The Baroness’ Choices of New Books Publishing This Week
2024, Week 14’s New Books
My choices for this week include Cozy Paranormal Mysteries, Cozy Holiday Mysteries, Spies and Espionage Thrillers, MGs, Cozy Mysteries, Cozy Culinary Mysteries, Police Procedural Mysteries, MG Mysteries, and Sweet Historical Romances.
How is your Easter going if you celebrate? We aren’t doing much over here. It’s better with little kids. Tomorrow is April Fool’s Day, and I can’t believe that tomorrow is April. All of these books I have found this week sound so amazing. I wish there were enough time to read them all.
Jen will be reading two of these books. I read one last month, and I have one coming out the following week.
Here are my choices for New Books Publishing Week 14 of 2024!
A Withering Storm by Amy Boyles
Withering Mysteries #3
Publication Date: March 31, 2024
Genre: Cozy Paranormal Mystery
It’s all come down to this.
Matterhorn by Christopher Reich
Mac Dekker #1
Publication Date: April 1, 2024
Genre: Spies and Espionage Thriller
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A sudden family death and an old nemesis bring retired agent Mac Dekker in from the cold in this alpine thriller from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Reich.
Robbie Steinhardt lives a peaceful life. A fixture of his small alpine village, he tends cattle, minds his own business, and doesn’t dwell on his former life and the family and lover he left behind―back when he was Mac Dekker, CIA.
But when he learns his son Will died following in his footsteps, he needs answers. What mission took Will up into the alpine heights, and why is Ilya Ivashka on the same trail? Ilya―his close friend, his rival in love. Ilya, who framed Mac for treason and sent him into hiding.
Wiping away the years, Mac returns to the field to find the secrets Will hid and finds himself facing the Herculean task of stopping a terrorist plot that threatens thousands. But in a field of double agents, who can he trust?
Continental Drifter by Kathy MacLeod
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Genre: Middle Grade
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With a Thai mother and an American father, Kathy lives in two different worlds. She spends most of the year in Bangkok, where she’s secretly counting the days till summer vacation. That’s when her family travels for twenty-four hours straight to finally arrive in a tiny seaside town in Maine.
Kathy loves Maine’s idyllic beauty and all the exotic delicacies she can’t get back home, like clam chowder and blueberry pie. But no matter how hard she tries, she struggles to fit in. She doesn’t look like the other kids in this rural New England town. Kathy just wants to find a place where she truly belongs, but she’s not sure if it’s in America, Thailand . . . or anywhere.
Murder Backstage by Jessica Fletcher and Terrie Farley Moran
Murder, She Wrote #58
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Genre: Cozy Mystery
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The newest entry in the USA Today bestselling Murder, She Wrote series.
Jessica Fletcher’s British cousin, Emma MacGill, will be traveling to Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, to perform with internationally famous star of stage, screen, and television Derek Braverman in an old-fashioned musical review. Emma would love for Jessica to join her there and suggests she bring along some friends. Having just finished her latest book, Jessica is ready for a vacation and is delighted to agree. Dr. Seth Hazlitt and Sheriff Mort Metzger are huge fans of Braverman, so they are eager to tag along, and their fanboy behavior gives Jessica and Mort’s wife, Maureen, more than occasional cause to roll their eyes.
Upon arrival in Edmonton, Jessica is quickly outed as mystery writer J. B. Fletcher, and despite numerous protests, a hotel staffer arranges a book signing for her. This and touristy adventures arranged for the group make for a much busier trip than Jessica was expecting. When a hotel bartender, who also happens to be a stagehand for Emma’s play, turns up dead backstage at the theater, Jessica’s fun and relaxing vacation quickly becomes anything but.
Murder in a Tourist Town by Lynn Cahoon
Tourist Trap Mystery #0.5
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Genre: Cozy Culinary Mystery
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In this delightful prequel to the beloved Tourist Trap mystery series, lawyer Jill Gardner flees job burnout to take a vacation—and finds a brand-new life on the California coast.
