Kit McGowan is the best bounty hunter in the fae territories at what she does—if a shifter goes feral or a fae kills the wrong innocent, she hunts them down. She’s also at the bottom of the pay scale, because keeping her very specific heritage hidden from everyone is the only thing standing between her and every bounty hunter in the territories wanting her dead. She lives paycheck to paycheck, supporting herself and her younger brother, and it is fine. It is fine until Ethan Hale—cu sith, one of the finest and most feared assassins in the fae territories—chooses her specifically to help him investigate a case. She can’t say no; she needs the money. He cannot find out what she is, because if he does, she will be begging for death. People are dying. Someone is stealing god magic and selling it. And Kit has to solve it while working alongside the most dangerous fae in the country and keeping her secret intact. Jayne Hawke opens the Hidden Magic series with the urban fantasy that readers devoured in a single sitting. ✨
Hawke writes with the first-person propulsive voice and sharp banter that urban fantasy readers prize—Kit’s competence is never in question, the world-building draws on Irish and Scottish fae mythology with a distinctive texture, and the slow-burn tension between Kit and Ethan is earned rather than manufactured. 🔍
Hawke is an English author living in Ireland. The Hidden Magic trilogy is fully completed. ⭐
Why this captivates: A bounty hunter with a secret that would get her killed takes a case from the most dangerous fae assassin alive—and has to solve it without letting him find out what she is.
Nicholai collects debts for Victor, a ruthless Russian mob boss. He has never failed to collect. They fight, they claw, they plead—he always delivers. Until Mila. Mila knew this day was coming. Victor had warned her she would return. She goes willingly when Nicholai arrives because fighting is pointless—or so she thinks. But Nicholai breaks the rules. He doesn’t take her to Victor. He keeps her for himself. What Mila knows, and what Nicholai doesn’t yet understand, is who she actually is—and what her identity means for both their fates. He has set something in motion he cannot walk back. She has a secret that could destroy them both. His fate is now sealed with hers. Vi Carter opens the Cells of Kalashov series with the dark Bratva enemies-to-lovers romance that her readership describes as impossible to put down. 💕
Carter is known in dark romance circles for her fast-paced plotting and the specific tension she creates between characters who have every reason to be enemies and no rational explanation for what is happening between them. The dual first-person POV—both Nicholai and Mila narrating—gives the reader both sides of a situation that is rapidly spinning out of anyone’s control. HEA guaranteed, no cliffhanger. This book contains mature content. 🔍
Carter is an Irish author who writes mafia and Bratva dark romance. The Cells of Kalashov series runs four books. ⭐
Why this hooks you: The Bratva collector who never fails kept her instead of delivering her—and neither of them knows yet what that decision has just unleashed.
Victor Daniels comes home from an academic conference exhausted. He finds his wife brutally murdered. The only clue: a blood-soaked stuffed toy with a sinister gleam in its eye that should not be possible in any toy. Overcome with rage and guilt, Victor teams up with paranormal expert Jeremy Rhinehart to track down the origins of the bear—and the two of them unravel a tangled web of haunted collectibles and bloodshed, all pointing toward one man: Stefan Korzh. A tragic childhood in a mansion filled with cursed antiques has driven Stefan to madness. Each haunted item in his ancestral home carries a legacy of terror and death. And now he has decided to unleash his family’s collection on the world, spreading chaos through objects that find their way to new owners—new victims. Only Victor can stop him. But how far is he willing to go to find justice for his wife, and will he survive the entities that are protecting Korzh’s plan? Ron Ripley delivers the Haunted Collection series opener that readers call genuinely scary. 🔍
Ripley grew up across the street from a large cemetery, and the specific brand of antique-horror he’s built—cursed objects with histories and personalities, spirits more malicious in death than they were in life—has proven effective enough that readers consistently report reading with lights on. The series rewards continuing beyond Book 1 as Stefan’s larger plan expands. 💙
Ripley is a prolific horror author published through Scare Street. The Haunted Collection series runs seven books. ⭐
Why this grips you: His wife was murdered. The only clue is a child’s toy with eyes that glow. And the man behind it has a mansion full of haunted antiques he’s about to set loose on the world.
