Dan did something so terrible that his afterlife consists of returning to the world repeatedly—inhabiting the bodies of awful people, three weeks at a time, until he gets kicked out and moves on to the next. The complication is that he has a conscience. Rather than simply ride out his three-week occupancy and wait for the next rotation, he decides to use the time to stop the terrible people from continuing to be terrible after he is gone. This is the Jenkins Cycle in a nutshell. 💡
The premise is one of the more genuinely original in crime and mystery science fiction—a body-hopping afterlife with a moral mission, rendered from the perspective of a man who understands exactly what he did to earn this particular purgatory and is trying, imperfectly and often hilariously, to make something useful of it. Sometimes the three weeks are strange. Sometimes they are shocking. Sometimes they are an absolute blast. Then there are times it is so awful that all Dan wants is out. It is never, ever boring. 😄
John L. Monk writes the Jenkins Cycle with the dry wit and moral intelligence that distinguishes the best speculative crime fiction from the merely clever—Dan’s situation is inherently comic and inherently serious simultaneously, and the balance between those tones is maintained with the consistency that makes the series worth following across its full run. Kick launches the series with the premise fully established and the first three-week occupancy delivered with enough energy to make the next one feel inevitable. ⚡
What makes this essential: John L. Monk launches the Jenkins Cycle with a crime mystery science fiction of pure originality—a man condemned to inhabit terrible people’s bodies three weeks at a time who decides, since he has a conscience, to stop them from continuing to be terrible after he leaves. It’s never boring. 🌟
When Carmela “CJ” Jones’s love life goes from “I do” to “I don’t think so,” she swaps wedding bells for seashells and heads to Cocoa Reef Resort on St. Nicholas Island for some much-needed soul-searching. The plan is inner peace, sunshine, and the kind of distance from disaster that only an island can provide. Instead of inner peace, she finds Keston Kips—the infuriatingly handsome mixologist who seems to have a PhD in getting under her skin. 🍹
On St. Nicholas Island, the only thing better than the drinks is the man making them, which is precisely the problem. CJ did not come to the Cocoa Reef Resort to be attracted to anyone. She came to recover, regroup, and figure out what comes next after a love life that just cratered in the most spectacular fashion. Keston has other ideas—or rather, he simply exists with sufficient charm and handsomeness that CJ’s recovery plan keeps getting disrupted without him technically doing anything unreasonable. 💛
Lynn Joseph writes the Cocoa Reef Resort series with the tropical island romance atmosphere and enemies-to-lovers dynamic that the escape romance subgenre delivers at its most irresistible—a setting where the cocktails are excellent, the ocean is right there, and the emotional distance CJ was trying to maintain keeps closing in the most inconvenient possible ways. The series title promises both drinks and a love interest, and the opening installment delivers both with the warmth and humor that tropical island romance at its best sustains across a full series. ⚡
What makes this irresistible: Lynn Joseph launches the Cocoa Reef Resort series with a tropical island escape romance of pure sun-drenched charm—a woman who traded wedding bells for seashells, a St. Nicholas Island resort where inner peace was supposed to happen, and an infuriatingly handsome mixologist who is making the recovery considerably more complicated. 🌟
Disgraced teacher James Fisher moved to a backwoods town content to live quietly in solitude—until a small girl with a big problem woke him from his apathy. He suspected his neighbor was abusing and exploiting Brittany. He called the police, which turned out to be his first mistake: the neighbor was related to the chief of police, and the call placed James squarely in the crosshairs of a local law enforcement system that now had every reason to make his life difficult. 💀
Most people in James’s position would have looked the other way. He did not. He lacks the physical power or the connections to save himself, let alone Brittany—the police hold all the authority, and they know it. But that institutional confidence is also their weakness: they completely underestimated what a mild-mannered teacher and a young runaway would be willing to do for justice when the legitimate channels have been closed off. Phil M. Williams builds the vigilante justice thriller premise on the specific moral clarity of a man who has very little to lose and a conscience that will not let him disengage. ⚡
Williams writes with the unflinching honesty and character depth that distinguishes his work—James is not a hero in the conventional thriller sense but an ordinary person whose willingness to act makes him extraordinary in the specific circumstances the novel creates. The small-town corruption setting gives Cesspool its claustrophobic pressure, and the child abuse stakes give it its moral urgency. 💛
What makes this compelling: Phil M. Williams delivers a vigilante justice thriller of genuine moral power—a disgraced teacher in a backwoods town who calls the police about a neighbor abusing a child, discovers the neighbor is related to the chief, and decides that a mild-mannered man and a runaway girl are going to find justice another way. 🌟
