April 2021 list by Donalee Jacobs
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Animals
by Will Staples
When rhino poachers kill two of his fellow rangers in Kruger Park, South African Defense Force veteran Cobus Venter reaches his breaking point. Quitting his job, he embarks on a vigilante mission to take down the animal-trafficking syndicate from the inside. Meanwhile, in Florida, insurance investigator Randall Knight is called to a private roadside zoo, where a new tiger cub of suspect lineage brought a virus that wiped out all the zoo's tigers. Both men's journeys take them from the darkest corners of Southeast Asia to the VIP gambling rooms of Macau, where they must stay alive long enough to stop a vicious international triad from ending wildlife as we know it.
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Astrid Sees All
by Natalie Standiford
Longing for glamour and adventure after the death of her father, Phoebe dives into the party underworld of 1984’s East Village, where she struggles against painful secrets and her own self-destructive impulses.
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Bewitched
by Darynda Jones
Forty-something Defiance Dayne only recently discovered she comes from a long line of powerful witches. Added to that was the teensy, infinitesimal fact that she is what's called a charmling. One of three on the entire planet. And there are other witches who will stop at nothing to steal her immense power, which would basically involve her unfortunate and untimely death. No one told her life after forty would mean having to learn new life skills-such as how to survive a witch hunter dead set on killing her-or that the sexiest man alive would be living in her basement.
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Big Little Spies
by Krista Davis
When a pet detective winds up dead after offending a group of wealthy pet moms, Holly and her super-smart Jack Russell terrier must sniff out the clues to catch a killer among the elite.
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The Bounty
by Janet Evanovich
Straitlaced FBI agent Kate O’Hare and international con man Nick Fox reluctantly team up with the fathers who taught them everything they know to prevent a shadowy international organization from claiming a fortune in Nazi gold.
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Caul Baby
by Morgan Jerkins
This fiction debut by the author of Wandering in Strange Lands finds a would-be mother rendered the unexpected caregiver of a niece’s unplanned baby, who a matriarch predicts will restore their family’s prosperity.
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Deadly Editions
by Paige Shelton
Mysteriously invited to participate in an eccentric socialite’s exclusive treasure hunt, bookseller Delaney Nichols investigates her hostess’s dangerous past when a man connected to the competition is found murdered.
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Double Jeopardy
by Stuart Woods
Stone Barrington launches an investigation in coastal Maine, where he confronts high-connected and well-funded family enemies hiding in plain sight among the region’s stately houses and private clubs.
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First Person Singular: Stories
by Haruki Murakami
Told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator, this new collection by the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award-winning writer explores the boundaries of the mind through subjects ranging from youth and music to baseball and solitude.
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Good Company
by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than twenty years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband's wedding ring—the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five. What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now? With Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's signature tenderness, humor, and insight, Good Company tells a bighearted story of the lifelong relationships that both wound and heal us. By the author of the bestselling novel The Nest.
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The Good, the Bad, and the Dumped
by Jenny Colgan
After suffering a humiliating broken engagement, Posy tracks down all her exes online to ask them why all her romances have been train wrecks in the new novel from the best-selling author of 500 Miles from You.
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The Ladies of the Secret Circus
by Constance Sayers
Paris, 1925: Bound to her family's Secret Circus, it's the only world Cecile Cabot knows until she meets a charismatic young painter and embarks on a relationship that could cost her everything. Virginia, 2004: Lara Barnes is on top of the world, but when her fiancé disappears on their wedding day everything comes crashing down. Desperate, Lara's search for answers unexpectedly lead to her great-grandmother's journals. Swept into a story of a dark circus and ill-fated love, the journals reveal a curse that has been claiming payment from the women in her family for generations. A curse that might be tied to her fiancé's mysterious fate.
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The Last Exiles
by Ann Shin
Falling in love against a backdrop of political turbulence in North Korea, two Pyongyang university students are separated when one makes a desperate choice to save his starving family.
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Life's Too Short
by Abby Jimenez
Gaining an unexpected online following after quitting her job to travel the world, a woman anticipating a short life becomes the guardian of her infant niece before her resolve to avoid relationships is tested by a baby-savvy lawyer.
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The Man Who Lived Underground
by Richard Wright
Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city's sewer system. This is the devastating premise of this scorching novel, a never-before-seen masterpiece by Richard Wright. Written between his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), at the height of his creative powers.
