Welcome to the brutal heart of London’s East End, where loyalty is currency, family is everything, and power comes at a deadly price. She didn’t choose this life—but now she’s in it, she’ll be damned if anyone takes it from her. Ruby never wanted to be part of the family business, the criminal enterprise her father Colm Byrne ruled with fear and favors for decades. Sharp, ambitious, and brilliant in the courtroom, she was meant for a life far from the streets where violence and intimidation passed for business strategy. She had legitimate degrees, legal career prospects, a future that didn’t involve looking over her shoulder or washing blood money clean. 💎
But when a violent triad war leaves Colm fighting for his life and the Byrne firm exposed to rivals circling like sharks sensing blood in the water, Ruby is dragged into a world she thought she’d escaped—and quickly proves she’s more dangerous than anyone ever imagined. As the Byrne brothers crumble under pressure, making mistakes born of panic and proving they lack their father’s strategic ruthlessness, it’s Ruby who steps up. From shadowy assassinations to cut-throat deals with ruthless allies, Ruby’s transformation into a powerful, calculating leader is as shocking as it is unstoppable. The lawyer becomes the enforcer, the legitimate daughter becomes the heir, the woman who wanted nothing to do with the family business becomes its salvation. 🔪
But every decision comes at a cost, and as enemies close in, alliances fracture, and bodies fall across London’s East End, Ruby learns the one truth her father never said aloud—the crown might be hers, but it’s built on blood. Some debts can only be paid in violence, some loyalty can only be earned through fear, and some power can only be maintained by proving you’re willing to be more ruthless than everyone trying to take what’s yours. Welcome to Ruby’s education in running a criminal empire where being brilliant isn’t enough—you have to be brutal. ⚔️
Jackie Diamond launches The Legacy Series with noir crime that examines what happens when the daughter who escaped becomes the only one capable of saving the family business. Ruby’s legal training gives her strategic advantages—she knows how systems work, how to manipulate them, how to appear legitimate while operating in shadows. Her transformation isn’t about discovering hidden bloodlust but about making calculated choices to protect what’s hers, even when “what’s hers” is a criminal enterprise built on violence. This is London gangster fiction for readers who want their protagonists complicated, their violence consequential, and their crime families operating with the understanding that the crown is heavy and stained with everything it took to claim it. 👑
What makes this essential: A London noir crime thriller launching The Legacy Series where brilliant lawyer Ruby Byrne is dragged into her father Colm’s criminal empire after a triad war, transforming from courtroom sharp to ruthless leader when the Byrne brothers crumble—learning the crown is hers but built on blood and debts paid only in violence.
When Jane Kovak trades her cheating ex-husband and cushy city life for an old Victorian farmhouse in the mountains of Virginia, she’s prepared to face some challenges. Sulky teenager adjusting to the move? Check. Leaky roof needing immediate repair? No problem. Territorial chickens who clearly resent new ownership? That wasn’t in the real estate listing but she’ll manage. A misogynistic neighbor with boundary issues who thinks women can’t run farms? That’s just great. A zombie apocalypse that starts literally days after closing on the property? Now wait a damn minute… 🧟
One day Jane is juggling her remote design job, single parenthood to a teenager who hates everything about rural Virginia, and an assortment of quirky new neighbors who have Opinions about how city people shouldn’t buy farms they can’t manage. The next day she’s collecting stray kids whose parents didn’t make it, fighting off the infected with a hammer because guns are for people who planned ahead, and discovering that her territorial chickens are surprisingly good at alerting to zombie presence. Now the power is out, supplies are running low, winter is setting in, and Jane’s Victorian farmhouse has become refugee center for every surviving kid in the area. Fun times at the End Times. ❄️
Mary Jane Owen delivers humorous science fiction that asks: what if the zombie apocalypse hit someone completely unprepared who just wanted a quiet life raising chickens? Jane’s remote design job becomes useless without internet, her parenting skills get tested when she’s suddenly responsible for multiple traumatized children, and her farmhouse becomes fortress by necessity rather than design. The “cozy” in Cozy Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse comes from Jane’s determination to maintain some normalcy—kids still need routines, meals still need cooking, and just because the world ended doesn’t mean you stop trying to fix the leaky roof. 🏡
This is apocalypse fiction for readers who want their survival stories grounded in realistic problems (how do you feed this many kids? what happens when someone gets sick? how do you keep morale up when winter’s coming and hope is fading?) rather than action hero fantasies. Jane isn’t a prepper or ex-military—she’s a divorced mom with design skills and chickens who has to figure out zombie survival through trial, error, and the help of neighbors she barely knew before everything fell apart. Last Mom Standing proves that sometimes the person who survives the apocalypse isn’t the one who prepared for it, but the one too stubborn to give up even when circumstances are objectively terrible. 💪
What makes this essential: A humorous zombie apocalypse novel where Jane Kovak escapes her cheating ex for a Virginia farmhouse with a sulky teen and territorial chickens, only to face the End Times days after moving in—collecting stray kids, fighting infected with a hammer, and proving single moms can survive anything including the undead.
