All the April 2024 Prepub Alerts in one place, plus a downloadable spreadsheet of all titles from every post.  

Historical Fiction

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cleeton, Chanel. The House on Biscayne Bay. Berkley. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780593440513. pap. $18. F

Best-selling Cuban American Cleeton’s Next Year in Havana was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick, and NPR named Our Last Days in Barcelona as a best book of 2022. Her latest is set in 1920s Miami at a gilded Gothic-style estate with a treacherous legacy. When Carmen moves into the house, now owned by her estranged sister, she must uncover the mansion’s secrets before history repeats itself.

Donati, Sara. The Sweet Blue Distance. Berkley. Apr. 2024. 672p. ISBN 9781984805058. $28. F

Writing her popular historical fiction as Donati (a pen name for PEN/Hemingway Award winner Rosina Lippi), the author returns with an epic Western story set in 1857, about a young midwife who travels from New York City to Santa Fe in the New Mexico Territory, where she makes a new life for herself.

Fox, Hester. The Book of Thorns. Graydon House. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781525812019. pap. $18.99. F

Fox’s The Last Heir to Blackwood Library was a B&N most-anticipated book. Her newest also contains a bit of magical realism, as two sisters meet on opposites sides of the battlefield during the Napoleonic Wars and use the magic of flowers to solve the mystery of their mother’s death.

Gable, Michelle. The Beautiful People. Graydon House. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781525805035. pap. $17.99. F

Best-selling Gable (The Lipstick Bureau) explores the glamorous 1960s Jet Set crowd of Palm Beach socialites through the story of broke debutante Margo, who becomes an assistant to photographer Slim Aarons (a real-life figure famous for his pictures of high society) and befriends iconic fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Grunwald, Lisa. The Evolution of Annabel Craig. Random. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780593596159. $30. F

Film rights were snapped up for Grunwald’s last novel, Time After Time. Now she features real historical events in this story about a young woman in 1925 Tennessee whose marriage is tested as her lawyer husband works on the Scopes Trial, litigating the teaching of the theory of evolution at a public high school.

Huguley, Piper. American Daughters. Morrow Paperbacks. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780063273702. pap. $18.99. F

Following the LJ-starred By Her Own Design, Huguley’s latest explores the lives of Portia Washington and Alice Roosevelt, daughters of Booker T. Washington and President Teddy Roosevelt, as they forge their own paths and develop a lifelong friendship. With a 100K-copy first printing.

Lattimore, Ashton. All We Were Promised. Ballantine. Apr. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9780593600153. $30. F

Lattimore, award-winning journalist and editor in chief at Prism, a nonprofit news outlet by and for communities of color, makes her debut with this story of three young Black women—a formerly enslaved housemaid, an abolitionist socialite, and a currently enslaved woman—whose lives collide in 1837 Philadelphia.

Schaffert, Timothy. The Titanic Survivors Book Club. Doubleday. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780385549158. $29. F

Librarian Yorick survives the Titanic by being left stranded at the dock and subsequently decides to pursue his dream of opening a bookshop in Paris, where he meets a secret society of fellow Titanic survivors and starts a book club. Schaffert’s previous title, The Perfume Thief, was a Los Angeles Times top book of the summer.

Thompson, Kate. The Wartime Book Club. Forever: Grand Central. Apr. 2024. 416p. ISBN 9781538757017. pap. $18.99. F

Thompson (The Little Wartime Library) is already a best-selling author in the UK, and her newest U.S. release gets a 75K-copy first printing. The novel focuses on the English island of Jersey, which German forces occupied in 1940 during World War II. Inspired by true events, it is an emotional story of bravery, resistance, and the power of books.

Vasilyuk, Sasha. Your Presence Is Mandatory. Bloomsbury. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781639731534. $28.99. F

Award-winning journalist Vasilyuk makes her debut with a story inspired by the life of her grandfather. Ukrainian World War II veteran Yefim Shulman sacrificed much to survive the war. After his death, his family has to contend with the secrets he kept when they find a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. With an 80K-copy first printing.

Wood, Daisy. The Royal Librarian. Avon. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780008636920. pap. $18.99. F

Wood (The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris) writes a dual-timeline novel that alternates between the Royal Library at Windsor Castle in 1940, as World War II rages, and present-day Philadelphia, where Lacey Turner finds a mysterious book with a stamp from the castle’s royal bindery and seeks to reunite the volume with its owner. With a 100K-copy first printing.

Forthcoming Series Title

Cornwell, Bernard. Sharpe’s Command. Harper. (Sharpe, Bk. 23). Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780063219298. $30. F

Horror

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barnes, S.A. Ghost Station. Tor Nightfire. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9781250884923. $27.99. HORROR

Barnes follows up her well-received space-horror novel Dead Silence with another scary trip to space as a small exploration crew attempts to establish residency on an abandoned planet—but then their pilot is gruesomely murdered. With a 125K-copy first printing.

Castro, V. Immortal Pleasures. Del Rey: Ballantine. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780593499726. $18. HORROR

Two-time Bram Stoker Award–nominated Castro (The Haunting of Alejandra) reimagines real-life La Malinche, a Nahua woman who translated for Spanish conquistador Cortés, as an immortal vampire, avenging her people and returning their stolen artifacts while longing for pleasure and love.

Hall, Polly. Myrrh. Titan. Apr. 2024. 128p. ISBN 9781789095357. $16.95. HORROR

Hall’s debut novel, The Taxidermist’s Lover, was nominated for a Stoker Award and was a Gold Medal winner in the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her new novella offers a psychological horror story in which a woman with a goblin inside her searches for her birth parents and uncovers the secrets of her past.

Kerin, Liz. First Light. Tor Nightfire. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781250835703. $27.99. HORROR

In this sequel to Night’s Edge, a heartrending vampire tale, Mia infiltrates a secret network of fugitives as she pursues the man who turned her mother into a vampire—and finds she may be their prey. With a 100K-copy first printing.

LaRocca, Eric. This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances. Titan. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781803366647. $19.95. HORROR

LaRocca wrote the viral-sensation novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, which was nominated for a Stoker Award and won the Splatterpunk Award. Known for reads that disturb and terrify, he returns with a new novella and short story collection.

Medina, Nick. Indian Burial Ground. Berkley. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593546888. $28. HORROR

Medina follows up his much-anticipated and well-reviewed debut, Sisters of the Lost Nation, with mythological horror from an Indigenous point of view. As suspicious deaths mount on a reservation in Louisiana, Noemi begins to uncover secrets about what is menacing the tribal lands.

Olde Heuvelt, Thomas. Oracle. Tor Nightfire. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9781250759580. $29.99. HORROR

Winner of the Hugo and the Netherlands’ Paul Harland Prize, internationally best-selling Dutch author Olde Heuvelt (Echo) writes a supernatural thriller in which the past threatens the present as people disappear into a stranded 18th-century sailing ship, the Oracle, a harbinger of an ancient doom.

Ryan, Lindy. Bless Your Heart. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250888884. $28. HORROR

Ryan, founder of Black Spot Books and editor of the Stoker Award–nominated Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga, offers a vampire novel set in 1999 Texas, featuring the Evans women, owners of a funeral parlor who must take up their blades against vampires when bodies start rising from the dead.

Literary Fiction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alvarez, Julia. The Cemetery of Untold Stories. Algonquin. Apr. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9781643753843. $28. F

Multi-award-winning and best-selling Alvarez (Afterlife) pens a tale of magical realism about a writer and her stories. Alma Cruz returns to her homeland of the Dominican Republic and buries her untold stories, literally, but they have other ideas and take on lives of their own. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Beams, Clare. The Garden. Doubleday. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780385548182. $28. F

Beams’s second novel, after The Illness Lesson, navigates between gothic and historical fiction as it explicates how women’s bodies are annexed. In 1948, Irene Willard arrives at a remote residential hospital after her fifth miscarriage. There are doctors, a garden of mysterious power, and a great deal on the line. With blurbs from Rachel Yoder, Paul Tremblay, and Kelly Link.

