JDCMustReadBooks
An online marketing consultant, an avid reader of 400 + books a year. Professional reader, reviewer, and blogger. Enjoy ARCs and new releases.
20 Top Books Coming April
April Spring Book Countdown
Pub Date Order
A Criminal Defense
ISBN: 978-1503943421
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Publication Date: 4/1/2017
Format: Audio
Narrator: Peter Berkrot
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
**Debut**
Losing the trial of his life could mean losing everything.
When a young reporter is found dead and a prominent Philadelphia businessman is accused of her murder, Mick McFarland finds himself involved in the case of his life. The defendant, David Hanson, was Mick’s close friend in law school, and the victim, a TV news reporter, had reached out to Mick for legal help only hours before her death.
Mick’s played both sides of Philadelphia’s courtrooms. As a top-shelf defense attorney and former prosecutor, he knows all the tricks of the trade. And he’ll need every one of them to win. Read More Buy the Book
The Sisters of Blue Mountain
By: Karen Katchur
ISBN: 1250066824
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: 4/4/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 5 Stars
For Linnet, owner of a Bed and Breakfast in Mountain Springs, Pennsylvania, life has been a bit complicated lately. Hundreds of snow geese die overnight in the dam near the B&B, sparking a media frenzy, threatening the tourist season, and bringing her estranged younger sister, Myna, to town. If that isn't enough, the women's father has been charged with investigating the incident.
But when a younger expert is brought in to replace him on the case and then turns up dead on Linnet's B&B’s property, their father becomes the primary suspect. As the investigation unfolds, the sisters will have to confront each other, their hidden past, and a side of Mountain Springs not seen before.
Karen Katchur has written a thrilling novel of sisters and the secrets that bind them that is sure to appeal to readers of her acclaimed first novel, The Secrets of Lake Road. Read More Buy the Book
The Night the Lights Went Out
By: Karen White
ISBN: 9780451488381
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: 4/11/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 5 Stars + +
Top Books of 2017
**Blog Tour April 11**
From the New York Times bestselling author of Flight Patterns comes a stunning new novel about a young single mother who discovers that the nature of friendship is never what it seems....
Recently divorced, Merilee Talbot Dunlap moves with her two children to the Atlanta suburb of Sweet Apple, Georgia. It’s not her first time starting over, but her efforts at a new beginning aren’t helped by an anonymous local blog that dishes about the scandalous events that caused her marriage to fail. Read More Buy the Book
The Widow of Wall Street
ISBN: 9781501131349
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: 4/11/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 5 Stars
A provocative new novel by bestselling author Randy Susan Meyers about the seemingly blind love of a wife for her husband as he conquers Wall Street, and her extraordinary, perhaps foolish, loyalty during his precipitous fall.
Phoebe recognizes fire in Jake Pierce’s belly from the moment they meet as teenagers. As he creates a financial dynasty, she trusts him without hesitation—unaware his hunger for success hides a dark talent for deception.
When Phoebe learns her husband’s triumph and vast reach rests on an elaborate Ponzi scheme her world unravels. As Jake’s crime is uncovered, the world obsesses about Phoebe. Did she know her life was fabricated by fraud? Was she his accomplice? Read More Buy the Book
One Perfect Lie
By: Lisa Scottoline
ISBN: 978-1250099563
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: 4/11/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 4 Stars
One Perfect Lie is an emotional thriller and a suburban crime story that will keep you guessing until you turn the very last page. On the surface, it tells the tale of the struggling single mother of a high-school pitcher, a shy kid so athletically talented that he’s being recruited for a full-ride scholarship to a Division I college, with a future in major-league baseball.
But the mother fears that she’s losing her grip on her son because he’s being lured down a darker path by one of his teammates, a secretly disturbed young man from an affluent family, whose excellent grades and fun-loving manner conceal his violent criminal plans.
One Perfect Lie is a riveting and suspenseful family drama, and by the time you close the book, you will realize that nothing was as it seemed at the beginning. Read More Buy the Book
The Perfect Stranger
By: Megan Miranda
ISBN: 978-1501107993
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 4/11/2017
Format: Other
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
In the masterful follow-up to the runaway hit All the Missing Girls—a “fiendishly plotted thriller” (Publishers Weekly)—a journalist sets out to find a missing friend, a friend who may never have existed at all.
Confronted by a restraining order and the threat of a lawsuit, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs to get out of Boston when she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who has just left a troubled relationship. Emmy proposes they move to rural Pennsylvania, where Leah can get a teaching position and both women can start again. But their new start is threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later.
The Hideaway
By: Lauren K. Denton
ISBN: 9780718084226
Publisher: Thomas Nelson--FICTION
Publication Date: 4/11/2017
Format: Paperback
My Rating: 5 Stars +
**Debut**
“A story both powerful and enchanting: a don’t-miss novel in the greatest southern traditions of storytelling.” —Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author
When her grandmother’s will wrenches Sara back home from New Orleans, she learns more about Margaret Van Buren in the wake of her death than she ever did in life.
