Looking for something new to read? Browse our fiction picks for April! Includes books Anthony Horowitz, Tracy Borman, Gillian McAllister and more.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
A Deadly Episode
Anthony Horowitz
The actors have been cast, the script written, and filming has already started in Hastings. But when Hawthorne and Anthony visit the set, they find a far from happy family.
The director’s pretentious, the screenwriter’s an eco-warrior, the two stars hate each other, and the producer has run out of money. And things are about to get much, much worse.
In the middle of shooting, the actor playing Hawthorne is stabbed – which leaves the real Hawthorne with no choice. He has to step in and investigate his own murder. Because the killer may not have got the right man.
Was it Hawthorne himself who was meant to be the target?
The House of Boleyn
Tracy Borman
When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to a newly anointed King Henry VIII, he sets in train events that ensure the Boleyn name will never be forgotten.
Years later, as Henry VIII relentlessly pursues Thomas’ daughter Anne Boleyn to be his queen, Hever Castle becomes her escape, a place where her trusted attendants and her father must advise, protect and support her. Lavish gifts are sent by the King and the Boleyn family is given ever greater prominence at court, their glory shining over everything and everyone.
Until ambition turns the family on itself, enemies outside the castle circle closer and danger begins to stalk the corridors of Hever. And as Henry’s gaze moves elsewhere when Anne cannot give him the heir he so desperately seeks, the family faces a terrible, bloody fate. But as long as Hever still stands, hope still exists.
My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein: A Fiction
Deborah Levy
Who was Gertrude Stein? Avant-garde American poet and art collector who made her home in Paris, godmother of modernism, queer icon, friend to Picasso and Hemingway, self-declared genius – a writer who has baffled readers and critics for a century.
And why does she matter? The narrator of Deborah Levy’s novel has gone to Paris to find out. There she meets Eva with the blinding gaze, an artist in a long-distance marriage, and Fanny, a sexually adventurous financier; together they cook, walk, read and argue late into the nights.
As Paris sweeps her along in its ceaseless flow, she thinks – about what we have to lose to become modern, navigating anxiety, living with uncertainty, angry fathers, making a new life in another country, art and language – how all these things looked to Gertrude Stein in the early days of the twentieth century, and how they look to her and her friends in the early twenty-first.
The Ending Writes Itself
Evelyn Clarke
World-famous author Arthur Fletch is dead. His final novel, the most anticipated book in history, remains unfinished. But the ending won’t write itself.
When six struggling authors are invited to Fletch’s private Scottish island and presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, the plot thickens: whoever writes a worthy ending will receive a game-changing book deal and two million dollars.
Why have they been chosen to attend? Who is behind the invitation? And just how far would they go to secure a place on the bestseller list?
They have just 72 hours, a typewriter and a blank page. All they have to do is write.
Caller Unknown
Gillian McAllister
Simone’s holiday to Texas was meant to be some much needed bonding time with her teenage daughter, Lucy.
On their first night in the desert, Simone wakes to find Lucy missing and a mobile phone in her place. The phone rings: Lucy has been taken and, in order to get her back, Simone must commit a crime.
As Simone prepares to follow the kidnapper’s instructions, she feels certain that there is nothing she wouldn’t do to save Lucy. But becoming a wanted woman is just the start.
The Palm House
Gwendoline Riley
Laura Miller and Edmund Putnam have been friends for a long time. Theirs is a happy meeting of minds, with long evenings spent huddled in an ancient pub by the Thames, where they share office gossip, reflect on their teenage passions, and lament the state of the world.
Recently, though, Putnam has been harder to reach: he has lost his father, and the magazine to which he has dedicated his life has been hijacked by an insufferable new editor, Simon ‘call me Shove’ Halfpenny.
Laura has her own problems: with a prickly mother and a tricky past, and in a beautiful and indifferent city, her day-to-day life is precarious.
But as Putnam starts to sink into despondency, she must try to bring him back.
Last One Out
Jane Harper
In a dying town, Ro Crowley waits for her son on the evening of his twenty-first birthday. Sam never comes home.
His footprints in the dust of three abandoned houses offer the only clue to his final movements. One set in. One set out.
Five long years later, Ro returns to Carralon Ridge for the annual memorial of Sam’s disappearance. The skeletal community is now an echo of itself, having fractured under the pressure of the coal mine operating on its outskirts.
But Ro still wants answers. Only a few people remain. If the truth is to be found in that town, does it lie among them?
‘Last One Out’ is a hugely atmospheric mystery from the author of ‘The Dry’, ‘Force of Nature’, ‘The Lost Man’, ‘The Survivors’ and ‘Exiles’.
Turn the Dial for Death
Jeremy Vine
Sidmouth is gearing up for summer – but murder is all year round.
When a doctor is found dead in the woods, shot through the heart with a crossbow, his wife is the prime suspect, despite an ironclad alibi. Desperate to clear her name, she appeals to radio presenter Edward Temmis for help.
But Edward has troubles of his own. With his beloved radio station in crisis and a mysterious motorbike crash on the seafront, the doctor’s death isn’t the only problem he has to face. Edward, Kim and Stevie must reunite on a treacherous path to uncover the truth.
Can they solve the case before everything tumbles down?
Permanence
Sophie MacKintosh
This is the story of an affair.
Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been slipping away from their respective lives, sharing stolen afternoons in hotel rooms, their time together painfully sweet and all too short.
Until one day they wake up in a bedroom neither of them recognises with no memory of how they got there. They find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar city: a place where adulterers can live openly as couples, without fear of consequence, putting the theory of their love into practice.
Here the sky is painted over the old town square in changeless, cloudless blue. Ripe fruits wait on the table each morning and the sunset comes down in a blaze of pink each night. And contact with the real world is impossible.
As long as Clara and Francis are here, they only have each other. How do you know when you’ve found true love?
Woodspring
Elizabeth Buchan
Since the house was built in 1810, the Danes have always lived at Woodspring.
Over the generations it has given them shelter, solace and joy. War brings change, and the next three generations of the family will lead very different lives, at home and abroad.
Peace is shattered, pain is unavoidable, loves are found and lost, but Woodspring is constant, and will always draw them back.
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