5 April 2022 Book Releases I Can’t Wait To Read

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I’m SO ready to bring on the spring months with these five books! This month holds some of my most anticipated books of the year and I absolutely cannot wait to share them with you!

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Let’s dive in!

April 2022 Book Releases

When Old Fires Ignite (Aileen and Callan Murder Mysteries Book 5) by Shana Frost
Expected Publication Date: April 4th 2022
Genre: Mystery & Crime

Synopsis: 

The dead man on her doorstep: a premonition or an angel?

A car burns just around the bend from Dachaigh. Is it a plot to destroy the inn or exterminate every trace of the body within?

For Detective Inspector Callan Cameron, it’s a brilliant example of a homicide with the victim as hidden in the shadows as the suspects.

Amateur sleuth Aileen Mackinnon vows to crack this case. Was the man a fraudster, or a damaged soul looking for salvation?

Smoke and mirrors lead them down a path to jail, fraud and fatal car crashes.

Is this a promise of something new or the end of Aileen and Callan?

Note: I cruised through all of Shana’s work in January, and I have been eagerly awaiting this book ever since! I cannot wait to dive into this one once my preorder arrives.

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Maggots Screaming by Max Booth III
Expected Publication Date: April 12th 2022
Publisher: Ghoulish Books
Genre: Horror

Synopsis: 

THE FAMILY THAT DECAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER

On a hot summer weekend in San Antonio, Texas, a father and son bond after discovering three impossible corpses buried in their back yard.

From the author and screenwriter of We Need to Do Something comes a new novel of body horror and existential crises.

Note: I was sent an ARC of this one! Stay tuned for my review coming up soon!

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Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes
Expected Publication Date: April 26th, 2022
Publisher: Celadon Books
Genre: True Crime

Synopsis: 

From the detective who found the Golden State Killer, a memoir of investigating America’s toughest cold cases and the rewards-and toll-of a life solving crime.

I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don’t even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. I’m drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can’t shake.

Crime solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me, for better or worse, to the point of obsession. People always ask how I am able to detach from the horrors of my work. Part of it is an innate capacity to compartmentalize; the rest is experience and exposure, and I’ve had plenty of both. But I have always taken pride in the fact that I can keep my feelings locked up to get the job done. It’s only been recently that it feels like all that suppressed darkness is beginning to seep out.

When I look back at my long career, there is a lot I am proud of. I have caught some of the most notorious killers of the twenty-first century and brought justice and closure for their victims and families. I want to tell you about a lifetime solving these cold cases, from Laci Peterson to Jaycee Dugard to the Pittsburg homicides to, yes, my twenty-year-long hunt for the Golden State Killer.

But a deeper question eats at me as I ask myself, at what cost? I have sacrificed relationships, joy–even fatherhood–because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? It’s something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice. “I don’t know if I can solve your case,” I whisper. “But I promise I will do my best.”

It is a promise I know I can keep.

Note: I have a copy of this one preordered from a local bookshop, Gibsons Bookshop!

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The Fervor by Alma Katsu
Expected Publication Date: Apr 26th 2022
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Genre: Horror

Synopsis: 

The acclaimed author of the celebrated literary horror novels The Hunger and The Deep turns her psychological and supernatural eye on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.

1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko’s husband’s enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.

Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.

Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores the horrors of the supernatural beyond just the threat of the occult. With a keen and prescient eye, Katsu crafts a terrifying story about the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it’s too late. A sharp account of too-recent history, it’s a deep excavation of how we decide who gets to be human when being human matters most.

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Wasps In The Ice Cream by Tim McGregor
Expected Publication Date: April 26th 2022
Publisher: Silver Shamrock Publishing
Genre: Horror

Synopsis: 

What happens when you fall for the girl everyone hates?

Summer 1987: Mark Prewitt’s only priority is to avoid his dad’s new wife and waste time with his friends, but idle nights are the devil’s handiwork. When his friends decide to pull a cruel prank on the reclusive and strange Farrow sisters, Mark regrets caving in to peer pressure.

Wanting to make amends, Mark is drawn into the mysterious world of the Farrow girls, finding a kindred spirit in the middle sister, George. She is unlike anyone he’s ever known; a practicing witch who uses folk magic to protect her family. They bond over books, loneliness, and homemade spells. She even invites Mark to join a séance to contact her dead sister, who died under mysterious circumstances.

Keeping their relationship secret, Mark learns that living a double life in a town this small is impossible. When the secret is exposed, and his friends plot to punish the witch sisters for stealing one of their own, Mark is forced to choose between these two worlds.

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Thanks for reading!
What books are you looking forward to in April?