Freudenberger, Nell. The Limits. Knopf. Apr. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9780593448885. $29. F

Freudenberger (Lost and Wanted) has racked up numerous accolades, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a PEN/Malamud Award. Her latest novel, set in French Polynesia and New York City, is a heart-wrenching tale that considers race, class, and family as three characters experience a life-changing year during the COVID pandemic.

Hughes, Caoilinn. The Alternatives. Riverhead. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593545003. $28. F

Award-winning Irish poet and novelist Hughes (The Wild Laughter), currently a Cullman Fellow at NYPL, writes a new novel that features four sisters whose parents died tragically. As adults, the women lead separate lives across the globe, until one of them abruptly disappears, and the sisters reunite to search the Irish countryside.

Jennings, Karen. Crooked Seeds. Hogarth: Crown. Apr. 2024. 240p. ISBN 9780593597125. $28. F

Jennings, a South African writer whose novel An Island was longlisted for the Booker Prize, examines national trauma and collective guilt in this story that alternates between 1994, the year that Apartheid ended, and 2028, as a woman’s family home in Cape Town becomes the scene of a criminal investigation.

Khong, Rachel. Real Americans. Knopf. Apr. 2024. 416p. ISBN 9780593537251. $29. F

Opposites Matthew and Lily meet and fall in love, but years later Lily’s son goes looking for the biological father he never knew. Khong’s previous novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, was named a best book of the year by multiple media outlets and is in development for a feature film.

Kim, Crystal Hana. The Stone Home. Morrow. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063310971. $30. F

Kim was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 in 2022, and her debut, If You Leave Me, was chosen as a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Now she tells a dual-timeline coming-of-age story that begins in the 1980s with a young girl and her mother in a South Korean reformatory center. With a 100K-copy first printing.

Lodato, Victor. Honey. Harper. Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780063309616. $32. F

Lodato’s debut, Mathilda Savitch, won the PEN USA Award. His latest is the story of Honey Fasinga, daughter of a notorious New Jersey mobster, who returns home many years later and finds herself falling in love and having to reckon with her violent past—and deciding if she wants to forgive or avenge.

Lu, Wenyan. The Funeral Cryer. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Apr. 2024. 240p. ISBN 9781335016935. $28.99. F

Lu makes her debut with this novel that won the SI Leeds Literary Prize for best unpublished novel in the UK. Taking place in contemporary rural China, it depicts a woman stigmatized by her job as a funeral cryer—until she takes a leap of faith that turns her life around. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Mukherjee, Neel. Choice. Norton. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781324075011. $28.99. F

London-based publisher Ayush obsesses about how one ought to live. As he pursues this and questions every act of consumption, the novel explores the ramifications of choice—and how much choice one really has—through three connected narratives. Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while A State of Freedom was named a New York Times notable book.

Portero, Alana S. Bad Habit. HarperVia. Apr. 2024. 176p. tr. from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem. ISBN 9780063336124. $24. F

Spanish activist Portero writes a coming-of-age story about a trans woman growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Madrid, set against the drug- and party-filled 1980s and ’90s. The novella gets a 75K-copy first printing.

Sahota, Sunjeev. The Spoiled Heart. Viking. Apr. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9780593655986. $29. F

Twice-nominated for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the ALA Carnegie Medal, Sahota (China Room) delves into the cascading impact of a small, careless act and long-held secrets as two rivals vie to lead their labor union.

Shriver, Lionel. Mania. Harper. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780063345393. $30. F

National Book Award finalist and best seller Shriver (Should We Stay or Should We Go) tackles political division and culture wars through a novel set in an alternate 2011 when the Mental Parity movement—which believes that everyone is equally smart—takes hold, and a lifelong friendship implodes when two women disagree about it.

Smiley, Jane. Lucky. Knopf. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780593535011. $29. F

Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley (A Dangerous Business) tells the story of imagined folk musician Jodie Rattler, who grows up in St. Louis in the 1950s and then starts a singing career that sends her across the globe during the heyday of folk music as she searches for love and meaning in her life.

Taylor, Justin. Reboot. Pantheon. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780553387629. $28. F

Leaning into ’90s nostalgia, Taylor (Riding with the Ghost) satirizes Hollywood and toxic fandom, as a washed-up former child actor, now a deadbeat dad addicted to alcohol, makes a comeback in a revival of the Buffy rip-off hit teen drama that made him a star. Taylor is an editor at The Literary Review and director of the Sewanee MFA program.

Williams, Fiona. The House of Broken Bricks. Holt. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781250896766. $27.99. F

Williams’s debut, set in the English countryside, features the stories of four family members, told through their alternating perspectives. There’s Tess, who longs for London; Richard, who uprooted the family for a farming life; and their 10-year-old twins, one presenting as Black, the other white. This story of belonging and identity won the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award.

Mystery

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cambridge, Colleen. A Murder Most French. Kensington. (An American in Paris, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781496739629. $27. M

Cambridge delighted readers with her cozy historical mystery and LibraryReads pick, Mastering the Art of French Murder, featuring Julia Child and her fictional friend Tabitha Knight in postwar Paris. In the second richly set “An American in Paris” title, the women are searching for a killer after a chef at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school is poisoned.

Griffiths, Elly. The Last Word. Mariner. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063374720. $27.99. M

After wrapping up her popular “Ruth Galloway” series, the best-selling and Edgar Award–winning Griffiths pens a stand-alone that features characters from The Postscript Murders. Edwin, age 84, and the much younger Natalka, unlikely partners in a detective agency, go undercover at a creative-writing retreat to solve the murder of a local writer.

Nichols, Peter. Granite Harbor. Celadon. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781250894816. $29. M

Moving through genres, Dublin Literary Award longlist Nichols, who also wrote the best seller The Rocks, takes up crime fiction with a story about a serial killer terrifying a small town in Maine, as Alex Brangwen, the town’s only detective, tries to solve his first murder case. With a 100K-copy first printing.

Rozan, SJ & John Shen Yen Nee. The Murder of Mr. Ma. Soho Crime. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781641295499. $25.95. M

This action-packed series opener full of historical detail from popular, multi-award-winning Rozan (“Lydia Chin/Bill Smith” mystery series) and debut author Nee, a past executive at both DC and Marvel, is set in 1920s London and introduces Judge Dee Ren Jie and academic Lao She as a Holmes-and-Watson–like duo.

Sampson, Freya. Nosy Neighbors. Berkley. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780593550526. pap. $18. M

Sampson’s debut, The Last Chance Library, was a GMA Book Buzz and LibraryReads pick; her second, The Lost Ticket, was a best seller too. In this pivot from fiction to mystery, 25-year-old Kat Bennett and 77-year-old Dorothy Darling, prickly neighbors in the historic Shelley House in England, band together to save their building and bring a criminal to justice.

Steinberg, Shaina. Under the Paper Moon. Kensington. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781496747808. $27. M

Steinberg (screenwriter of Bride Hard, Rebel Wilson’s forthcoming film), makes her debut with this historical mystery about two former World War II spies, Evelyn Bishop and Nick Gallagher. After the war, Evelyn returns home to Los Angeles and becomes a PI, where she finds a murdered man—and Nick.

Tietjen, Katie. Death in the Details. Crooked Lane. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781639107186. $29.99. M

Writer and school librarian Tietjen debuts with a historical mystery inspired by real-life forensic scientist Frances Glessner Lee. Following World War II and the death of her husband, Maple Bishop makes a living selling intricately crafted dollhouses. When a customer turns up dead, she creates the crime scene in miniature to help solve the case.

