Forthcoming Fiction
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April 2026
Hope Rises by David Baldacci
Hope Rises
by David Baldacci
Release Date: April 14

Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him. He has nothing left to lose and with long, rigorous training under his belt the gentle and sensitive Nash has transformed into something he never thought he'd be: a physically imposing man with lethal skills. And now he has only one goal left in life: taking down Victoria Steers. In order to succeed, he's going to need to cross enemy lines and work the job from the inside. But Steers is shrewd and only brings those she trusts completely into her inner circle. Nash must rely on every ounce of his hard-earned skills in order to prove himself an ally to Steers if he's ever going to get close enough to decimate her criminal empire. Yet, despite hating the woman for destroying his life, Nash finds himself oddly drawn to Steers in ways that he never could've imagined. And what he ultimately discovers will turn all he believed upside down, forcing Nash to do something truly unfathomable. So, will the truth set Nash free? Or end him?
Clawed and Dangerous: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery by Rita Mae Brown
Clawed and Dangerous: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery
by Rita Mae Brown
Release Date: April 28

When a series of suspiciously similar deaths begin to pop up across Crozet, Mary Minor Harry Haristeen must connect the dots with the help of her beloved cats and dogs in the latest mystery from Rita Mae Brown and her feline co-author Sneaky Pie Brown. The leaves have fallen in Crozet, Virginia, and with a sudden downpour of cold rain, autumn gloom has settled. But Harry and her best friend, Susan, are determined to cheer up the town, and with the help of a kind local doctor, they just might succeed. Not only is Dr. Anglin kind and generous, he's also the owner of multiple properties, and he agrees to let Harry and Susan use one of his homes to throw a spooky Halloween bash. Harry and Susan quickly bury themselves in the flurry of planning: witches, ghosts, and headless horsemen abound. But around town, things grow even spookier when a local townsperson turns up dead. Soon, one dead body turns into multiple--and what's even spookier is that the deaths seem to be connected. Could these deaths be the result of a lover's quarrel? Or is something even more sinister haunting the town? With help from her feline sidekicks Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and her helpful hounds Tee Tucker and Pirate, Harry has no choice but to get to the bottom of it.
The Sapphire Sea by Davis Bunn
The Sapphire Sea
by Davis Bunn
Release Date: April 28

Being himself is a challenge. When it comes to the bittersweet memories of his late mother, Colin Eames is a relatable boy, recalling her tales of a faraway place called the Sapphire Sea where happiness forever is a way of life. Other than that, Colin is different. To Child Services, he is a prodigy to be nurtured. To his classmates, he's an outsider. To his father, a man of political ambitions and unchecked rage, Colin is a trial, defying the narrowed path his father demands. When Colin is accepted into the Outer Banks Academy for the Gifted, it's his chance to slip out from under his father's control, to chart his own course, and to embark on a quest for the one thing that eludes him: love.  As the years pass and Colin's freedom offers dream opportunities, his yearning to make a connection grows stronger. It's a difficult longing for an awkward teenager for whom the simplest interactions are a mystery. Then he meets Mira, an empathic girl weathering tragic losses of her own. She's there for him, supporting each new step he takes. Even those with Tiana, a history student from Hawaii who ushers Colin into a new world of first kisses, belonging, and trust--far from the confusion and loneliness of his childhood days. For Colin, maybe the promise of the Sapphire Sea wasn't a bedtime story after all, but rather a true and genuine place in the heart--one worth searching and waiting for.
The Patchwork Players: An ELM Creek Quilts Novel by Jennifer Chiaverini
The Patchwork Players: An ELM Creek Quilts Novel
by Jennifer Chiaverini
Release Date: April 14

The cast of a smash TV show arrives at a quilter's retreat for week of camaraderie and creativity that takes some surprising twists in this heartwarming new installment of Jennifer Chiaverini's much-beloved Elm Creek Quilts series. Acclaimed TV actress Julia Merchaud almost can't believe her good fortune. Her beloved historical drama, A Patchwork Life, revived her career and made stars of several younger actors. But Julia's happiness turns to dismay when she learns that the hit show will have only one more season. Can she convince everyone to stay just a little longer? Inspiration comes after a conversation with Summer Sullivan, one of the expert quilters who helped Julia prepare for her role. When Summer confides that Elm Creek Quilt Camp is in financial trouble, Julia concocts a brilliant plan that will help the Elm Creek Quilters and herself. Julia sets about persuading the cast and crew to join her for what she promises will be a marvelous week at a luxurious nineteenth-century mansion amid the autumnal splendor of central Pennsylvania, a creative and dynamic working vacation they'll never forget. Secretly, she hopes the bonding experience will convince them to abandon their other plans and sign on for another few seasons. But after several joyful days of quilting and camaraderie, Julia's scheme takes an unexpected turn. Soon she'll have to make hard choices about which matters more--career or friendship.
Kill for a Million by Janet Dailey
Kill for a Million
by Janet Dailey
Release Date: April 28

