Every month, librarians from across the country pick the upcoming book releases they’re most excited to get their hands on. This month, we have a re-telling of Pinocchio full of quirky and charming characters, a thriller set in the classical music world, a humorous anti-heist novel, and three tales of horrors that move unseen, including one set aboard a spaceship.

Top Pick: In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune

Clearly if you need a book about a robot that’s guaranteed to have you break out into heaving sobs, this is the novel for you. Klune’s masterful retelling of Pinocchio — a little bit science fiction, a little bit dystopian, and a little bit book-clubby–is a sure-fire winner with so much appeal on so many levels it should prompt readers of all genres to step into something new and original. For fans of The Maker of Swans and The Night Circus. —Douglas Beatty, Baltimore County Public Library

While you wait: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose

Ciara is a perfect mom and influencer who knows what to do, buy, and promote in her small Irish town. Ciara also is an irresponsible woman who plays friends against each other, eats up and spits out all the town husbands, and seals her own fate with her reprehensible behavior. An Orient Express-like cast shines in this twisty domestic thriller about secrets and lies. —Donna Ballard, East Meadow Public Library, East Meadow, NY

While you wait: Regrets Only by Kieran Scott

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her. Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.

When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins exploring her family’s history, starting with the biological mother she never knew. As she goes deeper into the lives of the women in her family, she learns that heartbreak and tragedy are not the only things she has in common with her ancestors.

Because the crying woman was with them, too. She is La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican legend. And she will not leave until Alejandra follows her mother, her grandmother, and all the women who came before her into the darkness.

While you wait: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Homecoming by Kate Morton

Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia.

Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story, struggling to make ends meet. When her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, suffers a fall and is raced to the hospital, Jess returns to care for her. In Nora’s bedroom, she discovers a true crime book, chronicling the police investigation into a long-buried tragedy: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. It is only when Jess skims through the book that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous crime.

While you wait: Exiles by Jane Harper

Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge

In Paris after WWII, Julia Child, her husband Paul, sister Dort, and Tabitha, a half French American
ex-pat, are all recent arrivals. The romance, sights, sounds, and food of the city are delightful enough; add a murder committed with one of Julia’s knives, and a wonderful series is born. For fans of culinary mysteries, historical mysteries, and the City of Light. —Jennifer Winberry, Hunterdon County Library

While you wait: Death in Paris by Emilia Bernhard

Moorewood Family Rules by HelenKay Dimon

Jillian Moorewood is the oldest child from that meet-cute-gone-wrong marriage. The stable one. The sensible and dependable one. The one who protects and fixes. The one who went to prison to save their sorry butts. Now, thirty-nine months later, she’s out and she’s more than a little pissed. With the help of a great aunt (crooked but lovable), a bodyguard (who is a nice surprise after three years in prison), and a few allies (all working undercover), Jillian starts to put her life back together. She kicks out a few mooching relatives living under her roof, sets limits on everyone’s access to the money, ducks from their various attacks, and sees if that bodyguard is maybe interested in sticking around for a while. For the first time, she’s Jillian Moorewood, her own woman, and she’s ready to figure out who she is. 

While you wait: The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson for another story of adult children setting boundaries with wacky (this time, performance artist) relatives.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

A virtuoso pianist gives up her future as a musician to work at a high-end wellness store in New York City where the pursuit of beauty comes at a staggering cost. Holistik is known for its remarkable products and outrageous procedures: remoras that suck cheap Botox from the body,eyelash extensions made of spider silk, emotional support ducklings bred to imprint on their owners. Every product is ethically sourced and made with nothing but the highest quality ingredients. But beneath these fancy creams and tinctures lies a terrible truth that threatens to consume her. After all, beauty is nothing without ugliness.

While you wait: Chlorine by Jade Song

The Scourge between Stars by Ness Brown

A tense, claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set aboard a doomed generation ship harboring something terrible within its walls.

As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their forebears’ failed colony on a distant planet. Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the treacherous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn’s crew has reached their breaking point. As unrest begins to spread throughout the ship’s Wards, a new threat emerges, picking off crew members in grim, bloody fashion. Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship’s unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.

While you wait: Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina

Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation’s casino…and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step-an ancient tribal myth come to life, one that’s intent on devouring her whole. With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she’s sure lies in the legends of her tribe’s past. When Anna’s own little sister also disappears, she’ll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation — both old and new — are strong, and sometimes, it’s the stories that never get told that are the most important.

While you wait: My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones or Highway of Tears by Jessica McDiarmid

Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb

Bern Hendricks has just received the call of a lifetime. As one of the world’s preeminent experts on the famed twentieth-century composer Frederick Delaney, Bern knows everything there is to know about the man behind the music. When Mallory Roberts, a board member of the distinguished Delaney Foundation and direct descendant of the man himself, asks for Bern’s help authenticating a newly discovered piece, which may be his famous lost opera, RED, he jumps at the chance.

With the help of his tech-savvy acquaintance Eboni, Bern soon discovers that the truth is far more complicated than history would have them believe. Armed with more questions than answers and caught in the crosshairs of a powerful organization who will stop at nothing to keep their secret hidden, Bern and Eboni will move heaven and earth in their dogged quest to right history’s wrongs.

While you wait: Ecstasy by Mary Sharratt

See the full list here: LIBRARY READS APRIL 2023

Descriptions provided the publisher unless otherwise noted.