Don’t worry, you’ve come to a safe space.
To be clear, the same can’t be said for the rest of the internet, which every April Fools’ Day lards its usual mystery blend of fact, rumor and misinformation with, well, still more misinformation — this time in the service of what some allege to be humor.
But you’ve found sanctuary in the next few hundred words, promise. Here are six real books coming out this week, with dust jackets that reflect their real contents: mysteries and mishaps, often told with a sly smirk. Because something has to make sense in this crazy world, dang it.
Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance, by Joe Dunthorne
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Flesh, by David Szalay
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I See You’ve Called in Dead, by John Kenney
It doesn’t sound outlandish that a professional obituary writer would draft an obituary for himself at one time or another – perhaps even featuring a few flattering embellishments, why not? But problems arise when said writer – Bud Stanley, the ill-starred hero of Kenney’s comic novel – drunkenly publishes this whopper-laden exercise in wish fulfillment during his own lifetime. Opportunities arise too, though, and it’s not long before his own death turns his life on its head.
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Rabbit Moon, by Jennifer Haigh
Separated for years by the centrifugal forces of divorce and estrangement, the Litvak family is yanked back together by tragedy: Daughter Lindsey, victim of a hit-and-run car collision, lies in a coma in a hospital in Shanghai, while the parents she left half a world away must reunite at her bedside, to piece together clues of the life she lived without them. It’s a portrait, told in time jumps, of a family fractured by nothing so much as their own profoundly human flaws.
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The Usual Desire to Kill, by Camilla Barnes
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Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man), by Jesse Q. Sutanto
She’s not Hercule Poirot, exactly, but Vera Wong is no rookie gumshoe either. In Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, published in 2023, the 60-something teashop owner and meddling mother already demonstrated her sleuthing skills – and her utter inability to just mind her own business. Sutanto’s big-hearted follow up finds the meddlesome detective taking on a new case – the disappearance of a mysterious social media influencer – whether or not anyone actually asked for her help. Vera knows they need her, don’t worry.
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Source: www.npr.org