Frank Culhane's murder remains unsolved while his widow, Lila, is still battling to keep her beloved ranch from the grasp of his embittered first wife and grown children. As for arresting Frank's killer, time is running out for Detective Sam Rafferty to prove himself and save his career, and for his number one suspect--and Lila's lover--Culhane ranch manager Roper McKenna, to prove his innocence. Both men are staking their fates on the outcome of the imminent reining event of the year: the Run for a Million. Roper's dream of riding in Run for a Million is finally coming true. And for his struggling family, the million-dollar prize will mean everything. He'll be competing on borrowed stallion Fire Dance, with Lila's legendary stallion, One in a Million, as one of his backups. For now, only winning matters. But suddenly, even that is in jeopardy. On the road, a huge semi almost sideswipes Roper's truck and horse trailer. He just manages to save the rig from rolling, but the horses are severely shaken. Was it an accident, or an attempt to sabotage Roper--or to kill Lila, who was supposed to have accompanied him? Meanwhile, others are in turmoil of their own. There's Sam's clandestine affair with Lila's pampered stepdaughter--and murder suspect--Jasmine; dangerous information Jasmine has about her mother; and a long-buried secret Roper's sister harbors that could explode the Culhane dynasty. Then there is the sole witness to Frank's murder--a witness who can't speak, but may have a one in a million chance at revealing the truth.
A Cruise to Die for by Heather Graham
A Cruise to Die for
by Heather Graham
Release Date: April 7

Special Agent Chloe McMurray has been asked to do many things in the name of her job. Going undercover on a cruise ship leaving from her home port of Miami, however, is a new one. Not only that, but she’s tasked with posing as the wife of her federal counterpart, Special Agent Wesley Law. Their investigation? A string of murders and suicides across three states that seem unrelated, until they uncover a deadly technological connection. Every victim was an expert in technology and had some connection to Milestones, a megacorporation with ties to many industries...including the cruise industry. Chloe and Wesley must successfully go undercover as tech employees on the ship hosting the ten-year anniversary of the Milestones cruise company. A tough ask when the two have never met before. They’ll infiltrate the technology events, investigate their fellow passengers and try to uncover what’s really going on. However, danger is never far behind. Their killer can use tech to do the job without lifting a finger, and at sea, there’s no escape if their covers are blown.
A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz
A Deadly Episode
by Anthony Horowitz
Release Date: April 28

They're making a major feature film of the first Hawthorne/Horowitz mystery novel. Except--they're behind schedule, they've run out of money and oh, the star has just been murdered. Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is dead. Or, rather, the actor playing him in the film adaptation of The Word is Murder is. Rising star David Caine has been stabbed, and it seems that everyone on the set had a motive. Caine had just fired his PA. He had fallen out with his director, slept with the screenwriter, humiliated his co-star and dropped his agent days before he was about to sign a multi-million-dollar deal to appear in the next Spider-Man movie. But what if Caine's murderer had made a mistake? What if it was the real Hawthorne who was the intended victim? For it turns out that the brilliant detective may have got it wrong ten years earlier. An innocent man has died in jail. And perhaps someone has decided that Hawthorne must pay the price. From the film set on the south coast of England, the story moves to Reeth, in Yorkshire, the village where Hawthorne grew up. A burned-down school, a car accident that isn't what it seems, blackmail and murder in an Elizabethan country house ... somehow they combine to unlock the secret of what has happened in Hastings. For once, the local police are helpful. DS Sarah Milnes gives Hawthorne carte blanche to investigate and there may even be a hint of romance in the air. Which leaves his hapless sidekick, Horowitz, on his own, stumbling his way to the truth. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, A Deadly Episode is an intriguing page-turner that once again demonstrates why Anthony Horowitz is the reigning king of the modern whodunit.
We Burned So Bright by Tj Klune
We Burned So Bright
by Tj Klune
Release Date: April 28

A heart-wrenching standalone novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, We Burned So Bright follows an elder gay couple on an end-of-the-world road-trip. The road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky...Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they've experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world. Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they've ever known will be gone. Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They're in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it's all over. On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how--impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends. And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough. Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes?
Chasing the Clouds Away by Debbie Macomber
Chasing the Clouds Away
by Debbie Macomber
Release Date: April 28

