ABC News
Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest?
OffOn
April is showering us with an abundance of books.
• 26 min read
Escape into 34 books this April
April showers bring May flowers. Well, this April is showering us with an abundance of verdant and colorful books, all delighting the senses like an unexpected flower patch.
Novels translated from Italian and German, memoirs about murder and massacres, hilarious essay collections, poignant short stories and many food-themed tomes combine to give us a rainbow collection of fantastic literary fun.
If only the rain would stop.
ABC News Photo Illustration
April 6 The Light of Days by Judy Batalion
January was another lockdown month worse than ever, because now we have a curfew at 8 PM and huge fines for breaking it, which means it’s not just illegal but pretty much impossible to see anyone. Isolation is really getting to me. The numbers are going down, though, which is good, and people are starting to be vaccinated, though I am low on the list. In any case, I spent a lot of time in January on pure escapist reading, and I read twenty-eight books in a variety of genres, with a very high rate of excellence.
A delightful romance, recommended by a friend. Two men in London who haven’t been making relationships work pretend to be each other’s boyfriends and of course end up falling in love. Really well written, memorable, and really fun to read. As an attempt to read feel-good romances that are not set in Italy but are actually good, this was really successful.
Bookshop At the start of this stunning crime novel from McLain (
The Paris Wife), Anna Hart, a San Francisco detective whoâs on indefinite leave following a tragic incident that has brought her marriage to the brink and destroyed her faith in herself, is driving to Mendocino, Calif., where she spent part of her childhood with the foster parents who offered her a first taste of stability. Soon after she arrives in town, she spots a missing person poster: 15-year-old Cameron Curtis, adopted daughter of a recently retired actor, has vanished. Cameronâs fate reminds Anna of the still-unsolved murder of a childhood friend that occurred when she was in high school. âSomeone has to save this girl,â she resolves. â
23 books to read in 2021
Today s best articles
Daily business briefing
Solving COVID newsletter
It has been nearly a year now since most of us have enjoyed a book in any of the usual places: a coffee shop, on a commute, in an airplane, on a beach. But that hasn t stopped people from reading â in fact, the opposite. Speaking personally, 2020 made me
extra grateful for all the moments I spent with paper and ink, away from yet another screen containing no good news.
Now we seem on the cusp of what is hopefully the beginning of the end, and it becomes possible again to imagine reading books in places like coffee shops or on transcontinental flights. But our to-be-read piles might be starting to look a little shorter after all those months in quarantine.