As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
In 1704, a Russian team of cartographers stumbles onto a lethal secret in a cave in the Canadian Northwest Territories—a pile of skeletons and something far worse. More than three hundred years later, a bomb goes off at Yellowstone National Park. The blast itself isn’t the only problem: it released something into the air, and the outbreak is spreading fast, infecting and killing more people with every hour that passes. Harvey “Ben” Bennett is a reclusive Yellowstone park ranger who was out re-homing a problem bear when the explosion hit. He’s not a trained killer, but he’s the one on the ground, and when he teams up with Juliette Richardson—a driven CDC agent with the Biological Threat Research team—the two of them are the best shot anyone has at finding the terrorists behind the attack before it becomes an extinction-level event. Nick Thacker opens the Harvey Bennett Thrillers series with the action-adventure debut that readers compare to National Treasure meets Indiana Jones. 🔍
Thacker writes with the lean, forward-momentum prose and short punchy chapters that define the genre—the action starts on page one and doesn’t let up—and Bennett’s reluctant-hero energy distinguishes him from the standard action-hero mold. Reviewers consistently place the series alongside James Rollins and Clive Cussler for readers who want big-scale adventure with an authentic everyman protagonist. 💙
Thacker is a USA Today bestselling author who lives on a volcano in Hawaii. The Harvey Bennett Thrillers series runs 12 books and counting. ⭐
Why this grips you: A Yellowstone bomb released a deadly virus, a reclusive park ranger and a CDC agent are the only people in position to stop it, and the clock is already running.
Phoebe Tillington has been waiting her whole life. Waiting for the right moment, the right person, the right circumstances—and she has spent years watching all of them pass her by. So when she arrives in Pretty Beach—a sun-drenched, sparkling little town on the English south coast where the sea glitters, the locals wave hello, and life moves at the pace of someone who actually has time to enjoy it—she makes herself a promise: no more waiting for anything or anyone. She is going to live now. The problem, and the unexpected delight, is that a man at the end of the garden seems to have other ideas about her future. Polly Babbington opens the Old Sugar Wharf Pretty Beach series with the British coastal romance that one reader called so good she “didn’t come out from under the duvet” until she’d read all of Babbington’s books. 💕
Babbington writes with the specific, sun-drenched warmth of someone who truly loves the British coast—the tumbledown houses, the salt air, the community texture of a small town that wraps you up the moment you arrive. Sarah Johnson called the series “a joy to read—utterly comforting, feel-good romance.” Heidi Jones described Babbington’s world as one “you won’t want to leave.” 🔍
Babbington is a British author who writes from a summer house at the end of her garden. The Old Sugar Wharf Pretty Beach series runs three completed books. ⭐
Why this charms: She spent years waiting and arrived in Pretty Beach determined to finally stop—then a man at the end of the garden changed all her plans in the best possible way.
News reporter Trudi Wells never wanted to be a food writer. She was a crime reporter, and a good one—right up until an embarrassing editing mistake she would rather not discuss ended up getting her reassigned to the food desk. Now she’s supposed to write warm, cuddly features about restaurants and recipes, which is a problem because Trudi survives happily on peanut butter and breakfast cereal and knows nothing about fine dining. Then the most famous chef in the California foothill community is found murdered with a cooking knife, and Trudi spots an opportunity: solve the case, prove her skills, get back to the news desk where she belongs. In a tight-knit world of cooks, caterers, and wine snobs, how does an impulsive, smart-mouthed reporter who doesn’t know a ramekin from a colander navigate a world she has no business being in? Julie Adler opens the Trudi Wells series with the culinary cozy mystery that readers call genuinely funny and genuinely suspenseful. 🔍
Adler is a journalist who has covered food and drink, and both the newspaper and culinary world details in the novel ring completely authentic. Trudi’s voice—sharp, self-deprecating, slightly chaotic—is exactly what the genre needs more of. A clean cozy; no graphic content. Multiple reviewers describe finishing and immediately hunting for Book 2. 💙
Adler is a California-based journalist and food writer. The Trudi Wells series runs multiple books set across California, Prague, and Italy. ⭐
Why this charms: A news reporter dumped onto the food desk finds the most famous chef in town murdered and sees her ticket back to real journalism—if she can survive long enough to write the story.
