One for sorrow. Two for joy. Three for murder?
Meet Julia ‘Jools’ Lanchester, daughter of celebrity ornithologist Rupert Lanchester—a woman who’d much rather spend her evening with a good Bordeaux, listening to the sweet birdsong drifting through her cottage windows, than dealing with family drama. She’s built a quiet life for herself in Suffolk, far from the cameras and chaos that follow her famous father everywhere he goes. A life where solving mysteries means figuring out which wine pairs best with fish and chips, not actual crimes. 🍷
Nothing can spoil Jools’s perfectly planned cozy night in—a new bottle she’s been saving, her favorite chair, and absolutely zero obligations to anyone. Except maybe an unexpected visit from her famous father, Rupert Lanchester, the ornithologist célèbre whose nature documentaries have made him the most dashing silver fox on English telly and a household name across Britain. He turns up unannounced on the doorstep of her quaint little Suffolk cottage looking uncharacteristically shaken, desperate to get something off his chest that apparently can’t wait until morning or be discussed over the phone like normal people. 🐦
Jools doesn’t want to hear another word about her glamorous yet insufferably snooty new stepmum, the former model who’s young enough to be his daughter and clearly married him for the celebrity lifestyle rather than any genuine affection. She’s heard quite enough about the woman’s decorating demands, her social climbing, and her complete lack of interest in anything with feathers. So she gives him short shrift—perhaps more harshly than she intended—and sends him on his way back to London with instructions to sort out his own marital drama. It seemed reasonable at the time, a daughter’s right to establish boundaries with a parent who always puts his career first. Next morning, he’s vanished without a trace, and the last person to see him was his daughter who told him to leave. 😰
Jools and Michael Sedgwick—her father’s infuriatingly dapper new assistant who dresses like he stepped out of a Savile Row catalog and seems to know more about ornithology than anyone has a right to—reluctantly team up to go looking for Rupert. Michael clearly disapproves of how Jools handled the situation, and she clearly doesn’t appreciate his judgment or his perfectly tailored waistcoats. What they find instead of her missing father is a dead body connected to Rupert’s research, a discovery that transforms a simple missing person case into something far more sinister. Suddenly Jools is thrust into a world of secrets, lies, and murder, armed with nothing but her sharp tongue, her knowledge of wine, and an assistant who makes her want to simultaneously throttle him and kiss him, possibly in that order. 🔍
Here’s what you’re getting: Marty Wingate launches the Birds of a Feather Mysteries with quintessential British charm, pairing an unlikely detective duo in a cozy mystery that combines family secrets, ornithology, and just enough danger to keep the wine from going to waste.
After years of abuse, can she overcome her insecurity and put the past behind her…
Trish “Mac” Mackenzie rappels off buildings with the confidence of someone who owns the sky, saves kids trapped in mangled car accidents without hesitation, and carries unconscious victims out of raging fires like they weigh nothing. She’s earned her nickname, earned the respect of her fellow firefighters through sheer grit and determination, and built a reputation as someone you want on your team when everything goes wrong. But her personal life? That’s a completely different story, a disaster she can’t extinguish no matter how much training she has. 🔥
No one else knows the real Trish hiding behind the fearless firefighter facade—not even the Sisters of Fire, her closest friends and fellow female firefighters who’ve been through hell alongside her. They don’t see the insecure child who learned early that love came with fists, or the wounded adult who still flinches at sudden movements and carefully manages her breathing when someone raises their voice. The inner Trish is the one who was systematically abused, who had self-worth beaten out of her year by terrible year until she almost believed she deserved it. That Trish knows she’s fundamentally broken in ways a helmet and turnout gear can’t protect against. 💔
When kindergarten teacher Nathan Mitchell finds himself unexpectedly drawn to the tough-talking firefighter who volunteers at his school’s safety day, he sees past the armor almost immediately. Maybe it’s his training working with traumatized kids, or maybe it’s something more personal, but he begins to glimpse the woman behind the mask—vulnerable, scared, convinced she’s not worthy of the gentle affection he’s offering. And once he really sees her, once he understands the depth of what she’s survived and how hard she fights every day just to believe she deserves to exist, he’s determined to help her transform into the woman she was meant to become before abuse stole her sense of self. 🌟
The road to healing is rocky and sometimes genuinely dangerous, complicated by Trish’s crazed ex-partner at the firehouse who won’t accept that she’s moved on and who sees Nathan as a threat that needs eliminating. There are setbacks and breakthroughs, moments where Trish backslides into old patterns of self-blame and sessions where Nathan’s patience seems bottomless. But through it all, he never once wavers in his conviction that she’s worth fighting for, that beneath the damage is someone extraordinary who deserves love without violence, touch without terror, and a future without fear. 💕
What makes this special: Kathryn Shay launches the Sisters of Fire series with an emotionally powerful romance about trauma, recovery, and finding someone patient enough to help you believe you’re more than enough, combining firefighting action with genuine heart.
