Her heart is wide open. His is sealed shut. Can one dare change everything? 💕

Preschool teacher Harley Cole has always viewed life through rose-colored glasses with the kind of optimism that either inspires people or makes them suspicious. With a career she genuinely loves working with tiny humans who think she’s magical, friends she enjoys spending time with, and a home that is her haven filled with twinkle lights and cozy blankets, there’s only one thing missing—finding her soul mate. As the holidays approach and everyone around her seems to be pairing off, Harley is inspired to help her former high school crush rediscover his holiday joy that’s been buried under divorce papers and cynicism. It’s just a good deed, she tells herself. Pure altruism. Definitely not an excuse to spend time with him. Until the feelings she thought were safely buried in her teenage diary come rushing back with terrifying intensity. 🎄

Fire Chief Becker Lange returns home to River’s Edge with a heavy heart and luggage full of emotional baggage he’s not ready to unpack. His divorce has emotionally ravaged him in ways he didn’t expect, leaving him more confused than ever about what women actually want and whether he’s capable of giving it. So to protect himself from another spectacular failure that ends with lawyers and dividing up the furniture, he closes his heart completely. Locks it up tight. Throws away the key for good measure. And then Harley Cole—sunny, persistent, impossibly cheerful Harley—makes him a flirty dare that she can help him overcome the holiday blues and remember what Christmas joy feels like. Beck’s not sure he wants to remember. Being numb is safer. But Harley’s a hard woman to tell no to, especially when she’s looking at him like he’s still the guy she had a crush on in high school. 🔥

As Harley launches her “Operation: Unscrooge the Fire Chief” campaign—complete with gingerbread house building, ice skating, and aggressive holiday movie marathons—Beck finds his carefully constructed walls crumbling. Her optimism is infectious in the most annoying way possible. Her laughter makes him remember what happiness sounds like. And the way she looks at him makes him want to be the man she thinks he is rather than the divorced cynic he’s become. 🌟

Can the magic of Christmas and a sweet stray kitten that shows up on Beck’s doorstep and refuses to leave bring these two lonely souls together? Or will Beck’s fear of getting hurt again keep him from the one person who could actually heal his broken heart? ❄️

What makes this heartwarming: Nan Reinhardt delivers a small-town holiday romance about a sunshine heroine melting a grumpy hero’s frozen heart, complete with Christmas magic, second chances at love, and a scene-stealing kitten—perfect for readers who love their holiday romance with emotional depth and genuine sweetness.

A fun festive British village cozy mystery packed with twists and turns! 🕯️

Murder at the craft fair, because apparently even handmade candles can be deadly…

Christmas is around the corner in the quaint village of Northash, and candle shop owner Claire Harris is genuinely excited about her first craft fair. Being held in the locally historic Starfall House—a gorgeous manor that’s hosted craft fairs for generations—Claire is absolutely sure her festive scents will fly off her stall. She’s got peppermint bark candles, gingerbread dreams, cranberry wassail, the whole holiday lineup. Her only problem? She’s not the only stallholder selling homemade candles at the fair, and her main competition takes “cutthroat business practices” a bit too literally. 🎄

When her rival candle maker dies on the first day of the fair under suspicious circumstances—and all evidence seems to point directly at Claire’s stall, her candles, and her frankly terrible alibi—all fingers point to Claire as the prime suspect. The local gossips are having a field day. The police are asking uncomfortable questions. And Claire’s carefully built candle business reputation is melting faster than wax near an open flame. Can she prove her innocence before Christmas Day, or will she be spending the holidays in a cell that definitely doesn’t smell like cinnamon and cloves? 🔍

Claire Harris, daughter of a retired detective inspector who taught her everything about investigation whether she wanted to learn or not, runs her dream candle shop in a quaint British village that’s equal parts charming and nosy. Surrounded by gossiping villagers who know everyone’s business before they do, tight-knit friends who support her sleuthing habit, and loyal family who wish she’d just stick to making candles, Claire, in her mid-thirties, can’t help sleuthing when strange things happen on her doorstep. Especially when those strange things involve murder accusations that could destroy everything she’s built. 🕵️

