If your “to be read” list isn’t already out of control, consider this your warning. The next wave of releases is stacked with sharp thrillers, quietly devastating literary fiction and a few titles that will have everyone talking the moment they land. From dark, offbeat crime to emotionally rich storytelling, these are the books worth pre-ordering, bookmarking and clearing your schedule for. Here are a few of our favourites coming soon.
Mrs Shim Is A Killer – Kang Jiyoung, translated by Paige Morris
From a major new international voice -a gritty, humorous Korean literary crime novel.
Recently widowed and unemployed, Mrs Shim and her two children face an empty fridge. As her job options run out, she answers an ad for the Smile Detective Agency. Within weeks, she has a new line of work…
By day, she prepares kimchi for her family and cares for her neighbour with dementia; by night, Mrs Shim is out on contract. But what starts as a need for survival escalates into a thirst for vengeance. Mrs Shim is done with being everyone’s doormat.
April 28 | $38
The Calamity Club – Kathryn Stockett
Kathryn Stockett’s first novel since the global bestselling phenomenon, The Help.
Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned to rely on no one since her mother disappeared and she was left among the “unadoptable” girls at the town orphanage.
When she meets Birdie, a young woman uncovering unsettling truths about her socialite sister’s charmed life, their fates become entwined with a group of women who refuse to be overlooked. In a town steeped in hypocrisy, even the smallest act of defiance can carry dangerous consequences…
May 5 | $38
Shrink Solves Murder – Philippa Perry
The first novel from the psychotherapist and author of the bestselling The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read.
When a body is found near Beachy Head, the police quickly rule it a suicide. But local psychotherapist Patricia Phillips isn’t convinced.
Used to listening for what lies beneath the surface, Pat begins to suspect someone wanted her patient dead. With the help of her best friend Prichard, she sets out to uncover the truth.
April 28 | $38
Such A Nice Girl – Andrea Mara
Two missing girls. One murder. Is your daughter the victim or the killer?
The morning after a glamorous wedding, two mothers wake to a nightmare: their twenty-four-year-old daughters have vanished. In the pool house they shared, there’s a smashed lamp, a blood stain on the carpet and a ringing phone.
As the police begin their search, a chilling possibility emerges — is one daughter trying to kill the other?
From the author of All Her Fault, recently made into a TV series screening on TVNZ.
April 28 | $38
The Things We Never Say – Elizabeth Strout
A poignant novel about loneliness, friendship and the secrets we carry.
Artie Dam is a man with a secret… but one day, he learns that life has been keeping a secret from him.
This is a standalone, not part of the Olive Kitteridge/Lucy Barton/Bob Burgess worlds, but has the same feeling as and loose connections to Strout’s other books. Ostensibly about one man’s life, it’s also about the state of the USA and the world.
May 5 | $38
