One decision can change everything, and for Claire Harris, that change comes covered in wax and wrapped in murder. 🕯️

Claire Harris loves nothing more than crafting homemade candles, pouring melted wax and blending scents with the kind of care most people reserve for painting or poetry. She has always dreamed of opening a quaint candle shop in her home village of Northash, a cozy establishment where locals can find hand-poured vanilla bean, lavender dreams, and cinnamon spice candles made with actual passion. But at thirty-five, stuck in a soul-crushing job at the local candle factory cranking out mass-produced garbage, and back living with her parents because her finances are a disaster, Claire knows her life needs a serious shakeup. The dream feels further away than ever. 💔

The last place she expected change to come from was the factory itself, but when the owner is shockingly pushed to her death in circumstances that are definitely not accidental, Claire’s life is flipped upside down in ways she never anticipated. She isn’t the only person in the village depending on the factory for employment—half of Northash works there, and if the business collapses, the entire community suffers. When the murder plunges the factory’s future into uncertainty with investors pulling out and employees panicking, Claire feels compelled to solve the crime not just for justice, but for survival. If the factory closes, her candle shop dream slips through her fingers forever because there won’t be a viable economy left in Northash. 🔍

With the help of her retired-detective father who taught her everything about investigation whether she wanted to learn or not, and her closest friends who are entirely too enthusiastic about playing amateur sleuth, Claire uncovers a tangled web of conspiracies, cover-ups, secrets, and lies lurking beneath Northash’s quaint village surface. Turns out the factory owner had more enemies than a soap opera villain, and everyone from disgruntled employees to rival business owners had motives ranging from financial desperation to pure revenge. But can Claire uncover the truth before her candle shop dream evaporates like melted wax? ⚖️

As Claire digs deeper into the factory’s dark secrets—embezzlement, affairs, blackmail, corporate espionage—she realizes the murder isn’t just about one person’s death. It’s about protecting secrets that could destroy multiple families and businesses across the village. The killer is willing to strike again to keep those secrets buried, and Claire’s investigation is making her the next target. Suddenly her dream of opening a charming candle shop seems less important than staying alive long enough to see it happen. 😱

What makes this essential: Agatha Frost launches the Claire’s Candles series with a British cozy mystery combining small-town charm, candle-making passion, and a determined amateur sleuth proving that sometimes your dead-end job leads to the murder investigation that changes your life—perfect for readers who love their mysteries with tea, gossip, and a protagonist who smells perpetually of vanilla and beeswax.

A disgraced captain. An alien invasion. One last shot at redemption that he absolutely doesn’t want. 🚀

When Eli Bryce stumbles upon a plot to attack Earth while doing his usual business of smuggling questionable cargo through questionable systems, he shrugs it off with the enthusiasm of a man who’s seen too much and cares too little. He’s not in the Earth-saving business anymore. That phase of his life ended badly, spectacularly, in ways that still wake him up at night two decades later. He’s in the staying-alive-and-avoiding-consequences business now, which is challenging enough without adding planetary defense to his job description. 🌍

Two decades after he was banished from his homeworld for a disaster that still haunts him—the kind of catastrophic failure that gets you exiled not just from a planet but from any hope of redemption—Eli and his crew of misfits struggle to survive on the outskirts of the galaxy. They’re the people nobody wants, doing the jobs nobody else will take, living on the margins where questions aren’t asked and past mistakes don’t follow you. It’s not glamorous, but it’s honest work if you squint and ignore the occasional illegality. 💫

But when Eli, goaded by his estranged daughter who has inherited his stubborn streak but none of his cynicism, rescues a near-dead castaway with an impossible secret about the coming invasion, everything changes in ways he can’t ignore. The castaway knows things nobody should know—invasion plans, alien technology, the coordinates of Earth’s destruction. Information that could save billions of lives if anyone bothered to listen to a disgraced smuggler and his crew of outcasts. Suddenly Eli’s comfortable existence of avoiding responsibility gets very uncomfortable. 😱

