So what looks ripe for the to-be-read pile in April? Several of our local Connecticut authors have new books, and you know what our motto is: Eat, Sleep, Read Local! I'll stick to item three for today.
"Always Emily" by Michaela MacColl
The latest novel by Michaela MacColl, "Always Emily," hits bookstores on Tuesday and is her fourth featuring famed women from history and literature as teens. I got a sneak peak thanks to an advance reader copy and, as with each of MacColl's previous novels, thoroughly enjoyed this combination of history, mystery, and adventure.
"Always Emily" finds Emily and Charlotte Bronte searching for the connection among a suspicious death, a string of burglaries, a secret society, and a handsome stranger with a mysterious past.
As always, MacColl deftly weaves together history and mystery, combining a page-turner of a plot with thorough character development and rich sensory details that bring the past vividly to life. What we know historically about the lives of the Bronte family blends seamlessly with imagined experiences that could plausibly explain their novels, a treat for book lovers familiar with the themes in their work.
MacColl's previous novels include "Nobody's Secret" (teen Emily Dickinson solves a murder), "Prisoner's in the Palace" (England's future Queen Victoria is a sheltered teen coming into her own), and "Promise the Night" (Beryl Markham's adventure-filled childhood in Kenya). I loved them all for their plucky but human protagonists, for the way MacColl blends fine details with a larger portrait of the women and their times, and for stoking my curiosity to find out more about their lives.
More new books by local authors, in order of publication dates:
"The Deliverers 3: The Golden Dragon of Ang" by Greg Slomba
The third book in Slomba's fantasy young adult series was released March 26.
The novel finds the Dragon Islands in chaos, with no Dragon to reveal the mythical Golden Dragon of Ang's wisdom and 12 – 15 year old children mysteriously disappearing. While the three Deliverers—Eric Scott, Stig the owl, Kate Endria and Hallo Tosis the dwarf—search for clues to find the missing children, a balance of power may be shifting elsewhere on the islands, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Pakkala's coming of age novel for middle-grade readers was released April 1.
Two 8th grade girls whose lives look very different on the outside narrate their experiences in alternating chapters. After her father's death, Jasmine has moved to Connecticut with her mother looking for a fresh start but is still struggling, while Maddie seems to have it all.
"Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing" by Nina Sankovitch
This second memoir by Sankovitch, author of "Tolstoy and the Purple Chair," comes out April 15. She will speak about the book at Westport's Barnes & Noble on April 24.
This meditation on handwritten letters began when Sankovitch discovered a trunk of letters in her backyard, written from a Princeton freshman to his mother at the turn of the 20th century. Her discovery coincided with her son's leaving home for his first year at Harvard, inspiring Sankovitch to explore the place of letters through history, from ancient Egypt, medieval times, modernity, and even in epistolary novels.
"Roberto's Return" by Paul Ferrante
The third young adult novel in Ferrante's action-packed T. J. Jackson Mysteries series will be released April 24.
"Roberto's Return" combines two of Ferrante's writing lives: in addition to his young adult novels, he is a longtime baseball contributor for "Sports Collectors Digest." His latest novel brings teen paranormal investigators, T. J. Jackson and his friends Bortnicker and LouAnne, to Cooperstown, where they have been called to look into the appearance of the ghost of Roberto Clemente, the baseball hall-of-famer who died mysteriously on a humanitarian mission to Nicaragua.
Ferrante shared with Books, Ink some background on the book. Click here to read more about it.