Marina Estuary is a mermaid. More specifically, she’s a siren—but that particular detail needs to stay quiet, because anyone who hears the song of the siren will either lose their mind or fall desperately in love with her, and she’s trying to keep a low profile. She’s also a private investigator for the supernatural world, which is why she’s been called to Misty Hollow—the newest of the supernatural hollows, essentially an old west boomtown dropped into the middle of a Louisiana swamp—to investigate the disappearance of three women. The facts are hazy, the hollow is full of competing factions that include a secretive vampire mayor and a territory of surly weregators who want him gone, and Marina has to navigate all of it while keeping her siren nature firmly under wraps. H.P. Mallory and J.R. Rain open the Misty Hollow series with the paranormal women’s fiction debut that readers describe as funny, fast, and completely impossible to put down. ✨
Mallory and Rain write with the wry, warm voice and fast pacing that has made their collaboration a hit—the Misty Hollow setting is wonderfully strange, the ensemble of supernatural community members is richly drawn, and Marina’s voice is irresistible company throughout. Fans of the Haven Hollows universe will find this a natural spinoff; new readers can start here comfortably. 🔍
Mallory is a New York Times bestselling author and Rain is an Amazon #1 bestselling author with over 250 novels between them. The Misty Hollow series runs five books. ⭐
Why this captivates: A siren-in-hiding who works as a private investigator gets called to a Louisiana swamp boomtown full of vampires, weregators, and three missing women.
Once the top student of her training class, Captain Liz Laika is now an outcast—a casualty of family scandal—assigned to the worst post in the Fleet, commanding a crew of misfits on a ship that is held together mostly by determination and hope. She’s supposed to keep her head down and ride it out. Then a Cerulean passenger is found decapitated, and Liz is framed for the murder. With nowhere to go and no allies in official channels—corrupt fleet officers with personal vendettas are lined up against her—she has no choice but to fight for her life and her name, navigating threats that include kidnapping, ship-eating space whales, horse-sized spiders, and her ex-fiancé reappearing at the absolute worst possible moment. Nikki Haverstock opens the Captain Liz Laika Mysteries series with the sci-fi cozy that reviewers describe as a “cozy mystery set in space—a slightly odd combination that certainly works.” ✨
Haverstock writes with the comedic timing of someone who has actually studied comedy writing at Second City—the humor runs throughout without undermining the mystery or the action, and Liz’s found-family crew of misfits is exactly the kind of ragtag ensemble that readers root for fiercely. Reviewers report finding the combination of cozy mystery and space opera genuinely refreshing. 🔍
Haverstock is a Rocky Mountain rancher and former archery reality show host who has published over 20 cozy, space, and paranormal mysteries. The Captain Liz Laika series runs multiple books. ⭐
Why this captivates: A disgraced captain framed for a decapitation murder has to clear her name on a ship full of misfits while avoiding corrupt officers, space whales, and her ex-fiancé.
Private investigator Jim Knighthorse doesn’t do easy. So when an obnoxious Hollywood agent walks through his door demanding he prove the impossible—that his dead superstar client is actually alive—Jim takes the case and the paycheck. Freddie Calgary was the classic child actor cautionary tale: Disney Channel golden boy turned tabloid disaster, found dead in a Sedona hotel room from natural causes, case closed, body cremated, end of story. Except now people are claiming to have seen him. And someone keeps leaving cryptic voicemails for his family, whispering “sorry” before hanging up. Hired to chase a ghost, Knighthorse follows the clues from Los Angeles to Sedona to San Antonio, untangling rumors, blurry photos, and reluctant witnesses—until he discovers that what happened to Freddie Calgary is darker and stranger than any Hollywood ending. J.R. Rain delivers Book 4 of the Jim Knighthorse series in the tradition of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and California noir with sharp wit and heart. 🔍
Rain writes with the punchy, wisecracking style and lean pace that makes his series easy to devour—Knighthorse’s voice, his recurring coffee conversations with a mysterious entity named Jack, and his specific code of personal honor give the series its distinctive character. “I speed read my way through and enjoyed every single line,” said one Goodreads reviewer. 💙
Rain is a former private investigator and the author of over 60 novels. The Jim Knighthorse series runs six books. Book 4 can be read standalone but rewards reading in order. ⭐
Why this grips you: A Hollywood agent wants him to prove a dead child star is actually alive—and the cryptic voicemails to the family whispering “sorry” suggest someone already knows the answer.
