Facing pressure to marry and make a fine match in London, our wildcard heroine recognizes a golden opportunity for escape when her best friend Augustus finds himself in equally desperate need of rescue. Their goals might be different, but the solution could be elegantly identical: a fake betrothal that solves both their problems. Any self-respecting outsider would seize this chance. Augustus, being a gentleman, has reservations about her scheme. 💍
Through reluctant agreement and persistent persuasion, she convinces Augustus to embark on this journey toward a strategic altar. The plan seems straightforward—maintain the charade until their respective problems resolve, then quietly dissolve the engagement with reputations intact. Except something shifts along the way, something neither anticipated when they struck their bargain. What starts as performance begins feeling uncomfortably genuine. 💕
Very real feelings get involved, tangling the neat lines they’d drawn around their arrangement. The path to their future fills with more unexpected twists and turns than the hedge maze where they first discussed this scheme. Intentions that seemed crystal clear become muddied by emotion, and hearts that were supposed to remain safely uninvolved get bruised in ways neither knows how to address. 🌹
The question becomes whether this fake marriage can stay purely transactional, or whether her heart will be the first to fall—betraying the carefully constructed walls she’d built around feelings that were never supposed to develop. Augustus might be a gentleman, but he’s also her best friend, which makes the stakes infinitely higher. When the performance becomes reality, can they acknowledge what’s happening between them, or will fear of losing the friendship doom both the fake relationship and the real one trying to emerge? ⚡
**What makes this essential:** Laney Hatcher delivers a delightful friends-to-lovers historical romance where a wildcard heroine and gentleman hero enter a fake betrothal to solve their individual problems, only to discover that performed romance and genuine feelings create complications more twisted than any hedge maze—especially when your fake fiancé is also your best friend. Perfect for readers who love marriage of convenience tropes, slow-burn friends-to-lovers dynamics, witty banter, Regency settings, and the delicious tension of pretending feelings that are becoming increasingly real.
DCI James Glover fled London for the remote Scottish Highlands after his partner’s murder, desperately seeking answers about why she’d been investigating the quaint town of Beauly before her death. He imagined solitude, time to grieve, and space to uncover the truth that got her killed. Instead, his peaceful retreat shatters when eleven-year-old Isla Campbell is kidnapped on her way to school, forcing him back into the nightmare he’d tried to escape. 🏴
The case bears haunting similarities to one from Glover’s past—the infamous London Butcher, a sadistic killer who targeted young girls before Glover put him away. But certain details shouldn’t be possible: the raspy voice, the distinct smell of blood, specifics that only a survivor could know. Either Glover arrested the wrong man years ago, sending an innocent person to prison while the real monster walked free, or someone is playing an elaborate and deadly game using Isla as bait. 💔
Forced to become Beauly’s temporary DCI, Glover must push aside his obsession with solving his partner’s murder to focus on finding Isla before she becomes another victim. He works with a reluctant local team who view him as an outsider interfering in their community, chasing dead-end leads and uncovering long-buried grudges while the clock ticks mercilessly forward. Every hour Isla remains missing decreases the likelihood she’ll be found alive. 🔍
As the investigation intensifies, Glover confronts not just the possibility he failed catastrophically years ago, but that his partner’s murder and Isla’s kidnapping might be connected in ways he never imagined. The quaint Scottish town hides secrets as dark as anything London offered, and the peaceful Highlands setting masks malevolence that feeds on innocence. Glover faces an impossible question with life-or-death consequences: Did he destroy the wrong man’s life and leave a monster free to kill again, or is someone weaponizing his guilt to break him completely? ⚡
**What makes this essential:** Oliver Davies launches a gripping Scottish crime series where a London DCI fleeing his partner’s unsolved murder is forced to investigate a child’s kidnapping that mirrors a case from his past, raising devastating questions about whether he imprisoned the wrong man years ago or whether someone is using his guilt as a weapon. Perfect for readers who love British crime fiction, Scottish Highland settings, detectives haunted by past failures, race-against-time child abduction cases, and investigations where the protagonist’s credibility becomes part of the mystery itself.