Attorney Sabre Brown’s latest case seems routine at first—a tragic but straightforward situation involving four traumatized children left behind after their five-year-old brother is mysteriously smothered at home while the parents were supposedly in the next room. In her years working juvenile dependency cases, she’s seen terrible things happen to innocent kids, but something about this one feels off from the very first interview. But as she delves deeper into the family dynamics, interviewing neighbors and reviewing medical records and watching the parents’ body language during questioning, Sabre quickly realizes this is no ordinary day at the office dealing with the broken child welfare system. 👨⚖️
The case takes a genuinely dark turn when the medical examiner’s report reveals details that don’t match the parents’ timeline, when the surviving children tell contradictory stories they’ve clearly been coached to repeat, and when Sabre discovers a pattern of suspicious incidents at the home stretching back years. She’s being pulled into a web of family secrets and carefully constructed lies, where everyone has something to hide and the truth about what really happened to that little boy is buried under layers of deception. The deeper she digs, the more dangerous it becomes—not just to her case, but to the surviving children who might be the killer’s next targets. ⚖️
Meanwhile, as if one nightmare case wasn’t enough, Sabre’s eccentric, hoarding Aunt dies suddenly under circumstances that are being labeled natural but feel anything but. Sabre finds herself drowning in a literal sea of garbage and figurative ocean of greed as she attempts to sort through her aunt’s catastrophically chaotic estate. The house is crammed floor to ceiling with newspapers from the 1970s, broken appliances, clothes with tags still on, and enough random junk to fill a warehouse. Sorting through the mess becomes a legitimate nightmare, made worse by grasping relatives who’ve suddenly appeared claiming they deserve a piece of whatever inheritance exists, family members who never visited when her aunt was alive but now have strong opinions about how things should be divided. 🏚️
Amidst the overwhelming clutter and family drama, Sabre uncovers some genuinely shocking treasures hidden in the chaos—valuable antiques her aunt never mentioned, evidence of hidden fraud that could implicate prominent community members, and most disturbing of all, her aunt’s increasingly paranoid journal entries expressing chilling suspicions that someone was actively trying to kill her before she could change her will. With her PI boyfriend, JP, working alongside her, Sabre must navigate a complex labyrinth of familial deceit, potential murder disguised as natural death, and her duty to both her young clients and her aunt’s peculiar final wishes. As they unearth disturbing truths in both cases, Sabre realizes the two investigations might be connected in ways that put her directly in a killer’s crosshairs. 🔍
Why this deserves your attention: Teresa Burrell delivers a twisty legal thriller that weaves together child advocacy and estate mysteries, following an attorney who refuses to quit even when solving two cases simultaneously might cost her everything she holds dear.
NEW RELEASES
From his father’s shocking assassination when James was still an infant to the explosive political and deeply personal intrigues that defined his controversial reign, this fresh biography reveals as never before the passions that drove King James I—both his hunger for power and his hunger for love. Gareth Russell’s scholarly yet accessible voice invites us into James’s complicated world, revealing a monarch whose reign was fundamentally defined by the intersection of his public power and private vulnerabilities 👑
For far too long, historians have either shied away from examining James’s sexuality altogether or condemned it through the moral lens of later eras rather than understanding it within its own context. Russell offers instead a candid, unflinching narrative that not only reveals James’s passionate relationships with five prominent men but also challenges the inconsistent historical standards routinely applied when examining royal intimacies. Why do historians speculate freely about heterosexual royal affairs from fragmentary evidence yet demand ironclad proof before acknowledging same-sex relationships? 📚
This biography stands as a significant scholarly contribution to understanding royal history beyond sanitized official narratives, illuminating the personal experiences and emotional needs that fundamentally shaped James’s political decisions, his foreign policy choices, and his evolving philosophical views on masculinity, power, and sexuality. Russell examines how James’s relationships influenced everything from his approach to religious tolerance to his theories on divine right monarchy 🏰
The book explores James’s life from his traumatic childhood—his father murdered in a conspiracy before James could form memories of him, his mother Mary Queen of Scots executed by Elizabeth I—through his surprisingly successful reign over both Scotland and England. Russell demonstrates how James’s personal life, far from being separate from his political achievements, was inextricably woven into his governance, his patronage of the arts, and his vision for a unified Britain that would outlast him by centuries ⚔️
What makes this essential: Gareth Russell delivers a groundbreaking biography that refuses to hide or condemn James I’s sexuality, instead examining how love, desire, and personal relationships shaped one of Britain’s most influential monarchs—essential reading for anyone interested in honest royal history.