As Claire investigates her fellow craft fair vendors—from the suspiciously cheerful soap maker to the aggressively competitive knitter to the jam seller with a mysterious past—she discovers that Starfall House holds secrets beyond just bad wiring and creaky floors. Someone wanted her rival dead, and they’re perfectly happy to let Claire take the fall for it. But Claire didn’t spend her childhood watching her father solve cases just to let herself get framed for murder during the most wonderful time of the year. 🎁

With the craft fair continuing despite the murder (because nothing stops British commerce, apparently), Claire has to navigate holiday shoppers, investigate suspects, and keep her candle sales going—all while avoiding the killer who’s decided one body at the craft fair might not be enough. ❄️

Why this delights: Agatha Frost serves up a festive British cozy mystery combining holiday craft fairs, candle shop charm, and a determined amateur sleuth proving her innocence—perfect for readers who love their murder mysteries with tea, scones, and Christmas spirit.

I saw her first. Blonde. Gorgeous. Feisty. I was captivated instantly. 💕

But it doesn’t matter because hours later, she walks out of my roommate’s bedroom half naked wearing his shirt, and I know with devastating certainty I’ve lost my chance before I even had one. She’s off-limits. She’s his. And I’m the guy who has to pretend I don’t think about her constantly, who has to act like seeing them together doesn’t make me want to punch walls. 💔

Now, we’re forced to live together in close quarters and constantly bicker about everything—whose turn it is to do dishes, the thermostat setting, whether pineapple belongs on pizza. Though I purposely get under her skin because antagonizing her is the only way I’m allowed to engage with her without crossing lines, I can’t stop thinking about her in all the wrong ways. I should move out, get my own place so I can get over my feelings and stop torturing myself. But the selfish part of me can’t let go of being near her, even if it’s killing me slowly. 🔥

When her boyfriend and my best friend tragically dies in an accident that shatters all of us, we’re left to grieve together in the worst possible way. Instead of pushing her away like I should, giving her space to mourn without complicating things further, I pull her closer. Because she needs someone, and I need her to be okay, and the lines between grief and something else get dangerously blurred. 😢

Just as we come to terms with our new reality and start figuring out how to function in a world without him, she finds out she’s expecting his baby. A baby she’ll raise alone. A baby that will be her only connection to the man she loved and lost. Her religious parents will never accept a pregnancy out of wedlock—they’ll disown her, cut her off completely, make an already impossible situation unbearable. 👶

So to avoid disappointing them and protect her from more pain, I offer to be her fake husband in a plan that sounds reasonable at 2 AM but is obviously insane in the light of day. We’ll get married on paper, convince her parents it’s real, and I’ll help her raise the baby. Simple. Touching her hand at family dinners, kissing her for appearances, sharing a bed when her parents visit—it’s torture on my heart that’s been in love with her since the moment I saw her, but I ignore the guilt that I’m benefiting from my best friend’s death and play along because this is what she needs. 💍

As the lines blur between real and fake in ways that terrify me, as I fall deeper every day playing house with a woman who’s still grieving the man I’ll never measure up to, I finally confess I’m not pretending. That I’ve been in love with her from the beginning. That this fake marriage is the realest thing in my life. But she’s not ready to admit the same, not ready to let go of his memory, not ready to acknowledge that what we have might be more than just convenient. ⚡

I’m in love with my best friend’s girlfriend, raising his baby, living in his shadow. And she can never truly be mine, no matter how much we both pretend otherwise. 💫

What makes this devastating: Brooke Fox and Brooke Montgomery launch the Between Us Trilogy with angsty romance exploring forbidden love, surprise pregnancy, fake marriage becoming real, and the guilt of falling for someone you were never supposed to want—perfect for readers who love emotional torture with their happy endings.

