Evelyn Sinclair, the enigmatic daughter of a fallen aristocrat, carries a secret that could destroy the carefully constructed life she’s built from her family’s ruins. Working in the shadows of the Duke’s estate, she’s determined to rebuild her family’s fortunes through careful saving and strategic invisibility. Her plan requires remaining concealed from society’s scrutinizing eyes—no attachments, no recognition, no risk of anyone discovering who she really is. Yet when the Duke returns to his estate, their paths intertwine in ways she can’t avoid, sparking a friendship that challenges everything about her resolve to stay hidden. 👑
Sebastian Sterling, the Duke of Ashbourne, suffocates under the weight of familial expectations and society’s relentless pressure to marry appropriately and produce an heir. Every eligible lady paraded before him fits the mold perfectly—well-bred, accomplished, utterly boring. Then a chance encounter with Evelyn shatters his resignation. Intrigued by her sharp intellect and fierce individuality, he finds himself contemplating the unthinkable: defying convention by pursuing a woman whose mysterious background should make her impossible to court. 💕
As their secret meetings evolve into an extraordinary romance neither can resist, Sebastian confronts unsettling evidence that their growing connection is putting Evelyn in genuine danger. Someone knows her secret, and they’re willing to expose or harm her to prevent the Duke from making what society would view as a catastrophic mismatch. The closer they become, the more vulnerable she is—but Sebastian can’t bring himself to walk away. 😰
The question becomes not whether Sebastian will defy society to protect and claim Evelyn, but whether she’ll let him. She’s fought so hard for independence that accepting his help feels like surrender, even as the threats multiply. And Sebastian must decide: is marrying a woman like Evelyn truly as mad as everyone insists, or is it the sanest thing he’s ever considered? Sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is exactly what your heart demands. 💖
Why this charms: Amanda Seabrook delivers classic Regency romance with the hidden-identity and class-difference tropes that never get old, particularly when combined with genuine danger rather than just social disapproval. The Duke’s willingness to defy convention for love creates satisfying romantic tension, while Evelyn’s secrets add mystery beyond typical Regency plots. For readers who love traditional historical romance with backbone, where heroines have agency despite limited options and dukes prove their worth through protection and respect, this offers exactly the escape into elegant ballrooms and forbidden attraction that makes Regency romance enduringly popular. 👗
Set amid the rigid elegance of 1870s New York high society, The Age of Innocence follows Newland Archer—a man poised to make the perfect social match by marrying sweet, conventional May Welland. His future is mapped out with the precision his social class demands: a respectable marriage, a comfortable life, predictable happiness within the narrow boundaries society has drawn. Then Countess Ellen Olenska arrives, May’s cousin who’s fled a disastrous European marriage, and everything Newland thought he wanted crumbles. Ellen’s independence, intelligence, and passionate worldview awaken a longing he can no longer suppress. 💔
Torn between duty to May and desire for Ellen, Newland confronts the silent forces that shape his gilded world. New York society operates through unspoken rules more binding than law—codes about whom you can marry, what you can say, how you must live. To choose Ellen means social destruction for them both, ostracism from the only world they know. To choose May means suffocating the best parts of himself, living a lie dressed in respectable clothes. Wharton dissects this world with surgical precision, revealing how beautiful surfaces can cage the soul. 🗽
What makes this novel devastating is Wharton’s refusal to offer easy answers. Newland isn’t choosing between good and evil but between different forms of sacrifice—his own happiness or Ellen’s reputation, passion or stability, authentic life or social survival. The “innocence” of the title becomes increasingly ironic as Wharton reveals how this society uses naiveté as a weapon, how ignorance is enforced to maintain control, how people collaborate in their own imprisonment. 📚
Praised as “one of America’s greatest novels,” this Pulitzer Prize winner blends emotional depth with razor-sharp social observation and exquisite prose. Wharton writes with the authority of an insider exposing her own class, creating a love story made tragic not by external villains but by the invisible cages people build and maintain together. The novel asks whether any love is worth the price society demands, and whether choosing duty over desire is noble sacrifice or cowardly surrender. ✨
