☰

April 2022 Adult Top 10 Picks

← Return to Archive Sign up for our mailing list
  1. An Unthinkable Thing
    by Nicole Lundrigan Canada
    9780735242678
    Viking
    Apr 12, 2022
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Paperback / softback
    An Unthinkable Thing
    by Nicole Lundrigan Canada
    9780735242678
    Viking
    Apr 12, 2022
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Paperback / softback
    SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA AWARD FOR BEST CRIME NOVEL

    A tragedy brings a young boy into the home of a "perfect" family—one whose dark secrets begin closing in, until a horrifying moment changes everything.

    Tommie Ware’s life is turned upside down the summer of 1958, just after his eleventh birthday. When his beloved aunt—the woman who raised him—doesn’t return after her shift as a night nurse and is later found murdered, there is only one place left for Tommie to go: “home” to the mother who handed him over the day he was born.
    All is not as it seems behind the hedgerow surrounding the lavish Henneberry estate where Tommie’s mother, Esther, works as live-in housekeeper. Her employers have agreed he can stay until she “sorts things out,” but as she's at the family’s beck and call around the clock, Tommie is mostly left on his own to navigate the grounds, the massive house, and the twisted family inside.
    Soon he is enmeshed in the oppressive attentions of matriarch Muriel, who is often heavily medicated, and of fifteen-year-old Martin, who treats Tommie sometimes like a kid brother, sometimes like a pawn in a confusing game. While Dr. Henneberry mostly ignores Tommie, he also seems eager for him to be gone. Then there’s the elderly neighbour, who may know more about the family's past than anyone else will say.
    By summer's end, the secrets and games tighten around Tommie and his mother, until a horrific crime is discovered and we are faced with an unthinkable question: could an eleven-year-old boy really have committed cold-blooded murder?
    View this title on BNC CataList
  2. Bluebird
    by Genevieve Graham Canada
    9781982156657
    Simon & Schuster
    Apr 05, 2022
    FICTION / Historical / 20th Century / World War I
    Paperback / softback
    Bluebird
    by Genevieve Graham Canada
    9781982156657
    Simon & Schuster
    Apr 05, 2022
    FICTION / Historical / 20th Century / World War I
    Paperback / softback
    A dazzling novel set during the Great War and postwar Prohibition about a young nurse, a soldier, and a family secret that binds them together for generations to come—from USA TODAY and repeat #1 bestselling author Genevieve Graham.

    Present day

    Cassie Simmons, a museum curator, is enthusiastic about solving mysteries from the past, and she has a personal interest in the history of the rumrunners who ferried illegal booze across the Detroit River during Prohibition. So when a cache of whisky labeled Bailey Brothers’ Best is unearthed during a local home renovation, Cassie hopes to find the answers she’s been searching for about the legendary family of bootleggers...

    1918

    Corporal Jeremiah Bailey of the 1st Canadian Tunnelling Company is tasked with planting mines in the tunnels beneath enemy trenches. After Jerry is badly wounded in an explosion, he finds himself in a Belgium field hospital under the care of Adele Savard, one of Canada’s nursing sisters, nicknamed “Bluebirds” for their blue gowns and white caps. As Jerry recovers, he forms a strong connection with Adele, who is from a place near his hometown of Windsor, along the Detroit River. In the midst of war, she’s a welcome reminder of home, and when Jerry is sent back to the front, he can only hope that he’ll see his bluebird again.

    By war’s end, both Jerry and Adele return home to Windsor, scarred by the horrors of what they endured overseas. When they cross paths one day, they have a chance to start over. But the city is in the grip of Prohibition, which brings exciting opportunities as well as new dangerous conflicts that threaten to destroy everything they have fought for.

    Pulled from the pages of history, Bluebird is a compelling, luminous novel about the strength of the human spirit and the power of love to call us home.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  3. The Patron Saint of Second Chances
    by Christine Simon
    9781982188771
    Atria Books
    Apr 12, 2022
    FICTION / Humorous / General
    Hardback
    The Patron Saint of Second Chances
    by Christine Simon
    9781982188771
    Atria Books
    Apr 12, 2022
    FICTION / Humorous / General
    Hardback
    The self-appointed mayor of a tiny Italian village is determined to save his hometown no matter the cost in this charming, hilarious, and heartwarming debut novel.

    Vacuum repairman and self-appointed mayor of Prometto, Italy (population 212) Signor Speranza has a problem: unless he can come up with 70,000 euros to fix the town’s pipes, the water commission will shut off the water to the village and all its residents will be forced to disperse. So in a bid to boost tourism—and revenue—he spreads a harmless rumor that movie star Dante Rinaldi will be filming his next project nearby.