A cruising couple live a life many only dream of aboard their 42-foot boat in Mexico’s hauntingly beautiful Sea of Cortez, where the water is impossibly blue and the sunsets make you believe in magic. But their chosen sea has a serpent lurking beneath the paradise: Mexico’s out-of-control drug trade that’s turning coastal communities into war zones. ⛵

They’re living the sailboat dream—anchoring in pristine coves, diving with sea lions, watching whales breach at sunset, trading stories with other cruisers at beach bonfires. It’s everything they’d imagined when they left the rat race behind to sail away from responsibility and routine. Until the day they witness a drug deal gone catastrophically wrong in a supposedly safe anchorage, and suddenly their peaceful cruising life becomes a nightmare they can’t wake up from. 🌊

After witnessing the violence—seeing things they absolutely were not supposed to see, being in the wrong place at the devastatingly wrong time—they set off a deadly chain of events that lands them in a sea of intrigue involving people they thought they could trust. Their best friend, the one who introduced them to cruising in the Sea of Cortez and swore it was safe. The Mexican Federal Police who may or may not be on the cartel’s payroll. The DEA agents who seem more interested in using them as bait than protecting them. The US Coast Guard who can’t operate in Mexican waters. The INS with their own agenda. And most terrifying of all, a particularly nasty drug cartel that really doesn’t appreciate witnesses and has infinite resources to make problems disappear permanently into the deep blue sea. 💀

Now they’re caught between multiple agencies who all want to use them for different purposes, none of which involve keeping them alive, and a cartel that wants them dead before they can testify about what they saw. They can’t go back to shore—the cartel has people everywhere. They can’t sail away—Mexican waters stretch for thousands of miles and the cartel has boats faster than theirs. They can’t even call for help without potentially alerting the people trying to kill them. 🚤

As they navigate treacherous waters both literal and political, trying to stay alive while various authorities play jurisdictional games with their lives, they realize their dream of peaceful cruising has become a desperate fight for survival. The Sea of Cortez is still hauntingly beautiful. But now every approaching boat is a potential threat. Every friendly sailor could be working for the cartel. Every safe anchorage might be a trap. Paradise has become a prison, and the only way out is through a gauntlet of drug runners, corrupt officials, and bureaucratic nightmares. 😱

What makes this gripping: Jinx Schwartz delivers international crime thriller set against the gorgeous backdrop of Mexican waters, proving that paradise can become deadly in an instant—perfect for readers who love sailing adventures that take a dark turn into cartel territory.

For every woman who has ever dreamed of starting over, or being a better mother, or just knitting a really nice scarf without dropping half the stitches… 🧶

When her husband dies in a car crash—not long after announcing he wants a divorce in the cruelest possible way—Jo Mackenzie packs up her two rowdy boys and moves from London to a dilapidated villa in her seaside hometown. There, she takes over her beloved Gran’s knitting shop—a quaint but hopelessly out-of-date store in desperate need of a facelift, new inventory, and probably some structural repairs. It’s overwhelming, exhausting, and exactly what she needs to rebuild a life from the wreckage. 🏠

After a rough beginning involving plumbing disasters, accounting nightmares, and the realization that running a small business is way harder than it looks, Jo soon finds unexpected comfort in a “Stitch and Bitch” group. This collection of quirky, lively women who gather weekly at the shop share their stories, their addiction to cake that borders on religious devotion, and their lives with warmth, humor, and the kind of brutal honesty that only comes from women who’ve stopped pretending everything’s fine. They become the support system Jo didn’t know she desperately needed. ☕

The women meet every week at the shop on Beach Street and trade gossip, relationship advice, parenting horror stories, and knitting patterns as freely as they do a new stitch or cake recipe. As Jo starts to get the hang of single-parent life in a small town—navigating school runs, business finances, and two boys who have opinions about everything—she relies on her knitting group for support that goes way beyond yarn recommendations. 💕

But when a new man enters Jo’s life and complicates her determination to stay single forever, and an A-list actress moves into the local mansion bringing paparazzi and chaos to their quiet town, the knitting club has even more trouble confining the conversation to knit one, purl two. Suddenly everyone has opinions about Jo’s love life, the actress’s rumored scandals, and whether Jo’s ready to risk her heart again. 🌟

Why this resonates: Gil McNeil delivers heartwarming women’s fiction about starting over, the healing power of female friendship, and discovering that sometimes the best support system comes with yarn, cake, and women who refuse to let you give up on yourself.

