Fearsome Scots laird Gabriel MacLachlan must take a bride, but not just any bride. Magdalene, his overlord’s younger sister, is known to be as bonny as any Highland lass but as mad as a loon. Mad Maggie, they call her—and Gabriel has no choice. Not if he wants to put food in his clansmen’s bellies, clothes on their backs, and repair the crumbling castle he calls home. A fat dowry in exchange for a madwoman, whose life will be in danger from the MacLachlan family curse the instant she becomes his wife. 🏴A generations-old curse, an honorable chieftain, a clever beauty—it’s the perfect recipe for a spirited Highland Romance. Miriam Minger delivers Scottish Highlanders historical romance where fearsome lairds must take brides exchanging fat dowries for madwomen whose lives will be in danger from family curses the instant they become wives. 💕
Why I’m including this: Fearsome Scots laird Gabriel MacLachlan must take a bride—Magdalene, his overlord’s younger sister, known as Mad Maggie. Gabriel has no choice if he wants to put food in his clansmen’s bellies and repair his crumbling castle. A fat dowry in exchange for a madwoman whose life will be in danger from the MacLachlan family curse the instant she becomes his wife. A generations-old curse, an honorable chieftain, a clever beauty.
Rachel Sharpe sees things. Dreadful things. When she locks eyes with someone, it hits her like a jolt of electricity—an ominous sense of impending doom for that person. She doesn’t always know what tragedy will strike them, only that it will be terrible. To survive, Rachel avoids eye contact at all costs and keeps relationships limited to a few “safe” people—and her tracking dog, Ruby. She thought Aaron, a man she couldn’t resist, might be safe too, until she actually sees the tumor behind his eyes. Three months later, he is dead from brain cancer. 😱Now Rachel is panicked. What if she didn’t sense Aaron’s cancer—what if she caused it? Then comes her most chilling vision yet: the busser at a local restaurant is stalking women. Three weeks later, a woman last seen outside that same restaurant disappears. Lynn Walker delivers psychological thriller where locking eyes with someone hits like electricity creating ominous impending doom senses until seeing tumors behind eyes means three months later death from brain cancer creating panic about causing it. 💔
Why I’m including this: Rachel Sharpe sees things—dreadful things. When she locks eyes with someone, it hits her like a jolt of electricity, an ominous sense of impending doom. She thought Aaron might be safe until she saw the tumor behind his eyes. Three months later, he died from brain cancer. Now Rachel is panicked: What if she didn’t sense Aaron’s cancer—what if she caused it? Then comes her most chilling vision yet: the busser at a local restaurant is stalking women.
Welcome to Hartwell—a picturesque English village full of cobbled streets, pretty cottages, and dark secrets. Lady Lucy Hanley is struggling to preserve crumbling Hartwell Hall for her son as rumours circulate about her husband’s disappearance. Her best friend, Rachel Foxton feels trapped and lonely. She’s lived in Hartwell all her life and is exhausted after teaching during the pandemic, grieving her beloved father, and battling heartache. 🏴Dr. Meera Kumar is a new arrival. She’s always been the good girl, but now she needs to escape her marriage and make a fresh start for herself and her young son. And former London detective Jo Ormond has been transferred to Hartwell in disgrace. A quiet Yorkshire village where everyone knows your business is the last place she wants to be. H L Marsay delivers British murder mystery where picturesque English villages with cobbled streets and pretty cottages hide dark secrets as Lady Lucy struggles preserving crumbling halls while rumours circulate about husbands’ disappearances. 😱
Why I’m including this: Welcome to Hartwell—a picturesque English village full of cobbled streets, pretty cottages, and dark secrets. Lady Lucy Hanley struggles to preserve crumbling Hartwell Hall as rumours circulate about her husband’s disappearance. Her best friend Rachel feels trapped after teaching during the pandemic and grieving her father. Dr. Meera Kumar needs to escape her marriage. Former London detective Jo Ormond has been transferred to Hartwell in disgrace.