Eli might have no choice but to get back into the Earth-saving business despite every instinct telling him to run the other direction. The invasion is real, the timeline is terrifyingly short, and nobody else is in position to stop it. All the official channels, the military brass who exiled him, the governments that turned their backs on him—they’re too slow, too bureaucratic, too invested in not believing that the disgraced Eli Bryce might actually be right about something this time. ⚡

Worse, he might have to grow a conscience, which at his age and with his history feels like asking a stone to develop feelings. But his daughter’s looking at him like she believes he can still be a hero, his crew’s starting to care about something beyond their next paycheck, and the castaway’s dying words were about hope. Turns out, you can run from your past for two decades, but eventually it catches up and asks you to save the world one more time. 🌟

Why this works: Joshua James and Daniel Young deliver the complete nine-book Outcast Starship series featuring a reluctant hero, found family dynamics, galaxy-spanning adventure, and the question of whether redemption is possible for those who’ve already lost everything—perfect for readers who love their space opera with emotional depth and morally complicated protagonists.

She needed an escape from her shattered present. She got four centuries of complications instead. ⏰

After a devastating divorce that destroyed her trust, her finances, and her sense of who she is, Valerie Crane escapes to the picturesque English coast, hoping the ocean air and charming villages will soothe her damaged heart. On the hill behind her inn, the elegant ruins of Yealm Castle draw her repeatedly like a siren call—there’s something about those crumbling stones that speaks to her grief and loneliness. But instead of finding peace among the historical rubble, Valerie is swept up in an astonishing mystery when she touches a wall and is transported to the year 1605, when the castle is impossibly restored and beautiful. 🏰

Alone and terrified in a century where her clothes are wrong, her speech is suspicious, and her very existence is impossible to explain, Valerie only starts to grasp what has happened when she meets the handsome but taciturn Alec Whitfield, master of the now-intact castle. Alec is everything a brooding historical romance hero should be—powerful, mysterious, carrying secrets that darken his eyes, and deeply suspicious of this strange woman who appeared from nowhere speaking in riddles about the future. Alec doesn’t believe Valerie’s story about time travel because obviously that’s insane, but just as her last hope fades and she’s facing being thrown out to starve or worse, his charming, roguish brother Finlay persuades Alec to let her stay. 💕

As Valerie grows closer to both brothers while trying to navigate 17th-century life without indoor plumbing, antibiotics, or any of the modern conveniences she took for granted, passion flares into a love triangle that could consume them all. Alec’s reserved intensity draws her in ways that feel dangerous and inevitable. Finlay’s easy charm and kindness offer the safety and acceptance she desperately needs. She’s falling for both of them in different ways, and in 1605, that’s not just socially unacceptable—it’s a scandal that could destroy the entire Whitfield family. 🔥

The danger and violence around them escalates dramatically when Finlay becomes entangled in a treasonous plot—possibly involving gunpowder, Parliament, and the kind of conspiracy that gets entire families executed. With lives on the line and history threatening to repeat its darkest moments, Valerie realizes her knowledge of what’s supposed to happen could save them or doom them depending on how she acts. If she can find a way back to her own time through whatever magic brought her here, should she take the chance to run back to modern plumbing and divorce lawyers? Or will she risk everything—her safety, her chance to return, her life—for a chance to save the man she loves? 💔

Because here’s the thing about time travel: you can’t love someone in 1605 without consequences. Stay, and she might die in a century without modern medicine or face execution for witchcraft. Leave, and she abandons the people she’s come to love to their historical fates. Some choices don’t have good options, just impossible ones. ⚖️

Here’s what you’re getting: Irina Shapiro delivers time travel romance combining a divorced modern woman, two brothers in Jacobean England competing for her heart, actual historical stakes involving treason, and the agonizing question of whether love is worth being trapped four centuries in the past—perfect for readers who like their romance with historical detail and genuine danger.