Evelyn Christie has resigned herself to another long, boring weekend at Hessleham Hall, the home of her husband Tommy’s aristocratic family—the kind of stuffy country house gathering where conversations revolve around hunting, society gossip, and the proper way to address a duchess. As a former policewoman who served during the war, Evelyn finds these weekends tedious at best, suffocating at worst. But she married Tommy, which means enduring his family’s world of titles, traditions, and too much formality. However, this particular weekend turns out to be anything but dull when Tommy’s uncle, the Earl of Northmoor, is shockingly murdered in his own home. 🏰
Evelyn must use all of her sleuthing knowledge, gained whilst she was a member of the Police force during the war, to find out who the murderer is before the bungling local police force decides the Earl was bumped off so Tommy could inherit his title. The local constabulary is more accustomed to handling poaching and property disputes than aristocratic murder, and their immediate suspicion falls on the obvious heir—Tommy, who stands to gain the title and estate. Evelyn knows her husband didn’t commit murder, but proving his innocence requires investigating his entire family and their weekend guests, all while maintaining the social niceties expected of the future Countess. 🔍
Catherine Coles delivers a traditional detective mystery boxed set spanning books 1-3, featuring Evelyn Christie as amateur sleuth with professional police training navigating aristocratic murder in the interwar period. Evelyn’s background as wartime policewoman gives her investigative skills and credibility while her position as Tommy’s wife gives her access to suspects who would never speak candidly to authorities. The country house mystery setting provides classic locked-room elements—limited suspects, all with access and opportunity, social dynamics that complicate honest disclosure. 🕵️
The three-book collection allows readers to follow Tommy and Evelyn through multiple investigations where Evelyn’s police experience clashes with aristocratic expectations about what ladies should and shouldn’t do. This is cozy mystery for readers who want their sleuths competent rather than accidentally stumbling into solutions, their historical settings accurate to interwar British class dynamics, and their detective couples operating as partners where the wife’s skills matter as much as the husband’s social position. The Earl’s murder is just the beginning of Evelyn learning that weekends at Hessleham Hall are never boring when someone keeps committing murders that the local police can’t solve. 👑
What makes this essential: A traditional detective mystery boxed set where former wartime policewoman Evelyn Christie faces murder at Hessleham Hall when her husband Tommy’s uncle the Earl is killed—forcing her to investigate before bungling local police decide Tommy committed murder to inherit the title, launching a three-book series of aristocratic investigations.
The Grizzly Who Stole Christmas
I hate Christmas. I hate the crowds that descend on my peaceful mountain town, I hate the traffic that clogs roads that should be empty, and I hate the annoying tourists who’ve turned my quiet mountain oasis into a loud festive hell every December. They bring their holiday cheer, their rental cabins, their Instagram photography sessions in front of my forest, and their complete disregard for the fact that some of us live here year-round and don’t appreciate the invasion. So when the town hosts a Christmas tree lighting festival—the ultimate tourist trap designed to pack even more people into my territory—I know it’s time for my revenge. Christmas is about to be canceled, by me and my vicious roaring grizzly bear. 🐻
But when we spot our Christmas-loving mate in the crowd, everything changes. She’s there in the festival throng wearing a ridiculous light-up sweater, drinking hot cocoa, singing carols with genuine enthusiasm, embodying everything about Christmas I’ve spent years hating. And she’s mine. My bear knows it instantly, roaring to claim her even as my human side realizes the cosmic joke being played on me: my fated mate loves the holiday I’ve dedicated myself to destroying. I thought Christmas was my enemy, the annual plague ruining my peace. Turns out it delivered the one gift I never knew I needed—my mate. And that’s one gift I’ll never give back, even if it means tolerating tinsel. 🎄
Olivia T. Turner delivers shifter romance with the grumpy/sunshine dynamic amplified by holiday setting. The grizzly shifter who hates Christmas finding his mate at the Christmas festival he’s planning to ruin is peak romantic irony. This isn’t about him learning to love Christmas through her—it’s about him loving her enough to tolerate the holiday chaos he despises, which feels more authentic than magical transformation. The vicious roaring grizzly bear meeting his match in a woman who rocks light-up sweaters provides both humor and heat. ❤️
What makes this essential: A shifter holiday romance where a grumpy grizzly who hates Christmas plans to ruin the town’s tree lighting festival with his vicious bear, until he spots his Christmas-loving mate in the crowd—delivering the cosmic joke that his perfect match loves everything he’s sworn to destroy.
