April Top Picks

The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis
Release Date:  Early Apr
This is one that I expected to do better in the large format, but perhaps the price point made it a bit less of an impulse buy. This month we’ll be getting the $19.99 paperback, which I hope will encourage more people to pick it up. It’s a debut novel, and another genre blender though readers won’t realise this until they are well into the book. It’s a dynamic thriller that begins with Elka who lives on a remote mountain with Trapper, the solitary hunter who took her in when she was seven years old. They live a simple, self sufficient existence and he has taught her everything she needs to survive. When, against Trapper’s advice Elka travels to the nearby town she sees wanted posters everywhere proclaiming Trapper as a wanted murderer. Now the Magistrate hunting Trapper is on her trail too and she’s discovered some very disturbing things about her own past. Just like the world, which was knocked back centuries by the event known as the Damn Stupid, Elka’s life is in ruins. She has no idea who to believe and who to trust, only that the answers may be locked in her own lost childhood memories. This is a post- apocalyptic adventure thriller unlike anything else in the genre for fans of The Passage, Station Eleven and The Road. 

Kokoro by Keith Yatsuhasi
Release Date:  Early Apr
There’s a lot of urban fantasy books about, and to be honest I like most of them. The fantasy-crime-thriller mash up in a modern setting really appeals to me and others too since I sell quite a lot of them. As a result I’m always interested when something a bit new comes into that space. Keith Yatsuhashi‘s first book Kojiki hit shelves last year and wowed readers with its combination of modern thriller, Japanese mythology and Anime aesthetic. It’s at the lighter end of the genre, which I think it owes to the Anime connection. While Kojiki was mostly set on Earth, the new book Kokoro starts on the planet Higo. Baiyren, a disgraced prince steals a sentient armoured suit and uses it to open a portal to a new world, ours. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for the world, his path will cross that of Keiko Yamada a magical young woman who has already defended the earth from supernatural threats once before. I’d recommend reading Kojiki before this one since most of the set up for Keiko is in it, but you could read it on its own. It’s not without flaws and a little lacking in depth, but if you’re a fan of anime and quirky urban fantasy you’ll find it fun. 

The Crown’s Game by Evelyn Skye
Release Date: Late Apr
This is one for fans of young adult fantasy, which to my mind is anyone who wants old-school fantasy adventure that’s happy to keep the nasty stuff out of sight. The book is set in Russia at a time when St Petersburg was the capital and the Tsar looked with concern to the Ottomans and Kazakhs on his borders. Chief among his advisors is the Imperial Enchanter, who is always the greatest magic wielder in Russia. It is a position that can only be won by killing the others who aspire to it. Right now there are only two enchanters in Russia that could fill the role, Vika Andreyeva who can summon the snow and turn ash into gold and Nikolai Karimov who can see through walls and conjure bridges out of thin air. They are both of age and the Tsar has initiated The Crown’s Game, an order that compels them to fight, so that the tsar may once again have an Imperial Enchanter as his side. Each of them is willing to participate. Each wants, for their own reasons, what victory would bring. But then they meet and discover that only enchanters can really understand each other and that victory and defeat have become difficult to separate. A book filled with Slavic folk lore and set against the glorious backdrop of imperial Russia, this is one for fans of Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen, Saba Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes, and Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown. 

A Dark So Deadly by Stuart MacBride
Release Date: Late Apr
Stuart MacBride is one of my favourite crime writers, both for his gritty Logan McRae police procedurals and the two Ash Henderson books which are some of the most dark and intense examples of contemporary crime. His new book A Dark So Deadly introduces a new character in the form of DC Callum MacGregor. It’s still set in Aberdeen and environs, but features a new police team, known to their piers as the Misfit Mob. This is the place where those who have not done things bad enough to be dismissed, but are not good enough for anyone to want, end up. They are the troublemakers, the discipline cases, the compromised and the inept and they get the cases that offer no fame or prestige or most of the time even any chance of ever being solved. When an ancient mummy turns up in a bog, naturally it falls to Callum and the Misfits to figure out which museum it used to call home. When a connection arises between the mummy and three missing young men it seems that Callum now has a serious case on his hands. With other divisions already overstretched, it looks like they’re going to have to see it through themselves. There’s a killer on the loose and the only thing protecting the next victim is a team that most consider the worst on the force. 

