There’s good news and bad news on the Anthony Horowitz book that’s hitting store and library shelves this spring.

The good news is that his annual satiric mystery is almost here. The bad, for some fans, will be that it’s not the long-awaited fourth title in the series he kicked off with “Magpie Murders” (he has said he has an idea for “Mile End Murders,” but has not begun writing it). Horowitz’s “A Deadly Episode” is just one of the books we can’t wait to read in April, which also include new poetry and another mystery that comes with Stephen King’s imprimatur.

‘A Deadly Episode’ by Anthony Horowitz

Fans love the Susan Ryeland mysteries, which began with “Magpie Murders” and have been the basis of two PBS shows, with a third (“Marble Hall Murders”) on the way. But “A Deadly Episode” is the sixth in the other popular series from Horowitz, who loves to bury mysteries within mysteries. That series features a private detective named Daniel Hawthorne who is assisted and sometimes hindered by a fictional version of Horowitz. If that sounds complicated, wait until you hear the plot of the new one: A movie is being made of “The Word is Murder” (first book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series) but production shuts down when the actor playing Hawthorne is murdered. But was the actor the target or was Hawthorne? April 28

‘The Ending Writes Itself’ by Evelyn Clarke

Endorsements don’t come much more enthusiastic than Stephen King’s for this debut thriller, which he compares to Agatha Christie and proclaims (already!) “in the running for best mystery of 2026.” “Debut” is a bit of a misnomer, since “Evelyn Clarke” actually is a collaboration between vets Cat Clarke and V.E. Schwab. The cover of their book looks a little like the black-and-white-and-red-all-over covers of Horowitz’s thrillers and, like them, “Ending” is very meta: A top thriller writer invites six down-on-their-luck colleagues to a spooky island (that island might remind you of Christie’s “And Then There Were None”). When they arrive, they learn their more famous peer is dead and that one of them will have the opportunity to finish his final novel. If they live to put pen to paper. April 7

‘Famesick’ by Lena Dunham

“Rowdy” is the first word her publisher uses to describe the Emmy Award nominee’s memoir about the period when she was creating, writing, directing and starring in HBO’s beloved/reviled series “Girls.” On Instagram, Dunham said she began writing “Famesick” when she was just 30 days out of rehab. And that title doesn’t exactly promise a bed of roses, so expect the book to be as raw, complicated and funny as her show often was. (The memoir only covers the 2010-20 years, so there won’t be anything about, for instance, her excellent film starring Bella Ramsey, “Catherine Called Birdy.”) April 14

‘Lidie’ by Jane Smiley

The Pulitzer Prize winner (for “A Thousand Acres”) returns to historical fiction with a tale set on the eve of the Civil War. The title character is a high-spirited widow who, grieving her husband, agrees to accompany her niece Annie on a trip to England. There, Annie becomes an acclaimed actor, with the help of an enigmatic benefactor. Early readers of “Lidie,” a sequel to the 1998 novel “The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton,” have applauded its depiction of Victorian Liverpool and evocation of the writing style of “Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott. April 21

‘Visitations’ by Julia Alvarez

The prolific novelist and essayist’s first poetry collection since “The Woman I Kept to Myself” 15 years ago, “Visitations” revisits themes from her bestsellers “In the Time of the Butterflies” and “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,” but this time in verse. The poems loosely trace her journey from her childhood in the Dominican Republic through her family’s adaptation to a new life when they moved to America to the present, when Alvarez is a National Medal of Arts recipient and the subject of an episode of PBS’ “American Masters.” P.S. April is National Poetry Month! April 7

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