Amazon Best Books of March 2018

Every month Amazon puts out a list of Best Books of the Month, and every month, I troll that list and select a few that I’ll add to my reading list.

From Amazon’s Best Books of the Month (March 2018), these are the ones that caught my eye …

Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha #1), Tomi Adeyemi

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zelie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were targeted and killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now, Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

That cover is gorgeous – and I love a good fantasy book – the summary sounds like s right up my alley. There have already been a lot of positive feedback from readers – like in this article on Barnes & Noble on 6 Reasons You’ve Got to Read Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood And Bone.

[Buy Children of Blood and Bone @ Amazon]

Amazon’s Best Books of March – The Rest of the List …

Girls Burn Brighter, Shobha Rao. When a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend again. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India’s underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. [Buy Girls Burn Brighter @ Amazon]

Barbed Wire Heart, Tess Sharpe. Harley McKenna is the only child of North County’s biggest criminal. Duke McKenna’s run more guns, cooked more meth, and killed more men than anyone around. Harley’s been working for him since she was sixteen–collecting debts, sweet-talking her way out of trouble, and dreading the day he’d deem her ready to rule the rural drug empire he’s built. .With a bloody turf war threatening to consume North County, Harley is forced to confront the truth: that her father’s violent world will destroy her. [Buy Barbed Wire Heart @ Amazon]

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, Michelle McNamara. A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer – the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade – from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case. [Buy I’ll Be Gone in the Dark @ Amazon]

Enlightment Now, Steven Pinker. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. [Buy Enlightenment Now @ Amazon]

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, Claire L. Evans. Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they’ve often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don’t even realize. Learn from Ada Lovelace, the tortured, imaginative daughter of Lord Byron, who wove numbers into the first program for a mechanical computer in 1842. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can’t imagine life without. [Buy Broad Band]

Crimson Lake (Crimson Lake #1), Candice Fox.

12:46: Claire Bingleystands alone at a bus stop.
12:47: Ted Conkaffey parks his car beside her
12:52: The girl is missing …

Six minutes in the wrong place at the wrong time – that’s all it took to ruin Sydney detective Ted Conkaffey’s life. Accused but not convicted of a brutal abduction,Ted is now a free man and public enemy number one. Maintaining his innocence, he flees north to keep a low profile amidst the steamy, croc-infested wetlands of Crimson Lake. There, Ted’s lawyer introduces him to eccentric private investigator Amanda Pharrell, herself a convicted murderer. The residents of Crimson Lake are watching the pair’s every move  … and the town offers no place to hide. [Buy Crimson Lake @ Amazon]

Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions (Tante Poldi #1), Mario Giordano, John Brownjohn (Translation). On her sixtieth birthday, Auntie Poldi retires to Sicily, intending to while away the rest of her days with good wine, a view of the sea, and few visitors. But Sicily isn’t quite the tranquil island she thought it would be, and something always seems to get in the way of her relaxation. When her handsome young handyman goes missing and is discovered murdered, she can’t help but ask questions. [Buy Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions]

Gun Love, Jennifer Clement. Fourteen-year-old Pearl France lives in the front seat of a broken down car and her mother Margot lives in the back. Together they survive on a diet of powdered milk and bug spray, love songs and stolen cigarettes. Life on the edge of a Florida trailer park is strange enough, but when Pastor Rex’s ‘Guns for God’ programme brings Eli Redmond to town Pearl’s world is upended. Eli pays regular visits to Margot in the back seat, forcing Pearl to find a world beyond the car. Margot is given a gift by Eli, a gun of her own, just like he’s given her flowers. It sits under the driver’s seat, a dark presence.

The Italian Teacher, Tom Rachman. Rome, 1955. In one of Rome’s historic villas, a party is bright with near-genius, shaded by the socialite patrons of their art. Bear Bavinsky, creator of vast, masculine, meaty canvases, is their god. Larger than life, muscular in both figure and opinion, he blazes at art criticism and burns half his paintings. From the side of the room watches little Pinch – his son. At five years old he loves Bear almost as much as he fears him. After Bear abandons his family, Pinch will still worship him, striving to live up to the Bavinsky name. [Buy The Italian Teacher @ Amazon]

The books above are the editors top picks, but there are many more choices broken down by categories. Check them all out at Amazon’s Best Books of March – are there any you’re looking forward to reading?