After her last remaining family member dies, Sara Jenkins goes home to The Hideaway, her grandmother Mags's ramshackle B&B in Sweet Bay, Alabama. She intends to quickly tie up loose ends then return to her busy life and thriving antique shop in New Orleans. Instead, she learns Mags has willed her The Hideaway and charged her with renovating it—no small task considering Mags’s best friends, a motley crew of senior citizens, still live there.
“Two endearing heroines and their poignant storylines of love lost and found make this the perfect book for an afternoon on the back porch with a glass of sweet tea.” —Karen White, New York Times bestselling author Read More Buy the Book
The Day I Died
By: Lori Rader-Day
ISBN: 0062560298
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: 4/11/2017
Format: Paperback
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
From the award-winning author of Little Pretty Things comes this gripping, unforgettable tale of a mother’s desperate search for two lost boys.
Anna Winger knows people better than they know themselves with only a glance—at their handwriting. Hired by companies seeking trustworthy employees and by the lovelorn hoping to find happiness, Anna likes to keep the real mess of other people’s lives at arm’s length and on paper. But when she is called to use her expertise on a ransom note left behind at a murder scene in the small town she and her son have recently moved to, the crime inevitably gets under Anna’s skin. Was the child kidnapped from his home by his own mother, trying to save him from his abusive father? Thirteen years ago, Anna did the same thing for her unborn son, now a troubled teen rebelling against the protected life she’s given him. Read More Buy the Book
The Fix
By: David Baldacci
Amos Decker #3
ISBN: 978-1455586561
Publisher: Grand Central
Publication Date: 4/18/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 5 Stars
THE NEW MEMORY MAN NOVEL!
Amos Decker witnesses a murder just outside FBI headquarters. A man shoots a woman execution-style on a crowded sidewalk, then turns the gun on himself.
Even with Decker's extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, the killing is baffling. Decker and his team can find absolutely no connection between the shooter--a family man with a successful consulting business--and his victim, a schoolteacher. Nor is there a hint of any possible motive for the attack.
Enter Harper Brown. An agent of the Defense Intelligence Agency, she orders Decker to back off the case. The murder is part of an open DIA investigation, one so classified that Decker and his team aren't cleared for it. Read More Buy the Book
Gone Without a Trace
By: Mary Torjussen
ISBN: 9780399585012
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: 4/18/2017
Format: Other
My Rating: 3 Stars
**April 18 Blog Tour Host **
A jaw-dropping novel of psychological suspense that asks, If the love of your life disappeared without a trace, how far would you go to find out why?
Hannah Monroe's boyfriend, Matt, is gone. His belongings have disappeared from their house. Every call she ever made to him, every text she ever sent, every photo of him and any sign of him on social media have vanished. It's as though their last four years together never happened.
As Hannah struggles to get through the next few days, with humiliation and recriminations whirring through her head, she knows that she'll do whatever it takes to find him again and get answers. Read More Buy the Book
The Secret Room
By: Sandra Block
Zoe Goldman #3
ISBN: 9781455570201
Publisher: Grand Central
Publication Date: 4/18/2017
Format: Paperback
My Rating: 4 Stars
"I am a forever-fan of the Zoe Goldman series and will read anything Block writes. You should too." -Lisa Scottoline,New York Times bestselling author
Her patients are dying. Some are apparent suicides and others possible accidents, but rumors are flying that Dr. Zoe Goldman is an angel of death- intentionally helping hopeless cases go to a "better place"- or, worse yet, a dangerously incompetent doctor.
As a new psychiatry fellow at the local correctional facility, Zoe is still learning the ropes while watching her back to avoid some dangerous prisoners. As the deaths mount up, Zoe is wracked with horror and guilt, feverishly trying to figure out what is going wrong and even questioning her own sanity. Read More Buy the Book
Falling Darkness
By: Karen Harper
South Shores #3
ISBN: 978-0778319900
Publisher: MIRA
Publication Date: 4/18/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
At the mercy of a treacherous sea…
Claire Britten's training never prepared her for this—the forensic psychology curriculum didn't cover plane crashes. Or how to help fellow survivors cope, seven frightened people huddled in two small rafts awaiting a rescue that may never come. Especially when three of them are your ex-husband, your young daughter—and the man you love, Nick Markwood, whose pursuit by a criminal mastermind forced you all to run in the first place.
When the bedraggled crew finally reaches dry land, they are still far from safe. Nick tries to secure transport to their witness-protection placement, urging everyone to stick to the identities laid out for them. Read More Buy the Book
Slightly South of Simple
The Peachtree Bluff Series #1
ISBN:1501158058
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication Date: 4/25/2017
Format: Other
My Rating: 5 Stars +
Top Books of 2017
From the next “major voice in Southern fiction” (New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand) comes the first in an all-new series chronicling the journeys of three sisters and their mother—and a secret from their past that has the potential to tear them apart and reshape their very definition of what it means to be a family.