Forthcoming Series Titles

Allen, Samantha Jayne. Next of Kin. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Annie McIntyre, Bk. 3). Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781250863836. $28. M

Bannalec, Jean-Luc. Death of a Master Chef. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Brittany Mystery Series, Bk. 9). Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781250893055. $28. M

Brown, Rita Mae. Feline Fatale. Bantam. (Mrs. Murphy, Bk. 32). Apr. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9780593357637. $28. M

Deveraux, Jude. An Unfinished Murder. Mira: Harlequin. (A Medlar Mystery, Bk. 5). Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780778305392. $30. M

Graves, Sarah. Death by Chocolate Raspberry Scone. Kensington. (Death by Chocolate Mystery, Bk. 7). Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781496744111. $27. M

Harris, C.S. What Cannot Be Said. Berkley. (Sebastian St. Cyr, Bk. 19). Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593639184. $28. M

Hillerman, Anne. Lost Birds. Harper. (Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito, Bk. 9). Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780063344785. $30. M

Meier, Leslie. Patchwork Quilt Murder. Kensington. (A Lucy Stone Mystery, Bk. 30). Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781496733795. $27. M

Muller, Marcia. Circle in the Water. Grand Central. (Sharon McCone, Bk. 36). Apr. 2024. 224p. ISBN 9781538724521. $28. M

Paretsky, Sara. Pay Dirt. Morrow. (V.I. Warshawski, Bk. 22). Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780063010932. $30. M

Shelton, Paige. The Poison Pen. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Scottish Bookshop Mystery, Bk. 9). Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250890603. $27. M

Thomas, Will. Death and Glory. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Barker & Llewelyn, Bk. 16). Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250864925. $28. M

Thompson, Victoria. Murder in Rose Hill. Berkley. (A Gaslight Mystery, Bk. 27). Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593639795. $28. M

Pop Fiction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acton, Helly. Begin Again. Avon. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780063345348. $30. F

Acton, nominated for the Comedy Women in Print Prize for her UK debut The Shelf, gets a 75K-copy first printing for her U.S. debut, in which Frankie McKenzie dies in a freak accident involving a kebab and gets five second chances to revisit her life and see what would have happened if she made different choices.

Adams, Sara Nisha. The Twilight Garden. Morrow. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780063025325. $30. F

After arriving with buzzy debut The Reading List, an LJ Best Book, Adams comes out with a joyful sophomore outing set in a neglected London garden shared between two neighbors who are less than neighborly. When one mysteriously receives photos of the space in its heyday, a garden détente begins, leading to friendship and much more. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Burr, Samuel. The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers. Doubleday. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780593470091. $29. F

Orphan Clayton Stumper was raised by a group of enigmatologists. When the group’s crossword compiler extraordinaire dies, she leaves Clayton her last perplexer, which holds the key to his parentage. Full of word puzzles and marketed as a cozy and uplifting escape read, Burr’s debut has already been optioned by Disney.

Dolan, Lian. The Marriage Sabbatical. Morrow. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780063270619. $30. F

Dolan (Lost and Found in Paris) poses a provocative what-if: Can you take a vacation from marriage? After 23 years, Nicole and Jason decide to take nine months and find out. He’s off to motorcycle across South America, and she’s headed to Santa Fe to learn jewelry design; it’s all don’t-ask-don’t tell.

Garvin, Eileen. Crow Talk. Dutton. Apr. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9780593473887. $28. F

Best seller Garvin’s debut, The Music of Bees, sparkled. She returns with a story of friendship and healing set in the Pacific Northwest where two women find refuge in an off-season enclave. One is battered by her failing academic career; the other, far from her Irish home, is trying to raise her daughter who will not speak. When an injured baby crow enters their lives, the three find something like solace.

Gramazio, Holly. The Husbands. Doubleday. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780385550611. $29. F

Lauren’s attic somehow creates an infinite supply of husbands, each re-forming her life in multiple ways. She was a single London woman the night the husbands started; now she must navigate a multitude of men, wondering which one is right. Game designer Gramazio’s debut was picked up in a 10-way auction, with TV rights already sold and big book clubs calling.

Leavitt, Caroline. Days of Wonder. Algonquin. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781643751283. $29. F

Best seller Leavitt meditates on maternal love. Ella fell hard for Jude, conceiving a baby before she was convicted of attempting to murder his father and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Released after serving six, Ella wants to reunite with her daughter and has few leads to do so. Locating her will mean finding other truths as well—such as what happened that fateful day.

Novak, Brenda. Tourist Season. Mira: Harlequin. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780778305408. pap. $18.99. F

Award winner Novak, author of over 60 novels (most recently Talulah’s Back in Town), sets her newest on an island, the site of the luxurious Windsor family beach house. Ismay Chalmers, engaged to Remy Windsor, arrives at the house just as a hurricane starts to brew. Alone, preparing to weather the approaching storm, Ismay searches for supplies and discovers the hidden secrets of the family. With a 100K-copy first printing.

Piazza, Jo. The Sicilian Inheritance. Dutton. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780593474167. $28. F

Piazza (We Are Not Like Them, a GMA Book Club pick, cowritten with Christine Pride) pens an intergenerational, dual-timeline story that blends historical fiction and mystery. Sara gets a new chance at life when she inherits land in Sicily, only to discover that her great-great-grandmother Serafina might have been murdered. Focused on both women, the story is getting buzz, with an iHeart Radio podcast in the works and blurbs from Emily Giffin, J. Courtney Sullivan, and Pam Jenoff.

Reichl, Ruth. The Paris Novel. Random. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780812996302. $29. F

Reichl, former editor of Gourmet and author of memoirs, a cookbook, and the novel Delicious!, pens a Paris-set, food-rich story about Stella, whose mother bequeaths her a one-way ticket to the City of Lights. That leads to the purchase of a vintage Dior dress, which helps her gain entry into the glittering culinary and artistic center of Paris—all of which leads Stella to find a new way of life, with plenty of food as comfort.

Robinson, Ishi. Sweetness in the Skin. Harper. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780063334878. $30. F

Robinson’s debut, won at auction, and with a planned 75K-copy first printing, stars Pumkin Patterson, a 13-year-old baker who lives an unstable life in Kingston, Jamaica. She wants to move to France to be with her aunt, but standing in her way is a French exam, her wastrel father, her absent mother, and the funds needed for the test. She starts baking to raise the money, but when her plans go public, even more barriers are raised.

Robotham, M J. The Scandalous Life of Ruby Devereaux. Bloomsbury. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781035901104. $28.99. F

Ruby Devereaux is in her 90s and has seen, and done, almost all, including writing twenty-plus books and living a larger-than-her-fiction-writing life. Composing her last book, she might just lay everything on the line. Robotham is well equipped to detail the span of history the book surveys, as she writes historical fiction under the name Mandy Robotham.

Towles, Amor. Table for Two. Viking. Apr. 2024. 448p. ISBN 9780593296370. $32. F

Best seller Towles (Rules of Civility; A Gentleman in Moscow; The Lincoln Highway) turns to short stories and a novella here. The stories range across NYC, and the novella is set in L.A. One of the works extends the story of Eve from Rules of Civility; note that she and yet another character from the collection will also feature in Towles’s next novel.

Zentner, Jeff. Colton Gentry’s Third Act. Grand Central. Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9781538756652. $30. F

Award-winning YA author Zentner debuts for the adult market with the affirming story of a country musician who, grieving the death of his best friend in a mass shotting, watches his career implode after he speaks his truth about gun violence. Washed up, he returns to his small Kentucky hometown, to second chances, third acts, and new hopes. Blurbed by Emily Henry and Jesse Q. Sutanto.