I never said I was engaged to Alex Stone, the richest man in Eureka and quite possibly the hottest. My douchey ex just assumed I was, and I didn’t correct him because I was having a moment. 💍

You see, I was out of work after a spectacular professional implosion, out of money with my savings evaporating faster than my dignity, and Alex had just offered me a lifeline by hiring me to be his live-in nanny for his adorable kids for a month. The job pays well, comes with room and board, and most importantly, gets me away from my ex Drake who won’t stop texting about what a hot mess I am. So when Drake the douche starts going on at my best friend’s wedding about how I’ve failed at everything and what a disaster my life is, I kind of let him believe Alex and I were a thing. A serious thing. An engaged thing. 😅

I never actually said the word fiancé out loud. I just didn’t correct his assumption when he put it together himself. And I definitely never expected Alex Stone—controlled, formal, never-makes-a-bad-decision Alex—to overhear the conversation, connect the dots, and decide to play along with my ridiculous lie. But that’s exactly what happened, because apparently beneath that buttoned-up billionaire businessman exterior beats the heart of someone who enjoys chaos more than he admits. 🎭

Alex Stone is one of those list-topping, Forbes-cover, billionaire businessmen-types who treats life like a spreadsheet that needs optimizing. He’s controlled in ways that would make a robot jealous, formal enough to make the Queen seem casual, and never makes a bad decision about anything ever. He’s also tall, dark, and brutally handsome with smokey hazel eyes that see everything, wavy brown hair that somehow stays perfect despite small children climbing on him, and a body that will literally melt your brain. This is a detail I happen to know after accidentally catching him just out of the shower completely naked, which is a memory I will take to my grave and also replay in my mind approximately seven hundred times a day. 🔥

The plan is beautifully simple: he’ll secretly be my fake fiancé for the wedding night, just long enough to get Drake off my back, no harm done. We’ll pretend to be madly in love for a few hours, I’ll get my dignity back, and then we return to our normal employer-employee relationship where I watch his kids and absolutely do not think about him naked. Easy. Except the douche stays longer than just the wedding, stretching out his visit because of course he does. So our fake engagement has to continue, and somehow the secret engagement becomes not-so-secret when Drake starts asking questions and posting on social media. 📱

And when Alex decides there are things we should know how to do if we’re supposedly engaged—like making out convincingly in case anyone’s watching, sleeping in the same bed when Drake drops by unexpectedly, being comfortable with casual physical affection—my carefully controlled lie really gets out of control. Because it’s one thing to be fake engaged to the hottest, richest, most emotionally unavailable man in town who also happens to be your live-in boss. That’s manageable if you keep your head on straight and your hands to yourself. ⚡

It’s a little twist to find yourself falling in actual love with him when the engagement is completely fake, the attraction is devastatingly real, and the expiration date on your employment is approaching fast. Alex’s rules about keeping things professional are sound and reasonable. My feelings about wanting to tear those rules into tiny pieces are neither sound nor reasonable. And his kids are starting to look at me like I’m staying permanently, which I’m definitely not, because this is temporary, everything is temporary, none of this is real. Except somehow it’s starting to feel more real than anything else in my life. 💕

What makes this delightful: Tia Louise delivers contemporary romance featuring fake engagement tropes, a billionaire single dad, close proximity tension, and a heroine discovering that sometimes the best relationships start with ridiculous lies told to terrible exes—perfect for readers who love their romance with heat, humor, and the satisfying schadenfreude of showing up your ex with a fake fiancé who’s absurdly perfect.

Mince pies, mistletoe, and a murder most festive in the town where Christmas never ends. 🎄

I used to think the most ridiculous thing about my life was my name—Holly Wood, which sounds like either a bad porn star pseudonym or someone’s idea of a joke. That was before I nearly froze to death in a snowdrift on Christmas Eve while running away from my problems like a coward, and was rescued by the actual real Mrs. Claus who is apparently real and lives in England. Now I’m recuperating in her storybook cottage in Candy Cane Hollow, a village where the fairy lights never switch off, Christmas decorations are year-round lifestyle choices, and somehow this is all completely normal to the residents. 🌟

Just when my lonely, previously Christmas-hating heart starts to think this perpetually festive nightmare might actually be home—helped significantly by Mrs. Claus’s distractingly handsome son Nick, who manages to make even a Santa sweater look good—disaster strikes in the most Christmas way possible. The frostiest, most unpleasant receptionist in town, a woman who makes Scrooge look like a philanthropist, eats one of Mrs. Claus’s famous homemade mince pies at the village holiday party and collapses dramatically. Suddenly my kind-hearted rescuer, the woman who saved my life and welcomed me into her home, is suspect number one in what’s being treated as a poisoning. 😱

