April 2024 list by Donalee Jacobs
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2054
by Elliot Ackerman
Set 20 years after the events of the best-selling 2034 the fate of American democracy is threatened by a tech visionary in the Amazon rainforest who uses a breakthrough in AI to assassinate the president.
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The Angel of Indian Lake
by Stephen Graham Jones
The final installment of the popular Indian Lake Trilogy picks up four years after Don't Fear the Reaper as Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to build a life after the years of sacrifice—only to find the Lake Witch is waiting for her.
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Annie Bot
by Sierra Greer
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. She's not the greatest at keeping Doug's place spotless, but she's trying hard to please him. Doug says he loves that Annie's AI makes her seem more like a real woman, so Annie explores human traits such as curiosity, secrecy, and longing. But becoming more human also means becoming less perfect, and as Annie's relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder: Does Doug really desire what he says he wants? And in such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?
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Becoming Madam Secretary
by Stephanie Dray
This captivating and dramatic new novel explores the life of American heroine Frances Perkins who met a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt in turn-of-the-century New York and, despite initially not getting along, formed a historic partnership that led them both to the White House.
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Blessed Water
by Margot Douaihy
A tattooed nun who moonlights at a detective agency feels she is called on by god to find the killer after discovering a dead priest in the second novel of the series following Scorched Grace.
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The Divorcées
by Rowan Beaird
Lois is living with other would-be divorcees in Reno for the six weeks' residency that is the state's only divorce requirement in 1951. They spend their days riding horses and their nights flirting with cowboys. But it isn't until Greer Lang arrives that Lois's world truly cracks open. Completely indifferent to societal convention, Greer is unlike anyone Lois has ever met—and she sees something in Lois that no one else ever has. Under her influence, Lois begins to push against the limits that have always restrained her, but how far will she go to forge her independence, on her own terms?
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The Duchess
by Sophie Jordan
Following the death of her husband, Valencia, the Dowager Duchess of Dedham, is finally her own woman. Flitting from party to party, freedom is sweet and life should be perfect. Until Rhain, the new Welsh Duke of Dedham, moves into her home with his six unwed sisters, and requires Valencia to assist in marrying them off in exchange for financial security and independence. But the more time they spend beneath the same roof, the more she realizes it's not safety she wants but Rhain. Valencia has vowed never to risk marriage again. And yet how can she resist the tempting man when he might be the greatest adventure of her life?
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A Feather So Black
by Lyra Selene
A changeling raised by the queen to be a spy is sent through a hidden gate to a strange realm where she must retrieve the princess she was swapped with and break a curse.
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The Girls We Sent Away
by Meagan Church
North Carolina, 1960s. Lorraine has it all - the boyfriend, the good grades, the white picket fence, the ambition to become the first woman astronaut. But when she becomes pregnant, her parents send her away to a maternity home. Lorraine soon realizes that instead of being a safe haven, the home forces unwed mothers to relinquish parental rights and place their babies for adoption. Lorraine must decide if she has the agency and power to fight to keep her baby or if she must submit to the rules of the society she once admired.
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Good Half Gone
by Tarryn Fisher
After witnessing her twin sister get kidnapped years prior, Iris Walsh decides to intern at a hospital for the criminally insane where she believes the perpetrator is being held and discovers something even more sinister going on.
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The Great Divide
by Cristina Henríquez
It is said that the Panama Canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. Searing and empathetic, The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers—those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.
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How to Solve Your Own Murder
by Kristen Perrin
After a fortune teller in 1965 predicts her murder, Frances spends her life searching for her best friend, who disappeared at a county fair, until she actually is murdered 60 years later, leaving her grand-niece Annie to solve both crimes.
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James
by Percival Everett
A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view, who decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island after learning he is to be sold to a man in New Orleans.
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Kill For Me, Kill For You
by Steve Cavanagh
One evening on New York City's Upper West Side, over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. They come up with the perfect plan: if you kill for me, I'll kill for you.
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Kilt Trip
by Alexandra Kiley
Addie is sent on travel assignment to help a struggling family-run tour company in the Scottish Highlands. Logan Sutherland's greatest joy is sharing the beauty of Scotland's hidden gems. The last thing Logan wants is some American "expert" pushing tourist traps, especially when Addie never leaves her desk to experience the country for herself. When Logan discovers Addie's secret connection to Scotland - a handful of faded Polaroids of her late mother - he creates a private tour to the places in the pictures to help Addie find closure, never expecting the attraction between them.
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Leaving
by Roxana Robinson
Former college sweethearts reconnect decades later after each has married, raised a family and forged careers, and embark on an intense affair that forces them to confront the moral responsibilities of their love for their families and each other.