Romance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bellefleur, Alexandria. Truly, Madly, Deeply. Avon. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780063258532. pap. $18.99. LGBTQIA+ ROMANCE

Lambda Literary Award winner and LibraryReads Hall of Famer Bellefleur’s (The Fiancée Farce) newest features a romance novelist, Truly Livingston, and a divorce lawyer, Colin McCory, who agree to cohost a dating-advice podcast. Both bi and rather unlucky in love, they spark in the worst way at the start, but in true enemies-to-lovers fashion, the two find a path an HEA.

Eddings, Mazey. Late Bloomer. St. Martin’s Griffin. Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9781250847089. pap. $18. LGBTQIA+ ROMANCE

Winning the lottery is the ticket to an HEA in this sapphic, neurodivergent, opposites-attract rom-com by Eddings (The Plus One). Winner Opal decides to flee the pressure of money by buying a flower farm in Asheville, NC. Too bad Pepper Smith says she is the farm’s rightful owner. As the two come to terms, their relationship blossoms along with the flowers. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Gagnon, Jilly. Love You, Mean It. Dell. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780593722961. pap. $18. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

Gagnon, who writes crime and YA fiction, turns to rom-com with this fake-engagement, enemies-to-lovers story. Ellie meets real-estate scion Theo Taylor when her family deli is at risk of closure and accidentally ends up pretending to be his fiancée. The arrangement, oddly, seems to work, until his ex shows up.

Grossman, Felicia. Wake Me Most Wickedly. Forever: Grand Central. (Once Upon the East End, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781538722565. pap. $8.99. HISTORICAL ROMANCE

In her second Regency fairy tale retelling set in a Jewish community (after the Cinderella-inflected Marry Me by Midnight) Grossman offers a new gender-swapped take on Snow White, featuring a businessman facing down danger while deciding his heart’s true desire. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Henry, Emily. Funny Story. Berkley. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780593441282. $29. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

Henry (author of Book Lovers, an LJ Best Book) focuses on friendship and new starts as Daphne is jilted almost at the altar in a town she moved to just for her now ex-fiancé; he abandoned her for Petra, who left Miles brokenhearted in her wake. Knowing no one else, Daphne moves in with Miles, just to have a roof over her head. Misery loves company but also, it seems, friendship—and something more.

Holiday, Jenny. Earls Trip. Kensington. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781496745071. pap. $16.95. HISTORICAL ROMANCE

Best-selling Holiday (A Princess for Christmas) launches a new series as three Earls, bonded buddies, start their annual coach-trip. It is soon sidetracked when an unexpected rescue mission leads to an even more unexpected but delightful proposition, as nice guy Archie gets reacquainted with manic-pixie Clem. The publisher is calling it Ted Lasso meets Bridgerton.

Jimenez, Abby. Just for the Summer. Forever: Grand Central. Apr. 2024. 432p. ISBN 9781538704431. pap. $17.99. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

Best-selling Jimenez (Yours Truly) sets her newest rom-com at a cottage on a private island in Lake Minnetonka. There, Justin and Emma, who are dating each other just to try to break a curse (all their exes find true love after leaving them), find a lot more than they bargained for when deeper feelings develop. With a 300K-copy first printing.

Mandanna, Sangu. A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping. Berkley. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780593439371. pap. $18. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

After the LJ Best Book The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Mandanna returns with a new witch story filled with plenty of cozy charm, romance, and descriptive detail. Sera Swan has lost most of her magic. To get it back, she turns to historian Luke Larsen, a man who has a past—with her.

Moher, Laura. What She’s Having. Sourcebooks Casablanca. (Big Love from Galway, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781728278087. pap. $16.99. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

July and Joe get another chance at love in Moher’s second novel set in Galway, NC (after her multi-starred debut Curves for Days). When Joe disappeared years ago, he left July with emotional scars; it will take a lot of southern charm to mend the rift. Newcomer Moher is making a splash, known for her plus-size heroines and heartfelt style.

Park, Suzanne. One Last Word. Avon. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780063216099. pap. $18.99. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

An app Sara Chae is developing ends up revealing far more than she ever wanted—to friends, family, and her crush, Harry Shim, a venture-capital hotshot. The drunken data download creates havoc (and hilarity) as Sara works to put things right. Korean American Park (The Do-Over) excels at the slow-burn rom-com and earns blurbs from Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood. With a 60K-copy first printing.

Forthcoming Series Titles

Long, Julie Anne. My Season of Scandal. Avon. (Palace of Rogues, Bk. 7). Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780063280953. pap. $9.99. HISTORICAL ROMANCE

Ward, J.R. The Beloved. Gallery. (Black Dagger Brotherhood, Bk. 22). Apr. 2024. 512p. ISBN 9781982180089. $28.99. PARANORMAL ROMANCE

Science Fiction & Fantasy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashton, Edward. Mal Goes to War. St. Martin’s. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250286314. $29. SF

Ashton’s novel Mickey7 earned an LJ starred review and is getting a film adaptation from Bong Joon Ho. His new stand-alone considers artificial intelligence and what it really means to be human as war rages between modded and unaugmented humans, and a free AI finds himself trapped in the body of a cyborg mercenary.

Bardugo, Leigh. The Familiar. Flatiron. Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9781250884251. $29.99. FANTASY

Best-selling Bardugo, creator of the Grishaverse books (now a Netflix series), pens a historical fantasy set in Spain. Lowly kitchen servant Luzia uses a bit of magic to get through her days, but when her ability to produce small miracles is discovered, it launches her into a dangerous world. With a 500K-copy first printing.

Cathrall, Sylvie. A Letter to the Luminous Deep. Orbit. (The Sunken Archive, Bk. 1). Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780316565530. pap. $18.99. FANTASY

Cathrall debuts with an epistolary cozy set in a magical underwater world. As the reclusive E. and scholar Henerey Clel correspond, they uncover a mystery. When the two are lost in a seaquake, their families must piece together answers from the letters, sketches, and field notes they left behind.

Chang, Molly X. To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods. Del Rey: Ballantine. Apr. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9780593722244. $28.99. FANTASY

Chang’s debut, an epic fantasy, features Ruying, a young woman with the ability to pull life out of mortal bodies, in a land where invaders defeated the magic of her people long ago. When an enemy prince wants her to become his assassin in exchange for her family’s safety, she faces an impossible decision.

Chupeco, Rin. Court of Wanderers. Saga. (Reaper, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 448p. ISBN 9781982195748. $29.99. FANTASY

The sequel to LJ-starred Silver Under Nightfall continues the story of vampire hunter Remy Pendergast and his unexpected companions—royal vampires. After fighting against the Night Empress, they are on a journey to the Third Court, but they have more battles to face and new powers to unleash in this queer gothic fantasy.

Evans, Erin M. Relics of Ruin. Orbit. (Books of the Usurper, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 448p. ISBN 9780316441049. pap. $19.99. FANTASY

Evans launched the epic-fantasy “Books of the Usurper” trilogy with Empire of Exiles, which featured complex worldbuilding, magical archives, and a murder. This second in the series unveils another mystery when a stolen ancient relic is found; scrivener Quill and Amadea investigate, even as an old enemy is gathering strength.

Ford, Daniel M. Necrobane. Tor. (Warden, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250815682. $28.99. FANTASY

Aelis de Lenti, Warden of the small village of Lone Pine, returns in this adventure-packed sequel to The Warden. She released an army of the undead after opening some crypts and now must embark on a quest with a mercenary and a half-orc to unearth an immense source of necromantic power to protect her village. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Gladstone, Max. Wicked Problems. Tor.com. (The Craft Wars, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 464p. ISBN 9780765395931. pap. $19.99. FANTASY

Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award winner Gladstone, coauthor of the viral best seller This Is How You Lose the Time War, offers the second entry in the “Craft Wars” series (after Dead Country) as the battle for the world of the Craft ensues, and Tara Abernathy races to stop an apocalypse. With a 60K-copy first printing.