With elf police posted at the door like something out of a fever dream (yes, elf police, because apparently that’s a thing in Candy Cane Hollow), and Gilbert the over-helpful house-elf constantly underfoot offering suggestions that range from brilliant to completely insane, Nick and I dive headfirst into investigating small-town rivalries that run deeper than fruitcake, festive competitions where winning matters more than human decency, and very human motives hiding behind all the Christmas cheer. We need the truth served up on the table before Christmas dinner and before they haul Mrs. Claus away in elf handcuffs. 🔍

As we investigate the victim’s extensive list of enemies—and I do mean extensive, this woman made enemies like other people make cookies—we discover that beneath Candy Cane Hollow’s relentlessly cheerful exterior lurks jealousy, revenge, financial desperation, and long-held grudges. The receptionist knew everyone’s secrets because she worked at the doctor’s office and had zero professional ethics. Someone wanted those secrets buried along with her, and they’re perfectly happy to let Mrs. Claus take the blame. 💀

Between interrogating suspects who insist on offering us hot cocoa and Christmas cookies, dodging Gilbert’s increasingly creative detective theories that involve entirely too much glitter, and trying not to fall completely in love with Nick while we’re literally living in his mother’s house investigating her potential imprisonment, we race against the clock to find the real killer. Because if we fail, the woman who embodies everything good about Christmas goes to prison, and I lose the first place that’s ever felt like home. Also Nick. I’d really like to not lose Nick. 🎁

Why this delights: Mona Marple launches the Candy Cane Hollow Christmas series with a cozy mystery combining a town where Christmas is eternal, the real Mrs. Claus framed for murder, a heroine named Holly Wood solving crimes with Santa’s son, and discovering that even the most festive villages hide darkness—perfect for readers who love their holiday mysteries with magic, romance, and over-enthusiastic elves.

A murder investigation reveals a conspiracy between a company and its workers in this noir alternate world SF novel from a multi-award-winning author who knows how to blend genres into something genuinely unique. 🏭

The year is 1919. The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry, the shining example of what capitalism can achieve when unconstrained. They built the guns that won the Great War before it even began, turning battlefield superiority into a fait accompli. They built the airships that tie the world together, making intercontinental travel routine and profitable. And, above all, they built Evesden—a shining metropolis rising from nothing, the best that the modern world has to offer, a testament to corporate vision and industrial might. 🔧

But something is rotten at the heart of this gleaming city, festering beneath the polished surface. Deep underground in the trolley tunnels that workers use to commute, a trolley car pulls into a station with eleven dead bodies inside, blood pooling on the floor. Four minutes before, witnesses saw the victims boarding at the previous station, alive and laughing after their shift. Eleven men butchered by hand in the blink of an eye, torn apart with impossible violence. All are dead. And all are union members, which makes this more than just murder—it makes it a message. 💀

Now one man, Cyril Hayes, must fix this before the city tears itself apart. There is a dark secret behind the revolutionary inventions of McNaughton, something that explains their impossible technological leaps and their uncanny success. And with a war brewing between the executives in their towers and the workers in the depths, between those who profit and those who bleed, the truth must be discovered before the whole city burns in riots and retribution. ⚙️

Caught between the union organizers who want justice and the company security forces who want silence, between the police who serve corporate interests and the victims’ families demanding answers, Hayes must uncover the mystery before it kills him too. Because in Evesden, asking the wrong questions gets you disappeared, and discovering the right answers might get you killed. And the deeper Hayes digs, the more he realizes the conspiracy isn’t just about murder—it’s about what McNaughton has been doing to maintain their monopoly on innovation, and what they’re willing to do to keep it secret. 🕵️

Why this grips: Robert Jackson Bennett delivers noir alternate history blending fantasy elements, corporate conspiracy, and class warfare into a murder mystery where the real horror isn’t supernatural—it’s what humans do for profit and power.

