April 2025 Books

What’s new and good to read this month? Dan Coombes has a look at what’s on offer from publishers in April and chooses Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway, Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata and Mere by Danielle Giles.

Sleeper Beach – Nick Harkaway

Cheap shot at establishing the author’s credentials and snagging your interest: He’s John Le Carre’s son! Actual reasons you should read this book: Nick Harkaway is a great and critically acclaimed writer, brimming with odd genre-hopping ideas that stray into surreal, fantastical territory.

Sleeper Beach is a twisty detective tale set in a world where the rich become physically younger and larger the wealthier they get and the everyday hero – dosed with the same drug that makes this happen – is also rapidly growing, finding himself thrust not only into a world of political corruption, duplicity and lies but also a struggle for his own identity.

A far from ordinary thriller from a far from ordinary writer.

On the shore of a rundown holiday town, a young woman washes up dead. Martha Erskine, the matriarch of a local dynasty, suspects a member of her own family might be involved in the murder, and calls in Cal to investigate. Cal Sounder is a detective first and a Titan second, but it’s not easy to make that work. It’s hard to be an ordinary guy when you’re fundamentally not ordinary anymore.

Cal has recently taken a dose of T7, a rare drug that is usually the preserve of the rich, making its users – called the Titans – younger and bigger each time they take it, so that as they age the bodies of the ultra-wealthy become as immense as their bank accounts.

As Cal digs into the crime, he finds this forgotten town is simmering with wage disputes, strikes, and political conflict, and no one is quite who they say they are – not even the victim.

As Cal second-guesses everyone he meets, he is forced to confront his own identity and ask himself who he wants to be from the far side of the mirror of power, age and greed.

Images: Sleeper Beach front cover,  Author Nick Harkaway

Vanishing World – Sayaka Murata

Feeling like a bit of an outsider, separate from the rest of the world, struggling to fit in with society’s expectations or just plain refusing to conform to them…probably some of the most relatable feelings there are, and some of Sayaka Murata’s favourite topics.

She’s explored them brilliantly in her previous two novels while also meticulously dissecting all kinds of aspects of Japanese life and the human experience in general, carrying on down similar paths with

Vanishing World. This time she takes us to a good ol’ fashioned near-future dystopia where love, sex and marriage are viewed very differently and one woman raised in an unconventional family tries to navigate her world and find where she fits.

Definitely more on the slightly odd and quirky weird fiction side of things, but in a good way.

In a near-future world, children are solely conceived by artificial insemination. Even sex between married couples is viewed as taboo.

Amane’s family is irregular. Her parents copulated to create her and hope that she too will find love and have a child with the person she marries. But Amane falls in line with society’s way of thinking and wants a regular ‘clean’ marriage.

Then she hears of a place that is the subject of a social experiment. Everyone in Paradise-Eden will act as one big family. Could this be the perfect third way?

Images: Vanishing World front cover,  Author Sayaka Murata

Mere – Danielle Giles

There’s historical romance afoot in Danielle Giles’ debut novel, but not the stolen glances, arch conversations at dinner, dropped hankies and deeply impractical olden timey undergarments kind. This love story is all wrapped up in oppressive religion, sinister horror, the inexplicable power of nature and the possible involvement of Satan.

Mere is as much an unsettling literary horror story as it is a tale of love, and much more off-kilter and a bit disturbing than it is heartwarming. And not least because it’s set in Norfolk.

A hypnotic historical novel about fear and survival, power and position, and a love that takes hold in the darkest of places. Norfolk, 990 AD.

Deep in the Fens, isolated by a vast and treacherous mere, an order of holy sisters make their home. Under the steely guidance of Abbess Sigeburg they follow God’s path, looking to their infirmarian, Hilda, to provide what comfort and cures she can.

But when the mere takes a young servant boy, Sigeburg’s grip falters and Hilda quickly realizes this place holds secrets darker and more

unholy than she can fathom. Then proud Sister Wulfrun, a recent arrival to the convent, has a vision: a curse is upon them and change must be brought. Is she saint or serpent? To Hilda, Wulfrun is a signal bolder and brighter than any fire set – one she cannot help but follow . . .