Lawrence, Mark. The Book That Broke the World. Ace: Berkley. (The Library Trilogy, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780593437940. $29. FANTASY

From internationally best-selling Lawrence, this second entry in “The Library Trilogy,” after The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, continues to explore the ancient and mysterious great library that connects this fantasy world. But now Evar and Livira find themselves separated and on the run as something hunts them.

Leckie, Ann. Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction. Orbit. Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780316553575. $29. SF

For the first time, Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Leckie’s (Translation State) short fiction is collected in one volume. It includes a brand-new novelette, stories from the Imperial Radch universe, and several stand-alone sci-fi and fantasy short stories.

Liu, Cixin. A View from the Stars. Tor. Apr. 2024. 208p. ISBN 9781250292117. $27.99. SF

After winning several awards in China, Liu also received a Hugo for the English translation of his best-selling The Three-Body Problem. This new book collects his essays and short stories, ranging across the past three decades. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Matharu, Taran. Dragon Rider. Harper Voyager. (The Soulbound Saga, Bk. 1). Apr. 2024. 576p. ISBN 9780063227576. $29. FANTASY

Best-selling YA author Matharu (“Contender” series) makes his adult debut with this trilogy starter, an epic fantasy featuring dragons and magic. Royal hostage Jai escapes with handmaiden Frida and a stolen dragon hatchling, which he hopes to bond with in order to draw on its power and seek his revenge. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Samatar, Sofia. The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain. Tor.com. Apr. 2024. 112p. ISBN 9781250881809. pap. $18.99. SF

Samatar’s first novel, A Stranger in Olondria, won the World Fantasy Award. Following her memoir, The White Mosque, longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, she returns to fiction with this sci-fi novella about a boy who toils in a mining spaceship and must learn the key to breaking free.

Whitten, Hannah. The Hemlock Queen. Orbit. (The Nightshade Crown, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 480p. ISBN 9780316435291. $30. FANTASY

Best seller Whitten’s debut, For the Wolf, was a B&N Speculative Fiction Pick. Her last book, The Foxglove King, launched a romantic fantasy series, and she’s back with its second installment that finds Prince Bastian seizing the throne with Lore, a necromancer, by his side. With a 125K-copy first printing.

Wiswell, John. Someone You Can Build a Nest In. DAW. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780756418854. $28. FANTASY

Wiswell won the Nebula for his short story “Open House on Haunted Hill.” He makes his full-length novel debut with this queer romantic fantasy, a creepy yet heartwarming story in which monster-slayer Homily falls in love with Shesheshen, a shapeshifting monster—all told from Shesheshen’s perspective.

Wolf, Sara. Heavenbreaker. Entangled: Red Tower. Apr. 2024. 512p. ISBN 9781649375704. $32.99. SF

YA author Wolf breaks into adult fiction with a planned romantic sci-fi duology featuring Synali von Hauteclare, who lives aboard a massive spaceship and seeks vengeance for her mother’s death as she participates in a combat tournament on her giant robot steed Heavenbreaker. With a 500K-copy first printing and beautiful packaging from the publisher of Rebecca Yarros’s The Fourth Wing.

Forthcoming Series Titles

Brust, Steven. Lyorn. Tor. (Vlad Taltos, Bk. 17). Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780765382863. $27.99. FANTASY

Czerneda, Julie E. A Change of Place. DAW. (Night’s Edge, Bk. 3). Apr. 2024. 512p. ISBN 9780756410698. pap. $20. FANTASY

Thrillers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baldacci, David. A Calamity of Souls. Grand Central. Apr. 2024. 480p. ISBN 9781538765029. $30. THRILLER

Best seller Baldacci (Simply Lies) tries something new here, a thriller set in the 1960s in his hometown of Richmond, VA, during desegregation. The plot is being kept under wraps, but the publisher suggests that the story will attract a new readership while still offering fans a fast-paced ride. With a 1 million–copy first printing.

Cole, Alyssa. One of Us Knows. Morrow. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063114951. pap. $18.99. THRILLER

Edgar winner Cole (When No One Is Watching) returns to crime fiction with a 100K-copy first printing. Diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, Kenetria “Ken” Nash and her other identities get a job as caretaker of an island estate. As a nor’easter begins to brew, a murder also storms in, washing Ken up as the main suspect. She and her alters must survive and solve the case.

Garrett, Kellye. Missing White Woman. Mulholland. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780316256971. $29. THRILLER

Multi-award-winning Garrett (Like a Sister) offers a buzzy, twisty domestic thriller in which Breanna wakes up on the last day of vacation, confronted with two missing-persons cases: her boyfriend has disappeared, and the body of a woman whom the entire Internet and the police have been searching for is in her foyer.

Hepworth, Sally. Darling Girls. St. Martin’s. Apr. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9781250284525. $29. THRILLER

LibraryReads Hall of Famer Hepworth (The Soulmate) offers the next in her long list of best-selling domestic thriller rides as three women, bonded during childhood when they endured the strictures of their foster mother, are called back to the farmhouse where they grew up; bones have been found, and the police have questions. With a 300K-copy first printing.

Koffi, Sara. While We Were Burning. Putnam. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780593714959. $28. THRILLER

Putnam wanted debuter Koffi’s twisty uplit social thriller badly enough to offer a preempt. Race, class, and revenge intersect in Memphis as two women search for answers. Elizabeth, a white woman, wants to know why her best friend is dead. Brianna, a Black woman working for Elizabeth, wants to know why the police killed her son.

Kubica, Mary. She’s Not Sorry. Park Row: Harlequin. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780778308065. $30. THRILLER

Kubica (Just the Nicest Couple) made LibraryRead’s Hall of Fame with her clever, tense domestic thrillers. This time, an ICU nurse becomes embroiled in a deadly situation when she gets drawn into the life of a patient brought in with traumatic brain injuries—did that woman jump from a bridge, or was she pushed? With a 200K-copy first printing.

McHugh, Laura. Safe and Sound. Random House. Apr. 224. 3o4p. ISBN 9780593448854. $29. $39. THRILLER

McHugh, an LJ Best Book winner, returns to her rural Ozark landscape of choice, this time with the story of two sisters trapped in a small town with little on their horizon. Their cousin had found a way out, until someone made her disappear. As the sisters investigate what happened, they find terrors. 

Miranda, Megan. Daughter of Mine. S. & S./Marysue Rucci. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781668010440. $28. THRILLER

Reese Witherspoon Book Club choice and LibraryReads Hall of Famer Miranda (All the Missing Girls; The Last House Guest) pings on a popular trend, the “return home” novel. When Hazel Sharp moves back to Mirror Lake, she finds the water levels dropping—revealing evidence of what happened when her mother disappeared years ago.

Mofina, Rick. Someone Saw Something. Mira: Harlequin. Apr. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9780778305439. pap. $18.99. THRILLER

A six-year-old goes missing while walking with his stepsister in Central Park in multi-award winner and best seller Mofina’s (Everything She Feared) newest page-turner. It’s soon evident that there’s nothing clear about the case—or the family. Secrets and questions swirl, along with blackmail and conspiracy theories, as the shocking allegations pile up.

Nguyen, K. T. You Know What You Did. Dutton. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780593473856. $37 THRILLER

Debuter Nguyen’s glamorous psychological thriller mixes crime with intergenerational trauma as Vietnamese American artist Annie Shaw gets drawn into a nightmare after her mother’s death, an art patron goes missing, and she wakes up next to a dead body. Annie’s OCD, questions from the police, and the urgent need to protect her daughter crescendo.