Night Owl: A Trasker Thriller
After three decades in counterintelligence, Brad Trasker is retired, disillusioned, and dealing with a tragic loss that’s left him questioning everything he once believed about his career. Spy games are firmly behind him—or so he thinks—until he attends the launch of a next-generation aircraft for innovative aerospace CEO Kylie Connor. When the project explodes on the tarmac nearly killing Kylie in the process, Trasker finds himself pulled back into the line of fire and the deadly world he’d sworn to leave behind. ✈️
The mystery of the sabotage quickly deepens into something far more sinister than a simple case of industrial espionage. All of Kylie’s data has been wiped from the server with professional precision. One of her key engineers has vanished without a trace. A seed investor died in what’s being called an accident but looks increasingly suspicious. And a cold-blooded murder raises the stakes even higher, making it clear someone is orchestrating a complex conspiracy with lethal consequences for anyone who gets too close. 💣
To discover who’s pulling the strings behind this dangerous conspiracy, Trasker needs to find the motive driving it all—corporate espionage, personal revenge, or something he can’t yet see but suspects is even worse. Targeted by assassins who clearly know his background and capabilities, he finds himself overmatched when he realizes he can’t trust anyone, including Kylie herself whose technology may be at the center of something far larger than aircraft innovation. 🎯
Too long out of a game he no longer understands, Trasker must adapt his old-school counterintelligence skills to a new landscape of threats or die trying. The novel explores how a veteran spy navigates a world that’s evolved beyond his experience, where trust is weaponized, technology changes everything, and the conspiracy he’s unraveling threatens not just lives but potentially national security. His journey back into the shadows becomes a desperate race against enemies who are always three steps ahead. 🕵️
What makes this essential: A pulse-pounding conspiracy thriller about a retired counterintelligence officer dragged back into lethal spy games when an aerospace CEO’s aircraft explodes, launching him into a web of sabotage, murder, and deception where he can’t trust anyone—including his client. 🔥
Tina Craig longs to escape her violent husband, working all the hours God sends to save up enough money to leave him while also volunteering in a charity shop to avoid her unhappy home. The charity work provides both financial hope and emotional refuge from a marriage that’s become dangerous. Whilst going through the pockets of a second-hand suit donated to the shop, she comes across an old letter—the envelope firmly sealed and unfranked, as if it never reached its intended destination. 💌
Tina opens the letter and reads it, a decision that will alter the course of her life forever in ways she cannot possibly anticipate. The words on that aged paper create a connection across time that transcends her immediate circumstances, offering hope and perspective she desperately needs. What begins as simple curiosity about a decades-old mystery becomes something far more profound as she realizes this letter holds significance not just for its original sender and recipient, but for her own future. 📝
On September 4, 1939, as Britain stands on the brink of war, Billy Stirling knows he has been a fool but hopes he can put things right. He sits down to write the letter he believes will change his future, pouring his heart onto paper in hopes of redemption and second chances. The letter does change his future—in more ways than he can ever imagine—though not in the way he expected when he sealed that envelope with trembling hands. ✉️
The dual timeline narrative weaves together Tina’s contemporary struggle to escape domestic violence with Billy’s wartime story of love, regret, and the desperation to make amends before it’s too late. The unsealed letter becomes a bridge between their lives, demonstrating how acts of courage and hope can echo across generations. As Tina uncovers Billy’s story, she finds inspiration and strength to write her own future, proving that sometimes the past provides exactly the guidance we need to change our present. 🌟
What makes this essential: A dual-timeline WWII novel where a woman trapped in a violent marriage discovers an unsealed 1939 letter in a charity shop that connects her to Billy Stirling’s wartime story of regret and redemption, inspiring her own escape and second chance at life. 💕
For as long as he can recall, Baker Bastian has been the backbone of Bastian Acres Ranch, carrying a heavy load trying to keep his family legacy from being swallowed by corporate farming. He’s battled a fondness for the bottle, survived a messy divorce, and managed a grandmother set on becoming the next Annie Oakley if she could just get a gun that shoots straight. It’s not been an easy road, and now with his worthless philandering father’s death, the deed to the ranch is to be split four ways with three half-brothers he never wanted to know better. 🤠
As the ranch is tossed into chaos, Baker is driven to open the gates to strangers—not just his brothers and their traveling companions but actual paying guests. In order to turn a buck and keep Bastian Acres afloat, the once proud owner of prime cattle is reduced to calling his farming legacy a guest ranch, swallowing his pride one painful gulp at a time. It’s humiliating, necessary, and about to change his life in unexpected ways. 🐄
The first client to show up is Hanley Welsh, a world-renowned wildlife photographer with a rugged presence that catches Baker completely off guard. Baker should be too busy juggling ranch chaos, family drama, and financial survival to notice how Hanley’s eyes crinkle with his easy smile, or how well his jeans fit, or the patient way he handles both cameras and difficult situations. But notice he does, and the attraction becomes impossible to ignore despite everything else falling apart around him. 📸
Baker’s lonely existence threatens to end with the arrival of a man who carries the song of the indigo bunting in his heart—someone who sees beauty in the Oklahoma landscape Baker’s taken for granted and possibility where Baker sees only struggle. The question becomes whether Baker can let someone in when his entire life has been about holding the ranch together alone, and whether a photographer who roams the world chasing wildlife will find a reason to stay with a rancher whose roots go impossibly deep. 💕
What makes this essential: A Western romance about an Oklahoma rancher battling to save his family legacy from corporate farming who finds unexpected love when a world-renowned wildlife photographer arrives as his first guest ranch client, offering both financial salvation and emotional redemption. 🌾
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3