Welcome to February, and the chance to talk about March books. With Treasures in My Closet, I’m always looking ahead one month so you have time to place your holds on books at your favorite public library, or to pre-order books from your favorite bookstore.

Let’s kick off the March titles with Maggie Barbieri’s Lie in Plain Sight. It’s a busy day at Maeve Conlon’s bakery when she receives a phone call that her employee’s daughter, Taylor, is ill. With Taylor’s mother out on a delivery, Maeve stands in and gives permission for Taylor to leave high school. But, somewhere between the school and home, Taylor disappears. Feeling responsible, Maeve takes matters into her own hands. (Release date is March 15.)

A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass is a comic satire. Furo Wariboko, a young Nigerian, wakes one morning before a job interview to find that he’s been transformed into a white man. It seems he’s been completely changed into a man with red hair, green eyes, and pale skin. However, there’s still his family, his accent, his name, and his black ass. He plunges into the bustling world of Lagos, landing his first job, and tries to make his way in an unfamiliar world. (Release date is March 1.)

When Molly Murphy Sullivan’s husband is in a precarious position, she heads to San Francisco to help in Rhys Bowen’s latest mystery, Time of Fog and Fire. Molly’s husband, Daniel, is a police captain in turn-of-the-century New York City, but the police commissioner wants him off the force. So, he’s eager to accept an assignment from John Wilkie, head of the secret service. But, when Molly sees Daniel on a news segment in San Francisco, and receives a cryptic note from him, she takes her son on a cross-country trip to assist him, not knowing the danger or the risk. (Release date is March 1.)

All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage is the story of two families caught up in their own happiness, a twenty year gap between a gruesome murder and justice, and a combination of noir and gothic. It’s the story of an upstate New York town trying to reinvent itself, a dairy family torn apart by the decline of that town, and a newcomer couple. It’s the story of that murder, and a cop who relentlessly searches for the killer. (Release date is March 8.)

Devonshire Scream is Laura Childs’ latest Tea Shop Mystery. Theodosia Browning is thrilled that she and the Indigo Tea Shop are catering a high-class trunk show at Heart’s Desire Fine Jewelry. It’s a gathering of jewelers, museums, and private collectors, all sipping Theo’s best blends. But, the party is crashes by a gang of masked thieves who steal the precious gems and jewelry, leaving shattered glass, scattered gemstones, and a dead body behind. The FBI believes it’s the work of an international gang of thieves. Theo is looking a little closer to home. (Release date is March 1.)

Debut mystery! Terror in Taffeta is Marla Cooper’s mystery featuring a wedding planner of destination weddings. Kelsey McKenna is wrapping up her latest job, a destination wedding in the charming, colonial Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende. But, just as the bride and groom are taking their vows, one of the bridesmaids collapses. When Kelsey discovers the woman is dead, the demanding mother of the bride insists Kelsey not tell anyone. And, when the bride’s sister is arrested for murder, Mrs. Abernathy demands that Kelsey fix the matter. Before she can leave Mexico, Kelsey must deal with stubborn detectives, another dead body, and a rekindled romance. (Release date is March 22.)

I’ve put Camille DeAngelis’ Immaculate Heart on my calendar. A down-on-his-luck American reporter returns to Ballymorris in Ireland for a funeral, and learns of a story that happened only months after his last visit many years before. A group of four teenagers, three of whom are family friends, claimed to have been visited by the Virgin Mary. For a while wealth and tourism hit the small Irish town. But, twenty years later, the former teens all have different stories, and the supposed miracle feels like a curse. Now, the reporter seeks out each of the four stories, uncovering truth, lies, and wondering what he can believe. (Release date is March 22.)

Rebecca Drake’s Only Ever You is the story of a mother under police suspicion who fights to find her missing daughter. When three-year-old Sophie Lassiter disappears at the playground and is found after forty minutes, her mother, Jill, is convinced the tiny dots on her daughter’s arm are puncture wounds. But, doctors find no trace of drugs in her system. But, when Sophie disappears three months later, and information turns up suggesting she was killed, Jill and her husband come under suspicion. Then Jill realizes if the police are looking at the Lassiters, they aren’t looking for Sophie or the person who has her. (Release date is March 22.)