Grand Isle, Louisiana, 1899. Edna Pontellier is the wife of a prosperous Creole businessman and mother of two young sons—a woman whose life is arranged correctly in every outward respect. A summer on Grand Isle brings two things she has never allowed herself to consider: an infatuation with the dashing Robert Lebrun, and a growing, disturbing awareness that she has spent her entire life playing a role she never chose for herself. Back in New Orleans, Edna begins to test the limits of what a woman of her social standing is permitted to want—moving to her own house, pursuing painting, refusing to perform the social duties expected of her, exploring what it might mean to live as herself rather than as someone’s wife or mother. Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel was so scandalous on publication that it effectively ended her career and was largely suppressed for fifty years before being rediscovered as a foundational text of American feminist literature. 📚
Chopin writes with a deceptively light, sensory prose that makes Edna’s gradual awakening feel both inevitable and devastating—the novel’s ending remains one of the most debated and discussed in American literary history. It is now taught in universities across the world as one of the earliest and most powerful depictions of a woman’s interior life written in the American tradition. 💙
Chopin was a Louisiana-born American author who published The Awakening in 1899. It is now a cornerstone of the American literary canon and is in the public domain. ⭐
Why this matters: A century before anyone had a language for it, Kate Chopin wrote the interior life of a woman who wanted something she couldn’t name—and the world that couldn’t survive her wanting it.
Child advocate attorney Sabre Brown is having a great time geocaching—the internet’s version of a treasure hunt that sends participants tracking down hidden containers using GPS coordinates. The fun ends completely when she opens a container and finds a death certificate inside listing “murder by poison” as the cause of death. The most disturbing part: the date of death is ten days in the future. Thrust into a deadly race against time, Sabre follows a trail of cryptic clues from cache to cache, each more puzzling and more dangerous than the last. As the clues escalate and unexpectedly lead back to one of her court cases, Sabre must figure out if she is actually trying to stop a murder—or if someone is using the geocache as a twisted game to play her. Teresa Burrell delivers Book 7 of the Advocate Series with the legal suspense mystery that reviewers call one of the strongest entries in the series. 🔍
Burrell is a former San Diego attorney who spent years representing abused minors and juvenile delinquents, and the authenticity of the child welfare system details that thread through the series is what distinguishes Sabre Brown from the field of amateur sleuths. The geocaching premise is genuinely novel—and delivers exactly the puzzle-within-a-puzzle structure that mystery readers come for. 💙
Burrell is the author of over 20 books in the Advocate Series. The series now runs 20 entries; this is Book 7 and can be enjoyed alone or in sequence. ⭐
Why this hooks you: She opened a geocache container and found a death certificate dated ten days in the future—and now has to follow the clues to stop a murder that hasn’t happened yet.
Research shows that in today’s content-saturated digital world, you have fewer than three seconds to capture a person’s attention before they scroll past. That’s not a guideline—it’s a hard behavioral reality, and most brands, businesses, and content creators are losing every day because their messages aren’t built for it. Brendan Kane has made a career of solving this problem: a digital strategist who has built social platforms for Taylor Swift and Rihanna, and worked with Fortune 500 companies including Paramount, Viacom, and MTV. In Hook Point, he reveals the communication concept he considers the most important tool in the modern attention economy—a hook point being a concise, immediately compelling message that grabs attention within seconds and gives the audience a reason to keep watching, reading, or listening. The book covers how to create them for video, articles, social media, brand campaigns, and live pitches. 📚
Kane backs the concept with real case studies and offers practical exercises to help readers identify what actually makes them different from the field—and how to say it in a way that stops the scroll. Keith Ferrazi, author of Never Eat Alone, called it “the answer to standing out and growing your brand or business.” Jon Jashni noted that Kane’s “flashlight pierces the pop-cultural fog more effectively than anyone else’s.” 🔍
Kane is also the author of One Million Followers. Hook Point was an Amazon #1 bestseller in multiple marketing categories. ⭐
Why this helps: You have three seconds—the digital strategist behind Taylor Swift and Rihanna’s social platforms explains exactly how to use them.