Maisy Gallagher has her own dreams, but when her father passes away, she selflessly sets them aside to help her family. Despite knowing it was the right thing to do, she can't help but wish for the road not taken. Chase Furst, the hardened heir to a financial empire, is on the other hand primarily focused on his own life and on his work as a bank executive. His childhood was marred by his mother's struggle with addiction, and left him cynical and emotionally distant. But then Chase meets Maisy, a beautiful woman full of optimism and kindness who can see past his defenses. To his surprise and annoyance, she offers to help him during a time of need, and declines his offer of payment. Instead, she asks him to pay it forward--and not with money or a quick fix, but through an act of true selflessness. At a loss, Chase doesn't know where to begin.
Ghost Town by Tom Perrotta
Ghost Town
by Tom Perrotta
Release Date: April 28

Jimmy Perrini lives in 1970s suburban New Jersey, a few miles from Manhattan, but a world apart. At the end of eighth grade, after tragedy strikes, Jimmy finds himself lost in a fog of grief that alienates him from friends and family, drifting instead into troubling friendships with two older teenagers: one a notorious local burnout with a fast car, an endless supply of weed, and a shaky grasp of reality; the other a smart, eccentric girl, whom Jimmy finds himself drawn to as they become entranced by her Ouija board, which may just offer the only salve to their grief. As a fateful public drama unfolds, Jimmy is torn between the occult beyond and the cold realities of the place he has called home. Narrated by a much older Jimmy, a literary-turned-commercial novelist, Ghost Town reveals how the past haunts the present--the way our ghosts are always with us, even when we think we've left them behind.
Death Times Seven: A Daniel Pitt Novel by Anne Perry
Death Times Seven: A Daniel Pitt Novel
by Anne Perry
Release Date: April 14

1913: Junior attorney Daniel Pitt must step in for his friend, fellow attorney Toby Kitteridge, whose parents have been brutally attacked. Toby's mother is dead and his father, a village vicar, is barely alive. With Toby returning to the family home in rural Ipswich, struggling with grief and disbelief, Daniel remains in London to substitute for Toby and defend Peter Ward, on trial for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman. Daniel is convinced that Ward is innocent, yet the evidence seems to prove otherwise. Eager to assist, his pathologist wife, Miriam fford Croft, offers her forensics expertise and exposes a community of fellow pathologists who may have purposefully omitted information from their autopsy reports. Despite Miriam's involvement in the case, Daniel finds himself distracted by his desire to help Toby, who is too distraught to investigate the attack on his parents. And when the evidence points to Toby's father as the killer of Toby's mother, Daniel faces two of the greatest challenges of his young career: proving the innocence of both Peter Ward and Reverend Kitteridge. One mistake in London and a blameless man will hang. One mistake in Ipswich and Toby's father will go to prison for life. 
Paradox by Douglas Preston
Paradox
by Douglas Preston
Release Date: April 21

One of the holiest relics in Christendom, inexplicably defaced. A paranoid old prospector, ritualistically murdered. A controversial exobiologist, tortured and dismembered. When a reclusive man is found dead under grisly circumstances in the Colorado wilderness, CBI Agent Frankie Cash and Eagle County Sheriff Jim Colcord, whom we met in the New York Times bestseller, Extinction, team up again on their most enigmatic and dangerous case yet. Their investigation uncovers a trail of bizarre killings, baffling money transfers, and a fanatical secret society. And all the while, the resurrected Neanderthals, who vanished into the Colorado mountains, seem to be biding their time for something spectacular. 
Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell
Cherry Baby
by Rainbow Rowell
Release Date: April 14

Everybody knows that Cherry's husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie. Almost nobody knows that he isn't coming home. Tom is the creator of Thursday--a semi-autobiographical webcomic that's become an international phenomenon. Semi-autobiographical. That means there's a character in this movie based on Cherry ... Baby. Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby. Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the page--let alone on the big screen. But there's no getting away from it. Baby looks so much like Cherry that strangers recognize her at the grocery store. While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles getting rich and famous and being the internet's latest boyfriend, Cherry is stuck in Omaha taking care of the dog he always wanted and the house they were going to raise a family in ... and wondering who she's supposed to be without him. Cherry had promised to love Tom through thick and thin. She'd meant it. One night, Cherry decides to leave all her problems, including Tom's overgrown puppy, at home. She ventures out to see her favorite band play her favorite album . . . and someone recognizes her from across the room. Russ Sutton knew Cherry when she was a young art student with a fondness for pin-up dresses and patent leather heels. Before Tom. Russ knows Cherry. He likes Cherry. And best of all ... he's never heard of Thursday. 
Revenge Prey by John Sandford
Revenge Prey
by John Sandford
Release Date: April 7