Why this endures: Edith Wharton’s masterpiece remains relevant because it explores the eternal tension between individual desire and social expectation, between the life you want and the life you’re told to want. The Old New York setting provides spectacular period detail while examining human themes that transcend era. For readers who love Downton Abbey’s class dynamics, literary fiction that trusts intelligence over action, or romance shaped by impossible choices rather than evil exes, this classic delivers everything that makes literature last—beauty, truth, heartbreak, and prose so elegant it makes tragedy feel like privilege. 🌹
Dalton “Nemesis” Knight thought he had everything—a Navy SEAL career he loved, his team brothers, and Lina, his wife. Then the war on terror cost him all of it, including his marriage. With his trust shattered and heart broken, he had to build something new from the wreckage. Eventually, he picked up the pieces and created Nemesis Inc., a private security company where he makes the rules and his heart stays firmly off the table. Nobody’s getting close enough to destroy him again—except she’s back in his life, and Lina has a way of making him forget every vow he’s made to protect himself. 💔
Cormack never wanted his sunshine girl pulled into his world of darkness and danger. She deserves safety, normalcy, a life without looking over her shoulder for threats most people never imagine exist. But when she’s taken by terrorists determined to make him pay for past operations, all he can do is pray he finds Willow in time. A man forged in violence trying to save a woman made for light—it’s a combination that shouldn’t work, yet Cormack discovers that sometimes the brightest lights shine in the darkest places. Can he convince her that her life isn’t over after what she’s endured? Can she convince him to let her go, or will their hearts have the final say? 🌞
Logan “Sensei” Winters lost his parents in the South Tower on 9/11, and that loss changed everything. Once an up-and-coming MMA fighter with a bright future, the rancher’s kid from the Midwest crossed over the line of right and wrong in a grief-fueled fury that led him places he never imagined going. Now he’s part of Nemesis Inc., using his particular set of skills to protect others from the kind of loss that broke him. But when a mission brings someone unexpected into his life, Logan must decide whether he’s still capable of the softness required for love, or whether violence has claimed too much of his soul. 🥊
This three-book collection delivers high-octane military romance filled with alpha heroes who’ve been broken by war, strong heroines who refuse to be victims, explosive action, genuine danger, witty banter, and guaranteed Happy Ever Afters. Each book explores different facets of trauma, redemption, and the healing power of love that refuses to quit even when quitting would be easier. 🔥
What makes this addictive: Bella Stone and Annabella Stone deliver military romance that balances hard-edged action with emotional depth, creating heroes whose toughness makes their vulnerability more powerful. The Nemesis Inc. framework allows for both team camaraderie and individual love stories, while the shared trauma background creates authentic bonds. For readers who love Suzanne Brockmann’s SEAL Team romances or Maya Banks’ KGI series—military romance with actual suspense, alpha heroes who earn their redemption, and the found-family dynamic that makes spec-ops teams so appealing—this collection offers binge-worthy escape into a world where dangerous men find healing through fearless women. 💕
NEW RELEASES
The Heart of Everything: A Novel
There’s nothing unusual about a father asking his son for a favor—unless the father in question has been dead for five years. Thomas, a young virtuoso pianist living a carefully structured life in France, is stunned when his late father Raymond suddenly appears in his home, solid and real enough to ask for help. He’s not a ghost in the traditional sense; he can interact with the physical world, even if he can’t quite explain how or why he’s back. 🎹
Raymond’s request? That Thomas travel with him to San Francisco to find Camille, the long-lost love of his life. For Thomas, it’s surreal—his father showing up after five years, asking him to drop everything for a cross-continental quest for a woman Thomas has never heard of. Yet it’s also an impossible opportunity: his last-in-a-lifetime chance to know his father as a man rather than just as “dad,” to understand the person Raymond was before parenthood defined him. 🌉
Together they embark on a five-thousand-mile journey that questions the nature of existence itself and proves that love transcends even death. Along the way, Thomas learns about Raymond’s youth, his regrets, the roads not taken that haunt us all. The trip rekindles the curious bond between parent and child, but this time on equal footing—two men trying to understand life’s mysteries together rather than father lecturing son. ✈️
As they search for Camille through San Francisco’s streets, both men must confront what they’re really seeking: Raymond wants closure with the woman who got away, while Thomas wants understanding of the father who was always present but somehow distant. Sometimes the journey matters more than the destination, and sometimes grief gives us one more chance to say the things we never said. 💕