    Unfortunately, the plan works a little too well, and soon everyone in town wants to be a part of the fictional film—the village butcher will throw in some money if Speranza can find roles for his fifteen enormous sons, Speranza’s wistfully adrift daughter reveals an unexpected interest in stage makeup, and his hapless assistant Smilzo volunteers a screenplay that’s not so secretly based on his undying love for the film’s leading lady. To his surprise—and considerable consternation, Speranza realizes that the only way to keep up the ruse is to make the movie for real.

    As the entire town becomes involved (even the village priest invests!) Signor Speranza starts to think he might be able to pull this off. But what happens when Dante Rinaldi doesn’t show up? Or worse, what if he does?

    A “hilariously funny and beautifully written” (Julia Claiborne Johnson, author of Better Luck Next Time) novel about the power of community, The Patron Saint of Second Chances is perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman and Maria Semple.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  4. Framed in Fire
    by Iona Whishaw Canada
    9781771513807
    TouchWood Editions
    Apr 26, 2022
    FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
    Paperback / softback
    Framed in Fire
    by Iona Whishaw Canada
    9781771513807
    TouchWood Editions
    Apr 26, 2022
    FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
    Paperback / softback

    Shortlisted for a 2023 Crime Writers of Canada Award
    Nominated for a 2023 Left Coast Crime "Lefty" Award
    An April 2022 Loan Stars Top 10

    A shallow grave, a missing person, and near-fatal arson keep Lane, Darling, and the Nelson police on high alert in the latest mystery in this Globe and Mail bestselling series.

    It’s early spring 1948 and Lane arrives in New Denver to find that her friend, Peter Barisoff, is not at home. Instead, in a nearby meadow, she encounters Tom, an Indigenous man in search of his ancestral lands. Lane is intrigued. Unfortunately, once Peter returns home, the day takes a gloomy turn when the trio uncovers human remains next to Peter’s garden, and Lane must tell her husband, Inspector Darling, that she’s inadvertently stumbled into his professional domain—again.

    Back in Nelson, the Vitalis, Lane and Darling’s favourite restaurateurs, are victims of arson. Constable Terrell’s investigation suggests prejudice as a motive, and the case quickly escalates, as the Vitalis receive increasingly threatening notes of warning. Meanwhile, Sergeant Ames works a robbery while alienating Tina Van Eyck in his personal time, and a swirling rumour sets the entire station on edge and prompts an RCMP investigation into Darling’s integrity.

    Amid the local bustle series readers have come to love, Framed in Fire is bound up in difficult questions of community and belonging, and the knowledge that trusted neighbours can sometimes be as sinister as a stranger in the dark.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  5. Forbidden City
    by Vanessa Hua
    9780399178818
    Ballantine Books
    May 10, 2022
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    Forbidden City
    by Vanessa Hua
    9780399178818
    Ballantine Books
    May 10, 2022
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A teenage girl living in 1960s China becomes Mao Zedong’s protégée and lover—and a heroine of the Cultural Revolution—in this “masterful” (The Washington Post) novel.

    “A new classic about China’s Cultural Revolution . . . Think Succession, but add death and mayhem to the palace intrigue. . . . Ambitious and impressive.”—San Francisco Chronicle

    ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, PopSugar • Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

    On the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution and her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman’s opulent residence—a forbidden city unto itself—that she learns that the girls’ job is to dance with the Party elites. Ambitious and whip-smart, Mei beelines toward the Chairman.

    Mei gradually separates herself from the other recruits to become the Chairman’s confidante—and paramour. While he fends off political rivals, Mei faces down schemers from the dance troupe who will stop at nothing to take her place and the Chairman’s imperious wife, who has secret plans of her own.

    When the Chairman finally gives Mei a political mission, she seizes it with fervor, but the brutality of this latest stage of the revolution makes her begin to doubt all the certainties she has held so dear.

    Forbidden City     is an epic yet intimate portrayal of one of the world’s most powerful and least understood leaders during this extraordinarily turbulent period in modern Chinese history. Mei’s harrowing journey toward truth and disillusionment raises questions about power, manipulation, and belief, as seen through the eyes of a passionate teenage girl.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  6. The Candy House
    by Jennifer Egan
    9781476716763
    Scribner
    Apr 05, 2022
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    The Candy House
    by Jennifer Egan
    9781476716763
    Scribner
    Apr 05, 2022
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    ONE of the TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR by THE NEW YORK TIMES * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * SLATE* THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER *

    Also named one of the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, Self, Vogue, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many more!

    OLIVIA WILDE to direct A24's TV adaptation of THE CANDY HOUSE and A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD!

    From one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes an “inventive, effervescent” (Oprah Daily) novel about the memory and quest for authenticity and human connection.

    The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes.

    In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,” those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love.

