Easton Calloway accused her of stealing, got her fired, and now has the nerve to ask her to be his temporary wife. She absolutely should say no. She’s a broke actress in New York City—so naturally, she says yes. 💍
The terms sound simple enough: one year of pretending to be happily married, a penthouse in the city, and a generous spending allowance. Then divorce papers and a check arrive, and she walks away free. Easy. Clean. No feelings involved. 🏙️
Except Easton Calloway is infuriating and surprisingly complicated, and three hundred sixty-five days is a long time to share a life with someone you’re definitely not falling for. 😬
What makes this addictive: Lyra Parish delivers a marriage-of-convenience romance loaded with sharp wit, crackling tension, and a grumpy billionaire who doesn’t stand a chance—irresistible fun for fans of enemies-to-lovers with a luxe New York City backdrop. ❤️🔥
Combat tracker Mitch Kearns is long past his days on the front lines—content to spend his time teaching FBI agents how to hunt fugitives rather than doing it himself. It’s a quieter life. It suits him. Then the past shows up at his door. 🎯
His mentor’s daughter arrives carrying something explosive: a terrorist group’s plans to strike the United States. Now Mitch faces an impossible race against time—get her to the authorities alive before hardened mercenaries eliminate them both. 💥
The tracker becomes the tracked. And Mitch will have to reach deep into skills he thought he’d left behind. 🏃
What makes this a great series opener: JT Sawyer builds a lean, propulsive action thriller around a hero with real tactical credibility—fast-paced, grounded, and impossible to put down for fans of military thrillers and black-ops fiction. 🔫
Nuclear war left the earth a wasteland. Inside the surviving settlement, Harper Riley was the best developer in her year—destined for a comfortable job in Systems. Instead, she’s drafted into Recon and dumped onto Eli Parker’s squad, kicking and screaming the whole way. ☢️
Eli has watched too many cadets die to get attached to anyone. Venturing into the radiation-soaked Fringe is routine for him—death is just an occupational hazard. Harper should be no different. She isn’t. She asks dangerous questions, the kind with no good answers, and she’s gotten under his skin in a way no one has before. 🌆
Eli wants to protect her from the Fringe. The harder question is whether he can protect her from herself. ⚡
What makes this compelling: Tarah Benner constructs a gritty, atmospheric post-apocalyptic world with real stakes and a slow-burn romance that earns every moment—a gripping series opener for fans of dystopian sci-fi with genuine emotional pull. 🚀
Private Screening (Tony Lord Book 1)
When a sniper’s bullet cuts down presidential hopeful James Kilcannon on live television, the nation erupts. Attorney Tony Lord steps forward to defend the accused—a Vietnam veteran the public has already convicted. Lord has never backed down from a fight, and he’s not starting now. 📺
A year later, tragedy circles back. A masked terrorist calling himself Phoenix kidnaps the assistant of Kilcannon’s rock-star girlfriend, Stacy Tarrant, and threatens to execute him on live TV unless his demands are met. Phoenix isn’t just a terrorist—he has direct ties to the Kilcannon assassination. 😰
And his next move is to put Tony and Stacy on trial. With Phoenix as judge, jury, and executioner. ⚖️
What makes this a standout: Richard North Patterson fuses courtroom drama, political intrigue, and live-wire suspense into a thriller that keeps escalating—smart, cinematic, and relentlessly tense from the opening shot. 🎬
Armed with sharp skepticism and a healthy dose of irreverence, Mark Twain takes his New World eyes on a grand tour of the Old—London, Paris, Rome, Constantinople, Damascus, Jerusalem, and beyond. He skewers the pretensions of Americans abroad, torments local tour guides at every opportunity, and cheerfully insists that Lake Tahoe is nicer than Lake Como. ✈️
In Genoa, he and his fellow travelers straight-facedly claim to have never heard of Christopher Columbus. The joke lands perfectly, and so does almost everything else in this endlessly quotable classic. 😄
First published in 1869, The Innocents Abroad made Twain a national celebrity and outsold every other book he ever wrote during his lifetime. It remains one of the best-selling travelogues ever written. 🌍
What makes this timeless: Part satire, part guidebook, entirely Twain—this is essential reading for anyone who loves great travel writing, biting wit, and the particular comedy of being a tourist who refuses to be impressed. 🎩
Hazel Underwood has slunk back to her magical hometown of Foxfire Haven, Washington, with her pride in tatters. While renovating the old funeral home she inherited from her uncle, she makes an unwelcome discovery: a dead body stashed beneath the hearse. 🧙
The victim is a delivery truck driver with no obvious connection to Hazel—except that Chief Constable Hightower is convinced she killed him with magic and is determined to prove it. Hazel is equally determined to prove the handsome curmudgeon wrong. 🔮
Suspects range from a potion-obsessed vampire to the garden store gnome, but the deeper Hazel digs, the more she suspects her uncle’s obsessive treasure-hunting in his final years may be tangled up in Steve’s murder too. 🏚️
What makes this a delight: Beth Dolgner blends sharp humor, genuine mystery, and witchy small-town charm into a paranormal cozy that’s impossible to resist—especially once the reluctant witch starts embracing what she actually is. 🌙
There’s too much going on to fall in love. Or maybe that’s exactly the reason they should. 🌻
What makes this unforgettable: Heidi McLaughlin writes grief, friendship, and second chances with rare emotional honesty—a small-town romance that earns its warmth through genuine loss and the hard, beautiful work of choosing to keep going. 🤍
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3