. But when Hitler invades in 1940, Max escapes to Chicago, leaving everyone behind. When he learns of his parents’ deportation and murder, he enlists in the US Army, and is trained in interrogation and counterintelligence. Deployed to the OSS, he carries out missions in Occupied countries, and interrogates German POWS. Post-war his work for the Americans takes him back to his Bavarian childhood home, where he finds someone he might be able to build a life with. (Release date is April 9.)
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When Emily Henry’s romcoms are good, they are really good. I loved Beach Read, and I’m always hoping the next book will be as good. In Funny Story, Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra. Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them? But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right? (Release date is April 23.)
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The fifth book in Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz series is Close to Death. Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong, and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate.It is the perfect idyll, until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, gaggle of shrieking children, and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kentworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and quickly offend every last one of the neighbors.When Charles Kentworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator they can call to solve the case. Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect? (Release date is April 6.)
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How timely! Someone is murdering pickleball players in Victoria Houston’s At the Edge of the Woods. When a local pickleball player is shot in the head while practicing at an abandoned tennis court with his partner-slash-lover, Sheriff Lew Ferris suspects that the bullet was a stray shot from hunters in the area. It’s not until a second player–the first victim’s mistress and pickleball partner–is killed that Sheriff Ferris realizes this is no hunting accident. Someone is hunting people, and it’s up to her to find out who. With the first victim’s crazed widow breathing down Lew’s neck, there’s no room to breathe, let alone to find time to appreciate the beautiful Loon Lake fall and go fishing. Adding to Sheriff Ferris’ difficulties are three pickleball players convinced someone has targeted them, someone who will do anything, even murder, to frighten them away from the courts where they play – but why? Release date is April 23.)
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I’ll admit I was a little exasperated with the heroine in Ava January’s The Mayfair Dagger at times, but the courtroom scene at the end of the book made up for everything. Possibly one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever read in a novel. London, 1894. Albertine Honeycombe never wanted a husband and certainly not the one with fifteen children that her cousin, Aubrey, is trying to marry her off to. She reinvents herself as Countess Von Dagga, a private detective aiding the upper echelons of women in society. As the Countess, she is a married woman, with a conveniently absent husband who doesn’t exist, which allows her far more freedom than being single. When Lord Grendel, from whom she has recovered blackmail letters, is murdered, Albertine is suspect number one—having been the last person to see him. And when the Duke of Erleigh comes looking for her utterly fictitious husband, she realizes she has landed herself in hot water, without a tea bag. When Albertine also becomes the prime suspect in her fictional husband’s death, things are looking grim. Unless Albertine can prove who murdered Lord Grendel and clear her name, her choices are stepmothering enough small children to start a school or hanging from the end of Her Majesty’s rope. (Release date is April 23.)
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Catherine Mack’s novel, Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies, has an unusual format, footnotes directed directly at the reader. All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series―is that too much to ask?Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor’s life―the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life―Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case. Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker―and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly―theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder? (Release date is April 30.)
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Patchwork Quilt Murder is Leslie Meier’s 30th Lucy Stone mystery. When a community center opens in town, many embrace it as a space where locals of all ages can gather and create. Others view it as a waste of taxpayer dollars. The director, Darleen Busby-Platt, is no less controversial. Intense and showy, Darleen has huge plans for her new role. But Lucy believes the woman isn’t exactly as warm hearted—or qualified—as she seems. That hunch deepens when Darleen and a young employee vanish . . . and dismembered remains appear! With lots of clues and few concrete answers, Lucy rushes to connect loose ends. First there’s the disappearance of Tim Stillings, a troubled twenty-something who endured harsh treatment on the job. Next there’s Darleen herself, who made fast enemies as the highest-paid resident in Tinker’s Cove. Finally, there’s Darleen’s rich ancestry and ties to heirlooms worth either a fortune or nothing at all. The closer Lucy gets to the facts, the more she realizes that solving this murder depends on the lies. (Release date is April 23.)
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John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan join forces for the remarkable novel, The Murder of Mr. Ma, a story that incorporates racism, history and adventure with a Chinese version of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Two unlikely allies race through the cobbled streets of 1920s London in search of a killer targeting Chinese immigrants. London, 1924. When shy academic Lao She meets larger-than-life Judge Dee Ren Jie, his quiet life abruptly turns from books and lectures to daring chases and narrow escapes. Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death with a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders—or are they next in line as victims? Blending traditional gong’an crime fiction with the most iconic aspects of the Sherlock Holmes canon, Dee and Lao’s first adventure is as thrilling and visual as an action film, as imaginative and transportive as a timeless classic. (Release date is April 2.)
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I’ll admit Lindy Ryan’s Bless Your Heart is labeled as a combination horror/mystery novel, but there’s a little more graphic horror than I care to read. It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny—Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter, have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone. But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy’s body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it’s clear that the Strigoi—the original vampire—are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town. As more folks in town turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return. (Release date is April 9.)