Amateur sleuth and book editor Samantha Clair returns in Judith Flanders’ A Bed of Scorpions. Samantha’s lunch with ex-boyfriend, art dealer Aidan Merriam doesn’t go so happily when she learns his partner has just been found dead in their gallery with a gun in his hand. And, the police investigation is being led by Inspector Jake Field, Sam’s new boyfriend. Then Sam is threatened. (Release date is March 1.)

White Ghost is the fourth book in Steven Gore’s Graham Gage thriller series. For more than thirty years Graham Gage has faced down enemies both near and far, but now he’s facing one from within. He’s been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. But, he’s going to delay his treatment while he helps the woman who saved his life in San Francisco’s Chinatown thirty years earlier. She’s come out of hiding after her troubled teenage son was ensnared and killed in a multimillion-dollar microchip robbery. Now, Gage heads to Hong Kong, Thailand, and China to put a scheme in place to link the conspiracy to the man responsible for the young man’s death. (Release date is March 29.)

On the two hundredth anniversary of her birth, Claire Harman brings us a biography that transforms Charlotte Bronte from a tragic figure into a modern heroine. Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart is the story of the woman who channeled her torment into her writing. (Release date is March 1.)

C.S. Harris’ new Sebastian St. Cyr mystery is When Falcons Fall. In 1813, St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin and his wife, Hero, travel to a peaceful Shropshire village to honor a slain friend, and learn more about St. Cyr’s ancestry. But when the body of a lovely widow is found, the village’s new magistrate turns to Sebastian for help. St. Cyr learns the dead woman did not kill herself, and she was also hiding her true identity and reason for being there. Sebastian learns that she wasn’t the first, nor even the second, woman t die under suspicious circumstances. Sebastian St. Cyr uncovers eerie secrets, and faces his most diabolical opponent ever. (Release date is March 1.)

It’s been almost ten years since Chicago video producer Ellie Foreman appeared in author Libby Fischer Hellmann’s books. Now, she’s back in Jump Cut. Libby is hired to produce a light-weight profile of Chicago-based aviation giant Delcroft. But, the company VP Charlotte Hollander trashes the production and cancels the product. When Ellie tracks down a man seen in some of the video footage, she finds he’s dead. And, Ellie’s suspicions and investigations entangle her in a web of espionage and murder, and endanger her family. (Release date is March 1.)

Olivia Laing examines the subject of loneliness in a work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism, Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. When Laing moved to New York City in her mid thirties, she found herself dealing with loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by her own experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. (Release date is March 1.)

Behave is Andromeda Romano-Lax’ novel about the Roaring ’20s and the birth of modern psychological science. In 1920, Rosalie Rayner took a coveted position at the John Hopkins research lab to assist charismatic John B. Watson, the man who pioneered behaviorist psychology. Together, Watson and Rayner conducted experiments on hundreds of babies to prove nurture over nature. And, their affair cost both of them their jobs. The Watsons’ parenting book became a bestseller, affected the upbringing of generations of children. And, Rosalie Rayner Watson, a mother herself, had to deal with those tenets as a woman ahead of her time and trapped in it. (Release date is March 1.)

New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard brings us Two if by Sea. Retired police officer Frank Mercy loses his family in a Christmas Eve tsunami in Australia. The next day, the American rescues a mysterious young boy from the floodwaters. As a sinister group pursues the gifted child, the story takes the readers from Brisbane to the heartland of America to an English village. Mitchard tells a story of the powerful love between parents and children. (Release date is March 15.)

Andy Mozina’s debut novel is Contrary Motion. Set in Chicago, it’s the story of a talented musician. Matthew Grzbc is a harpist, hoping for the life-changing audition with a major orchestra that will change his life. He appears successful on paper while struggling to cope with his six-year-old daughter, his girlfriend and his ex-wife, and, then, unexpectedly, his father’s death. (Release date is March 8.)

The last book in today’s half of the Treasures in My Closet post is an inspirational title, John O’Leary’s On Fire. When he was nine, O’Leary almost perished in a devastating fire. With burns on 100 percent of his body, he mustered the inner strength to survive. Now, he writes about the seven life-giving choices he made, choices that will allow people to transform their lives. (Release date is March 15.)

I hope you found something here that excites you. If so, let me know which book or two. If not, check back tomorrow for the second half of the March Treasures in My Closet.