The End of the Day by Claire North
Release Date: Early Apr
One of the things I really like about Claire North is that each book is a completely fresh story with new characters. Nevertheless her previous books, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Touch and The Sudden Appearance of Hope all have something in common. Each of them is set mostly in the world we recognise, but with one surreal or supernatural element that makes all the difference. In the case of The End of the Day that element is Charlie. He is what is traditionally referred to as a harbinger. In this case, of death. He himself though, brings something else and only visits a select few. Sometimes a warning, sometimes a chance to change something or maybe knowing you’re about to die might make you put some things right. Charlie never knows what he’s going to offer till he gets there and not everyone is keen to take his gift. But Charlie has a kind face and sometimes that’s all someone needs towards the end. Charlie’s problems are more serious. Death isn’t the only one to have harbingers, War, Famine and Pestilence have them too and sometimes theirs and Charlie’s paths cross. Lately though it looks like there might be something more going on and if War, Famine, Pestilence and Death are planning something then it doesn’t take a genius to guess what it’s likely to be.  

Beren and Luthien by JRR Tolkien
Release Date:  Early June
Every Tolkien fan knows the Tale of Beren and Luthien
The doomed love of man and elf is part of one of the most important events in the history of middle-earth, and then mirrored by Aragorn and Arwen in the War of the Ring. The story itself though is scattered across Tolkien‘s work, with some of it told in The Lord of the Rings, some in the appendices of the series, and still more in The Silmarillion. In this edition the threads of the tale have been extracted from the various sources and brought together along with unpublished drafts, notes and elements that never made it into the final versions. What this becomes is not just a classic tale of Middle-Earth compiled of scattered pieces, but an insight into the evolution of Tolkien‘s world. For you see, the stories are not all the same. The first drafts of the Tale of Beren and Luthien began sometime in 1917, but as Tolkien started to flesh out the world that he had created the foundational myths and legends that underpinned it changed. The book presents the earliest versions first, followed by later variations in prose and verse and offers Tolkien fans a rare insight into the man and his work.  This was originally an April release but has been delayed. I’ve left it in this month’s newsletter because numbers will be limited so a pre-order is advised if you’d like to secure a copy.  

Sleeping Giants and Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel
Release Date:  Mid Apr
What we actually have here is two books, since Sleeping Giants is due out in paperback at roughly the same time that the sequel Waking Gods is due in trade. Since I don’t think I said anything about Sleeping Giants when it came out, I’ll use this bit to talk a little about both. The books are written in an epistolic style in that they are collections of letters and interviews with the characters that build the story with pieces. Books like The Martian by Andy Weir and our book club book Radiance by Catherynne Valente are two recent examples written in this style. It’s science fiction and at least in Sleeping Giants relatively low tech. Set basically in the here and now it begins when a small girl falls into a deep hole only to discover a huge metal hand. The hand predates any possible manufacture by humans and is constructed of unidentifiable materials. Years later that same little girl, now Dr Rose Franklin renowned physicist has managed to convince others of the thing she has believed for years. That the hand is only part of something larger and that the rest of the pieces remain unfound. The enigma of the hand is one of the world’s great mysteries and Rose believes that uniting all the parts will solve it. She’s right, but has no way of imagining what the answer is or what it will mean for humanity. The second book Waking Gods, takes up the story ten years after the end of Sleeping Giants, but I’ll skip the details to avoid spoilers. In short, Rose’s actions have unexpected repercussions and introduce another very dangerous factor. This is an unusual read because of the structure of the books, but in many ways it’s also a homage to old-school science fiction writers like Arthur C Clarke and John Wyndham and is well worth a look if you want something clever and a bit different. 

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti
Release Date:  Early Apr
This one’s probably more thriller than crime, but I think it’s going to be a big hit with crime readers anyway. Loo has been moving from town to town with her dad Samuel for years. They never stay long anywhere and he’s always looking behind him. It’s just the two of them since her mother died, but since Samuel won’t talk about it she doesn’t know the details. She knows her father had had a hard life, he wears twelve scars left by bullets that are the badges of a violent life he has left behind. Finally settling in her mother’s home town of Olympus Massachusetts, Loo and her father set about trying to fit in and make a life for themselves. It’s difficult for both of them, but as Loo learns more about the town she starts asking questions about her mother. Other things are coming back from the past as well and Samuel and Loo will have to confront and deal with the enemies from Samuel’s past if they are to have any chance of a future. A coming of age story with heart woven with that of a thriller.