A wedding. A secret past. A trail of anonymous letters. One by one, the lies unravel, and so has her trust. 💌

Lily Whitaker is courting the perfect man. Or so it seems to everyone watching their carefully orchestrated courtship unfold. Charles Bennington is kind, successful, admired by her family and her church community, everything a respectable young woman in 1912 New York could want in a husband. Their future seems bright—marriage, children, a comfortable life in proper society. Until a disturbing note arrives one morning warning Lily that Charles isn’t who he claims to be, that everything she thinks she knows about him is carefully constructed fiction. 😱

As more letters follow with increasingly specific accusations, doubts begin to take root in ways Lily can’t ignore no matter how much she wants to. Rumors stir in her social circles. Whispers grow louder at church gatherings. And the man Lily thought she knew—the man she was planning to marry—becomes harder and harder to defend against accusations she can’t verify but also can’t dismiss. Torn between loyalty to her fiancé and fear that the letters might be telling the truth, Lily searches for answers, risking her reputation, her family’s standing in New York society, and her heart in the process. 🔍

Set in the spring of 1912 in New York City—the same spring the Titanic sank, when the world seemed both modern and fragile, when appearances meant everything and secrets could destroy you—The Perfect Stranger is a gripping tale of love, deception, and redemption. A story where appearances deceive with devastating effectiveness, reputations unravel faster than they were built, and the heart must decide what to believe when evidence contradicts everything you thought was true. 💔

As Lily investigates Charles’s past, she discovers that perfect strangers aren’t always what they seem, that even good men can have secrets worth hiding, and that sometimes the truth is more complicated than lies or honesty—it’s somewhere in between, in the gray areas where people make mistakes and hope for second chances. The question becomes: can she love someone whose past she doesn’t fully know? And can Charles prove he’s worthy of that love? ⚖️

Fans of Dan Walsh’s bestseller The Deepest Waters will love this book with its period detail, moral complexity, and exploration of faith under pressure. And there’s a sequel, Scandal at the Belmont, already available, because apparently one book wasn’t enough to contain all the secrets hiding in gilded age New York. ✨

What makes this compelling: Dan Walsh launches the Gilded Secrets series with a religious mystery exploring trust, redemption, and whether love can survive when everything you believed about someone turns out to be carefully curated truth—perfect for readers who love their historical mysteries with moral depth and genuine stakes.

Wrong. Sinful. Taboo. Every word society uses to describe what I feel for him. 🔥

I know I shouldn’t want him the way I do, with this desperate ache that never quite goes away. I know I shouldn’t touch myself in the middle of the night as thoughts of him run through my mind on an endless loop that’s equal parts torture and relief. Thoughts of his kiss that I’ve imagined a thousand times, his touch that haunts me even though it’s never happened, his love that I’ve craved since I was old enough to understand what love means. 💔

I’d spent years obsessing over the man I thought I couldn’t have, building fantasies in the dark while pretending during the day that he was just… him. Safe. Off-limits. Impossible. The one person I wasn’t supposed to see that way, the one line I wasn’t supposed to cross, the one desire I wasn’t supposed to acknowledge out loud or even to myself in honest moments. But hiding feelings doesn’t make them disappear—it just makes them stronger, more desperate, more consuming. 😍

But as it turns out, he wants me too. He’s been watching me the same way I’ve been watching him. He’s been fighting the same battle, losing the same war against desire that society says is wrong but biology insists is inevitable. And he wants me now—not someday when circumstances change, not eventually when it’s more convenient, not after we figure out how to explain it to everyone else. Now. 🌟

The revelation changes everything and nothing. Because wanting each other doesn’t make it less complicated, doesn’t erase the reasons this is supposed to be forbidden, doesn’t change the consequences we’ll face if anyone finds out. But maybe some things are worth the risk. Maybe some connections are too powerful to deny no matter what labels society tries to attach. Maybe always been you means exactly that—it’s always been him, and pretending otherwise was the real sin. ⚡

Here’s what you’re getting: Q.B. Tyler delivers forbidden contemporary romance exploring taboo desire, years of suppressed longing finally unleashed, and two people discovering that sometimes the heart wants what society says it shouldn’t—perfect for readers who love their romance with high stakes and moral complexity.

