April should be easy I thought. I’ve already got a few options for most of the letters. It’s really nothing to worry about. To be fair, it wasn’t. At least it wasn’t until I got to “i”. I’m pretty sure that I don’t own any books that start with that letter but I also know that I owned a copy of I Capture the Castle at some point. I never thought I’d find something that I wanted to read but, with no time to spare, I managed another month. Here’s how I did it.

A

A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

Book 2 of the month.

Synopsis:

The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn, including Jane Marple, are agog with curiosity over an advertisement in the local gazette which reads: ‘A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m.’ A childish practical joke? Or a hoax intended to scare poor Letitia Blacklock? Unable to resist the mysterious invitation, a crowd begins to gather at Little Paddocks at the appointed time when, without warning, the lights go out… 

Read my review.

P

X-Men: Phoenix In Darkness by Grant Morrison

Book 4 of the month.

Synopsis:

As Jean’s connection with the cosmic firebird rekindles, Magneto returns! The X-Men thought his mutant menace had finally been ended — but he was hiding in plain sight all along, waiting to make his move. With the X-Men scattered and blindsided, New York aflame and Xavier’s students corrupted, Jean must reclaim the power of the Phoenix…no matter the terrible cost! Then, 150 years in the future, the X-Men’s ultimate foe has finally revealed his true face. But when the Phoenix Egg is discovered, will the X-Men of tomorrow become the next victims to burn in the Phoenix Force’s purifying flames? Experience a pivotal chapter in the life and legacy of Jean Grey!

No review.

R

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Book 1 of the month.

Synopsis:

In 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper. Ishiguro’s dazzling novel is a sad and humorous love story, a meditation on the condition of modern man, and an elegy for England at a time of acute change.

Read my review.

I

Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell

Book 5 of the month.

Synopsis:

A childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital. Shocking, electric, unforgettable, this is the extraordinary memoir from Costa Novel-Award winner and Sunday Times bestselling author Maggie O’Farrell.
It is a book to make you question yourself. What would you do if your life was in danger, and what would you stand to lose?

Read my review.

L

Lanny by Max Porter

Book 6 of the month.

Synopsis:

There’s a village sixty miles outside London. It’s no different from many other villages in England: one pub, one church, red-brick cottages, council cottages and a few bigger houses dotted about. Voices rise up, as they might do anywhere, speaking of loving and needing and working and dying and walking the dogs.

This village belongs to the people who live in it and to the people who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England’s mysterious past and its confounding present. But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, a figure schoolchildren used to draw green and leafy, choked by tendrils growing out of his mouth.

Dead Papa Toothwort is awake. He is listening to this twenty-first-century village, to his English symphony. He is listening, intently, for a mischievous, enchanting boy whose parents have recently made the village their home. Lanny. 

Review coming soon.