Panowich, Brian. Nothing but the Bones. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250835246. $28. THRILLER

ITW Thriller and Southern Book Prize winner Panowich pens his fourth country noir set in McFall County, GA. This time the spotlight falls on Nails McKenna, enforcer for the local crime lord. He defends a woman in a bar one night, and when that dust settles, the two find themselves in a car headed for escape. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Preston, Douglas. Extinction. Forge. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780765317704. $29.99. THRILLER

Best-selling juggernaut Preston gets a 250K-copy first printing for his latest solo endeavor, a new take on Jurassic Park, this time with woolly mammoths and others from the Pleistocene. When murders mount on the hundred-thousand-acre resort, two agents go on the hunt through the vast landscape—and it’s not clear what they are searching for.

Sherwood, Kim. A Spy Like Me. Morrow. (Double O, Bk. 2). Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063236578. $30. THRILLER

The “Double O” espionage trilogy expanding the world of James Bond continues (after Double or Nothing) as MI6 operatives search for the missing Bond and investigate a grim terrorist-funding scheme—which just might lead them to their missing agent. Sherwood (A Wild & True Relation) adds to the 007 canon and gets a 100K-copy first printing.

Tudor, C.J. The Gathering. Ballantine. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593356593. $29. THRILLER

ITW Thriller awardee Tudor, raking in adaptation deals, takes up vampires. Deadhart, AK, is home to both humans and creatures. When a boy is found with his throat torn out, Detective Barbara Atkins and Sheriff Jenson Tucker investigate. As the cold and snow draw the nights down ever darker, they wonder what kind of being they’re hunting.

Forthcoming Series Titles

Graham, Heather. The Reaper Follows. Mira: Harlequin. (Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Bk. 4). Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780778369738. $30. THRILLER

Winslow, Don. City in Ruins. Morrow. (The Danny Ryan Trilogy, Bk. 3). Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780063079472. $32. THRILLER

Fiction Finale

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enger, Leif. I Cheerfully Refuse. Atlantic Monthly. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780802162939. $27. F

Enger’s latest takes place in the near future, as a grieving musician sets sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed bookseller wife. The author is well known for his best-selling book-club favorite Peace Like a River and his last novel, Virgil Wander, which made multiple best of the year lists, including LJ’s.

Hall, Rachel Howzell. The Last One. Entangled: Red Tower. Apr. 2024. 512p. ISBN 9781649374400. $32.99. FANTASY

Hall (What Never Happened) turns from crime fiction to fantasy with this series launch that the publisher describes as “The Witcher meets N.K. Jemisin.” It features a young woman who awakens with missing memories and seeks answers as her magic grows. With a 500K-copy first printing.

Mack, Catherine. Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies. Minotaur. (The Vacation Mysteries, Bk. 1). Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781250325853. $28. M

Pseudonymous Mack pens the first in a witty new series starring mystery author Eleanor Dash. She’s in Italy on a book tour when her real life begins to resemble her novels—someone attempts to kill the handsome con man who is the basis for one of her fictional characters—and she is enlisted to solve the case. With a 150K-copy first printing.

Steel, Danielle. Only the Brave. Delacorte. Apr. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9780593498439. $29. F

In best-selling Steel’s latest, a historical novel set in Germany during World War II, Sophia Alexander is mired in loss. Her mother dies, and her father is imprisoned in a concentration camp after he aids those hiding from persecution. Sophia then joins the resistance, helping transport Jewish children to safety.

Forthcoming Series Titles

Chiaverini, Jennifer. The Museum of Lost Quilts. Morrow. (Elm Creek Quilts, Bk. 22). Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780063080799. $25.99. F

Clark, Mary Higgins & Alafair Burke. It Had To Be You. S. & S. (Under Suspicion, Bk. 8). Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781982132576. $26.99. SUSPENSE

Sandford, John. Toxic Prey. Putnam. (Prey, Bk. 34). Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780593714492. $32. M

Nonfiction

Ambidextrous Authors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carr, Caleb. My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me. Little, Brown. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780316503600. $30. MEMOIR

Perhaps best known for his early novel The Alienist, Carr has also published nonfiction, which he returns to here, after an eight-year break from writing, with a memoir about his life with Masha, a Siberian Forest cat he adopted from a shelter. For 17 years they have stood steadfast, always together.

Millet, Lydia. We Loved It All: A Memory of Life. Norton. Apr. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9781324073659. $27.99. MEMOIR

A Pulitzer Prize finalist shortlisted for the National Book Award, Millet turns to nonfiction for the first time with a cri de coeur imploring readers to understand their lives as being intimately tied to the natural world. A work of essays and nature writing, the title also veers into memoir.

Rushdie, Salman. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. Random. Apr. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9780593730249. $28. MEMOIR

Booker Prize–winning novelist Rushdie (author of Victory City, Joseph Anton, The Satanic Verses, and over a dozen additional titles) turns to nonfiction once more to explore the shocking attempt to kill him, its repercussions, and the role of art in his life and the world.

Tan, Amy. The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Knopf. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780593536131. pap. $35. MEMOIR

Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club and Valley of Amazement, returns to nonfiction as she chronicles her turn toward nature—and particularly to birds—as a source of solace and respite. Through observation and her own sketches, she details her backyard visitors with careful attention and whimsy.

Biography & Memoir

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curtis, Shilletha. Pack Light: A Journey To Find Myself. Andscape. Apr. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9781368094696. $27.99. MEMOIR

After losing her vet tech job due to the pandemic, Curtis, a Black queer woman, decided to work through her childhood trauma and through-hike the Appalachian Trail. This memoir captures her journey of recovery and self-discovery as she successfully completes the trip from Georgia to Maine over the course of eight months.

Dench, Judi & Brendan O’Hea. Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent. St. Martin’s. Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9781250325778. $32. MEMOIR

Academy Award–winner Dench is a legend on the stage and screen. Here she reflects on the many Shakespearean roles she’s played throughout her career, in conversation with her friend, actor and director O’Hea. With a 60K-copy first printing.

Dillon, Tim. Death by Boomers: How the Worst Generation Destroyed the Planet, but First a Child. Twelve. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781538757628. $30. MEMOIR

Dillon, a stand-up comedian with his own Netflix special, writes a humorous memoir about being raised by two Long Island boomers and the hardships he believes they endured in the suburbs, from mall traffic to occasional lines at the grocery store. With a 150K-copy first printing.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s. S. & S. Apr. 2024. 496p. ISBN 9781982108663. $30. MEMOIR

Pulitzer Prize winner Goodwin, known for her presidential histories, turns to memoir to examine the 1960s in the United States as she and her husband, a White House speechwriter during that era, embarked on a last project together before his death, sifting through his personal archive—hundreds of boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that he had saved.

Madia, Brianna. Never Leave the Dogs Behind: A Memoir. HarperOne. Apr. 2024. 208p. ISBN 9780063316096. $28.99. MEMOIR

In her best-selling memoir Nowhere for Very Long, Madia chronicled her adventures traveling across the American West in her orange van. Here she continues her story, swapping the van for a trailer set outside a small town in the Arizona desert, and grapples with her decisions, with her four dogs by her side.

Page, Susan. The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. S. & S. Apr. 2024. 480p. ISBN 9781982197926. $30. BIOG

Barbara Walters was an icon of broadcast journalism, interviewing presidents and celebrities on prime-time news and cohosting on the daytime talk show The View. Award-winning journalist Page, the best-selling author of Madam Speaker, pens a definitive biography of the groundbreaking and incredibly successful Walters, delving into her life via interviews and extensive archival research.

