You'd think that, with me buzzing around spring cleaning, I'd have less time and inclination to read, but that's not been the case. In fact, my reading consumption has increased. I'm really beginning to think that I'm a human solar panel, and the more sunshine I can absorb, the more I need to read. Besides, any of you who've read my
yearly reading statistics posts already know that in the summer I resemble a shark on a feeding (i.e., reading) frenzy!
Here are my picks for new mysteries being released in April. They're sorted by release dates and contain all the information you'll need to find them at your favorite book procurement locations. Book synopses are courtesy of Amazon. Happy Reading!
=== April 1 ===
Title: Destroyer Angel
#18 in the Anna Pigeon series set in various national parks throughout the United States
ISBN: 9780312614584
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Hardcover, 352 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Anna Pigeon, a ranger for the U.S. Park Services, sets off on
vacation—an autumn canoe trip in the to the Iron Range in upstate
Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Heath’s
fifteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth; Leah, a wealthy designer of
outdoor equipment; and her daughter, Katie, who is thirteen. For Heath
and Leah, this is a shakedown cruise to test a new cutting edge line of
camping equipment. The equipment, designed by Leah, will make camping
and canoeing more accessible to disabled outdoorsmen.
On their
second night out, Anna goes off on her own for a solo evening float on
the Fox River. When she comes back, she finds that four thugs, armed
with rifles, pistols, and knives, have taken the two women and their
teenaged daughters captive. With limited resources and no access to the
outside world, Anna has only two days to rescue them before her friends
are either killed or flown out of the country."
Title: Under Cold Stone
#7 in the Constable Molly Smith series set in British Columbia, Canada
ISBN: 9781464202353
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Paperback, 250 pages
Synopsis: "A weekend getaway to the Rocky Mountains. A Scottish-inspired castle of
carved stone, imposing turrets, liveried bellhops, and panoramic views.
Perched on the verge of one of the world’s greatest wildernesses. They’re
an unlikely couple: Lucky Smith, passionate environmentalist, old-time
hippy; Paul Keller Chief Constable of Trafalgar, British Columbia. This
vacation is a chance to explore their fledging late-in-life
relationship, to indulge themselves at the famous Banff Springs Hotel.
Trouble
interferes when Lucky, strong-willed and sometimes too stubborn for her
own good, stands up to two bullies in the local coffee shop. To his
horror Paul recognizes one of the young men as his estranged son, Matt. In
the early hours of the following morning, a frantic Matt calls his
father for help. Lucky and Paul arrive to find a body on the apartment
floor, but Matt has gone.
Matt Keller is an experienced
wilderness adventurer. All signs indicate that he’s escaped into the
backcountry. To RCMP Sergeant Eddie Blechta, running is all the proof of
guilt he needs. Paul Keller can do nothing but watch the investigation from a distance, terrified that Blechta is right.
Lucky’s
daughter, Constable Molly Smith of the Trafalgar City Police, abandons
her chaotic Thanksgiving kitchen to offer her mom support. She has no
intention of meddling in the police investigation, but when Matt’s sad,
shy girlfriend, Tracey, asks for her help, Molly Smith finds herself not
only interfering but putting herself on the wrong side of Edward
Blechta. And Molly Smith is as good in the wilderness as Matt Keller."
Title: Sugar and Iced
#6 in the Cupcake Bakery series set in Scottsdale, Arizona
ISBN: 9780425258927
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
Synopsis: "Normally Melanie Cooper and Angie DeLaura wouldn’t be caught dead at a
beauty pageant, but when Mel’s mom asks them to provide cupcakes for the
seventy-fifth annual Sweet Tiara contest as a favor for her best
friend, they can’t say no. Plus, between cooking up a daily display for
the three-day event and sponsoring a cupcake creation challenge for the
participants, Fairy Tale Cupcakes will get great publicity.