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Maktub: An Inspirational Companion to The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
A companion to the inspirational classic The Alchemist is filled with timeless stories of reflection and rediscovery. Each story offers an illuminated path to see life and the lives of our fellow people around the world in new ways, allowing us to tap into universal truths about our collective and individual humanity.
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The Morningside
by Tâea Obreht
When Silvia and her mother move to Island City, in a not-too-distant future, they end up living and working at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia's aunt, Ena, serves as the superintendent. Unlike her mother, Ena gives Silvia glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland in the Old World. As she begins seeing the world with magical possibilities, Silvia becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman who lives at Morningside, with three massive Rottweilers. Silvia's mission to unravel the truth and her own haunted past, transforms her own life in the most unexpected of ways
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The Mystery Writer
by Sulari Gentill
From 2023 Edgar Award nominee and bestselling author Sulari Gentill comes a literary thriller about an aspiring writer who meets and falls in love with her literary idol―only to find him murdered the day after she gave him her manuscript to read.
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On the Same Page
by Haley Cass
Riley Beckett met Gianna Mäkinen - influencer, trilingual, daughter of world-famous models - their first year at Boston University. And in the ten years since, Riley has come to depend on Gianna more than anyone else in her life. She knows Gianna just as well as she knows herself - maybe better. She knows Gianna doesn't do romance or relationships, and she knows nothing could ever come between them. But when a holiday party mix-up sets in motion a domino effect of changes to these previously inalienable truths, Riley has to question everything she thought she knew about their relationship.
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Parasol Against the Axe
by Helen Oyeyemi
Hero Tojosoa is in Prague for a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie. A book Hero is reading seems to be warping her mind: the text changes depending on when it’s being read and who’s doing the reading. Uninvited companions appear at activities and city landmarks, offering opinions, humor, and even treachery. When a third woman from Hero and Sofie’s past appears, the tension between the friends’ different accounts of the past reach a new level, forcing them to examine the lines between illusion and delusion, fact and interpretation, and weigh the risks of attaching too firmly to the stories of a place, or a person, or a shared history.
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Pelican Girls
by Julia Malye
Paris 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in crisis: too many occupants, not enough beds. Across the world, France's colony in North America has space to spare and needs families to fill it. So the director of the hospital rounds up female "volunteers" of childbearing age—orphans, prisoners, and mental patients—to be shipped to New Orleans. Among this group are three unlikely friends: Charlotte, Pétronille, and Geneviève. Strangers brought together by fate, these brave women face extraordinary adversity, trauma, heartbreak and love, while forging friendships that will sustain them through the years.
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The Princess of Las Vegas
by Chris Bohjalian
Living in the Buckingham Palace Casino, Crissy Dowling, a Princess Diana impersonator with her own musical cabaret, finds her carefully constructed kingdom crashing down around her when the owner of the casino is brutally murdered and she is drawn in a world of organized crime, cryptocurrency and obsession.
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Sleeping Giants
by Rene Denfeld
Twenty years ago, a boy was swept away by waves on a remote Oregon beach. Only a stone memorial remains to mark his tragic death. For most of her life, Amanda Dufresne had no idea she had an older brother named Dennis Owens, or that he had died. Adopted as a baby, she learned about him while looking into her late birth mother, and is curious to know more about this lost sibling. Retired police officer Larry Palmer offers to help Amanda find answers. The search leads to shocking and heartbreaking discoveries. As Amanda and Larry dig deeper into the past, the two stumble upon decades of cruelty and hidden crimes.
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Sylvia's Second Act
by Hillary Yablon
Divorcing her cheating husband, 63-year-old Sylvia and her best friend, Evie, a glamorous older widow, set up a new life in Manhattan, pawning jewelry and roughing it in tiny apartments, until Sylvia revives her decades-old wedding-planning business and realizes her entire second act, even romance, is right in front of her.
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Until August
by Gabriel García Márquez
Approved for release by his sons, the final novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, self-transformation, and the mysteries of love. Ana Magdalena Bach has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover. Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the fear hidden in her heart.
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What Happened to Nina?
by Dervla McTiernan
Nina and Simon are young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family's cabin, and only Simon comes home. Simon's explanation about what happened doesn't add up. Nina's parents push the police for answers, and Simon's parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign. Nina's family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters — finding their daughter. Out-gunned by Simon's wealthy, powerful family, Nina's parents recognize that if playing by the rules won't work, it's time to break them.
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Women of Good Fortune
by Sophie Wan
At a high-society Shanghai wedding, the reluctant bride and her two best friends, each with their own personal motives and fed up with the way society treats women, forge a plan to steal all the gift money on the big day.
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