This coffee shop is going to kill her. Eight months ago Bethany’s dad died, and she dropped out of college to keep his dream—The Frolicking Moose, a struggling coffee shop in a small mountain town—from dying with him. She has no idea what she’s doing, she’s drowning in debt, and the last thing she needs is a Viking-sized man appearing in the doorway to tell her everything she’s doing wrong. The infuriating part is that Maverick knows exactly what he’s talking about. The even more infuriating part is that she’s going to have to ask for his help. Maverick’s three-word assessment of Bethany: eyes like glacier pools. His four-word assessment of her business: she’s definitely going under. What he doesn’t tell her is his growing suspicion that underneath the power lipstick and the sun dresses is a woman about to seriously impress him. Katie J. Cross delivers the small-town romance that readers describe as one of the most charming and emotionally satisfying books they’ve ever read. 💕
Cross writes with genuine warmth and emotional depth—the grief running underneath the romance is real, not decorative, and Maverick’s arc from blunt critic to devoted supporter earns the payoff completely. The coffee shop setting is rendered with specific, loving detail. Goodreads readers report finishing and immediately hunting for the next book. Clean with mild romance; amputee representation. 🔍
Cross is a bestselling author of fantasy and romance fiction. The Coffee Shop series runs multiple books. ⭐
Why this charms: She’s drowning in debt trying to save her dead dad’s coffee shop dream, he showed up to tell her everything she’s doing wrong, and she has no choice but to let him help.
Dumped by her fiancé and desperately craving a fresh start, Vylette West retreats to the one place she swore she’d never return: Driftwood Cove, her peculiar coastal hometown. In a moment of questionable judgment, she impulsively buys the town’s most notorious haunted property—Briggs Manor—and discovers that the price includes two permanent residents: Captain Briggs, a ghostly sea captain with absolutely no concept of personal space, and Edgar, a talking raven with strong opinions about everything. Now trying to launch a real estate agency while also renovating a crumbling estate, Vylette lands her first listing: the Henderson house, a property so drowning in ghost gossip that even the bravest buyers flee. To make the sale—and to help a restless spirit named Harold find justice before he can move on—she’ll have to navigate cranky ghosts, whispered secrets, and a ruthless real estate mogul who has made it his personal mission to drive her out of town. Eva Onyx opens the Paranormal Realtor series with the cozy mystery that reviewers describe as an absolute delight. 🔍
Onyx writes with the specific warm charm that the best of the paranormal cozy genre delivers—the humor is earned rather than forced, Captain Briggs is one of the more original ghost characters in recent cozy fiction, and Edgar the raven provides running commentary that reviewers consistently single out as the highlight of the book. Four bonus recipes included. Clean; no adult content. 🐦
Onyx is a 2025 Global Book Awards Silver Medal winner. The Paranormal Realtor series runs six books and counting. ⭐
Why this charms: She bought the most haunted house in town, the ghostly sea captain refuses to observe boundaries, and the raven absolutely will not stop talking.
Hattie Leiper’s prize-winning Southern bake earns her a handshake from the famous TV judge—and then he collapses in front of everyone. A televised bake-off at a historic Belle Meade estate in Nashville has just turned into a crime scene, and Hattie has an uncomfortable feeling that she’s the prime suspect. Working alongside Detective Bo Beckett and guided by her furry crime-solving team—Moose the Chow Chow with his signature glasses, feisty Mini Pearl the Yorkie, and British Shorthair Cecil, who has an uncanny gift for showing up exactly where the trouble is—Hattie starts untangling the sugary secrets behind a field of very competitive bakers. A retired nurse with suspicious medical knowledge. A traditional pastry chef with a grudge. A tech-savvy baker who is playing the whole competition differently than everyone else. One of them engineered a mishap. Greta Sinclair delivers the culinary cozy that Nashville’s baking scene deserves. 🍰
Sinclair writes with the warmth and comedic timing that distinguishes the best of the Southern cozy mystery subgenre—the Belle Meade estate setting is lushly rendered, the animal sidekick trio steals every scene they’re in, and the mystery mechanics are solid enough to keep readers genuinely guessing. Four bonus Southern recipes are included. Clean; guaranteed HEA. 🔍
Sinclair is a multiple Amazon bestselling author and 2025 Global Book Awards Silver Medal winner for A Very Sticky Murder. Each Hattie and Moose book reads as a complete standalone. ⭐
Why this charms: The famous bake-off judge collapsed after shaking her hand, her Chow Chow has opinions, and her British Shorthair keeps wandering directly into the evidence.