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Whoops. Out of order because I missed Sara Paretsky’s Pay Dirt on my list. V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that’s where trouble finds V.I. Sabrina, one of Angela’s roommates, disappears and V.I. agrees to try to find her. Finding a missing person in a city where she knows few people and doesn’t have her trusted contacts is hard, but not as hard as the brutally negative reaction to the detective from some of the locals. When V.I. finds Sabrina close to death in a remote house, she lands herself in the FBI’s crosshairs and faces a violent online backlash. The men running the county’s opioid distribution are also not happy. Discovering a dead body in the same house a few days later, V.I. is pitched headlong into a local land-use battle with roots going back to the Civil War. She finds that today’s combatants are just as willing as opponents in the 1860s to kill to settle their differences. (Release date is April 16.)
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I’ll admit I wasn’t excited about the premise of John Sandford’s Toxic Prey, but it’s just as exciting and fast-paced as his other Prey books. Although it’s advertised as a Lucas and Letty Davenport novel, the emphasis is on Letty. Gaia is dying. That, at least, is what Dr. Lionel Scott believes. A renowned expert in tropical and infectious diseases, Scott has witnessed the devastating impact of illness and turmoil at critical scale. Society as it exists is untenable, and the direct link to Earth’s death spiral; population levels are out of control and people have allowed disarray and disorder to run rampant. When Scott then disappears without a trace, Letty Davenport is tasked with tracking down any and all leads. Scott’s connections to sensitive research into virus and pathogen spread has multiple national and international organizations on high alert, and his shockingly high clearance levels at various institutions, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, make him the last person they’d like to go missing. As the web around Scott becomes more tangled, Letty calls in her father, Lucas, help her lead a group of specialists to find Scott as soon as possible. But as Letty and Lucas begin to uncover startling and disturbing connections between Scott and Gaia conspiracists, their worst fears are confirmed, and it quickly becomes a race to find him before the virus he created becomes the perfect weapon. (Release date is April 9.)
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Terry Shames’ Perilous Waters thriller is a departure from her Samuel Craddock mysteries. Jessie Madison escaped to the Bahamas when she made a terrifying discovery at home and a bad decision got her dismissed from the FBI training program. Three months later, Jessie is ready to return to Virginia to pick up the pieces of her shattered life – until she and a friend are attacked during a boat ride and thrown overboard, with devastating consequences. Jessie is determined to bring their attackers to justice. Who are they? What were they looking for on the boat? And can she trust Nick, the handsome but enigmatic stranger who claims he wants to help her? Jessie must draw on all her survival and investigative skills if she is to stay alive long enough to get answers . . . (Release date is April 2.)
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The Poison Pen is Paige Shelton’s ninth book Scottish Bookshop mystery set in a speciality bookshop in Edinburgh called The Cracked Spine. Edinburgh is mourning recent the death of Queen Elizabeth II when Bookseller Delaney Nichols’s boss comes to her with a most unusual assignment. An old friend of his, living in an estate in the village of Roslin, has found what could be a priceless relic on her property, and Delaney is tasked with investigating. Could Jolie possibly have an item of breathtaking Scottish historical significance in her possession? But when Delaney arrives at Jolie’s estate, she is greeted by a legal team with a vested interest in the property. Jolie manages to remove the interlopers, but as they’re examining the priceless item, they hear a scream, and meet a much less welcome discovery: a body.As Delaney digs deeper, she discovers Jolie’s own fascinating history. Jolie’s mother had long claimed that her daughter was the rightful heir to the throne, not Elizabeth II, because of an affair she claimed to have with King Edward VIII. The only evidence, however, is in the form of a purported journal that one of Edward’s secretaries kept. The puzzles become more confusing when a connection is uncovered between this far-fetched story and the murdered man. Delaney will have to read between the lines to put together the pieces…or become history herself. (Release date is April 9.)
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Shaina Steinberg’s debut novel is Under the Paper Moon. It’s 1942, and as far as her father knows, Evelyn Bishop, heiress to an aeronautics fortune, is working as a translator in London. In truth, Evelyn—daring, beautiful, and as adept with a rifle as she is in five languages—has joined the Office of Strategic Services as a spy. Her goal is personal: to find her brother, who is being held as a POW in a Nazi labor camp. Through one high-risk mission after another she is paired with the reckless and rebellious Nick Gallagher, growing ever close to him until the war’s end brings with it an act of deep betrayal. Six years later, Evelyn is back home in Los Angeles, working as a private investigator. The war was supposed to change everything, yet Evelyn, contemplating marriage to her childhood sweetheart, feels stifled by convention. Then the suspected cheating husband she’s tailing is murdered, and suddenly Evelyn is back in Nick’s orbit again. Teaming up for a final mission, Evelyn and Nick begin to uncover the true nature of her case— and realize that the war has followed them home. For beyond the public horrors waged by nations there are countless secret, desperate acts that still reverberate on both continents, and threaten everything Evelyn holds dear… (Release date is April 23.)