Assassin. Gardener. Reluctant cat adoptee. All Dante wants is to be left alone in the small New Zealand town no one’s heard of, tending his garden, perfecting his orchid cultivation, and living a quiet life where nobody asks questions about his past or why someone with his skill set chose to retire to the middle of nowhere. No drama. No bodies. No questions about the very particular expertise he’s trying to leave behind. He’s traded killing for gardening, violence for horticulture, and he’d really prefer to keep it that way. 🌺
But then, of course, the orchid convention comes to town, and Dante is knee-deep in suspects, intrigue, and red herrings before he can deadhead a single bloom. Someone’s been murdered at an orchid convention—which shouldn’t be possible because orchid enthusiasts are supposed to be gentle souls who care about humidity levels and rare hybrids, not homicide. On top of all this murder investigation nonsense, Dante must navigate a mysterious woman from his past who’s suddenly appeared in town, cat issues involving a feline that’s decided Dante is its human regardless of his opinions, and the terrifying prospect of a first date with someone who might actually be interested in the man he’s trying to become rather than the assassin he used to be. 🐱
And he has to do all of it while fighting his instinct to solve problems the old-fashioned way: permanently. Every investigative dead end makes Dante’s fingers itch for solutions his former profession provided efficiently. Suspects who won’t talk? He knows how to make people talk. Evidence that’s been hidden? He knows how to find things people want to stay lost. But solving a murder investigation using assassination skills kind of defeats the purpose of retirement. Dante’s challenge isn’t just catching the orchid convention killer—it’s catching them using methods that don’t involve any of his very effective but highly illegal former techniques. 🔍
Naomi Kuttner delivers cozy paranormal mystery with a protagonist whose skill set is decidedly uncozy but whose determination to live peacefully makes every investigation an exercise in self-restraint. The retired assassin solving murders while resisting muscle memory to just eliminate suspects is comedy gold. The New Zealand small-town setting provides both charm and isolation—perfect for someone hiding from a violent past. This is cozy mystery for readers who like their protagonists competent, their cats judgy, and their first-date anxiety mixed with the question of whether your potential partner will run screaming when they learn what you used to do for a living. 💐
What makes this essential: A cozy paranormal mystery where retired assassin Dante wants peaceful orchid gardening in small-town New Zealand but instead gets murder at the orchid convention, a mysterious woman from his past, cat adoption issues, and first-date terror—all while fighting instincts to solve problems permanently.
One sniper. One plan. Zero margin for error. Jon Reznick doesn’t trust the CIA—years of experience have taught him that intelligence agencies have their own agendas that rarely align with the truth they claim to serve. But when operative Daniel Black shows up near his home in Maine rather than going through proper channels, Reznick listens. A high-value target has been taken out by a sniper in Mallorca. The kill was clean, professional, executed with the kind of precision that suggests military or intelligence training. And it’s just the beginning of something bigger. 🎯
Reznick is sent in under deep cover to hunt for the assassin and retrieve a cache of Cold War-era surveillance tapes—evidence so explosive it could bring down presidents, topple governments, and rewrite the official history of the last fifty years. Whatever’s on those tapes is worth killing for, which means multiple parties want them badly enough to eliminate anyone in their way. As bodies begin to fall across Europe and the sniper’s true mission comes into focus, Reznick realizes the stakes are far higher than anyone imagined. This isn’t just about preventing future assassinations—it’s about controlling information that powerful people have spent decades keeping buried. 🔫
Because this isn’t just a hit—it’s the opening move in something far more devastating, and time is running out to stop it. The sniper isn’t working alone or randomly selecting targets. There’s a pattern, a plan, a countdown to something catastrophic that the assassinations are designed to enable. Reznick must track a professional killer across international borders while racing against whatever deadline the sniper’s working toward, all while knowing that the CIA may not be fully honest about what’s really at stake or who’s actually pulling the strings. 💣
J. B. Turner delivers the fifteenth Jon Reznick thriller with the protagonist operating in familiar territory—deep cover work against shadowy enemies with unclear allegiances and extremely clear body counts. The Cold War surveillance tapes add historical intrigue to contemporary action, suggesting that current crises have roots in past conspiracies. Reznick’s distrust of the CIA complicates his mission since he can’t be certain his handlers are giving him complete information or truthful objectives. This is political thriller territory where the sniper might be the least dangerous enemy, and where the evidence everyone’s hunting could destroy the very institutions claiming to protect it. Hard Sun continues the series with professional kills, explosive secrets, and zero margin for error when hunting someone as competent as Reznick himself. 🌍
What makes this essential: The fifteenth Jon Reznick thriller where he hunts a professional sniper across Europe while retrieving Cold War surveillance tapes explosive enough to bring down presidents—racing against time as bodies fall and the sniper’s true mission reveals something far more devastating than anyone imagined.