CIA paramilitary officer and retired Navy SEAL Jon Smith has earned a vacation. Homer, Alaska seems like exactly the kind of remote, freezing place where nothing geopolitically complicated can find him. He is, predictably, wrong. 🦅
The setup here is sharp: a former KGB colonel who defected days after the Berlin Wall fell has spent thirty years reinventing himself as a respected CIA scientist — one who uses Remote Viewing, a method akin to ESP, to gather intelligence on America’s adversaries. Thirty years of quiet. Then the Kremlin decides it wants him back. ❄️
When the NSA intercepts a Russian extraction order, Dr. Karpinsky and his security detail are already isolated in a frozen Alaskan wilderness cabin with a satellite phone that isn’t answering. The President orders retrieval. Jon Smith, on vacation with zero backup, is suddenly the most qualified option in the area — and the Russians are already moving. 🎯
Bob Asher writes with the kind of technical confidence that comes from real familiarity with special operations and intelligence tradecraft. The Alaskan setting is used to terrific effect — the cold and isolation become tactical problems as pressing as the enemy. This is thriller fiction that respects its readers enough to get the details right. 🏔️
What makes this a must-read: A high-concept Cold War revival thriller — Remote Viewing, Russian extraction teams, and a SEAL on vacation who can’t stay out of it — set in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness. Fans of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor will find familiar pleasures here.
Marnie Baranuik is many things: professional psychic, amateur dunce by her own cheerful admission, DaySitter to an ancient revenant, and now reluctant investigator of a missing woman case that nobody else seems sufficiently alarmed about. Rachel Houseton vanished quietly, but the fear she carried every day of her life was anything but quiet — and Marnie can feel the echo of it. 🦇
A.J. Aalto has built one of urban fantasy’s most distinctively voiced protagonists in Marnie, who narrates her own adventures with a combination of genuine psychic sensitivity and gloriously self-aware haplessness. The Marnie Baranuik series operates in a world where the supernatural is known and integrated into daily life in ways that feel lived-in rather than dramatic, and that worldbuilding is one of its greatest pleasures. 🔮
This Between The Files story brings in two of the series’ most compelling supporting players: Marnie’s newly undead brother Wes, whose transition adds fresh emotional complexity, and Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, her ancient revenant partner whose aristocratic manner and genuine affection for Marnie make for one of paranormal fiction’s more unusual partnerships. 🌙
The case itself is a grim one — the kind that reminds you that DaySitters aren’t the only people living in close proximity to cold and terrible things. Aalto balances the series’ signature dark humor against genuine stakes with the skill of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. 🕯️
What makes this special: A perfectly crafted entry point into one of urban fantasy’s most original voices — dark, funny, and genuinely strange in the best way. If you haven’t met Marnie Baranuik yet, this novella-length case file is an ideal introduction to a world worth getting lost in.
A London layover. A spare afternoon. A decision to see Shakespeare at the Globe. It sounded like the perfect way for flight attendant Kendell and globe-trotting retiree Pauline to make the best of an unexpected delay — right up until the lead actor in Macbeth was murdered on stage in front of a full house. 🎭
Susan Harper launches the Flight Risk series with a premise that’s both genuinely clever and impeccably cozy: two women thrown together by circumstance, bonded by a shared crisis, and armed primarily with curiosity and the determination not to end up as suspects. The London setting is used to charming effect, and the Globe Theatre backdrop gives the whole story a theatrical energy that suits the genre perfectly. 🇬🇧
Kendell and Pauline make an appealing odd-couple duo — one younger and impulsive, one seasoned and observant — and their dynamic carries the investigation with warmth and genuine comedic timing. Harper has a light touch with both the humor and the mystery plotting, never letting either overwhelm the other. 🔍
For readers who like their mysteries served with a strong sense of place, an unlikely female friendship at the center, and just enough theatrical drama to keep things interesting, this is a thoroughly satisfying series opener. Think Agatha Christie meets a travel-themed buddy comedy. ✈️
What makes this irresistible: A cozy mystery set in Shakespeare’s Globe during a live performance of Macbeth — it practically writes its own atmosphere. Charming series launch featuring two instantly likable protagonists whose friendship is as much fun to watch as the mystery they’re solving.