Patterson, James & Matt Eversmann. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians. Little, Brown. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780316567534. $28. BIOG

Best-selling Patterson, writing with Eversmann, tells the inspiring true stories of several talented booksellers and librarians. Get to know these dedicated bibliophiles who spread joy through books and help readers discover new authors and favorite titles. With a 100K-copy first printing.

Rousey, Ronda. Our Fight: A Memoir. Grand Central. Apr. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9781538757376. $29. MEMOIR

Superstar MMA fighter and Olympic medalist Rousey told her story in her best-selling memoir My Fight/Your Fight. She picks up where that left off and chronicles her career changes, marriage, motherhood, and the adversity she’s overcome. With a 200K-copy first printing.

Trent, J. Dana. Between Two Trailers: A Memoir. Convergent. Apr. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9780593444078. $27. MEMOIR

Trent grew up in rural Indiana with mentally ill parents who used her to help with their drug dealing. Trying to escape her past, she attended Duke University and became a professor and minister, but found she had to confront her childhood trauma in order to move past it—as shared in this searing memoir. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Valby, Karen. The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History. Pantheon. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780593317525. $29. BIOG

In this biography already optioned by Netflix through a competitive auction, Valby tells the forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas, detailing their historic, glamorous careers and their enduring friendships, along with a glimpse into the world of professional ballet. With a 100K-copy first printing.

Wilson, Rebel. Rebel Rising: A Memoir. S. & S. Apr. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781668007204. $30. MEMOIR

Wilson, who starred in Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids, writes a candid and often humorous memoir about her path to Hollywood and journey to love herself, sharing lessons learned and personal experiences—from her most embarrassing moments, to challenges with fertility, weight gain and loss, and rejection.

Current Events

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruni, Frank. The Age of Grievance. Avid Reader. Apr. 2024. 224p. ISBN 9781668016435. $28. POL SCI

New York Times columnist Bruni (The Beauty of Dusk) considers how grievance culture has defined this era. He examines the fallout of a philosophy that sees the world as an endless cycle of blame and victimhood, and he offers questions and insights for a path out of the mire of outrage.

Garcia, Angela. The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City’s Anexos. Farrar. Apr. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9780374605780. $29. SOC SCI

Based on a decade of field research and her own family’s history, award-winning anthropologist Garcia’s first-of-its-kind examination of anexos (informal addiction-treatment centers that have spread across Mexico and into the U.S.) is both an ethnography and a memoir that considers issues of loss, hope, family, and the violence of the drug war. With a 75K-first copy printing.

Mattioli, Dana. The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest To Own the World and Remake Corporate Power. Little, Brown. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780316269773. $30. BUS

Wall Street Journal reporter Mattioli was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on Amazon. Here she digs deep in an exposé of the company’s never-ending drive for power—which she argues has changed the global economy as well as the economy and culture of the U.S. With a 150K-first copy printing.

McMillan, Tracie. The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America. Holt. Apr. 2024. 464p. ISBN 9781250619426. $31.99. SOC SCI

Award-winning McMillan (The American Way of Eating) offers a mix of memoir and reporting as she studies three generations of her family and the sources of their wealth, broadening from there to consider five others, all of whom benefit from white privilege, which has, as she details, a cash value. With a 75K-first copy printing.

Minian, Ana Raquel. In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States. Viking. Apr. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780593654255. $32. POL SCI

Historian at Stanford and Andrew Carnegie Fellow Minian (Undocumented Lives) offers a richly resourced history of immigrant detention, focusing on four migrants and their unfolding stories. She connects their experience to U.S. history and society, exploring issues of rights, race, and incarceration, as well as immigration.

Murgia, Madhumita. Code-Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI. Holt. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250867391. $29.99. SOC SCI

Tech correspondent for the Financial Times, where she leads AI coverage, Murgia uses a series of global stories to illustrate how AI is already infiltrating daily life, and the consequences, threats, and inequities stemming from a reliance on automated decision-making when humans give up—or deliberately cede—control to a machine. With a 60K-first copy printing.

Sellers, Bakari. The Moment: Thoughts on the Race Reckoning That Wasn’t and How We All Can Move Forward Now. Amistad: HarperCollins. Apr. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9780063085022. $29.99. SOC SCI

Politician, CNN political analyst, and best-selling author of My Vanishing Country, Sellers continues the conversation he started in that book, focusing upon Black lives in the U.S. and examining inequities across healthcare, education, and policing. With a 100K-first copy printing.

Suarez, Ray. We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century; An Oral History. Little, Brown. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780316353762. $30. SOC SCI

Former NPR and PBS correspondent Suarez spotlights new citizens, traveling the country to interview people who came to the U.S. from around the world. His portraits reveal individual stories while they also trace the history of immigration, the process of becoming a citizen, and the making of the nation.

We Refuse To Be Silent: Women’s Voices on Justice for Black Men. Broadleaf. Apr. 2024. 336p. ed. by Angela P. Dodson. ISBN 9781506491110. $29.99. SOC SCI

Elizabeth Alexander, Isabel Wilkerson, and more pen essays on the dangers Black men face living in the U.S., and the emotional impact on the Black women who love them. Editor Dodson is a former senior editor for the New York Times and a former executive editor of Black Issues Book Review.

Current Events: Climate Change

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aldern, Clayton Page. The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains. Dutton. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780593472743. $30. SCI

What is a changing climate doing to our brains? Aldern, who holds degrees in neuroscience and public policy from Oxford, details the alarming effects—IQ measurements decrease, sleeplessness rises, biological carries of brain disease spread farther. He’s known for his compulsively viewable visual data models, but early buzz is that Aldern’s writing is compelling too.

Guilbeault, Nina. The Good Eater: A Vegan’s Search for the Future of Food. Bloomsbury. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781635576993. $28.99. SOC SCI

Cofounder of Plant Futures, with a PhD from Harvard and attention from The Atlantic, The Telegraph, and Refinery29, vegan and sociologist Guilbeault offers an expansive social history of veganism, the science behind it, and its implications for food culture and the environment.

Humes, Edward. Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World. Avery. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780593543368. $28. SCI

Pulitzer Prize and PEN Award winner Humes returns with an immersive investigation of waste, his follow-up to Garbology. He considers waste of all kinds—plastic, food, and energy—and the way we accept and produce absurd levels of it. A big-thinking book that offers practical, can-do, advice.

Johnson, Ayana Elizabeth. What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures. One World. Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780593229361. $32. SCI

Johnson, a marine biologist, Ted Talk star, and Time 100 Next lister, offers a collection of essays, conversations, data, poems, and art that presents solutions and possible safe outcomes from the looming environmental dystopia. She coedited the bestselling All We Can Save and edited the 2022 edition of Mariner’s The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

Kimble, Megan. City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways. Crown. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593443781. $30. SOC SCI

Highways offer a singular meditation point for high emissions, urban sprawl, broken communities, and loss of green space. Southwest Book of the Year winner Kimble’s newest, a mix of history, investigative journalism, and nonfiction storytelling, was shortlisted for the 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award.

Schapira, Kate. Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth: How To Live with Care and Purpose in an Endangered World. Hachette Go. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780306831676. $30. SELF-HELP

Poet and senior lecturer at Brown University, Schapira was driven by her own anxiety over climate change to set up a sidewalk counseling booth to talk about it with others who also feel helplessness and grief over orange air and dying coral reefs. Her book offers a mix of support and guides for community action.

Vigliotti, Jonathan. Before It’s Gone: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change in Small Town America. Atria/One Signal. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781668008171. $28. SCI

Emmy Award–winning CBS News national correspondent Vigliotti debuts with an on-the-ground, journalistic, story-driven look at the impacts of climate change on individuals across the country, detailing the devastation already being experienced through wildfires, floods, coastline loss, and vast economic impact. His work is a call to action.