The Union is gone. Interstellar travel is no longer safe. Enter ex-Union Navy Officer Cliff Rawlins. 🚀

More than four years after being wrongfully stripped of his rank and decorations in a court-martial stacked against him by political enemies who wanted him silenced, ex-Union Navy Officer Cliff Rawlins suddenly finds himself a free man. The galaxy to which he returns, however, is changing in ways that would have been unthinkable when they locked him away. Everything he knew is unraveling. ⚖️

The Union of Free Planets is on the verge of dissolving into chaos and competing factions. Many of the shadowy political players working behind the scenes to end the Union—dismantling centuries of stability for their own gain—are the exact same people who sent Cliff away. Yet, in the coming political upheaval and the power vacuum it will create, Cliff glimpses an opportunity for something he thought he’d never have again: a future on his own terms. 💼

For centuries, people have relied upon the Union Navy to act as the policeman of the shipping lanes, keeping pirates at bay and trade flowing smoothly. With the end of the Union will come the end of the navy, leaving interstellar commerce about to become fraught with danger that nobody’s prepared for. Ships will be vulnerable. Trade routes will be lawless. Fortunes will be lost—or made by those smart enough to see it coming. 💰

Cliff has a way to use his hard-won military expertise to provide secure transport across interstellar space and fill the security void that’s coming. A mercenary navy to defend settled space, protect commercial shipping, and get extremely rich doing it. After all, he deserves it for what he went through—the years stolen, the reputation destroyed, the career ended by people who should have been on trial themselves. This is his shot at payback and profit. ⚔️

But there are enemies old and new who want him to fail spectacularly. The same political players who imprisoned him are watching, and this time, they don’t want him just discredited. They want him dead, permanently silenced before he can expose what they’ve done. 💀

What makes this gripping: John Spearman launches the Mercenary Navy series with space opera combining military experience, political conspiracy, and a wronged officer building an empire from the ashes of his destroyed career—perfect for fans of underdog protagonists and mercenary crews.

The greatest want of mankind is immortality. And some people will kill for it. 💀

After a historian is murdered while investigating an ancient text that supposedly holds secrets from before recorded history, and an archaeologist goes missing under suspicious circumstances, former government agent Sean Wyatt finds himself in a desperate race against time to solve a series of clues from a long-forgotten past. To make things exponentially worse, the missing archaeologist is his best friend, and every hour that passes decreases the chances of finding him alive. 🔍

Sean discovers a 4000-year-old mystery buried deep in the southeastern United States—hidden in plain sight beneath modern cities and forgotten landmarks. If this secret is uncovered by the wrong people, it could bring about a pandemic unlike anything the world has ever seen, making the Black Death look like a minor inconvenience. We’re talking civilization-ending levels of catastrophe. 🦠

And that’s exactly what one man wants with the kind of megalomaniacal certainty that makes James Bond villains look reasonable. So he can remake the human race in his image, becoming the architect of humanity’s next evolution—whether humanity wants it or not. Every riddle along the path carries its own deadly dangers, and one wrong move, one misinterpreted clue, one moment of carelessness could cost Sean his life before he can stop what’s coming. ⚡

On top of that immediate threat, a sinister branch of an old secret society is on his tail with resources that seem unlimited and methods that are brutally efficient. They will stop at nothing to uncover the secret of the stones first, and they’ve been searching for this for generations. They’re organized, ruthless, and they don’t leave witnesses. 🗿

Welcome to the International Archaeological Agency, where saving the world means decoding ancient riddles, dodging assassination attempts, and hoping your best friend is still alive when you finally reach the end. Because sometimes the past doesn’t stay buried—and maybe it shouldn’t have been buried in the first place. 🌍

Why this grips: Ernest Dempsey launches the Lost Chambers Trilogy with archaeological thriller action combining ancient mysteries, modern conspiracies, and a race to prevent humanity’s extinction—perfect for fans of Indiana Jones-style adventures with higher stakes.