Deal with the Devil (Mercenary Librarians Book 1)
Nina is an information broker with a mission—she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling near-future America where information is power and power is survival. Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils: a squad of supersoldiers who went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents and have been fighting to survive ever since. They are on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. 🔥
They could burn down what remains of the world, destroying each other in the process. Or they could do the impossible: team up. The post-apocalyptic science fiction romance premise that Kit Rocha builds here is one of the genre’s more genuinely original setups—mercenary librarians as the information-hoarding power base of a fractured America, supersoldier deserters as reluctant heroes with their own moral code, and the specific tension of two highly competent groups who are better together than apart and know it, and cannot decide whether to act on the knowledge. 💛
Kit Rocha—the writing duo of Bree Bridges and Donna Herren—writes with the world-building ambition and romantic chemistry that has made the Mercenary Librarians series a standout in the post-apocalyptic science fiction romance space. Deal with the Devil launches the series with the full premise established and the central relationship crackling from the first encounter. ⚡
What makes this essential: Kit Rocha launches the Mercenary Librarians series with a post-apocalyptic science fiction romance of genuine originality—an information broker and her team of librarians-for-hire, a AWOL supersoldier squad trying not to slaughter innocents, a collision course between them, and the impossible choice between burning everything down or teaming up. 🌟
True leadership is not a title or a job description—it is a capacity that has to be built deliberately across five distinct levels, each requiring something different from the person who wants to develop it. John C. Maxwell’s argument is that being chosen for a position is only the beginning: the first level of leadership, the one that requires nothing except having been given authority. Everything after that has to be earned. 💡
Level two requires people to follow because they want to—which means investing in them and building genuine relationships. Level three demands results, and the ability to build a team that produces them. Level four means helping people become leaders in their own right, which requires a shift from doing the work to developing the people who do it. Level five—the pinnacle—is where experience and sustained investment allow a leader’s influence to extend beyond their immediate reach and their own time, creating something that outlasts their direct presence. 📖
Maxwell is one of the most widely read leadership authors in the world, with tens of millions of books sold across multiple decades and a framework that has been adopted by organizations across every sector. The 5 Levels of Leadership delivers his central model in its clearest and most complete form—practical, actionable, and grounded in the conviction that leadership development is not a destination but an ongoing process of investment in people. 🌟
What makes this essential: John C. Maxwell delivers his landmark five-level leadership framework in its most complete and accessible form—a practical roadmap from positional authority through team-building, people development, and the pinnacle where a leader’s influence extends beyond their direct reach and their own time. 🌟
He picked up the name Preacher the hard way: captured by a marauding tribe and set to be burned alive as a young greenhorn, he started preaching and simply never stopped. His captors decided he was crazy as a lizard and turned him loose. Years of survival on the frontier have since formed the man—known from the Northwest to the deserts of the Southwest, as far from a man of the cloth as it is possible to get while carrying the name. 🤠
Now Preacher is the only man capable of leading a wagon train through the last leg of the Oregon Trail—and he knows exactly what that means. Renegade outlaws and bloodthirsty enemies wait ahead, and somehow he has to get these pilgrims through safely or end up buried along the trail with the rest of them. The stakes are personal even when they are professional: Preacher’s survival is as tied to the wagon train’s success as anyone else’s, which gives the novel’s action its particular urgency. ⚡
William W. Johnstone is one of the most prolific and bestselling Western writers in American publishing history, with hundreds of novels to his name and a devoted readership built across decades. The Preacher/First Mountain Man series is among his most beloved—launching here with the origin of a character whose specific combination of frontier competence, dark humor, and genuine moral code has made him one of Western fiction’s great protagonists. 💛
What makes this essential: William W. Johnstone launches the Preacher/First Mountain Man series with a classic American Western of pure frontier momentum—a man who talked his way out of being burned alive, became the only guide capable of taking pilgrims through the final leg of the Oregon Trail, and has very personal reasons to make sure they survive. 🌟
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3