Welcome to April! And don’t worry – no April Fools jokes in here.

Although I still chuckle thinking about the time I made the most obvious grammatical and spelling errors as an April Fool’s joke, and later admitted it in the newsletter, I received sooooo much hate mail from people who didn’t read that far.

Don’t worry – their won’t be any of those in hear! Only loosers do April Fools jokes.

I’ve been picking away at the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells, as mentioned in the last newsletter.

I read the second novella, Artificial Condition, earlier this month and am currently reading the third.

I am loving them – and not just for the story. But because they are short.

One of the best feelings as a reader is when you finish a book. You get to sit there and look at the list of books that you want to read, feeling the excitement as you debate which fictional world you want to enter next.

Reading shorter stories means I get to experience that so much more! Plus, they’re easy to read in about 90 minutes. So it’s nice if you have a couple of hours free and can just decide, hey, I’m going to read an entire ‘book’!

I think after I finish that series, I’ll look for some other novella series like that.

I picked the wrong time to go away last month, as the reader mailbag question on how many books you read in a year was one of our all-time most popular! Thank you to everyone for the responses; you can read them later in the newsletter.

I was in Savannah, GA, for the week. It was a work trip, and I was by myself, so that was pretty cool – I haven’t travelled by myself in a while, and I forgot how much reading I get to do! In the hotel, at dinner, at various bars, etc. Always so nice.

I did have an amusing interaction with someone while there. I was wearing my Litographs Slaughterhouse-Five t-shirt, and if you look at the back, you’ll see a picture of a plane dropping bombs.

I was sitting at a bar when I heard a voice behind me. It was just some random guy.

“So you like bombs, huh?”
“Oh, the t-shirt. It’s a Slaughterhouse-Five t-shirt.”
[blank look]
“The book. By Kurt Vonnegut. See – the shirt has parts of the book written all over it, and it makes this design.”
“Do you mean Kurt Cobain?”
“What? No. He’s an author. It’s a book about World War II.”
“Oh, World War II. Such a cool war. Americans committing war crimes. So cool.”

This was the part that amused me the most. I turned to him to explain the book further, and he noticed my Blue Jays hat and immediately said, “Canadians committed war crimes too! So cool.”

I laughed and pointed out I’m Scottish if it matters, and attempted to tell him that the book was anti-war and controversial for its time, but he just loudly said, “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU THINK WAR IS COOL,” then walked off.

I never, ever pictured a scenario where I’d be sitting at a bar, turning to the bartender and other patrons and saying the sentence “Just so you guys know – I DON’T think war is cool”! Anyway, a couple of other patrons knew the book, and we had a good chat about Vonnegut and books in general, so that was nice.

I read Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak. It’s a horror/thriller novel about a woman in recovery who becomes a full-time babysitter for a young boy with an imaginary friend, Anya, who draws these messed-up pictures. The cool thing is the drawings actually are in the book, such as this:

A tad creepy, isn’t it? Very enjoyable book. I’d recommend it.

I read The Widow’s Husband’s Secret Lie by Freida McFadden. It’s a satirical novella of the psychological thriller genre. I thought it was decent. It’s a hard subject to pull off, and I think Freida did a passable job of it.

I read Do Not Disturb by Claire Douglas, a standalone psychological thriller. On my Currently Reading video, I recommended it if you liked authors like Freida McFadden. However, I’d like to update that: this book has much more depth.

It was one of those books where at the halfway point it felt like the story was coming to an end – but in reality it was just beginning. Really impressive book and one that I got invested in. I’ll definitely read more of her work.

For the I Care About Books Book Club, I read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. I’ll be chatting about that on Episode 10 of the podcast, releasing on Monday. Subscribe now.

A friend of mine, who has mentioned wanting to get into reading for years, suddenly did so a couple of weeks ago with the YA novel That’s Not My Name by Megan Lally. I immediately dropped everything to read it too, just so he would have someone to chat about it with and to help me recommend other books to him, since he liked this one.

It’s a thriller about a young girl who wakes up on a dirt road with no idea how she got there.

A police officer finds her and takes her to the police station. A man shows up claiming to be her dad – but she has no idea who he is.

This was also really good. We’re starting to see the “young adult” genre being redefined; it’s more your general psychological or suspense thriller, just featuring young adults as the protagonists. Previously, books would be geared specifically towards young adults.