A deadly explosion rocks the nation’s capital, shattering windows for blocks and sending the entire security apparatus into overdrive. 💥

Three seemingly unconnected people suddenly find themselves under intense suspicion for the attack that’s dominating every news channel. A British ex-Special Forces operative with training in explosives and a complicated service record. An ex-Navy Seal who left the military under circumstances nobody will quite explain. And a teenage girl who shouldn’t have any connection to terrorism but whose digital footprint suggests otherwise. None of them know each other. None of them can explain why they’re being targeted. And all of them are running out of time to prove their innocence. 🎯

Soon, they’re in the middle of a sprawling conspiracy that threatens to unsettle the entire United States, a plot that goes higher and deeper than any of them imagined. If they have any hope to survive the dangerous situation they’ve found themselves in—federal agents closing in, media painting them as terrorists, actual conspirators trying to silence them permanently—these strangers must learn to rely on each other despite having every reason not to trust anyone. All while the question remains, burning in the back of everyone’s mind: did one of them actually cause the explosion? 😱

As they’re hunted across the country by authorities who’ve already decided they’re guilty, they start piecing together the real conspiracy. Someone planned this attack and deliberately framed three people with military training, three people who could theoretically pull off a bombing but who also have alibis that don’t quite add up. Someone wanted exactly these three people blamed, wanted them running, wanted them desperate. The question is: why? What connects a British operator, an American Seal, and a teenage girl? 🔍

The deeper they dig while staying one step ahead of capture, the more they realize the explosion wasn’t the real attack—it was just the beginning. And unless they can expose the truth before the conspirators complete their actual plan, thousands more will die while three innocent people take the fall. Trust no one, believe nothing, and survive long enough to clear your name. That’s the mission now. 💀

What makes this explosive: Paul Heatley launches the First Sleeper series with high-octane terrorism thriller combining three unlikely protagonists, a massive conspiracy, and the terrifying question of whether the people trying to clear their names might actually be guilty—perfect for fans of action-packed suspense where nobody’s quite who they seem.

“The Good War” is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Studs Terkel as an interviewer and oral historian who could make people reveal truths they’d never told anyone. 🎙️

From a pipe fitter’s apprentice at Pearl Harbor who watched the Arizona explode to a crew member of the Enola Gay who dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and still can’t quite process what he did, his subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences. They don’t perform patriotism or offer sanitized memories—they tell the truth, producing what People magazine called “a splendid epic history” of WWII that’s more honest than most official accounts. With this volume Terkel expanded his scope to the global and the historical, and the result is a masterpiece of oral history that captures war from every conceivable angle. 🌍

“Tremendously compelling, somehow dramatic and intimate at the same time, as if one has stumbled on private accounts in letters locked in attic trunks,” notes The New York Times Book Review. “In terms of plain human interest, Mr. Terkel may well have put together the most vivid collection of World War II sketches ever gathered between covers.” That’s because these aren’t academic analyses or strategic overviews—they’re human beings remembering the worst and best moments of their lives with startling clarity. 📚

“I promise you will remember your war years, if you were alive then, with extraordinary vividness as you go through Studs Terkel’s book,” writes the Chicago Tribune. “Or, if you are too young to remember, this is the best place to get a sense of what people were feeling.” Not what they were supposed to feel according to propaganda, not what historians decided they felt decades later, but what they actually experienced in the moment—terror, boredom, grief, pride, shame, confusion, camaraderie, and everything in between. 💭

The voices here represent everyone touched by the war: soldiers from every branch and theater, nurses who saw unspeakable injuries, factory workers building the machinery of war, civilians enduring rationing and fear, prisoners of war surviving camps, resistance fighters risking everything, and people on all sides trying to make sense of global violence. Terkel lets them speak without judgment, without editorializing, trusting that the truth is powerful enough on its own. And he’s right. ⚔️

What makes this essential: Studs Terkel delivers the definitive oral history of WWII by letting the people who lived it tell their own stories without filter—essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the war beyond textbook summaries and Hollywood heroics, hearing instead the complicated human truth.