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Mother May I
by Joshilyn Jackson
Blackmailed by a mysterious kidnapper to commit a seemingly harmless act, a once-poor woman who married into wealth triggers a devastating chain of consequences.
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Murder in the Cloister
by Tania Bayard
Paris, 1399. Scribe Christine de Pizan is sent to the Priory of Poissy by the palace to copy a manuscript for the prioress. But the prioress already has many copyists at the priory, and Christine senses that something is amiss. Her suspicions are confirmed when the prioress reveals that one of the sisters has been found murdered in the cloister. Fearing for the welfare of the king's young daughter who resides at the abbey, she is eager for Christine to find out who killed the young nun-and why. As Christine investigates, she uncovers dark mischief and closely guarded secrets, but can she unmask a killer?
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The Perfect Daughter
by D.J. Palmer
When the abandoned girl she adopted years earlier is locked in a decaying psychiatric hospital amid murder allegations, Grace embarks on a desperate search for the origins of her daughter’s multiple-personality disorder.
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Raft of Stars
by Andrew J. Graff
Fleeing into the woods believing that they have accidentally murdered an abusive parent, two young boys, unaware that they have become the focus of a desperate search, navigate dangerous natural threats in their effort to survive.
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A River Called Time
by Courttia Newland
Years after the Ark was cut off from the world—a world much like our own, but in which slavery has never existed—a chance of survival within the Ark's confines is granted to a select few who can prove their worth. Among their number is Markriss Denny, whose path to future excellence is marred only by a closely guarded secret: without warning, his spirit leaves his body, allowing him to see and experience a world far beyond his physical limitations.
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Second First Impressions
by Sally Thorne
A spoiled, tattooed rich man reluctantly agrees to become an assistant to two casually exploitative nonagenarians before unexpectedly catching the eye of the property’s serious-minded manager.
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Stargazer
by Anne Hillerman
Officer Bernie risks her relationship with Chee to investigate the disappearance of a former college roommate, whose confession for murder does not add up.
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Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill
by Jim Fergus
The conclusion to the One Thousand White Women trilogy is set in the aftermath of the battle of Little Big Horn and finds the integrated women survivors of a decimated Cheyenne tribe taking up arms against the United States on behalf of Native American territory rights.
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Summertime Guests
by Wendy Francis
The death of a young woman at the Seafarer, Boston’s most glamorous hotel, brings together four strangers – a bride-to-be, the hotel’s manager, a widow and a young man on a romantic getaway gone wrong – who become linked in the most unexpected of ways.
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The Warlord
by Gena Showalter
Fan-favorite character, Taliyah Skyhawk, returns in a series debut that pits the ice maiden against her greatest enemy, a villain of unimaginable brutality. By the best-selling author of the Lords of the Underworld paranormal romances.
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When a Stranger Comes to Town
by Michael Koryta
A story collection from Mystery Writers of America features tales of terrifying encounters with strangers from a variety of popular mystery and crime fiction authors including Michael Connelly, Dean Koontz, Joe Hill and Attica Locke.
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A Wicked Conceit
by Anna Lee Huber
When the anticipation of their baby’s birth is upended by the release of a play about their exploits with a roguish criminal, Kiera and Gage investigate a publisher’s murder to clear their names of wrongful suspicion.
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The Widow Queen
by Elçzbieta Cherezińska
To her father, the great duke of Poland, Swietoslawa and her two sisters represent three chances for an alliance. Three marriages on which to build his empire. But Swietoslawa refuses to be simply a pawn in her father's schemes; she seeks a throne of her own, with no husband by her side. The gods may grant her wish, but crowns sit heavy, and power is a sword that cuts both ways.
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You Love Me: A You Novel
by Caroline Kepnes
The highly anticipated new thriller in Caroline Kepnes’s hit You series, now a blockbuster Netflix show—is a compulsively readable trip into the deviant mind of the uniquely antisocial, savvy bookseller... Joe Goldberg. Joe is done with cities and moves to a cozy island in the Pacific Northwest. He gets a job at the local library—he does know a thing or two about books—and that’s where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won’t meddle, he will not obsess. He’ll win her the old-fashioned way. Over time, they’ll both heal their wounds and begin their happily ever after in this sleepy town. The trouble is... Mary Kay already has a life. She’s a mother. She’s a friend. She’s... busy.
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