It’s led me to explore other books of that nature – and one of them I am currently listening to has made it into the recommendations section below!

I checked out the murder mystery puzzle book The Killer Isn’t Alice by Iris Starling. Every page has hundreds of names written on it, and then there are clues as to which pages you can eliminate. Via process of elimination, you need to determine who the killer is. Fun enough concept.

Deb sent in this interesting note that I am sure describes many of us:

I learned a new word which describes me perfectly!!! Even tho the physical piles are no longer there, the ebook piles & audio purchases pile up faster than I realize!!!

The practice of buying more books than you can read is known as tsundoku, a portmanteau of the Japanese words tsumu, meaning “to pile up,” and doku, a verb that can be used to mean “to be reading.” The word dates back to the 19th century, and there’s not necessarily a negative connotation to it. Instead, those unread piles are a physical manifestation of your reading goals — they contain a wealth of knowledge and experiences you can imagine now and anticipate enjoying at a later date.

That is so very true. My dad was a hoarder, and thankfully, it pushed me in the opposite direction. However, I still have the tendencies, and am a big digital hoarder – especially when it comes to e-books.

Actually I noticed I’ve started ‘collecting’ a lot more book-related t-shirts lately. And it’s probably a bad sign that I read the above message, then immediately ordered this shirt!

As always, if you want:

  • 20x the authors as OrderOfBooks
  • Get notified of new books by your favourite authors
  • A Personalized Book Release Calendar
  • Track Your Reads and TBR
  • Printable book lists
  • And much much more….
  • …then check out our sister site Book Notification

I’m really excited about the feature we just launched there – author progress cards. Now you can share your reading progress on social media, etc, for specific authors. For example:

What’s really cool about it is how customizable it is. You can hide data, such as the progress bar or unreleased books. You can change the background, checkbox and checkmark styles, colours, and so much more. Check them out at Book Notification.

Each month, we give away 5 $25 Amazon gift certificates to random subscribers.

To win, all you have to do is be a subscriber. Nothing more! When we click “Publish,” we take a list of all our subscribers, put them into a random draw, and those are the winners.

Our winners this month are:

Deb from Waltham, MA (email has “500” in it)
Gary Li. from Springfield, MO
Mary from Tioga, ND (email starts with def)
Nancy Sch. from Santa Cruz, CA
Lois from Forth Worth, TX (email has “texas” in it)

All of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.

So it goes.

Graeme
OrderOfBooks.com

Book Recommendations

In this section, I give 3-5 random book recommendations from readers of the newsletter. They can be old books, they can be new. Feel free to e-mail suggestions to me. Just hit reply. If you wish to add a description for the book around the same size as the ones below that’d be great too! 

We Won’t All Survive by Kate-Alice Marshall I stumbled upon this one thanks to Libby’s “skip the line” feature. It’s a YA thriller, and I am only about halfway through, but I am loving it so far and wanted to recommend it.

I’m listening to the audiobook version, and it is excellent. It’s about a billionaire influencer who wants to host his own survivalist reality show, and recruits various people, including our protagonist Mercy Gray, who two years ago was called a hero for saving lives during a mall shooting.

Mercy and the others arrive at this remote location – only to realize they are the only people there. No producers. No staff. And then, without warning, the gates are closed, trapping them inside. Then on the second day, one of the contestants mysteriously dies.

It’s reminding me a lot of The Lost Colony by Irina Shapiro, which was another I really liked. At least halfway through – and I’d recommend it at this point!

Hank Thompson Series by Charlie Huston: Keith recommended this one, which he is listening to. I just noticed I’ve got the first book, Caught Stealing, on my TBR, so will hopefully get reading it soon motivated by this.

Here’s what Keith wrote:

“Caught Stealing” by Charlie Huston, read by Christian Conn. The first book in the Hank Thompson trilogy. Hank is a functioning alcoholic, and the entire story is told from his perspective in an almost stream of consciousness monologue.

Once a standout (5 tool) High School baseball player, Hank’s pro career prospects and life are ruined by a badly broken leg that never properly healed. He’s now working as a bartender in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and taking care of his neighbor’s cat.

One night, for no reason known to Hank, two thugs drag him over the bar and beat the crap out of him causing him to lose a kidney. It quickly dawns on Hank that Very Bad People want something from him, but he doesn’t know what it is and how to make them understand that he doesn’t have it. Brilliant writing and expert narration, except for Hank’s mother’s voice that sounded more Minnesota than Central Valley California. 9/10

Sounds like something I need to check out. You should too.