White, Heather. 60 Days to a Greener Life: Ease Eco-Anxiety Through Joyful Daily Action. Harper Horizon. Apr. 2024. 144p. ISBN 9781400341290. pap. $15.99. SELF-HELP

An advocate known as the Brené Brown of the environmental movement, White (One Green Thing) offers a 60-day challenge for climate action. Each of the wide-ranging entries, from connecting to nature to implementing sustainable school lunch choices, offers practical steps and insights designed to calm eco-anxiety and support greener choices.

History

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DuVal, Kathleen. Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. Random. Apr. 2024. 752p. ISBN 9780525511038. $38. HIST

Historian DuVal (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution) spent five years researching this sweeping yet detailed account of Indigenous history that considers 1,000 years of sovereignty, power dynamics, global influence, governing systems, and adaptation.

Gibbins, David. A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks. St. Martin’s. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250325372. $32. HIST

Maritime archaeologist and adventure/historical-fiction novelist Gibbins (author of the “Jack Howard” and “Total War” series) turns to nonfiction with a lively consideration of exploration, ranging from the Bronze Age through the Viking era, to doomed quests to the Arctic. Gibbins details the treasure and lives lost and the meaning of the voyages writ large.

Korda, Michael. Muse of Fire: World War One as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets. Liveright: Norton. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781631496882. $29.99. HIST

Novelist, memoirist, biographer, and a former editor in chief of S. & S., Korda offers a history of WWI as understood through the experiences of soldier-poets including Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, and Siegfried Sassoon. The result is a mix of poetical exploration and social and military history, offering a new lens through which to mark National Poetry Month.

Lance, Rachel. Chamber Divers: The Untold Story of the D-Day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations Forever. Dutton. Apr. 2024. 448p. ISBN 9780593184936. $32. HIST

Of the many lives put at risk during D-Day operations, one small group included scientific researchers inventing mini-submersibles which they tested in pressure tanks in London—during the Blitz. Their story, filled with maverick characters and including a romance, is based on newly declassified information. Lance, a biomedical engineer, knows the mechanics, having built underwater equipment for the SEALs.

Larman, Alexander. Power and Glory: Elizabeth II and the Rebirth of Royalty. St. Martin’s. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781250289599. $32. HIST

Larman completes his three-book consideration of Queen Elizabeth II’s ascension (after The Windsors at War and The Crown in Crisis) with a study of how the monarchy survived, and how Elizabeth thrived, in the wake of World War II, forging a new global image and power base for royalty.

Ohler, Norman. Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age. Mariner. Apr. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780358646501. $29.99. HIST

Best seller Ohler (Blitzed) offers a propulsive history of U.S. drug use and policy, tracing it through the history of the German Third Reich’s efforts to find a truth serum. The CIA, interested in what was happening in Germany, also used drugs in its brainwashing programs. All of this, argues Ohler, underpins how the U.S. currently understands and controls psychedelics.

Prasad, Aarathi. Silk: A World History. Morrow. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780063160255. $32.50. HIST

Scientist Prasad (Like a Virgin: How Science Is Redesigning the Rules of Sex) offers a microhistory of one of the world’s most luxurious fabrics, rooted in worms, crossing cultures and epochs, and dependent on science and secrets. The book reaches widely, from biology to art to ancient trade routes; even spiders and mollusks get attention.

Sides, Hampton. The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. Doubleday. Apr. 2024. 432p. ISBN 9780385544764. $35. HIST

Award-winning and best-selling Sides (On Desperate Ground; In the Kingdom of Ice; Ghost Soldiers) turns his attention to Captain James Cook, his last sailing, and his death in Hawai‘i. Sides uses Cook, a key figure in the Age of Exploration, not just to proffer a biography or an adventure saga but also to consider the still-reverberating impacts of the European voyages.

Music

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brown, Peter & Steven Gaines. All You Need Is Love: An Oral History of the Beatles. St. Martin’s. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781250285010. $32. MUSIC

A companion of sorts to Brown and Gaines’s 1983 best-selling The Love You Make, this history is comprised of the interviews with Paul, Ringo, and George (as well as Yoko Ono and many who knew the Beatles intimately) that were used as research for that earlier title. With a 200K-copy first printing.

Kaskowitz, Sheryl. A Chance To Harmonize: How FDR’s Hidden Music Unit Sought To Save America from the Great Depression—One Song at a Time. Pegasus. Apr. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781639365715. $29.95. MUSIC

Award-winning author Kaskowitz (“God Bless America”: The Surprising History of an Iconic Song) investigates the New Deal musical initiative, part of the homestead program meant to build community and boost morale, which laid the foundation for the folk-music revival and led to a collection of over 800 songs.

Maxwell, Tom. A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene, 1989–1999. Hachette. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780306830587. $30. MUSIC

A former member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers recounts the heady indie rock scene in North Carolina during the ’90s. Through interviews and contextualizing personal history, Maxwell takes readers into the music world, focusing on Superchunk, Ben Folds Five, Hootie and the Blowfish, and more.

Suárez-Pajares, Javier & Walter Aaron Clark. A Light in the Darkness: The Music and Life of Joaquín Rodrigo. Norton. Apr. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9781324004455. $39.99. MUSIC

Composer of the Concierto de Aranjuez, Rodrigo directly inspired Miles Davis, but his work, crafted during the cultural and political upheaval of Franco’s Spain, captured audiences beyond the jazz great. In this first English-language biography, two professors of musicology explain his importance and influence.

Wald, Elijah. Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories. Hachette. Apr. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780306831409. $30. MUSIC

Grammy winner and best-selling author Wald (Dylan Goes Electric!; Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues) focuses on Jelly Roll Morton, a key figure in the development of jazz. Diving deep, Wald uses Morton’s music to explore the beginnings of the popular-music scene and of Black culture at the dawn of the 20th century.

Self-Help

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arthur, Alua. Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End. Mariner. Apr. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9780063240032. $28.99. SELF-HELP

Arthur is the founder of Going with Grace, a death-doula training and end-of-life planning organization. She’s received heavy media attention for her work as a death doula, and her TED Talk has over a million views online. In her debut, she tells her story and explains why thinking about death helps one live a better life.

Coleman, Cady. Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change. Penguin Life. Apr. 2024. 240p. ISBN 9780593494011. $28. SELF-HELP

Coleman, a chemist, engineer, former U.S. Air Force colonel, and retired NASA astronaut, mines her own fascinating experiences, including being one of the few women astronauts, to give insights on success, leveraging insecurities, and how to build a strong team and work with them in close quarters—or remotely.

Ho, Sara Jane. Mind Your Manners: How To Be Your Best Self in Any Situation. Hachette Go. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780306832833. $29. SELF-HELP

Ho is the founder of two finishing schools in China and stars in her own Netflix series, Mind Your Manners. Here she imparts lessons on social and digital etiquette for relationships, work, family, food, and travel, designed to help readers learn social fluency.

Lamott, Anne. Somehow: Thoughts on Love. Riverhead. Apr. 2024. 208p. ISBN 9780593714416. $22. SELF-HELP

Beloved and best-selling author Lamott (Dusk, Night, Dawn) offers a joyful, feel-good read that explores the power of love—romantic, platonic, and familial—in people’s lives, with her usual grace, humor, and insight. With a 150K-copy first printing.

Trudeau, Sophie Grégoire. Closer Together: Knowing Ourselves, Loving Each Other. Random House Canada. Apr. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781039007444. $30. SELF-HELP

Interviewing experts and sharing moments from her own life, such as struggling with an eating disorder, working as a TV host, being married to the prime minister of Canada, and becoming a mother of three, Trudeau aims to help readers know and accept themselves and live a happier and healthier life.