Six years ago, private investigator Jack Till helped a terrified young woman named Wendy Harper disappear—new name, new city, new life, no forwarding address. It worked. For six years, there was silence. Then her former boyfriend and business partner, Eric Fuller, is charged with murdering Wendy to collect on her life insurance policy. Till knows she’s alive. He finds her—but the problem is that now the people who want her dead know she’s alive too. Specifically, a married couple named Paul and Sylvie Turner, two professional assassins who began with the contract to kill Wendy and now find that their own identities have been exposed. The fee just went up, and they will follow this job wherever it leads. Thomas Perry delivers the Jack Till thriller that Nelson DeMille called “ingeniously plotted and tightly written” and Marilyn Stasio called Perry’s “cat-and-mouse game at the top of his form.” 🔍
What distinguishes Perry’s psychological thrillers from the competition is exactly what the New York Times described as “elaborate cat-and-mouse machinations driven as much by the characters’ fears and neuroses as by ordinary motives.” The Turners—polished, professional, deeply strange—are among the most chilling adversaries in thriller fiction. Publishers Weekly praised “another intelligent, literate thriller” that “keeps up the pace throughout.” 💙
Perry is the author of over 23 novels including the beloved Jane Whitefield series. He won the Edgar Award for The Butcher’s Boy. The Jack Till series continues with two more novels. ⭐
Why this grips you: He helped her disappear six years ago. Now her ex is charged with her murder, and the assassins hunting her have learned she’s still alive—for $1.99.
With a little determination and a lot of charm, Rosa Capoletti transformed her family’s run-down pizza joint into Celesta’s-by-the-Sea—an award-winning beachfront restaurant that has been voted the best place to propose in the area three years running. Rosa is brilliant at creating romantic memories for other couples. Her own romantic life, however, has been quiet since Alexander Montgomery ended their love affair suddenly and without explanation a decade ago. When Alex returns to her Rhode Island seaside town asking for help sorting through his late mother’s affairs, they find themselves reunited at the beach house where they first fell in love. The secrets of the past are not what they seem, and all that Rosa ever wanted is standing right in front of her—if she can bring herself to trust it again. Susan Wiggs delivers the warm, sun-drenched second-chance romance that Jodi Picoult praised as the work of someone who “paints the details of human relationships with the finesse of a master.” 💕
Wiggs writes with the specific warmth and romantic intelligence that has made her one of the most beloved names in beach fiction—the Rhode Island shore is rendered with affectionate specificity, and Rosa’s combination of culinary passion and emotional guardedness gives the novel its heart. Recipes are woven throughout. 🔍
Wiggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over 50 novels. Summer by the Sea is a standalone. ⭐
Why this charms: She runs the best place to propose in town and hasn’t had a real romance since he left ten years ago without explanation—now he’s back—for $0.99.
Spencer Cadence has built his life around protecting others as a top agent for Northern Guardians Security—strong, disciplined, trusted with lives every day. What no one knows is that a devastating medical diagnosis is threatening to end his career and the calling he believes God gave him. Then he finds a woman bound and gagged in the bed of a pickup truck. Elana Hermans is running out of time. Betrayed by someone she trusted, she barely escaped with her life—only to be discovered by the one man she shouldn’t rely on. Spencer’s quiet strength offers safety, but trusting him means risking the secrets she’s been hiding. As Spencer investigates who wants Elana dead, he discovers the danger isn’t random—it’s personal. The closer he gets to the truth, the more his own carefully managed life begins to unravel alongside hers. Kari Trumbo opens the Northern Guardians series with the Christian romantic suspense that her devoted readership has been eagerly anticipating. 🔍
Trumbo writes with the emotional depth and authentic tension she developed through a background in psychology and criminology—the faith thread is present throughout without being heavy-handed, and the forced-proximity dynamic between Spencer and Elana is earned rather than manufactured. Spencer’s medical diagnosis gives the story an emotional dimension that sets it apart from standard protection romance. 💙
Trumbo is a Publishers Weekly bestselling author of over 120 novels across multiple Christian romance and suspense series. The Northern Guardians series runs six books. ⭐
Why this hooks you: A security agent with a secret medical diagnosis finds a woman someone is desperate to silence—and the closer he gets to her truth, the more he has to risk—for $1.99.