Caroline Murphy swore she’d never set foot back in the small Southern town of Peachtree Bluff; she was a New York girl born and bred and the worst day of her life was when, in the wake of her father’s death, her mother selfishly forced her to move—during her senior year of high school, no less—back to that hick-infested rat trap where she'd spent her childhood summers. Read More Buy the Book
Beartown
By: Fredrik Backman
ISBN: 978-1501160769
Publisher: Atria
Publication Date: 4/25/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 5 Stars
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here, comes a poignant, charming novel about a forgotten town fractured by scandal, and the amateur hockey team that might just change everything.
Winning a junior ice hockey championship might not mean a lot to the average person, but it means everything to the residents of Beartown, a community slowly being eaten alive by unemployment and the surrounding wilderness. A victory like this would draw national attention to the ailing town: it could attract government funding and an influx of talented athletes who would choose Beartown over the big nearby cities. Read More
Anything Is Possible
By: Elizabeth Strout
ISBN: 9780812989403
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 4/25/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 5 Stars
From #1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout comes a brilliant latticework of fiction that recalls Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity.
Written in tandem with My Name Is Lucy Barton and drawing on the small-town characters evoked there, these pages reverberate with the themes of love, loss, and hope that have drawn millions of readers to Strout’s work.
With the stylistic brilliance and subtle power that distinguish the work of this great writer, Elizabeth Strout has created another transcendent work of fiction, with characters who will live in readers’ imaginations long after the final page is turned. Read More Buy the Book
One Good Thing
By: Wendy Wax
Ten Beach Road Novel #5
ISBN: 978-0451488619
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: 4/25/2017
My Rating: 4 Stars
From the USA Today bestselling author of Sunshine Beach, a story of four women trying to rebuild more than their lives...
Before you can fix it up, you might have to tear it down...
Embroiled in a battle to regain control of their renovation-turned-reality TV show, Do Over, Maddie, Avery, Nikki, and Kyra find themselves holding tight to the frayed ends of their friendship and relationships.
Maddie must face the realities of dating a rock star once again topping the charts and deal with her hapless ex-husband, while Avery is caught up in family drama even as she attempts to transform a tiny cottage into a home for the newly impoverished heiress who helped bankroll their last renovation.
But friendship is made for times like these, to keep each other—and their dreams—from crumbling. Read More Buy the Book
The Red Hunter
By: Lisa Unger
ISBN: 9781501101670
Publisher: Touchstone
Publication Date: 4/25/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 4 Stars
What is the difference between justice and revenge? In this buzzworthy new standalone thriller by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger, two wronged women on very different paths find themselves in the same dark place…
Claudia Bishop’s perfect life fell apart when the aftermath of a brutal assault left her with a crumbling marriage, a newborn daughter, and a constant sense of anxiety about the world around her. Now, looking for a fresh start with a home restoration project and growing blog, Claudia takes on a crumbling old house—one that unbeknownst to her has an ugly history and may hide long buried secrets. Read More Buy the Book
Burntown
By: Jennifer McMahon
ISBN: 9780385541367
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication Date: 4/25/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 3 Stars
Ashford, Vermont, might look like your typical sleepy New England college town, but to the shadowy residents who live among the remains of its abandoned mills and factories, it’s known as “Burntown.”
Eva Sandeski, known as “Necco” on the street, has been a part of this underworld for years, ever since the night her father Miles drowned in a flood that left her and her mother Lily homeless. A respected professor, Miles was also an inventor of fantastic machines, including one so secret that the plans were said to have been stolen from Thomas Edison’s workshop. According to Lily, it’s this machine that got Miles murdered.
Necco has always written off this claim as the fevered imaginings of a woman consumed by grief. But when Lily dies under mysterious circumstances, and Necco’s boyfriend is murdered, she’s convinced her mother was telling the truth. Now, on the run from the man called “Snake Eyes,” Necco must rely on other Burntown outsiders to survive. Read More Buy the Book
The Girl Who Was Taken
By: Charlie Donlea
ISBN: 1496701003
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: 4/25/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
Charlie Donlea, one of the most original new voices in suspense, returns with a haunting novel, laden with twists and high tension, about two abducted girls—one who returns, one who doesn’t—and the forensics expert searching for answers.
Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are both high school seniors in the small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. When they disappear from a beach party one warm summer night, police launch a massive search. No clues are found, and hope is almost lost until Megan miraculously surfaces after escaping from a bunker deep in the woods.
A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has turned Megan from local hero to national celebrity. It’s a triumphant, inspiring story, except for one inconvenient detail: Nicole is still missing. Read More Buy the Book
I Found You
By: Lisa Jewell
ISBN: 9781501154591
Publisher: Atria
Publication Date: 4/25/2017
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 4 Stars
A young bride, a lonely single mother, and an amnesiac man of dubious origin lie at the heart of New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell’s next suspenseful drama that will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty and Paula Hawkins.
In a windswept British seaside town, single mom Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside.
Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed. Read More Buy the Book
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