Saturday, 4 April 2026

April Anticipation: Book Update

Is This Mutton's latest update on books read and new arrivals. April 2026.

Dear friends. An update for you on books I've recently read, new arrivals, and what's ahead in my mid April round-up.

RECENTLY READ

Don't Look Back by OJ Mullen. The link is to my Goodreads review. Published: 2 June 2026

Death on the Norfolk Express: the Norfolk Murders by Ross Greenwood. Link is to my Goodreads review. Published: 7 May 2026.

The Waterlands by Stephen Rutt (non-fiction)

NEW ARRIVALS

The Secrets from the Deep by Satu Rämö. Book 4 of Hildur. Published 28 May

1995: A young German woman disappears in the Westfjords of Iceland, but the case is quickly forgotten. It's not uncommon for foreigners who come to Iceland to vanish, and the police are too busy investigating a fatal car accident, recovering two bodies from the cold waters of the sea.

2022: Detective Hildur Rúnarsdóttir returns from a surfing holiday in Hawaii. Life is good. But when Hildur visits her family friend, Helga, in a nursing home, she is presented with surprising new details about her mother, Rakel.

The Hollow Boys by Tariq Ashkanani. Published 14 May.

Two children lost. The wrong one found. The town of Aurora is waiting to die. A few miles away a deep seam of coal burns underground, the fire creeping closer ever year. Businesses close. Families leave. Hope dwindles. And then one day, nine-year-old Danny Yates comes back from the dead. He walks into town half-starved and silent, ten months after he and his best friend Will Keefe were presumed drowned. But when Danny does finally speak, he swears that he's not Danny anymore. He's Will.

The Apothecary by the Sea: A Year in an Orkney Garden by Victoria Bennett (non-fiction). Published 30 April.

With the years of early motherhood and elderly caregiving over, Victoria faces a time of change. She and her family decide to take a leap, moving five hundred miles north of everything they know to the northern Scottish islands of Orkney, where the winters are long and the summer a perpetual light.

Uprooted and in an unfamiliar landscape, Victoria instinctively returns to the work of growing, setting out to transform her scrappy backyard into an abundant apothecary garden by the sea, inspired by Orkney’s folklore, ancient landscapes and wild nature.

The Butterfly Season by Lea Korsgaard (non-fiction). Published: 11 June 2026

In the darkness of winter on the first day of the year, a woman in Denmark is making a list. She plans to set out and see all of the country's butterfly species in a single summer. She knows nothing about butterflies. She doesn’t even know why she wants to see them. She just knows that something is calling her.

The Butterfly Season tells the story of what happened next. We follow Lea Korsgaard as her list takes her to landscapes she never knew existed, shaped by the wind and by the sea.

My Next Collection of Reviews

Look out for my summary of reviews on books published in April. This goes live on the 3rd Friday of the month, 17 April.

I'll be sharing my thoughts on: The Apothecary by the Sea, The Knapdale Murders by Daniel Sellers, Fallout by Eleanor Anstruther, The Faces of the Dead by Chris Nickson and The Penguin Guide to Penguins.

Do any of these books spark your interest? Do tell in the comments.

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