But
the world of pageants is even hotter than Mel’s kitchen. A high-strung
judge and a pushy stage mom target Lupe, a young friend of Mel and
Angie’s, at the competition and aim to take her out—by any means
necessary. When the same judge shows up dead underneath Mel and Angie’s
cupcake display, Lupe is crowned the lead suspect. Now Mel and Angie
will have to find the real killer quickly or Lupe may be strutting the
catwalk in prison pinstripes…"
Title: The Blackwoods Farm Enquiry
#5 in the Ivy Beasley Enquiries series set in England
ISBN: 9780425261811
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
Synopsis: "Rumors are flying around the village of Barrington about Mrs. Winchen
Blatch, a reclusive widow living alone in her old farmhouse. In the past
few weeks, the widow claims she has been tormented by ghostly
visitations, so she hires Ivy and her fellow investigators at Enquire
Within to get to the bottom of the mystery. Ivy’s new classes are very
close to the widow’s farmhouse, perfect for combining studying and
snooping…
With each new clue—a dark chamber, a smoking
cigar and an amorous lodger—it becomes harder to separate fact from
fiction. And when the ghost is revealed to be flesh and blood, the
lonely widow may be in more trouble than Ivy and her team can handle…"
Title: By Its Cover
#23 in the Guido Brunetti series set in Venice, Italy
ISBN: 9780802122643
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover, 288 pages
Synopsis: "One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the
director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out
of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems
clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an
American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem—the man
fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials,
the American professor doesn’t exist.
As the investigation
proceeds, the suspects multiply. And when a seemingly harmless
theologian, who had spent years reading at the library turns up brutally
murdered, Brunetti must question his expectations about what makes a
man innocent, or guilty."
Title: Murder at Westminster Abbey
Author: Amanda Carmack
#2 in the Kate Haywood series set in mid-16th century England
ISBN: 9780451415127.
Publisher: Signet Books
Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
Synopsis: "1559. Elizabeth is about to be crowned queen of England and wants her
personal musician Kate Haywood to prepare music for the festivities.
New to London, Kate must learn the ways of city life…and once again
school herself as a sleuth.
Life at the center of the
new royal court is abuzz with ambition and gossip—very different from
the quiet countryside, where Kate served Elizabeth during her exile.
Making her way among the courtiers who vie for the new queen’s favor,
Kate befriends Lady Mary Everley. Mary is very close to Elizabeth. With
their red hair and pale skin, they even resemble each other—which makes
Mary’s murder all the more chilling.
The celebrations go
on despite the pall cast over them. But when another redhead is
murdered, Kate uncovers a deadly web of motives lurking just beneath the
polite court banter, and follows the trail of a killer whose grievance
can only be answered with royal blood."
Title: Frog Music
Standalone set in Victorian San Francisco
ISBN: 9780316324687
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Hardcover, 416 pages
Synopsis: "Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking
heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad
saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.
The
survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over
the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer
to justice--if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche
struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate
paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and
damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious
character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer
as slippery as the frogs she hunts.
In thrilling, cinematic
style, FROG MUSIC digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of
songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of
love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like
no other."
Title: Body Count
Author: Barbara Nadel
#16 in the Inspector Çetin Ikmen series set in Istanbul, Turkey
ISBN: 9780755388929
Publisher: Headline Book Publishing
Hardcover, 384 pages
Synopsis: "Any bloody death will lead Inspectors Ikmen and Suleyman out onto the
dark streets of Istanbul. On January 21, a half-decapitated corpse in
the poor multicultural district of Tarlabasi poses a particularly
frustrating and gruesome mystery. But as the months pass and the
violence increases, it turns into a hunt for that rare phenomenon in the
golden city on the Bosphorus: a serial killer. Desperate to uncover the
killer's twisted logic as the body count rises, Ikmen and Suleyman find
only more questions. How are the victims connected? What is the
significance of the number 21? And how many Istanbullus must die before
they find the answers?"
=== April 15 ===
Title: The Axe Factor
#3 in the Jimm Juree series set in rural southern Thailand
ISBN: 9781250043368
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Hardcover, 304 pages
Synopsis: "Since Jimm Juree moved, under duress, with her family to a rural village
on the coast of Southern Thailand, she misses the bright lights of
Chiang Mai. Most of all, she’s missed her career as a journalist, which
was just getting started. In Chiang Mai, she was covering substantial
stories and major crimes. But here in Maprao, Jimm has to scrape
assignments from the local online journal, the Chumphon Gazette—and be
happy about it when she gets one. This time they are sending her out to
interview a local farang (European) writer, a man in his late
fifties, originally from England, who writes award-winning crime novels,
one Conrad Coralbank.