Jill’s family law career is in a rut. Watching a client go back to her abusive husband, yet again—and then learning she’s been passed up for a partnership, yet again—finally prompts her to take a break. She’ll have to dip into her emergency fund. But after all those long days in her windowless office, subsisting on leftover cake from the breakroom, it’s time to smell some flowers.
When she arrives in picturesque South Cove on the Pacific coast, she finds friendly residents, a peaceful beach, and nature’s beauty. But she also witnesses a shouting match between two business owners with a big score to settle. And when someone she knows turns up dead in the local coffee shop, she finds the town needs her skills, just as much as she needs the town. It’s time to set her roots where they belong . . .
Murder Most Owl by Sarah Fox
Magical Menagerie Mystery #1
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Genre: Cozy Paranormal Mystery
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The first in the enchanting new Magical Menagerie mystery series where things are not always what they seem. Georgie Johansen returns to the charming, coastal town of Twilight Cove and quickly finds herself in a whirlwind of romance, magic and murder!
It’s been years since screenwriter Georgie Johansen last visited her Aunt Olivia’s farm in the coastal town of Twilight Cove and things have certainly changed. First of all it’s now an animal sanctuary, and then there’s the new farmhand who’s as mysterious as he is handsome. Her first day on the farm, Georgie encounters the eccentric Dorothy Shale, an older woman who lives in a cabin in the woods. There are rumours that Dorothy’s a witch, but Georgie doesn’t believe that. Although, Dorothy does have an unusual magical presence around her . . .
When Dorothy ends up murdered, suspicion falls on Georgie – she was the one who found the poor woman’s body, and being new in town doesn’t help with the suspicion. Things only get worse when it turns out that Dorothy left her valuable plot of land to Auntie O!
Georgie must act fast to clear her and her aunt’s names by finding the real killer. But as bodies start to mount up, the pressure rises. With the help of the unusual powers of Dorothy’s two dogs and great-horned owl, can Georgie uncover the truth before she becomes the killer’s next target?
Murder on the Dodder by Keith Bruton
Lemon Man #2
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Genre: Police Procedural Mystery
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TASKS:
Get Gun
Kill Doyle
Save JackThe eagerly awaited sequel to The Lemon Man, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best International Novel and a Deadly Pleasures Magazine Top 10 Paperback of the Year.
Patrick Callen is a bike-riding hitman with mild OCD trying to save his crumbling relationship with his live-in girlfriend while racing through Dublin to save his kidnapped mentor from execution. The ransom: ticking off a to-do list of murders that will make Patrick a target of the police, the mob, and his closest friends…and doom his romance…if it doesn’t get him killed first.
Sing It Like Celia by Monica Mancillas
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Genre: Middle Grade
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Perfect for fans of The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise and Merci Suárez Changes Gears, Sing It Like Celia is a revelatory story about a Mexican American girl who finds her voice and herself with the help of her role model and icon, Celia Cruz.
Twelve-year-old Salva Sanchez has always been a fan of Celia Cruz, also known as “the queen of salsa.” Her love of Celia stems from her mother, who leaves Salva without explanation one awful day. Now Salva is stuck with her investigative journalist father in an RV campground. In the middle of nowhere.
As Salva acclimates to her new environment and desperately tries to figure out why her mother left, she befriends a posse of campground kids who have started a band. When the kids discover that Salva has an amazing singing voice, they convince her to join their group. Soon, Salva learns how to find her voice—and herself—with the help of her newfound friends, her dad, and the one and only Celia Cruz.
The Mystery of Locked Rooms by Lindsay Currie
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Genre: Middle Grade Mystery
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Crack the codes. Find the treasure. Escape the house.
From the acclaimed author of Scritch Scratch and What Lives in the Woods comes a action-packed adventure novel about three friends who team up to find a hidden treasure in an abandoned 1950’s funhouse.
Twelve-year-old Sarah Greene wants nothing more from her seventh-grade year than to beat the hardest escape room left in her town with her best friends, West, and Hannah. But when a foreclosure notice shows up on Sarah’s front door, everything changes. Since her father became ill two years ago, things have been bad, but not lose your house bad…until now.
