April recommended lists you don’t want to miss
April’s arrival means spring has officially begun and the days are finally lasting longer! With it also comes many new things to celebrate, including Earth Day and National Poetry Month. And apparently a Solar Eclipse that you may have heard a thing or two about. Your patrons are probably seeing displays for all three, and more, while they wait for the upcoming releases this month. Here are a a few lists to shop in Marketplace with plenty of titles to keep them busy in the meantime.
Earth Day
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This list has titles for all audiences, from narrative nonfiction about nature and our climate to cookbooks with plant-based recipes. We have everything you need for your patrons to celebrate our planet and learn how to tackle the important issues.
Featured Title
Cool Food by Robert Downey Jr.
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From your OverDrive Digital Content Librarian (DCL): This book has been promoted by the New York Times for months and it’s the perfect feature for our Earth Day list. Along with Thomas Kostigen, Downey’s journey through the book explains how to reduce your environmental impact in simple ways. Planning meals yourself or with meal kits and using new recipes with sustainable food are just some of the options Downey and Kostigen discuss during their travels. From the grocery store to the kitchen and everything in between, both authors discuss how “cool food” is vital to our culture and can benefit us in ways we may never have thought of.
National Poetry Month
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April is the time for poetry to shine. Whether you’re a fan of the classics or something more contemporary, there are plenty of titles for your patrons to choose from. If they’ve never checked out poetry before, now is the perfect time to encourage them to try something new!
Top Titles of April
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Featured Title
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
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From the publisher: In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family’s social position.
What begins as simple amusement for the nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the lines between magic, science, and fraud are never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santángel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.
April Blockbusters
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Featured Title
Funny Story by Emily Henry
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From the publisher: Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads —Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?
Top Mystery/Thriller of April
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Featured Title
Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack
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From the publisher: All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series—is that too much to ask?
Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor’s life—the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life—Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.
Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker—and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly—theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?
Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is the irresistible and hilarious series debut from Catherine Mack, introducing bestselling fictional author Eleanor Dash on her Italian book tour that turns into a real-life murder mystery, as her life starts to imitate the world in her books.
Top Romance of April
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Featured Title
Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
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From the publisher: Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it’s now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They’ll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea… and it just might work.
Emma hadn’t planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.
It’s supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma’s toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they’re suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected—including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?
Top Nonfiction of April
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Featured Title
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
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From the publisher: On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.
At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.
More April lists you don’t want to miss
Top Fantasy of April. Shop the list here.
Top Sci-Fi of April. Shop the list here.
If you need help shopping, don’t hesitate to reach out to your Digital Content Librarian. You can find your DCL’s information in the Support tab of Marketplace.
About the author: Sarah Filiberto spent 10 years in public libraries answering reference questions, providing community outreach to seniors, and even helping run Nerf nights for teens. At OverDrive, she spends most of her time helping public libraries utilize their digital collections and making some of the fun lists you see on Libby! In her spare time she loves to read, cross stitch, and crochet. She can also be found spoiling her 4 year old lab mix, Buddy, and his brother, a 4 year old cat, Franklin.