Tyler’s childhood ends abruptly and violently the night her mother makes one selfish, irreversible decision that changes the trajectory of both their lives forever. The blood pooling on familiar floors, the screaming that seems to go on forever, the helplessness of being too young to stop what’s happening—all of it shapes Tyler into a defensive adult carrying open wounds she absolutely refuses to acknowledge or heal. Running from pain becomes her specialty 💔
By twenty-five, she’s built something real: a rising singing career with a voice that melts hearts like butter on hot cornbread, the kind of talent that could take her anywhere she wants to go. But Tyler hides a destructive addiction behind carefully maintained attitude and deliberately manufactured chaos, using both as shields against anyone trying to get too close. She’s convinced that if people see the real her, the broken pieces she’s hiding, they’ll run 🎤
At sixteen, Logic is handed a crushing responsibility that leaves him feeling like Atlas with the weight of the entire world pressing down on his chest. He hustles harder than anyone should have to, constantly pushing the legal and moral limits to make absolutely sure his family never goes without food, shelter, or hope. When Logic’s best friend Al uses his last valuable connections to secure Logic a coveted seat at the big boys’ table, Logic feels like the universe is finally giving him one last chance to get things right and build something legitimate 💰
Tyler and Logic collide with all the subtlety of fire meeting gasoline—their chemistry immediate, reckless, and dangerously magnetic in ways that make rational thought impossible. The attraction between them is the kind that makes you forget your own name, that pulls you in despite every warning sign. There’s only one massive, complicated problem standing between them and happiness: she’s already someone else’s girl, tangled up in a relationship that’s as toxic as it is binding 🔥
Why this grips from page one: Ladii Nesha delivers raw, unflinching urban fiction that explores trauma, ambition, and the kind of forbidden attraction that burns hot enough to consume everything in its path—authentic voices telling a story about broken people trying to build something beautiful from the wreckage.
The whole world knows Eva May Williams’s name, recognizes her face from movie posters and magazine covers, follows her every public appearance. But fame can’t give her what she actually wants, what she desperately needs. No amount of red carpets, award speeches, or carefully managed public appearances can fill the emptiness inside. No one can understand what that’s like. Until them—until a pack whose scent makes the entire carefully controlled world stand completely still 🎬
Being a movie star isn’t all glamorous dresses and wild parties, despite what the tabloids suggest. There’s the constant scrutiny from critics who analyze her every performance, the relentless rumors about her personal life, the paparazzi screaming invasive questions about private pain and public hopes while flashbulbs blind her. The endless questions about when she’s finally settling down, as if a woman isn’t complete without a traditional relationship. They all think they know the real Eva May Williams from watching her on screen 💫
But they don’t know anything real. Her world is still reeling after recent tragedy, her twin sister is still trapped in paralyzing grief that Eva feels powerless to ease, and Eva’s still fighting desperately to break out of the limiting box Hollywood has shoved her into. She’ll happily take comfortable nights alone in her pajamas over another exhausting public event, thank you very much. That was her plan—stay single, stay safe, stay in control. That was before an awards show where a pack’s intoxicating scent made everything else fade to background noise 🌟
Before they told her with absolute certainty that she smells just as incredible to them, and they all locked themselves in a dressing room just to be sure, just to confirm the undeniable chemistry crackling between them. No NDA in the world, no matter how ironclad, will adequately cover the amount of overwhelming scent she unleashed in that confined space. The biology doesn’t lie, and neither does the connection they all felt. It’s only a matter of time until the whole world knows Eva May Williams has found her pack—and the media circus that will follow might destroy everything before they can build something real 💕
Here’s what you’re getting: Devyn Sinclair delivers a Slate City Omegaverse novella featuring a movie star omega who discovers that true connection can’t be scripted—steamy, sweet, and perfect for readers who love their omegaverse with Hollywood glamour and genuine emotion.