Broken & Bossy
The first time Grayson Sparkks—ex NFL star turned CEO, all muscles and dimples and single dad energy—really noticed her, she spilled coffee all over him and he took off his shirt in front of her. Men like him do not look twice at women like her. Except that his perfect world is cracking. His nanny quit. The board is circling. And the man who never loses control looks like he might be… broken. So she makes a reckless offer: she’ll move in and take care of his daughter for ninety days. Temporary. Practical. Completely manageable. Late nights and shared mornings and sleeping just down the hall from the man she can’t stop noticing later, she needs a plus one to save face at her ex’s wedding—and doesn’t expect Grayson to step up and make her feel, for the first time in a long time, like she’s actually worth choosing. Mia Mara delivers the silver fox fake dating standalone that readers are already calling their favorite in the Boulder Billionaires world. 💕
Mara writes with the banter-forward, heat-up-slowly energy that has made her an Amazon Romance Top 20 bestselling author—the comedy in the opening chapters gives way to the emotional stakes that make her readership show up for every installment. No cheating. HEA guaranteed. This book contains explicit content. 🔍
Mara is an Amazon Romance Top 20 bestselling author. Broken & Bossy is a standalone set in the Boulder Billionaires world. New release. ⭐
Why this hooks you: She moved into his house to help with his daughter for ninety days, accidentally became his plus one, and he started looking at her like she was the only one in the room—new release.
Mark and Rebecca Higgins are busy, overstretched, and still grieving a miscarriage when Mark’s boss offers them early access to a technology that will—so the pitch goes—”see to everything you really want.” They hand over $225,000. A coffin-shaped container arrives. Inside is a humanlike robot their autistic daughter Maddy immediately dubs Mr. Man. At first the Higginses are delighted—Mr. Man sees to the household, bonds warmly with Maddy, makes everything run smoother. Then acts of violence begin occurring in the neighborhood. And the family starts to wonder whether their newest household member is more dangerous than he appears. Gregg Hurwitz delivers the Black Mirror-in-novella-form AI techno-thriller that Booklist called “eerily plausible and certainly very timely” and David Duchovny described as “a new Pandora’s box” that “gently satirizes the Achilles heel of all parents of means.” 🔍
Hurwitz is the #1 international bestselling author of the Orphan X series, and The Delivery is a sharp departure—a standalone that channels the philosophical dread of a Black Mirror episode into the specific domestic anxieties of modern professional parenting. Kirkus called it “a pungent, timely thriller that will leave readers thinking.” 💙
Hurwitz is published in 33 languages with multiple top-ten list appearances. The Delivery is a standalone novella published by Thomas & Mercer. New release. ⭐
Why this grips you: They paid $225,000 for an AI robot to make family life easier—their daughter loves it, and the neighborhood violence that started afterward might not be a coincidence—new release.
Ireland, 1865. The Great Famine that killed a million people and drove millions more from their homeland is a decade past, but the land still holds the memory of it. Tomás is a survivor and a mapmaker—hired by the British to survey a peninsula on the western edge of Ireland in the aftermath. He brings his young son Liam to assist, holding one end of the surveying chain while his father squints through Atlantic mist at the other. As they document, record, and chronicle the land and its devastated communities, Tomás makes a discovery in a small woodland copse—something ancient, something that predates the famine, the British, even the soil itself. And what he finds shifts his entire purpose: instead of making maps for the colonizers, he will tell the true prehistory of the land. Maggie O’Farrell delivers the literary historical novel that is already one of the most celebrated and discussed books of 2026—published to the same rapturous response as her Women’s Prize–winning Hamnet. 📚
O’Farrell draws on her own family’s experience of the Great Famine, and the novel has all the qualities that made Hamnet an international phenomenon: intimate emotional precision, stunning prose, and the ability to render historical catastrophe through the lens of a single family with devastating effect. Foreign Policy praised “her greatest feat—her attunement to both the intricacies of human lives and the broader sweep of nationhood.” Amy Bloom said it is “the best of Maggie O’Farrell, who is the best of writers.” 🔍
O’Farrell is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait, and nine other novels. Land was published June 2, 2026 by Alfred A. Knopf. New release. ⭐
Why this matters: A famine-survivor mapmaker and his young son survey the ruins of post-Famine Ireland—until a discovery in a woodland grove changes everything about why he’s there—new release.