The Enchanted April is a book of literary fiction first published in 1922 in Great Britain. This light-hearted novel about unlikely female friendships and the power of a blissful escape was a best-seller in both England and the United States. The story centers on four very different ladies who reply to an advertisement in The Times for a stunning mediaeval castle that is available to rent for a month on the Italian Riviera. They travel to the serene Mediterranean coasts full of hope for a blissful retreat, seduced by the promise of “wisteria and sunlight.”
England, 1925. After years shut away from the world, former detective Lord Edgington of Cranley Hall plans a grand ball to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday.
But when someone starts bumping off members of his scheming family, the old man enlists his teenage grandson to help find the killer, before one of them is next. The mismatched duo must pick the culprit from a gaggle of preening playboys, scatter-brained spinsters and irate inspectors in this Agatha-Christie-style whodunnit that will have you racing to spot the killer.
Katherine Walker enjoys an enviable life. Her husband is an accomplished doctor, her children are bright and successful, and she devotes herself to charity work that uplifts her Suburban Colorado community. Settling into a new year, her life couldn’t be better…Until April. For Katherine, April has always rained trouble—but this time may be even stormier than the fraught past she’s trying to overcome. The emotionally fragile woman isn’t ready to consider the overwhelming evidence that someone may be trying to take her husband—and her life.
Lucy and Connor planned for the perfect Outer Banks wedding—and that’s exactly what they got. Aside from typical rumblings of familial tensions, the late spring weather allowed for a beautiful day, the food was delicious, and everyone had a good time, until one of the guests goes missing. Before Lucy can look forward to the rest of her life in Nags Head and the work she does at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library, she gets a phone call from her boss, Bertie James. Eddie, Bertie’s friend, never made it back home after the reception.
On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, it’s hard at first to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him. Because this young woman can’t be April Latimer. She was murdered by her brother, years ago—the conclusion to an unspeakable scandal that shook one of Ireland’s foremost political dynasties.
Chrissie is eight and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling made her belly fizz like soda pop. Her playmates are tearful and their mothers are terrified, keeping them locked indoors. But Chrissie rules the roost — she’s the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a feeling of power that she never gets at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer. Twenty years later, adult Chrissie is living in hiding under a changed name. A single mother, all she wants is for her daughter to have the childhood she herself was denied.
For much of the twentieth century, Vietnam played an outsized role on the global stage, charting the destinies of superpowers and reshaping the world’s politics. Now fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War comes The Colors of April, an anthology of fiction that finally speaks to the Vietnamese experience: voices of both those who left and those who stayed, what was gained and lost in the half century since, and for the generations that followed—what it means to be Vietnamese.
Vicar Max Tudor, reveling in his new-found personal happiness with Awena Owen, feels that life at the moment holds no greater challenge than writing his Easter sermon. With Awena away, he looks forward to a dinner that includes newcomers to the village like West End dramatist Thaddeus Bottle and his downtrodden wife Melinda. But when one of the dinner guests is found dead in the pre-dawn hours, Max knows a poisonous atmosphere has once again enveloped his perfect village of Nether Monkslip.
Based on real historical events: mysterious poisonings, in which victims died, often unaware they had been attacked. Albia is now 28 and an established female investigator. Her personal history and her British birth enable her to view Roman society and its traditions as a bemused outsider and also as a woman struggling for independence in a man’s world. The first novel takes place on the plebeian Aventine Hill, with its mix of monumental temples, muddy back lanes and horrible snack bars. We meet Albia’s personal circle – some familiar, some new.