At the same time, several local women
have left town without a word to anyone, leaving their possessions
behind. These include the local doctor, Dr. Sumlak, who never returned
from a conference, and the Thai wife of that farang writer, the
aforementioned Conrad Coralbank. All of which looks a little suspicious,
especially to Jimm’s grandfather, an ex-cop, who notices Coralbank’s
interest in Jimm with a very jaundiced eye. With a major storm headed
their way and a potential serial killer on the loose, it looks like Jimm
Juree, her eccentric family, and the whole town of Maprao is in for
some major changes."
=== April 22 ===
Title: A Few Drops of Blood
#2 in the Natalia Monte series set in Naples, Italy
ISBN: 9781616953539
Publisher: Soho Crime
Hardcover, 304 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "When the bodies of two men are found, shockingly posed, in the garden of
an elderly countess, Captain Natalia Monte of the Carabiniere is
assigned the case. Soon she finds herself shuttling between Naples’
decadent art galleries and violent criminal underworld. If she is to
succeed in solving the heinous crime, Natalia must deal with not only
her own complicated past and allegiances, but also those of the city as a
whole. A riveting and poetic exploration of the violence that lurks in
the heart of beauty."
Title: Ruin Falls
Standalone
ISBN: 9780345549075
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Hardcover, 352 pages
Synopsis: "Liz Daniels has every reason to be happy about setting off on a rare
family vacation, leaving behind her remote home in the Adirondack
Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children,
eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have met their paternal
grandparents only a handful of times. But Liz’s husband, Paul, has
decided that, despite a strained relationship with his mother and
father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent
his childhood.
On their way to the farm, the family stops at a
hotel for the night. In the morning, when Liz goes to check on her
sleeping children, all her anxiety comes roaring back: Ally and Reed are
nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice-cold terror as the
hours tick by without anyone finding a trace of the kids. Soon, Paul and
Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued, and
detectives are called in.
Frantic worry and helplessness
threaten to overtake Liz’s mind—but in a sudden, gut-wrenching instant
she realizes that it was no stranger who slipped into the hotel room
that night. Someone she trusted completely has betrayed her. Though she
knows that Ally and Reid are safe, Liz will stop at nothing to find them
and get them back. From her guarded in-laws’ unwelcoming farmhouse to
the deep woods of her own hometown, Liz follows the threads of a
terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams and
haunted by nightmares."
=== April 29 ===
Title: The Marathon Conspiracy
#4 in the series featuring Nicolaos, an investigator in classical Athens, beginning in 461 BCE
ISBN: 9781616953874
Publisher: Soho Crime
Hardcover, 352 pages
Synopsis: "Nicolaos, Classical Athens's favorite sleuth, and his partner in
investigation, the clever ex-priestess Diotima, have taken time out of
their assignments to come home to get married. But if Nico was hoping
they'd be able to get hitched without a hitch, he was overly optimistic.
When they arrive in Athens, there's a problem waiting for them.
The
Sanctuary of Artemis is the ancient world's most famous school for
girls. When one of the children is killed, apparently by a bear, and
another girl disappears in the night, Diotima's childhood teacher asks
her former pupil to help them. Diotima is honor-bound to help her old
school.
Meanwhile a skull discovered in a cave not far from the
sanctuary has proven to be the remains of the last tyrant to rule
Athens. The Athenians fought the Battle Marathon to keep this man out of
power. He was supposed to have died thirty years ago, in faraway
Persia. What are his remains doing outside the city walls? Nico's boss, the great Athenian statesman Pericles, wants answers, and he wants Nico to find them. What
makes it all so ominous is that the skull was discovered by the two
students of the Sanctuary of Artemis who are dead and missing.
What
does a decades-dead tyrant have to do with two young girls? Where is
the missing child? Is a killer bear really lurking beyond the walls of
Athens? And who is the mysterious stranger who's trying to kill Nico and
Diotima? Can the sleuths solve the interlocked crimes and save a child
before their wedding?"
Did any of these titles catch your eye-- and make it to your wish list? Which ones? (You know I'm an insatiably curious bookaholic!) I've already read Nevada Barr's Destroyer Angel, and I loved it so much that I can't keep quiet until my review is posted. But there are so many other wonderful books in this list that I can't choose a favorite!
