April global fiction: From Hawaii to Congo, six new novels to kickstart your summer reading

All information sourced from publsihers.

The Villain’s Dance, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated from the French by Roland Glasser

Zaire. Late nineties. Mobutu’s thirty-year reign is tottering. In Lubumbashi, the stubbornly homeless Sanza has fallen in with a trio of veteran street kids led by the devious Ngungi. A chance encounter with the mysterious Monsieur Guillaume seems to offer a way out … Meanwhile, in Angola, Molakisi has joined thousands of fellow Zairians hoping to make their fortunes hunting diamonds, while Austrian Franz finds himself roped into writing the memoirs of the charismatic Tshiamuena, the “Madonna of the Cafunfo Mines.” Things are drawing to a head, but at the Mambo de la Fête, they still dance the Villain’s Dance from dusk till dawn.

Honey in the Wound, Jiyoung Han

A sister disappears and returns as a tiger. A mother’s voice compels the truth from any tongue. A granddaughter divines secrets in others’ dreams. These women are all of one lineage – a Korean family split across decades and borders by Japanese imperialism.

At this saga’s heart is Young-Ja, a girl who infuses food with her emotions. She revels in her gift for cooking, nourishing the people she loves with her cheerfulness. But her sunny childhood comes to an end in 1931 when Japanese soldiers crush her family’s defiance against the Empire. Young-Ja is cast adrift, her food turning increasingly bitter with grief. When a Korean rebel fighter notices her talents, however, she is whisked off to Manchuria to join a secretive sisterhood of beautiful teahouse spies. There, Young-Ja finds a new sense of belonging and starts using her abilities for the resistance. But the Imperial Army is not yet finished with her…

Decades later, Young-Ja lives alone in Seoul, withdrawn from the world until her Tokyo-born granddaughter Rinako bursts into her life with the ability to see into dreams. In cultivating a tentative bond, they confront the long-buried past in a stunning emotional climax.

As an unforgettable family perseveres in the long shadow of colonialism, Honey in the Wound transports readers to mountain forests where tiger-girls stalk, to Manchurian teahouses and opium dens where charming smiles veil secrets, and to the modern metropolises of Tokyo and Seoul where restless ghosts stir.

Odessa, Gabrielle Sher

Yetta is a bright, quick teenage girl with a wild, searching spirit. Stifled by her mother’s anxiety, her father’s rules, and the path that’s been laid out for her, she craves the kind of freedom she doesn’t know the edges of. But her family has reason to be cautious and restrictive. Fear has wrapped itself around their shtetl. Jews are mysteriously disappearing, and there are whispers of an impending Gentile attack. When violence comes to their door, Yetta is killed.

Her father, in his grief, fumbles through his nascent knowledge of ancient texts and old magic to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned – but although she looks the same, Yetta is not the girl she once was. She knows there is a secret her family is keeping from her. The answer resides, in part, in the monstrous being stalking the villagers and their enemies, lurking in the woods beyond the shtetl, something that may be of her father’s making, and a being which has plans of its own.

We Burned So Bright, TJ Klune

The road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky…

Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they’ve experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world.

Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they’ve ever known will be gone.

Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They’re in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it’s all over.

On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how – impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends.

And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough.

Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes?

Mrs Benedict Arnold, Emma Parry

Coming of age as the Revolutionary War rages, Peggy Shippen is a woman torn between two sides. While her prominent Loyalist family seems to remain stubbornly neutral, she yearns to enter the political fray. That's when she meets the dashing, rising star, British Captain John André, who becomes the first to truly recognise her intelligence. He welcomes her into an irreverent circle of friends and soon has her heart.

But when the war separates them, Peggy attracts the notice of an older military General, whose heroics for the Patriots has captured the world’s imagination – Benedict Arnold. As she trades loyalist balls for patriot salons, she must carefully tread the line between the most prominent figures of early America and her own struggles against powerlessness. In an audacious scheme to ensure her family’s survival and in hopes of a revolutionary reconciliation, Peggy ensnares Benedict in what would become the most famous treason in history.

The Pohaku, Jasmin Iolani Hakes

A young woman lies comatose in a hospital, watched by her estranged grandmother. Mystery surrounds the woman’s fall – did she jump off the cliff, or was she swept away by a wave? Her grandmother suspects it is linked to the pohaku, an ancient stone that their family was tasked with protecting. In this novel spanning generations across Hawai’i and California, it soon becomes clear that the pohaku’s story must sur­vive if there is to be any hope of the fam­ily’s reconciliation with their home, with nature, and with each other.