Jody never asked to be a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley dumpster with a badly burned arm, supernatural strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, it becomes clear that someone else made the decision for her. The transition from nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to require help—and that’s where C. Thomas Flood enters the picture. Tommy is a would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, biding his time night-clerking at a San Francisco Safeway and bowling frozen turkeys in the aisles at three in the morning. When a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door, his life—and afterlife—changes in ways he never imagined possible. Meanwhile, a string of suspicious murders across the city may or may not be connected to the ancient vampire who turned Jody, and somebody has to figure that out. Christopher Moore delivers the vampire love story that Library Journal called “delightful—filled with oddball characters, clever dialogue, and hilarious situations.” ✨
Moore writes with the specific San Francisco energy that makes his novels feel like a city as much as a story—the Emperor of San Francisco and his two loyal dogs, the Safeway crew, and the city’s fog-wrapped geography all serve as comic atmosphere. Nothing like Anne Rice; considerably funnier than Bram Stoker. 🔍
Moore is the bestselling author of A Dirty Job, Lamb, and a dozen other novels. The Bloodsucking Fiends trilogy runs three books, all completed. ⭐
Why this captivates: She woke up undead under a dumpster, recruited the night clerk at a Safeway to help her navigate vampire life, and now they have to find out who turned her before the murders escalate—for $1.99.
Annie Harlow is a television cooking show host with a life that looks wonderful from the outside—until a devastating discovery just before a freak accident leaves her in a coma for over a year. When she wakes up, the marriage no longer exists, the career is uncertain, and the memory she carries is a man from her past who keeps flooding back. Grieving and wounded, she retreats to her family’s generational maple farm in Switchback, Vermont, surrounded by her free-spirited brother, their divorced mother, and four young nieces and nephews. Then she finds her grandmother’s old cookbook—and inside it, a mystery that might prove the salvation of the family farm. And her high-school boyfriend, now a judge, is still in Switchback. Susan Wiggs delivers the New York Times bestselling Vermont family saga that Booklist gave a starred review and called “soul-satisfying.” 💙
Wiggs writes with the effortless warmth and genuine emotional intelligence that has made her one of the most trusted names in women’s fiction—the Vermont setting is rendered with real love, the maple farming sequences are specific and vivid, and Annie’s recovery from both the accident and the betrayal is given real time and space. Debbie Macomber called it “a novel to cherish and to remember.” 🔍
Wiggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over 50 novels. Family Tree is a standalone. ⭐
Why this moves you: She woke up from a coma with her marriage gone and a grandmother’s cookbook full of secrets—and a hometown she thought she’d left behind—for $1.99.
All eighteen-year-old Sydney wants is to ace the audition for a prestigious ballet company and get to New York. One night before the most important audition of her life, a stranger jumps into her car and gets her caught up in something she had no business being involved in—and everything changes. The only one who can help her navigate the fallout is Aiden, twenty years old and the future Alpha of the Shadow Grove wolf pack: guarded, impossibly gorgeous, with haunting blue eyes that are everything she should stay away from. When his rescue attempt backfires and Sydney witnesses things she was never supposed to see, she finds herself pulled into a supernatural war she didn’t sign up for. The more Aiden insists on protecting her, the more torn she becomes between the forbidden pull toward him and walking away to save her own life. Leah Copeland opens the Wolves of Shadow Grove trilogy with the Upper YA paranormal romance that readers are comparing to The Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf. ✨
Copeland writes with the slow-burn energy and high-stakes action that the genre’s most devoted readers come for—the world-building is carefully layered, and the major twist near the end of Book 1 consistently leaves reviewers reporting jaw-dropped shock. Closed-door romance; appropriate for upper teen readers. 🔍
Copeland is a Virginia-based YA paranormal author. The Wolves of Shadow Grove trilogy is completed. ⭐
Why this captivates: A ballet dancer stumbles into a supernatural war the night before the most important audition of her life—and the only one who can help her is the future wolf Alpha she definitely shouldn’t trust—for $2.49.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2