It’s been almost a century since the veil fell and monsters invaded the world in a coordinated assault that humanity never saw coming. We didn’t give the humans an opportunity to retaliate as we charged in and took over with overwhelming force, and I was at the head of the front lines with my sword in hand, cutting through resistance like it was nothing. A perfect soldier, fighting the battles that ultimately put my people in charge of this planet. Half of humanity was slaughtered in those first brutal years, and in the decades since the invasion, things have only gotten progressively worse. ⚔️

Tensions between the rebel humans and monsters grew as the climate changed catastrophically, and temperatures rose as resources dwindled to nothing. The sun scorched away plants and trees, leaving behind a husk of a planet where everyone fights for survival, monster and human alike. The Fates were furious at our violence, at what we’d done to this world and its people. And now we’re all trapped inside the hell we created, dying slowly together. 🔥

We’ve all heard tale of the Mate’s Mark—the prophecy that says we’re destined to find our fated mate. One human, one monster, foretold to be the cure to this cursed world and repair the damage that has been done. What was once the cause of curiosity and intrigue has turned into nothing more than a mockery, a bedtime story nobody believes anymore. Decades have passed, and not a single pair of fated mates had been found. Until now. Until me. Until the night I pull off my armor after another pointless skirmish and find the mark staring back at me from my skin. 💫

The mark that means my fated mate is out there. The mark that means I’m supposed to save this dying world. The mark that changes absolutely everything about who I thought I was and what I thought my life would be. But there’s one massive problem: my fated mate is human. The enemy I’ve been fighting for a century. The species I helped nearly destroy. How am I supposed to bridge that gap? How am I supposed to convince them I’m not the monster I’ve been for a hundred years? 💔

And more terrifying: what if the prophecy is wrong? What if we’re the first, and we fail? 🌟

What makes this compelling: G. Eilsel launches the Mate’s Mark series with LGBTQ+ fantasy exploring enemies-to-lovers on a planetary scale, questioning whether love can truly heal the damage of war—perfect for fans of fated mates, morally complex protagonists, and redemption arcs.

Twenty-five years ago, I escaped. One of us didn’t. 💔

We were best friends—Penelope, Emily and me—growing up in the picture-perfect town of Tranquility Ridge. Pine-lined streets, quaint diners, creaky porch swings, the kind of place where nothing bad is supposed to happen, where everyone knows everyone and doors stay unlocked. But the night before my seventeenth birthday, everything changed in ways I’m still processing decades later. Emily invited us to a party. That’s when we were taken. 🌲

I woke up shackled to a rusted metal bed in a room I didn’t recognize. My wrists bled from fighting the restraints. My ankles bruised from trying to kick free. Music blared around the clock—too loud, too cruel, designed to disorient and break us. I never saw who did it, never saw their faces. I was trained through violence not to look, not to make eye contact, not to see anything that might give me hope. 🔗

I escaped after weeks of hell I’ve never fully described to anyone. Penelope didn’t. And Emily? She’s been lying ever since about that night, about the party, about everything. Her story never quite added up, but I was too traumatized to push, too broken to demand answers, too grateful to be alive to question the survivor who came home. 😱

Now, twenty-five years later, I’ve built a life from the wreckage. I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve moved away from Tranquility Ridge. I’ve tried to forget. Then a stranger appears at my door with a message, scrawled in Emily’s unmistakable handwriting—a message I never expected to read, a message that destroys the fragile peace I’ve constructed: **Penelope’s alive—find her!** 📝

Twenty-five years of believing my best friend died in that place. Twenty-five years of survivor’s guilt. Twenty-five years of Emily’s lies. If Penelope is alive, where has she been? Why didn’t she escape? And why is Emily suddenly telling me now? What game is she playing? And more terrifying: if I start looking for Penelope, will whoever took us twenty-five ago come looking for me? 🔍

Why this grips: S.C. Shannon delivers a psychological thriller about buried trauma resurfacing, childhood friendships destroyed by secrets, and a woman forced to confront the night that stole her innocence—perfect for fans of vigilante justice and survivors who refuse to let the past stay buried.