Rocket’s Red Glare
Nat Phillips leads an elite roster of former special operators—ex-Special Forces, communications specialists, intelligence officers—who have built a quiet, effective private operation in the years since leaving service. When a murder on American soil triggers a crisis that conventional law enforcement is not equipped to handle, Phillips’s team is the call that gets made. Their code name: Rocket’s Red Glare. Operating on domestic soil with the skills, instincts, and moral clarity that their military careers forged, they are about to find themselves in the middle of a threat that reaches further than anyone anticipated—and that will test every principle the team was built on. James Patterson and Matt Eversmann deliver the military thriller that Jack Carr called “a banger—breakneck pacing that will keep you riveted through the night.” 🔍
Eversmann is the retired Army sergeant whose story of the Battle of Mogadishu was portrayed in Black Hawk Down—he was the squad leader played by Josh Hartnett in the film. His co-authorship gives the tactical and operational details their authentic texture, and the domestic-setting premise gives the novel its particular contemporary relevance. Bret Baier called it “a military thriller that captures the best of American heroism.” 💙
Patterson is the world’s #1 bestselling author. Rocket’s Red Glare was published June 8, 2026. Standalone. New release. ⭐
Why this grips you: Ex-Special Forces operators on American soil, a murder that triggered a national crisis, and the team built to handle exactly this—new release.
In 1959, at fifteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder. They called it murder. She called it justice. Sixty-six years later, eighty-one-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick has been living quietly on her Melbourne street for decades—cantankerous, fiercely independent, never without tea or a cutting remark—when a neighbor turns up dead and the whispers start flying. Because someone has slipped an old newspaper article under Elsie’s door. Her neighbors know who she was. And now the police are sniffing around, the media is circling, and a relentless seven-year-old named Persephone who has just moved in across the street has decided Elsie is her new best friend whether she likes it or not. Sally Hepworth delivers the dual-timeline thriller that won the 2026 ABIA Audiobook of the Year. 🔍
Hepworth writes with the wickedly sharp combination of dark humor and genuine emotional weight that has made her beloved—Elsie’s voice is one of the most original elderly protagonists in recent crime fiction, and the dual-timeline structure builds a devastating case for who Mabel actually was and what she actually did. Multiple reviewers call it the best book of 2026. “Sharp, surprising, and wickedly funny,” said one reviewer. “She’s not done proving everyone wrong.” 💙
Hepworth is the New York Times bestselling author of The Soulmate and Darling Girls. Mad Mabel is a standalone. New release. ⭐
Why this captivates: Australia’s youngest convicted murderer is now eighty-one, her neighbor just turned up dead, and she’s finally ready to tell her side of the story—new release.
Luna Canning trusts numbers more than people—and her career as a forensic accountant who specializes in exposing fraud has given her every reason to. Numbers don’t lie, unlike the toxic family she has spent a lifetime trying to escape. Living in her grandmother’s Victorian home in Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, she has built a carefully ordered life behind walls she was fairly confident were unbreakable. Then her car is stolen from an airport parking lot and former FBI agent turned PI Nate Warren steps in to help. He is precisely the kind of man she made rules to avoid—warm, persistent, far too perceptive about things she has carefully hidden—and he proves more dangerous to her defenses than any actual thief. When she and Nate discover they have independently been hired to investigate the same corporate fraud, keeping things professional becomes considerably harder to manage. Catherine Bybee opens the Queen Anne Hill series with the romantic suspense that early readers are calling one of her very best. 💕
Bybee draws on her own experiences with toxic family dynamics and her years as an emergency room nurse to give Luna’s wounds their specific, authentic texture—this isn’t decorative backstory but the foundational architecture of a character who makes complete sense. The Victorian house itself is a character in the series, with a ghost and a history that grounds the found-family theme Bybee builds throughout. 🔍
Bybee is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of nearly 50 novels with over 11 million copies sold. Lead Me Home was published June 9, 2026 by Montlake. New release. ⭐
Why this hooks you: A forensic accountant who trusts numbers more than people meets an ex-FBI PI who sees right through every wall she built—new release.