    “A beautiful exploration of loss, memory, and history” (San Francisco Chronicle), “this is minimalist maximalism. It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive” (The New York Times).
    View this title on BNC CataList
  7. Memphis: A Read with Jenna Pick
    by Tara M. Stringfellow
    9780593230480
    The Dial Press
    Apr 05, 2022
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    Memphis: A Read with Jenna Pick
    by Tara M. Stringfellow
    9780593230480
    The Dial Press
    Apr 05, 2022
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy.

    “A rhapsodic hymn to Black women.”—The New York Times Book Review

    “I fell in love with this family, from Joan’s fierce heart to her grandmother Hazel’s determined resilience. Tara Stringfellow will be an author to watch for years to come.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone

    LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE     • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, NPR, BuzzFeed, Glamour, PopSugar

    Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

    As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.

    Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  8. Amongst Our Weapons
    by Ben Aaronovitch
    9780756414832
    DAW
    Apr 12, 2022
    FICTION / Fantasy / Urban
    Hardback
    Amongst Our Weapons
    by Ben Aaronovitch
    9780756414832
    DAW
    Apr 12, 2022
    FICTION / Fantasy / Urban
    Hardback
    The ninth novel of the bestselling Rivers of London urban fantasy series returns to the adventures of Peter Grant, detective and apprentice wizard, as he solves magical crimes in the city of London.

    There is a world hidden underneath this great city.

    The London Silver Vaults—for well over a century, the largest collection of silver for sale in the world. It has more locks than the Bank of England and more cameras than a paparazzi convention.

    Not somewhere you can murder someone and vanish without a trace—only that’s what happened.

    The disappearing act, the reports of a blinding flash of light, and memory loss amongst the witnesses all make this a case for Detective Constable Peter Grant and the Special Assessment Unit.

    Alongside their boss DCI Thomas Nightingale, the SAU find themselves embroiled in a mystery that encompasses London’s tangled history, foreign lands and, most terrifying of all, the North!

    And Peter must solve this case soon, because back home his partner Beverley is expecting twins any day now. But what he doesn’t know is that he’s about to encounter something—and somebody—that nobody ever expects…

    Effortlessly original, endlessly inventive and hugely entertaining—step into the world of the much-loved, bestselling Rivers of London series.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  9. Again, Rachel
    by Marian Keyes
    9780385675376
    Doubleday Canada
    Apr 05, 2022
    FICTION / Romance / Contemporary
    Paperback / softback
    Again, Rachel
    by Marian Keyes
    9780385675376
    Doubleday Canada
    Apr 05, 2022
    FICTION / Romance / Contemporary
    Paperback / softback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    "It will break your heart and nourish your soul. . . . Her finest novel yet." —Nigella Lawson

    From internationally bestselling author Marian Keyes comes the eagerly awaited sequel to Rachel's Holiday. Prepare to laugh and cry by turns with Rachel and the Walsh family.

    Back in the long ago nineties, Rachel Walsh was a mess.

    But a spell in rehab transformed everything. Life became very good, very quickly. These days, Rachel has love, family, a great job as an addiction counsellor, she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive sneakers.

    But with the sudden reappearance of a man she'd once loved, her life wobbles.

    She'd thought she was settled. Fixed forever. Is she about to discover that no matter what our age, everything can change?

    Is it time to think again, Rachel?
    View this title on BNC CataList
  10. Unlikely Animals
    by Annie Hartnett
    9780593160220
    Ballantine Books
    Apr 12, 2022
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    Unlikely Animals
    by Annie Hartnett
    9780593160220
    Ballantine Books
    Apr 12, 2022
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    “This tragicomic novel is heartfelt, touching, and delightfully quirky. You’ll fall in love with the offbeat cast of characters (both living and dead) and find yourself rooting for them right through the last page.”—Good Housekeeping (Book Club pick)

    A lost young woman returns to small-town New Hampshire under the strangest of circumstances in this one-of-a-kind novel of life, death, and whatever comes after from the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake.

    ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Book Riot     • Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

    It was a source of entertainment at Maple Street Cemetery. Both funny and sad, the kind of story we like best.

    Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she’s lost her way. A medical school dropout, she’s come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.

    Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad’s illness, her mom’s judgment, and her younger brother’s recent stint in rehab, but she’s unprepared to find that her former best friend from high school is missing, with no one bothering to look for her. The police say they don’t spend much time looking for drug addicts. Emma’s dad is the only one convinced the young woman might still be alive, and Emma is hopeful he could be right. Someone should look for her, at least. Emma isn’t really trying to be a hero, but somehow she and her father bring about just the kind of miracle the town needs.

    Set against the backdrop of a small town in the throes of a very real opioid crisis, Unlikely Animals is a tragicomic novel about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.
    View this title on BNC CataList

Sign up for our mailing list!

Sign up for the latest top 10 lists and other news about Loan Stars. You can unsubscribe at any time.


Sign up!