Kerk Murray
FREE
Sweet Romance
Emma Wright’s world shattered when her husband blindsided her with divorce papers on their anniversary and left her for a younger woman. 💔 Starting over at forty, she moves into a quaint beachfront cottage on the other side of Hadley Cove with her beloved rescue dog, Riley. But just as she’s picking up the pieces, Riley goes missing.
Meanwhile, widowed father Luke Grayson has moved from Chicago to Hadley Cove to repair his strained relationship with his teenage son, Jeremiah. 🏖️ They’re barely settled when an unexpected visitor arrives at their doorstep—a dog who seems to believe this is his home.
As destiny weaves Emma and Luke’s paths together, their lives begin to change in ways neither expected. 🐕 Murray delivers small-town charm, second chances, and the particular sweetness of finding connection when you’ve stopped looking for it.
Here’s what you’re getting: a warm, low-angst romance about two people brave enough to try again, with a loyal dog playing matchmaker. 🌊 First in the Hadley Cove series.
Lacey Daize
FREE
LGBTQ+ Short Reads
Benny wanted holiday overtime, but he didn’t expect to get it by wearing elf ears. 🎄 As a photographer, he’s good at getting kids to smile—which is probably why his boss tapped him for Santa photography duty. It’s a long day in costume, but at least the men playing Santa are easy on the eyes.
Pete and Warren are an alpha-alpha couple who love kids but face the realities of adoption. 🎅 Every holiday season, they don costumes and listen to thousands of children’s wishes as mall Santas. But this year brings something unexpected: their mutual attraction to their photographer.
Can these three find a bit of holiday magic in each other? ❄️ Daize delivers a sweet, steamy short about found family, festive charm, and the courage to want more than you thought you could have.
Here’s what you’re getting: a cozy holiday romance with heart, heat, and just the right amount of tinsel. 🦌 First in the Knotty Holidays series.
Lucy Langton
FREE
Historical Regency Romance
Abigail Andrews has landed a maid’s position just in time for her favorite season—and not even the dreadful rumors about her strange new employer can dampen her holiday spirit. 🎄 She’s never met the so-called “Demon Duke,” so she has no idea that the arrogant man she clashed with at the village Christmas market is her new master.
Ezra Haddington, Duke of Brunswick, is haunted by childhood demons. He hates Christmas and has sworn never to marry. ❄️ Yet the spirited woman from the market has awakened something he thought long buried—and he’s stunned to discover she’s his new parlourmaid.
As their forbidden attraction ignites, a wicked man with an angelic face lurks to steal their happiness away. 🔥 Can their romance survive a painful past and save Christmas, or will their love vanish like a winter snowflake?
Here’s what you’re getting: enemies-to-lovers heat wrapped in holiday ribbon, with all the Regency trappings—brooding duke, spirited heroine, seasonal redemption. 💋 Steamy and satisfying.
Forever Her Duke (Dukes Most Wanted Book 1)
Scarlett Scott
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
Victorian Historical Romance
Vivi, Duchess of Bradford, loved her husband from the moment they met—she was an unabashed hoyden, he was her brother’s best friend and heir to a dukedom. She vowed to marry him, and she did. What she couldn’t have predicted was how badly that fairy tale would curdle. 💔
After a year alone in England while Court gallivants abroad, Vivi has thrown herself into the Lady’s Suffrage Society and sworn to banish her absent husband from her heart. She’s hosting a country house party with her closest friends when the last person she expects arrives: Court himself, back from the continent and determined to reclaim his wife. 🏰
The problem? Vivi isn’t interested in being reclaimed. She wants answers, apologies, and possibly revenge. Court wants her complete surrender. Neither of them is prepared for how much they still want each other. 🔥
Scott writes Victorian settings with sharp attention to period detail and heroines with genuine agency—Vivi’s involvement in suffrage isn’t window dressing but central to who she is. The steam level runs high (the author’s warning is accurate), and the emotional reconciliation earns its payoff. 📖
What drew me in: a heroine who’s done waiting around and a hero who has to actually earn his second chance. First in the Dukes Most Wanted series, returning to Scott’s popular Notorious Ladies of London world.
Length: novella
Lissa Lovik
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
Domestic Thrillers
The scariest thing about Chris isn’t that he’s watching Serena. It’s that he genuinely believes he’s in love with her. 😬
After a chance meeting at a grocery store, Chris finds Serena’s name on a dropped receipt and does what any romantic would do—he looks her up online, finds her address and workplace, and schedules a house showing with her since she’s a realtor. He’s not being creepy. He just wants to learn everything about her so he can make her happy. 🔍
Lovik writes from Chris’s perspective, and the effect is deeply unsettling. His logic is meticulous, his justifications perfectly reasonable to himself. He’s patient, attentive, and absolutely certain that he knows what’s best for Serena—better than she does, better than her friends do. When people get in the way of their happiness, well, that’s their fault. 🕸️
The horror here isn’t gore or jump scares—it’s recognition. Chris sounds like a dozen “nice guys” you’ve encountered, just with the volume turned up enough to see the danger clearly. 👁️
What makes this one stick: a debut that gets under your skin by making the monster utterly convinced he’s the hero. Sharp, uncomfortable, and impossible to shake.
John B. Izzo
Regularly $11.99, Today $1.99
Motivational Self-Help
Izzo’s premise is simple but counterintuitive: happiness isn’t something you need to chase. It’s your natural state, and it’s being stolen from you by five mental patterns he calls thieves—control, conceit, coveting, consumption, and comfort. 🧘
He developed this framework during a sabbatical year walking the Camino de Santiago and living in the Peruvian Andes, and the book reflects that contemplative journey. Each thief gets its own examination: how it disguises itself, how it breaks into your mind, and practical methods for locking it out. 🚶
What elevates this above standard self-help is Izzo’s extension of the framework to society as a whole. The same thieves stealing individual happiness are also destroying communities and the planet. It’s a connection that feels organic rather than forced, and it gives the personal work a larger purpose. 🌍
What you’re getting: thoughtful, well-structured wisdom that’s mercifully free of empty affirmations. For readers who want their self-help grounded in something more substantial than positive thinking.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3