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I love an amateur sleuth who is a little different. Katie Tietjen’s Death in the Details is a debut historical mystery. It’s inspired by the real-life mother of forensic science, Frances Glessner Lee, and featuring a whip-smart, intrepid sleuth in post-WWII Vermont. Maple Bishop is ready to put WWII and the grief of losing her husband, Bill, behind her. But when she discovers that Bill left her penniless, Maple realizes she could lose her Vermont home next and sets out to make money the only way she knows how: by selling her intricately crafted dollhouses. Business is off to a good start—until Maple discovers her first customer dead, his body hanging precariously in his own barn. Something about the supposed suicide rubs Maple the wrong way, but local authorities brush off her concerns. Determined to help them see “what’s big in what’s small,” Maple turns to what she knows best, painstakingly recreating the gruesome scene in miniature: death in a nutshell. (Release date is April 9.)
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The last book, A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke, is also a debut. Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death. When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days nor return to a place where she’s already been. From the scorched dunes of the Calashino Sand Sea to the snow-packed peaks of the Himalayas; from a bottomless well in a Parisian courtyard, to the shelves of an infinite underground library, we follow Aubry as she learns what it takes to survive and ultimately, to truly live. But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s… (Release date is April 2.)
There. That’s the biggest Treasures in My Closet post since I moved. Is there anything on the list that appeals to you? Or, what is missing from this list?
Wow, that is a big list! I’ve put a couple holds in although it already feels like I’ll never catch up.
Oh, as if I’ll ever catch up, MM. It is quite a list, isn’t it?
That’s a lot of good books to look out for. I’ll add one to the list of April releases: my own police procedural, A FONDNESS FOR TRUTH. Like the first two books in my Polizei Bern series, PESTICIDE and SONS AND BROTHERS, this one is set in Switzerland’s medieval capital (where I’ve lived with my Swiss husband for the past 36 years) and features homicide detective Giuliana Linzer and her assistant Renzo Donatelli investigating the hit-and-run death of Andi Eberhart. Andi’s devastated partner, Nisha, is convinced the death was no accident and shows Giuliana a folder full of homophobic hate mail Andi’s been receiving for several years, letters that grew uglier after the couple’s baby was born.
As Giuliana pieces together the details of Andi and Nisha’s lives, Renzo researches Andi’s job advising young men who’ve been drafted into Switzerland’s civilian service. Working closely together on the case, the two detectives are again tempted to become more than just friendly colleagues. As they dig into Andi’s life, one thing becomes clear: Andi’s friends and family may have loved her for her honesty, but her outspoken integrity threatened others, including, perhaps, her killer. (Release date is April 16.)
Kim, Thank you for adding your own book to the list. And, thank you for the summary, as well!
Thanks for the heads up on Claire Booth’s new book. I’d missed that one.
You’re welcome, Sandy. Another good book in that series.
Nice long list. What else is there?
2 Gary Phillips, Ash Dark As Night (Harry Ingram)
16 Rita Mae Brown, Feline Fatale (Sneaky Pie Brown; can’t believe she is still writing these.)
23 Anne Hillerman, Lost Birds (#1 on my list – Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito)
30 Rick Mofina, Someone Saw Something
I agree, Jeff. Hard to believe Rita Mae Brown is still writing the Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries.
Thanks for the Anne Hillerman tip, I need to add that also.
The last Rita Mae Brown I read was not good. Mostly large sections of opinion that have little to do with the story or characters. I’ve sworn off
I see some here that are on my list and some I want to add now. Also on my list are
April 23- Four Alarm Homicide by Diane Kelly
April 23- A Murder Most French by Colleen Cambridge
April 23- Death by Chocolate Raspberry Scone by Sarah Graves
Thank you, Alicia. I’m always pleased to see what other readers want to add.
An amazing list, Lesa! I’ve already read a few and preordered several when Barnes & Noble had their preorder discount sale. I would add these: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna, The Other Side of Disappearing by Kate Clayborn, Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez, The Twilight Garden by Sara Nisha Adams, and The Last Word by Elly Griffiths.
Thank you, Margie! You have a couple authors I’ve never heard of on your list, as well as a few popular ones. Thanks!
My April list is long and now you’ve added to it, thanks! These haven’t been mentioned
Donati – THE SWEET BLUE DISTANCE
Muller – CIRCLE IN THE WATER
O’Neal – NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Chiaverini – THE MUSEUM OF LOST QUILTS
Larson – THE DEMON OF UNREST (nf)
Great list, Cindy. Thank you, especially for the reminder about the Larson book!
I love your Treasures list – thank you!
I’ll add one that I’ve already read, loved and recommend – (4/16): A CALAMITY OF SOULS by David Baldacci
And one I’m looming forward to – (4/2): TABLE FOR TWO by Amor Towles
Oh, yes, Kaye. I passed your recommendation about Baldacci on to Donna. She loves his books, but when you said it might have been the best of his that you read, I knew she’d want to know that.
Very much enjoyed TOXIC PREY and HOME FIRES.
Me, too, Kevin!