Top 10 April 2022 Book Releases

In comes spring, in comes a fresh wave of hot new book releases. If you're wondering what to read next, check out the top 10 April 2022 book releases below. 

The Younger Wife - Sally Hepworth 

This book follows Stephen Aston, an esteemed heart surgeon, who is getting married again. However, first he must divorce his current wife, who is suffering from dementia. His two daughters, Tully and Rachel, are uneasy with the situation, particularly given that his bride-to-be, Heather, is younger than them both. But all three women have secrets they want to keep hidden - secrets which are about to be uncovered in the events which lead up to the wedding.

The Children on the Hill - Jennifer McMahon

In 1978, Dr. Helen Hildreth, esteemed psychiatrist based in Vermont, brings a child home to play with her own two grandchildren, Vi and Eric. Vi and Eric are delighted to have an honorary new sibling to play with, and invite her to join their Monster Club - because, as Vi says, monsters are everywhere. 

In 2019, Lizzy Shelley, podcaster, is on her way to Vermont to investigate claims that a young girl has been abducted by a monster. Lizzy believes the monster sightings claimed by the villagers, because she knows better than all that monsters are real - after all, her sister is one. 

 

Insomnia - Sarah Pinborough 

From the author of Behind Her Eyes and 13 Minutes comes a new psychological thriller which follows the story of Emma Averell, esteemed lawyer and loving mother. Emma loves her life - but it wasn't always this way. When she was five, Emma and her sister were taken into care following a horrific accident involving their mother. Emma has always fought hard to keep her dark past separate from her current life - but now she can't sleep. And Emma is worried that her insomnia is a warning sign that she is beginning to lose her mind like the mother she left behind.

The No Show - Beth O'Leary 

Siobhan, Miranda and Jane are all completely different women with one thing in common - they've all been stood up by the same man, Joseph, on Valentine's Day no less. But this is all unbeknownst to them, and once they've forgiven him for his no-show, these women come dangerously close to falling in love with a man who seems to have three girlfriends on the go. 

The Lifeguards - Amanda Eyre Ward

This book follows Whitney, Annette, and Liza - three 'wine moms' who are based in Austin's Zilker Park and have raised their children together for 15 years. Their lives, and their friendship, is perfect - safe and unbreakable. Or so they think. One summer night, after enjoying their happy hour cocktails, the three women's sons return from the swimming hole where they are lifeguards, holding a secret which will destroy the perfect lives these women have imagined they are living for so long. What follows is a story of how far a mother will go to protect her child. 

Memphis - Tara M. Stringfellow

In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence, seeking refuge at her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighbourhood of Douglass--only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory, and she knows it won't be the last. Longing to become an artist, Joan pours her rage and grief into sketching portraits of the women of North Memphis--including their enigmatic neighbour Miss Dawn, who seems to know something about curses. Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of voices, Memphis weaves back and forth in time to show how the past and future are forever intertwined.

Such Big Dreams - Reema Patel 

Rakhi is a twenty-three-year-old haunted by the grisly aftermath of an incident that led to the loss of her best friend eleven years ago. Rakhi lives alone in a Mumbai slum, working as a lowly office assistant at Justice For All, a struggling human-rights law organization headed by the renowned lawyer who gave her a fresh start. That is, until Rubina Mansoor, a fading former Bollywood starlet, tries to edge her way back into the spotlight by becoming a celebrity ambassador for Justice For All. Steering the organization into uncharted territories, she demands an internship for Alex, a young family friend from Canada and Harvard-bound graduate student. Alex persuades Rakhi to show him "the real" India. In exchange, he'll do something to further Rakhi's dreams in a transaction that seems harmless, at first.

Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel 

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

 

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

 

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

 

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.

The Drowning Summer - Christine Lynn Herman

Six years ago, three Long Island teenagers were murdered—their drowned bodies discovered with sand dollars placed over their eyes. The mystery of the drowning summer was never solved, but as far as the town’s concerned, Evelyn Mackenzie’s father did it. His charges were dropped only because Evelyn summoned a ghost to clear his name. She swore never to call a spirit again. She lied.

 

For generations, the family of Mina Zanetti, a former friend of Evelyn, has worked as mediums, using the ocean’s power to guide the dead to their final resting place. But as sea levels rise, the ghosts grow more dangerous and Mina has been shut out of the family business. When Evelyn performs another summoning that goes horribly wrong, the two girls must navigate their growing attraction to each other while solving the mystery of who was really behind the drowning summer…before the line between life and death dissolves for good.

Wild and Wicked Things - Francesca May 

In the aftermath of World War I, a naive woman is swept into a glittering world filled with dark magic, romance, and murder in this lush and decadent debut.

 

On Crow Island, people whisper, real magic lurks just below the surface.

 

Neither real magic nor faux magic interests Annie Mason. Not after it stole her future. She’s only on the island to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one.

 

Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the biggest one may be her enigmatic new neighbor.

 

Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. And when Annie witnesses a confrontation between Bea and Emmeline at one of the island's extravagant parties, she is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested, and the cost of illicit magic might be death.

Those are the top 10 book releases of April 2022 - which ones will you be adding to your TBR?