Swipe Right on Fate
He’s a vampire who never quite fit into vampire society. She’s a werewolf who never developed her wolf. Two supernatural misfits who’ve spent their lives on the outside of the communities they were born into, both tired of pretending otherwise — and both, for entirely different reasons, giving a human dating app one last shot at finding something real. 🧛
The ByChance app declares them a PERFECT match, which seems promising right up until their first date goes sideways and his carefully maintained “normal guy” cover dissolves entirely. Whatever he expected from this experiment, having his most closely guarded secret evaporate over appetizers wasn’t it. 📱
What neither of them anticipated is the particular relief of being seen by someone who already knows what it’s like to not belong anywhere. The usual supernatural politics don’t apply here — no pack hierarchy, no vampire court, no community whose expectations need managing. Just two people who’ve spent too long being the wrong kind of creature in the wrong kind of world, discovering that love has never once cared about any of that. 🐺
Roxie Ray writes paranormal romance with a light touch and genuine emotional warmth — the supernatural elements are imaginative without overwhelming the core story, which is simply about two lonely people finding each other through the most unlikely possible channel. 💕
What makes this fun: Roxie Ray’s vampire romance pairs a vampire who never fit into vampire society with a werewolf who never developed her wolf — both supernatural misfits trying a human dating app as a last resort, matched as PERFECT by the ByChance algorithm, then forced to navigate a first date where his “normal guy” act collapses completely and they discover that being seen by someone equally out of place feels like exactly enough.
Augustine Montgomery is an Illusion Prime — the highest rank of magic user — and he has spent years making sure almost no one knows what that actually means. The people who have seen his real face can be counted on one hand. The people who’ve witnessed the full extent of his power are dead. Illusion isn’t just his magic. It’s become his entire way of moving through the world. 🎭
Then Diana Harrison walks into his premier PI firm with a problem. She’s also a Prime — a mage who bonds with animals and generally prefers their company to humans — and something precious has been stolen from House Harrison that she must recover before it perishes. She needs Augustine’s help. He finds, against all rational calculation, that he can’t refuse. 🦁
Two people who have built their lives around concealment, forced into proximity by a case that demands exactly the opposite. Augustine cold and rational and increasingly unsettled by a woman who disrupts his carefully maintained equilibrium. Diana fierce and capable and carrying secrets of her own. The enemy they’re facing is powerful enough to require them to risk everything — and the price of winning turns out to be the one thing neither of them ever planned to offer: complete honesty. 🔮
Ilona Andrews delivers urban fantasy romance with the sharp plotting and layered world-building that have made them one of the genre’s most reliably excellent names. ✨
What makes this electric: Ilona Andrews’s romantic fantasy pairs Illusion Prime Augustine Montgomery — a PI whose real face and true power are among his most carefully guarded secrets — with animal-bonding Prime Diana Harrison, who walks into his office with a stolen treasure and a case requiring them both to abandon concealment, face an unimaginably powerful enemy, and pay the ultimate price: complete honesty with each other.
Valentine’s Day in Paris, and Tara Gayarre has never felt more alone — right up until a chance encounter with a devastatingly handsome stranger turns one night into something she’ll spend a long time trying not to think about. She doesn’t expect to see him again. Paris is a big city. 🗼
It is not, as it turns out, big enough. When Tara meets the patron funding her six-month art restoration project at the Louvre, she recognizes him immediately. He is her only one-night stand. He is also, inconveniently, a Comte — heir to a powerful dynasty, a fixture of French paparazzi coverage, and not at all pleased about this development. They agree to remain professional. Their chemistry has other ideas. 🎨
The secret affair that follows is going well until his glamorous ex-wife finds out and manufactures a scandal suggesting Tara sold their relationship to the tabloids. Gustave ends things in fury, says the kind of things that can’t be unsaid, and Tara has no interest in forgiving them. 💔
The truth eventually surfaces — it always does — and Gustave faces the particular challenge of winning back someone he’s given very good reasons not to trust him, which requires risking his reputation, his family name, and the carefully maintained armor that passes for his personality. Maya Alden writes this Parisian romance with the glamour and emotional stakes the setting demands. ✨
What makes this romantic: Maya Alden’s Paris romance follows art restorer Tara Gayarre whose Valentine’s Day one-night stand reappears as the Comte funding her Louvre project — their secret affair destroyed when his ex-wife manufactures a tabloid scandal that makes Gustave say unforgivable things in fury, leaving him to win back a woman he’s betrayed by risking everything he’s spent his life protecting.