Sarah feels helpless until the day Hannah mentions a treasure rumored to be hidden in the walls of an abandoned funhouse. According to legend, Hans, Stefan, and Karl Stein were orphaned at eight years old and lived with different families until they were able to reunite as adults. Their dream was to build the most epic funhouse in existence. They wanted their experience to be more than mirror mazes and optical illusions, so they not only created elaborate riddles and secret passages, but they also claimed to have hidden a treasure inside the funhouse.
Once in, Sarah, West, and Hannah realize the house is unlike any escape room they’ve attempted. There are challenges, yes, but they feel personal. Like the triplets knew who would get in. It seems impossible, but so does everything about the house. As soon as they’re in she immediately worries that attempting the funhouse is a bad idea but Sarah has no choice but to continue, since her future is at stake.
Molten Death by Leslie Karst
Orchid Isle Mystery #1
Publication Date: April 3, 2024
Genre: Cozy Culinary Mystery
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A glimpse of a quickly melting corpse at the foot of a volcano has amateur sleuth and food enthusiast Valerie Corbin shocked. But how can she investigate a murder, when there’s no evidence the victim ever existed?
The first Orchid Isle cozy mystery, set in tropical Hilo, Hawai’i, introduces a fun and feisty LGBTQ+ couple who swap surfing lessons for sleuthing sessions!
Retired caterer Valerie Corbin and her wife Kristen have come to the Big Island of Hawai’i to treat themselves to a well-earned tropical vacation. After the recent loss of her brother, Valerie is in sore need of a distraction from her troubles and is looking forward to enjoying the delicious food and vibrant culture the state has to offer.
Early one morning, the couple and their friend – tattooed local boy, Isaac – set out to see an active lava flow, and Valerie is mesmerized by the shape-shifting mass of orange and red creeping over the field of black rock. Spying a boot in the distance, she strides off alone, pondering how it could have gotten there, only to realize to her horror that the boot is still attached to a leg – a leg which is slowly being engulfed by the hot lava.
Valerie’s convinced a murder has been committed – but as she’s the only witness to the now-vanished corpse, who’s going to believe her?
Determined to prove what she saw, and get justice for the unknown victim, Valerie launches her own investigation. But, thrown into a Hawaiian culture far from the luaus and tiki bars of glossy tourist magazines, she soon begins to fear she may be the next one to end up entombed in shiny black rock . . .
The amiable characters, stunning backdrop and culinary delights make this the perfect cozy of fans who enjoy a tropical vacation with a twisty murder mystery and compelling Hawai’ian culture – paired with an added bonus of recipes of local Hawai’ian dishes!
Dreams for Courage by Shanna Hatfield
Holiday Dreams #3
Publication Date: April 4, 2024
Genre: Sweet Historical Romance
Will two lonely hearts find the courage to love?
A loner for most of his life, Rowan Reed wants nothing more than to be left alone. He buys a run-down farm near Holiday, Oregon, intending to turn it into a successful ranch through hard work and determination. When a nosy, albeit beautiful, woman shows up on his doorstep, the instant attraction he feels to her sets off nearly as many warning bells as her barrage of probing questions.
Private detective Rhetta Wallace always unearths the truth. Involved in a lengthy investigation into a man suspected of killing a politician’s son, her pursuit leads her to the town of Holiday. Accompanied by her adopted son, Rhetta finds herself squaring off against the grumpy, growling rancher she believes is the suspect. Whether or not Rowan admits his true identity, Rhetta is sure of two things: his innocence of the crime, and the deep affection he awakens in her heart.
Will their dreams for courage help them release the past and embrace a future together?
♥ ♥ ♥
Enjoy a visit to Holiday, a small town built by honorable men and determined women, in the mountains of Eastern Oregon. Each sweet and wholesome historical romance novella features memorable heroes, relatable heroines, quirky and fun characters, family, faith, humor, and hope.
I Missed These Two
Well, that’s it for the New Books Releasing Week 14 of 2024
Drop a comment if you like one of the books above or if you have one to recommend.
Thank you for stopping by,
Happy Reading!
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