Blood in the Hills
FBI agent Sarah Cross is sent to Silver Hill—a picturesque, tight-knit town nestled in the Tennessee foothills—to begin rebuilding her life after a horrific case upended everything she knew. She’s still carrying the weight of what happened when a bloody massacre during a prisoner transport puts her directly in the middle of a new investigation. Five officers down during what should have been a routine transfer. Then an anonymous tip arrives with photographic evidence implicating Silver Hill’s own Sheriff in the attack—implicating her friend TK. While her colleagues line up behind the mounting evidence, Sarah refuses to accept it at face value. She dives into the case determined to look past the obvious, navigate the dangerous twists waiting beneath, and prove that the answer the evidence is pointing to isn’t the right one. A.J. Rivers delivers Book 4 of the Sarah Cross FBI Mystery Thriller series. 🔍
Rivers writes the kind of fast-paced, chapter-turning FBI thrillers that her vast readership—built across the Emma Griffin and Ava James series as well—describes as impossible to stop once started. The small-town Tennessee setting gives this series its distinct atmosphere, and Sarah’s growing relationships in Silver Hill deepen the emotional stakes with each installment. 💙
Rivers is the author of over 110 novels across 13 series. The Sarah Cross series runs four books and counting. Readers new to the series can start with Book 1: The Girl in the Hills. New release. ⭐
Why this grips you: Five officers massacred during a prisoner transport, anonymous evidence points to her friend the Sheriff, and Sarah is the only one who won’t accept it—new release.
A storage locker auction in the town of Harmony—halfway between Seattle and Sweetwater Falls—reveals something no bidder was prepared for: a trunk full of nightmare. Inside is evidence of the abuse of more than twenty girls. Photographs, locks of hair, tokens of suffering collected over what could be twenty years or more. When Harmony PD calls in FBI agent Blake Wilder and her team, the trouble is immediately clear: not one of the girls in the photos has been identified. Blake and her depleted team—still navigating the fallout of Mo’s departure and Rick’s arrest—launch a hunt that reaches back decades, through traps and insidious twists, to uncover who committed these acts and what happened to the victims. Elle Gray delivers Book 33 of the Blake Wilder FBI Mystery Thriller series. 🔍
Gray writes the kind of compulsive, fast-moving FBI thrillers that her enormous readership devours sequentially and then immediately recommends. The Blake Wilder series has earned a reputation for balancing case-of-the-book momentum with the long-running arcs that reward loyal readers—and the depleted-team dynamic in this installment adds particular emotional resonance for those who have followed the series. 💙
Gray is the author of over 130 novels across multiple bestselling FBI mystery series. The Blake Wilder series begins with The 7 She Saw. New release. ⭐
Why this grips you: A storage locker containing twenty years of evidence of abuse against unidentified girls, and an FBI team that has to find out who they were—new release.
1930s New York. Lucky Luciano controls five organized crime families—bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, narcotics, and the vice trade that runs through the city’s most famous establishments. Every prosecutor who has tried to bring him down has failed. Eunice Carter, Manhattan’s first Black female assistant district attorney, sees what the others have missed: the answer is in the vice rackets, not the traditional mob businesses. But to build that case, she needs intelligence she cannot get from inside the DA’s office. She needs Polly Adler—Manhattan’s most famous and well-connected madam, whose client list is a who’s who of the city’s most powerful men, and who has her own reasons to want Luciano gone. Polly and Eunice don’t like each other. They don’t trust each other. And together they are going to bring down the most powerful criminal in America. Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray deliver the Reese’s Book Club June 2026 pick. 📚
The bestselling authors of The Personal Librarian—a million-copy seller—bring their signature approach to women overlooked by history to two figures who have been almost entirely absent from the Luciano story despite being central to its outcome. Booklist called it “lively and lasting portraits of two heroic women.” Library Journal praised the “brisk pacing and brave, relatable characters.” 🔍
Benedict is the New York Times bestselling author of The Other Einstein and The Only Woman in the Room. Murray is the NAACP Image Award–winning author of over 30 novels. A Pair of Aces is a standalone historical novel. New release. ⭐
Why this matters: Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor and the city’s most powerful madam—two women who couldn’t stand each other—brought down Lucky Luciano together, and history barely noticed—new release.