Grace Abrahams possesses an unusual specialty: she helps murdered ghosts find justice. Her connection to the deceased manifests at storage locker auctions, where forgotten belongings become conduits for spirits desperate to tell their stories. It’s unconventional investigative work, but Grace has learned to navigate the boundary between the living and the dead with practiced efficiency. Then she meets Jenny Lorrimer, and everything about this case feels wrong from the start. 👻
Jenny was strangled with the lead of her own headset—a murder weapon that speaks to intimacy, opportunity, and premeditation. Grace discovers Jenny worked as an events planner and was killed at a wedding she’d organized, surrounded by guests celebrating while her body waited to be found. The juxtaposition of joy and horror creates a crime scene that’s both public and deeply personal, where the killer was likely present, possibly even smiling for photos. 💀
Grace’s investigation initially focuses on two obvious suspects: Jenny’s sister and Jenny’s best friend. Close relationships breed the kind of resentment and jealousy that can erupt into violence, especially when money or betrayal is involved. But as Grace delves deeper into Jenny’s life—her business relationships, her personal disappointments, her secret struggles—the easy answers crumble. A shock discovery redirects her down an entirely different investigative route, one that suggests the truth is far more complex than sibling rivalry or friendship gone sour. 🔍
The deeper Grace investigates, the more she realizes that events planners see everything at weddings—the stressed brides, the feuding families, the affairs barely concealed beneath polite smiles. Jenny’s murder might have occurred at someone else’s celebration, but it was rooted in secrets that had nothing to do with the happy couple. Grace must determine which secret was deadly enough to justify strangling a woman with her headset cord, and whether Jenny’s ghost can provide the final clue needed to bring her killer to justice. ⚡
**What makes this essential:** Gillian Larkin’s sixth Storage Ghost Murder mystery features psychic investigator Grace Abrahams helping murdered ghosts find justice, this time investigating an events planner strangled at a wedding she organized, where initial suspects prove misleading and shocking discoveries reveal the killer’s identity lies in secrets deeper than obvious grudges. Perfect for readers who love paranormal cozy mysteries, ghost-assisted investigations, wedding setting murders, and protagonists who bridge the living and dead worlds to solve crimes that conventional detectives miss.
CLUSTERF*CK
April is a married woman living the kind of life that looks perfect from the outside—respectable, stable, predictable. She never imagined that a simple encounter with a charming stranger in a hotel bar would lead to a partnership built on blood and deception. But when Eddie approaches her with that confident smile, completely undeterred by the wedding ring she’s wearing, something dark inside her responds to his proposition. What he suggests isn’t an affair. It’s something far more dangerous, far more binding, far more unthinkable. 💀Eddie exudes self-assurance, the kind of dangerous charisma that makes terrible ideas seem brilliant. He has a plan, he tells her—one that will solve both their problems permanently. All April has to do is say yes. And against every instinct that tells her to walk away, against every warning bell screaming in her head, she finds herself agreeing. What follows is a twisted alliance that leaves a trail of death and destruction in its wake, bodies accumulating as their partnership spirals into territory neither of them anticipated when they first shook hands on their blood pact. 🔪
As their crime spree unfolds with increasing brutality and escalating stakes, it becomes impossible to tell who is actually pulling the strings in this deadly dance. Is Eddie the mastermind he appears to be, orchestrating every move while April follows his lead? Or has April been playing a deeper game all along, manipulating the man who thinks he’s manipulating her? The power dynamics shift with each killing, each lie, each revelation that suggests nothing about their partnership is what it seems on the surface. 🎭
Brian O’Sullivan delivers a new-release noir thriller where moral lines don’t just blur—they disappear entirely. This is a psychological game of cat and mouse where both players might be the cat, both might be the mouse, and the audience won’t know which is which until the final, devastating reveal. In a partnership built on murder, trust is impossible, honesty is a weapon, and the only certainty is that when two predators join forces, eventually one of them has to become prey. 🌑
Why this grips from page one: A married woman’s chance encounter with a charming stranger leads to a deadly partnership leaving bodies in their wake—where it’s impossible to tell who’s manipulating whom until the final, devastating twist.