Leonard Summers--not his real name--is on the run. A former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. after providing critical information about Russian spies in U.S. government service, Leonard, his wife Martha, and son Bernard have spent the past year holed up in a CIA facility near Washington. After the CIA makes a deal with the U.S. Marshal Service's Witness Protection Program (WPP), Leonard's family is transported to Minneapolis. The plan is to hide them in a wooded Minneapolis suburb that resembles their former home and dacha near Moscow. The Summers are received at their destination by Lucas Davenport and fellow marshal Shelly White. Unbeknownst to them, the WPP group has been tracked by a Russian hit team. And while nobody in the WPP has ever been attacked...Leonard might be the first victim. As shots are fired and enemies dodged, Lucas must move quickly to uncover where the leak is coming from, before the hit team can strike again.
Lidie: The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton: A Novel by Jane Smiley
Lidie: The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton: A Novel
by Jane Smiley
Release Date: April 21

America's future is precarious; civil war looms on the horizon. After her abolitionist husband is murdered in the lawless Kansas Territory, Lidie Newton returns, in mourning, to her hometown of Quincy, Illinois. But her sisters have little comfort to offer, and Lidie is haunted by the memories of her failures--until she takes an interest in her niece, Annie. Beautiful, self-assured, and mischievous, Annie sticks out in Quincy. She becomes an actress at the local theater, and when she is offered the opportunity to perform abroad, she decides to run away. But travel is dangerous for a young unmarried woman, so Lidie, armed with her pistol and her wit, goes with her. The two women embark on a perilous journey across the Atlantic, rushing toward an unknown future in England. Once they arrive in Liverpool, they vanish into new roles in the household of Annie's benefactor, Mr. Mallory Cunningham. Annie takes a stage name and finds her way to a career, while Lidie becomes her lady's maid. But will either of them be content with her new lot in life? Exuberant and riveting, a sly commentary on truth and beauty and fulfillment that resonates with our times, Lidie delivers a panoramic portrait of a volatile era and the headstrong women trying to live an honest life in it.
A Woman's Place by Danielle Steel
A Woman's Place
by Danielle Steel
Release Date: April 21

In April 1912, twenty-three-year-old Lady Victoria Oldbrooke is traveling with her beloved father from England on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. But when the ship strikes an iceberg and lifeboats are lowered with women and children first, Lord Alfred gives his place to another, and they are separated. Before he goes down with the ship, he asks his friend Bert Banning, a mill owner from Manchester, to promise he'll marry his daughter and care for her. Devastated by the loss of Lord Alfred, Victoria and Bert take comfort in their growing friendship. Bert accepts his role as her guardian but, as friendship turns to deeper feelings, hesitates to propose. Not only is he forty years her senior, but her marrying an industrialist will cause Victoria to be ostracized by the aristocratic world she comes from. But she marries Bert and--cruelly shunned by everyone she knows, even family friends--moves to his home in Manchester. Isolated from her familiar universe and peers, she becomes fascinated by Bert's business and learns all she can about it. When he meets a tragic end, she steps into his shoes and applies everything she has learned, in spite of opposition from all sides. Taking on the risks, the hard decisions, and the responsibilities, Victoria has the sheer grit that it takes to make a difference in a man's world and change the limitations women have had to face and defy for centuries. 
Shadow Strike: A Pike Logan Novel by Brad Taylor
Shadow Strike: A Pike Logan Novel
by Brad Taylor
Release Date: April 21

After its proxies are devastated and its offensive capability pummeled in the latest war in the middle east, a rogue group of Iranian regime officials create a brazen plot to strike back at their hated enemies once and for all. They envision a series of operational dominos culminating in a devastating attack, and the first step is the assassination of the Israeli prime minister. And there's only one assassin with the skills to pull it off: Abdul Rahman, known in the shadows as the Ghost. When a routine prison transfer is ambushed, the Ghost escapes and is given the assignment. The only Operator who can hunt him down is the man who stopped him before: Pike Logan. Pike and his team soon learn that the mission involves something bigger than just the escape of his old enemy. Working with Mossad agents, the pursuit leads the Taskforce to Argentina. They work to unravel the scope of the attack, and the chase leads them through the tempestuous waterfalls of Iguazu and the Triple Frontier, to the vibrant streets of Buenos Aires, and the tiny village of Ushuaia at the End of the World. As the team races against the clock, Pike learns the stakes are much greater than a single life - the consequences extend into the heartland of America itself. The Ghost may hold the key to an escalation that will upend the worldwide balance of power, and if Pike fails, the fallout won't just be personal - it'll be global.
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