6 tales of mystery and mishap — all hitting book stores on April Fools’ Day

Don’t worry, you’ve come to a safe space.

To be clear, the same can’t be said for the rest of the internet, which every April Fools’ Day lards its usual mystery blend of fact, rumor and misinformation with, well, still more misinformation — this time in the service of what some allege to be humor.

But you’ve found sanctuary in the next few hundred words, promise. Here are six real books coming out this week, with dust jackets that reflect their real contents: mysteries and mishaps, often told with a sly smirk. Because something has to make sense in this crazy world, dang it.


(Scribner)

Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance, by Joe Dunthorne

The Welsh-born novelist seeks to unearth, and untangle, one particularly gnarled root of his family tree: his great-grandfather, a Jewish chemist who fled the Nazis in the mid-1930s. While true, this story of daring escape, passed down like a family heirloom, always obscured another, rather complicating detail: that same great-grandfather simultaneously was developing chemical weapons for the Nazi regime. Dunthorne’s attempt to understand this painful paradox interweaves memoir, archival research, travelogue and a fair bit of family therapy.


(Scribner)

Flesh, by David Szalay

Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it, Szalay’s new novel reads a bit like an immigrant bildungsroman flavored with Albert Camus. At the heart of it all is István, a Hungarian teen making his first stumbling steps into adulthood beset by trauma, flashes of violence and the more mundane misunderstandings that come to shape his life. It is the Hungary-based, British-raised novelist’s first book in seven years, and his second since being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016.


(Zibby Publishing)

I See You’ve Called in Dead, by John Kenney

It doesn’t sound outlandish that a professional obituary writer would draft an obituary for himself at one time or another – perhaps even featuring a few flattering embellishments, why not? But problems arise when said writer – Bud Stanley, the ill-starred hero of Kenney’s comic novel – drunkenly publishes this whopper-laden exercise in wish fulfillment during his own lifetime. Opportunities arise too, though, and it’s not long before his own death turns his life on its head.


(Little, Brown and Company)

Rabbit Moon, by Jennifer Haigh

Separated for years by the centrifugal forces of divorce and estrangement, the Litvak family is yanked back together by tragedy: Daughter Lindsey, victim of a hit-and-run car collision, lies in a coma in a hospital in Shanghai, while the parents she left half a world away must reunite at her bedside, to piece together clues of the life she lived without them. It’s a portrait, told in time jumps, of a family fractured by nothing so much as their own profoundly human flaws.


(Scribner)

The Usual Desire to Kill, by Camilla Barnes

A good rule of thumb: Any novel that so explicitly references homicide in its title is probably a murder mystery, or something to do with marriage. In this case, it’s the latter, and those violent urges belong primarily to the intransigent couple’s adult daughter, who has been unwillingly conscripted into the role of peacemaker. So don’t expect premeditated murder, exactly – but there may well be some dialogue sharp enough to draw blood in this tragicomic debut novel.


(Berkley)

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man), by Jesse Q. Sutanto

She’s not Hercule Poirot, exactly, but Vera Wong is no rookie gumshoe either. In Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, published in 2023, the 60-something teashop owner and meddling mother already demonstrated her sleuthing skills – and her utter inability to just mind her own business. Sutanto’s big-hearted follow up finds the meddlesome detective taking on a new case – the disappearance of a mysterious social media influencer – whether or not anyone actually asked for her help. Vera knows they need her, don’t worry.

 

Judge denies release of Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury transcripts

President Trump called for the release of the grand jury transcripts after growing pressure to divulge more information about Jeffrey Epstein's case, but the judge on the case said there is nothing new to release.

Factories are losing immigrant workers, stressing those who remain

Trump campaigned on helping American workers through his immigration policies. Now that he's revoked work authorization for thousands of immigrants, those left behind are feeling taxed by their absence.

What’s the deal with claims that birth control is dangerous?

Social media is full of videos saying hormonal contraception can hurt you and promoting natural alternatives. How did the treatments get such a bad reputation and do alternatives work?

Trump’s tariff revenue has skyrocketed. But how big is it, really?

President Trump's new tariffs are pouring in. But it's still only a fraction of overall government revenues — and falls short of new spending in the recent Republican megabill.

Boston Public Library aims to increase access to a vast historic archive using AI

The library is launching a project in collaboration with Harvard Law School and OpenAI this summer to digitize the materials and make them more fully searchable.

Israeli strike kills journalists in Gaza City, worsening the death toll for the media

Israel's military targeted an Al Jazeera correspondent with an airstrike Sunday, killing him, another network journalist and other people, all of whom were sheltering outside the Gaza City Hospital complex.

More Front Page Coverage