Peeking through the blinds of my new home, my heart catches in my throat as I come face to face with my new neighbor: Oliver’s ex-wife, Carla. The slight curl of her lip as she spots me watching is all the proof I need that this is no accident, no coincidence, no innocent choice of where to live. She’s here deliberately, and that knowing smirk says she’s been planning this move for a while. Oliver owns the house next door—so why on earth did he let her move in so close to us? And more importantly, why didn’t he warn me she was coming? 🏡When I try to confront Oliver about this impossible situation, he quickly shuts me down with dismissive reassurances that I’m worrying over nothing, that Carla has every right to live wherever she wants, that I’m being paranoid and jealous. But I see what he won’t acknowledge: the fear flickering in his eyes every time he glances toward Carla’s house, the tension in his shoulders when her name comes up, the way he’s suddenly working late more often and finding excuses to avoid being home. Oliver is up to something he’s desperate to hide. And Carla—beautiful, confident Carla—is clearly up to something too, playing a game whose rules only she knows. 👀
The proximity is suffocating. I can see into her kitchen from ours. She can watch our comings and goings. Every encounter in the driveway or at the mailbox crackles with unspoken tension and veiled threats. Carla always has that little smile, that knowing look that suggests she has information I don’t, that she’s holding cards she hasn’t revealed yet. What does she want? Why is she really here? What history do she and Oliver share that he’s so determined to keep buried? 💔
But here’s what neither of them knows: I have secrets of my own, carefully hidden skeletons that I’ve worked hard to keep locked away in closets where no one can find them. And I’ll do whatever it takes to protect those secrets, even if it means going to war with a woman who thinks she has the upper hand. When two wives—one current, one former—both have something to hide, and a husband caught between them has secrets of his own, the question isn’t if everything will explode. It’s when. And who will survive the fallout. 🔥
What makes this unputdownable: A new-release psychological thriller where a woman discovers her husband’s ex-wife has deliberately moved in next door—but neither woman nor the husband caught between them knows everyone is hiding deadly secrets that will destroy them all.
When MI6 assassin Charlie Cooper is ordered to take a leave of absence—a polite way of saying his superiors think he’s becoming a liability—he decides to use the unexpected time off to settle a very personal score that has nothing to do with queen and country. A former ally sold him out to Chinese intelligence during a mission in Singapore, and Cooper has neither forgotten nor forgiven that betrayal. Tracking her routine through London’s streets, identifying her vulnerabilities, he sets an explosive trap designed to end her permanently. But when the bomb detonates, she somehow survives. Before Cooper can finish what he started, Control recalls him to duty with a new assignment he can’t refuse. 💣His target: Hisham Al Iraqi, a legendary bombmaker whose devices have killed hundreds across the Middle East and who’s now hiding somewhere among the ancient ruins of Petra, Jordan. This isn’t a man you can simply walk up to and eliminate—Al Iraqi surrounds himself with layers of protection, moves constantly, trusts no one, and has survived countless attempts on his life by intelligence agencies from four continents. Cooper needs a cover that will put him in position without raising suspicion, something that gives him legitimate reason to be in Petra for an extended period while he waits for his opening. 🏜️
The solution: Cooper embeds himself as a volunteer on an archaeological dig in the Jordanian desert, posing as an amateur enthusiast fascinated by Nabataean history. Surrounded by actual archaeologists, graduate students, and professors who have no idea they’re working alongside a trained killer, he waits for the brutal summer heatwave to drive Al Iraqi out of whatever deep hole he’s hiding in. The temperature climbs to punishing levels, turning the dig site into a furnace and fraying everyone’s nerves. But as Cooper digs through ancient ruins by day and stakes out potential targets by night, he discovers he’s not the only one with secrets in this remote desert location. ⚡
The deeper he excavates—both literally in the archaeological sense and figuratively into the mission’s true parameters—the more enemies he unearths. Someone on the dig team isn’t who they claim to be. Someone in MI6 may have set him up. And in the shadows of Petra’s towering red rock canyons, an old friend is waiting for him—someone Cooper thought was dead, someone whose presence here can’t possibly be coincidence. When the heatwave breaks, so will the carefully maintained lies, and Cooper will discover that the most dangerous bomb in Petra isn’t the one Al Iraqi is building. 🔥
Why this delivers edge-of-your-seat tension: MI6 assassin Charlie Cooper embeds in a Jordanian archaeological dig to eliminate a legendary bombmaker—but discovers he’s not alone in having deadly secrets buried in Petra’s ancient ruins.