A Silent Death by Peter May: I really loved the Lewis Tetralogy by Peter May, and have been meaning to dive into one of his other series or a standalone.

Joan wrote in to recommend this standalone, so maybe that will be next on my list. She said it was one of his best, helped by the fact that it’s set in Southern Spain, an area she knows well. I always love it when a book takes place in an area you are familiar with.

A fugitive vows revenge on the Spanish cop he blames for his lover’s death, targeting her deaf-blind aunt—until a brilliant, prickly Scottish investigator joins the hunt to stop his vendetta before it turns fatal.

The Winter Of Our Discontent by Grace Gibson: This is a novel in Grace’s Pride and Prejudice Variation series. It’s incredible how many series there are out there in that world. We had a Goodreads import on Book Notification a few months ago, which included about 600 of these books.

It was really neat learning about that world.

Chris wrote in to recommend it.

“It may not sound at all promising, but it’s truly a wonderful book. Containing the characters from Pride and Prejudice, the reader learns a lot more about how they think than in the original book by Jane Austen. The premise is very unexpected: the main characters loathe each other and yet are compelled to marry and make a home. As the story unfolds, the reader will be hooked and may feel the need to read until late in the night, as warned by another reader in a review. For many, this book will not be their cup of tea, but for others, they will quite possibly count it as one of their favorites. I know I do.”

If you’re a Pride and Prejudice fan, but never read any variations, then this is a great starting point.

God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines: I’ve read a few books by Peter and really enjoyed them – he has an incredible imagination. Ray Porter narrates a lot of his books, too, which is a bonus.

Carol wrote in to recommend this one:

“I have another great listen- “God’s Junk Drawer” by Peter Clines. SUCH a fun listen. I almost had an issue with the immaturity of some of the characters, but that was more about me (74 years here) and it absolutely was believable in the story. Great world building, fabulous narration (as always, by Ray Porter), Won’t tell you more, hope you try it.”

April Book Of The Month

Hope Rises by David Baldacci: David Baldacci is back with his latest character, Walter Nash.

He released the first novel in this series, Nash Falls, in November, and now the second, Hope Rises, hits retailers on April 14th.

Walter Nash goes undercover to destroy the criminal queen who ruined his life, only to be dangerously drawn to her as the truth flips his entire revenge mission on its head.

Baldacci is one of the most popular authors on Order of Books, and I received a lot of positive feedback about the first book in this series.

10 More Notable Books Releasing in April

Brought to you by BookNotification.com where you can get updated on all the upcoming books by your favourite authors with your own personalized calendar!

Pictures of the Month

Thanks to Carla for the first two and Deborah for the Wave residential building in Denmark.

Send in your own to site@orderofbooks.com or by replying!

Images, jokes, etc. We’ll take it all!

Your Thoughts!

Last month, I asked how many books you read in a year. The answers are later in the newsletter.

This month I am asking:

Do You Ever Take Notes While Reading A Book?

I do this occasionally and did it while reading We Won’t All Survive by Kate Alice Marshall.

The author introduced 8 characters within the first 2 chapters, and while she did a good job differentiating them, it was hard to actually remember who was who. A bit later, a character was featured quite strongly, and I was sitting there thinking, “Which one is he? He seems important to the story, and knowing his backstory may be a factor.”

So I ended up skipping back to the beginning and just writing down each character and their traits/backstory so I could easily refer to them.

As I often review or discuss books here in blog posts and podcasts, I might make occasional notes of topics I want to mention or just my general opinion on a book at a given point. Truthfully, there are two reasons for that: one is that I have a bad memory, and the other is that I need to get it “out of my head,” or I will keep thinking about it as I read.

What about you – do you write down any notes? If so, what type?

And if you don’t – you can still enter the contest! I’d never exclude. Just write in and let me know what the best book you’ve read so far in 2026 is. Or heck, answer that too if you want.

E-mail us your feedback to site@OrderOfBooks.com or just reply to this e-mail, and we’ll pick the best comments and feature it in next month’s newsletter. Five people will also randomly win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.

Reader Mailbag!

Click here to read.

Book Notification
Order of Books » Newsletter » OrderOfBooks April 2026 Newsletter

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