What makes this extraordinary: Marc Levy, bestselling author of “P.S. from Paris,” delivers an uncannily funny and poignant exploration of father-son relationships, lost love, and the gift of unexpected second chances. The ghost-but-not-ghost premise sidesteps typical paranormal rules to focus on emotional truth rather than supernatural mechanics. For readers who loved “The Midnight Library” or “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue,” this offers that same blend of magical realism and emotional catharsis, proving that the bonds between parents and children endure beyond death—and that it’s never too late to really know the people we love. 🌟
Olympic silver medalist Kalista Brooks has built an impressive life in California—successful sports technology company, handsome fiancé, achievements that would make any parent proud. When her father’s heart condition takes a critical turn, she rushes home to Atlanta expecting the worst. Instead, he makes a surprising request: to relive favorite memories from all four seasons in just one month at their old farmhouse in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s an impossible ask, compressing a year into weeks, but she can’t refuse a dying man’s wish. 🏔️
With help from the close-knit community and her long-lost sidekick Calvin Calhoon, Kalista creates a tapestry of cherished moments: dogwoods in spring bloom, summer afternoons making blackberry jam, autumn bonfires under star-filled skies, and a magical winter evening that will live forever in her heart. Each season brings not just recreation of memories but revelation—her father sharing stories she never knew, explaining choices she never understood, giving her the gift of truly knowing him before it’s too late. 🌸
As father and daughter share these precious weeks together, racing against time and his failing heart, Kalista discovers what matters most isn’t the life she’s built in California but the connections she’s neglected. Time reveals its own truth: sometimes the sweetest seasons of life come when we least expect them, and sometimes we need to slow down enough to notice what’s been there all along. 🍂
In the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains where she grew up, Kalista learns that success isn’t measured in medals or companies but in presence, in truly seeing the people we love before they’re gone. The last father-daughter dance becomes a gift—not just to her father, but to herself, a chance to remember what home really means. ❄️
Why this touches the heart: Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author, delivers a poignant short story about making every moment count when time is running out. The four-seasons-in-one-month framework creates both urgency and beauty, while the Blue Ridge setting provides the perfect backdrop for reflection and reconnection. For readers who loved “Tuesdays with Morrie” or anyone who’s faced a parent’s mortality, this offers catharsis and the bittersweet reminder to cherish people while we have them—perfect for a single-sitting read that will stay with you for years. 💝
Pull up a chair and grab a slice of pie—Humboldt Cove’s favorite amateur sleuths are celebrating the holidays dachshund-style. Mystery writer Willa Lattner and her three doxies—Killer, Kyle, and Wags—are back for a festive collection that proves the holidays are never boring when curious canines are involved. From Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve, this crew sniffs out trouble with the same enthusiasm they bring to sniffing out bacon. 🦃
Inside you’ll find heartfelt holiday capers including “The Terrible Trouble of the Turkey Trot” (where Thanksgiving dinner goes hilariously wrong) and “The Gift of the Doxies” (a Christmas mystery that proves the best presents come with wet noses and wagging tails). Each story blends cozy mystery charm with genuine humor, small-town warmth, and just enough intrigue to keep pages turning between sips of cocoa. 🎄
But this collection offers more than mysteries—it’s packed with festive recipes to bring the Three Hounds Bakery home to your own kitchen. From seasonal pies to holiday cookies that would make Willa proud, these tested recipes let you recreate the cozy atmosphere of Humboldt Cove’s most beloved bakery while solving mysteries alongside your favorite dachshund detectives. 🥧
Perfect for fireside reading when you want something light, charming, and seasonally appropriate, these short stories deliver everything cozy mystery fans love: quirky small-town characters, lovable canine sidekicks, gentle mysteries that won’t give you nightmares, and that warm-fuzzy feeling that comes from visiting a place where everyone knows your name (and your dogs’ names too). 🐾
What makes this delightful: Julie Titterington delivers holiday cozy perfection—short mysteries ideal for busy December schedules, dachshund antics that will make dog lovers smile, plus actual recipes you can make while reading. The collection format means you can read one story per night or binge them all, while the holiday timeline from Thanksgiving to New Year’s makes it the perfect seasonal companion. For fans of Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen series or anyone who loves their mysteries cozy, their dogs adorable, and their holidays filled with both mischief and warmth, this is the ideal stocking stuffer. 🎁