She was born corrupted. Her soul, deemed impure from the moment of her first breath, carries a hunger for vengeance so consuming that the angels didn’t train her — they caged her, branded her, and kept her in the dark. The only time they let her out is to hunt. And what they send her to hunt are dragons. 🔥
Everly Frost builds paranormal worlds with real internal logic, and the premise of Hunt the Night is genuinely fresh — an angel who is herself the dangerous one, whose gifts are liabilities, and whose promised redemption comes with a kill quota attached. The tension between her violent nature and her desperate longing for freedom gives the story emotional weight beyond its action-heavy surface. ⚔️
The Dread clan of dragon shifters are merciless, shape-shifting predators who reveal their true nature only after dark. They should be the enemy. But one mistake — one moment of hesitation — costs our hunter her freedom and places her life entirely in the hands of Callan Steele, a Dread dragon whose touch somehow reaches the corrupted soul the angels gave up on long ago. 🐉
The enemies-to-lovers dynamic here is built on genuine conflict rather than contrived misunderstanding, and Frost handles the slow shift from captor and captive toward something far more complicated with real skill. This is paranormal romance with darkness that earns its light. 🌑
What makes this irresistible: A fallen-angel premise with a genuinely original twist — the hunter is the one who needs saving — paired with a dragon hero whose claim on her feels both threatening and inevitable. Series opener that leaves you needing book two immediately.
Sam Ireland came home from war with invisible wounds and one simple promise to his daughter Isla: a quieter life. He was trying to keep it. Then violence found them anyway — the worst kind, the kind that takes what can never be replaced — and the quiet life became something Sam could no longer afford to want. 🇮🇪
Finn Og writes with the compact, kinetic energy of someone who understands both grief and combat, and Charlie has the feel of a thriller written from the inside out. Sam isn’t a superhero or a fantasy soldier — he’s a man running on grief and muscle memory, making decisions that are often desperate and always consequential. His daughter Isla isn’t backdrop; she’s the reason every choice matters. 💔
As Sam hunts the men responsible, he finds himself pulled into Ireland’s shadow world — a place where predators and corrupt power have learned to coexist, and where his military training is both his greatest asset and his most dangerous liability. Every step toward justice carries the risk of leaving Isla without her last parent. 🌧️
This is the kind of thriller that earns comparisons to Lee Child and Andy McNab — but with a specifically Irish soul that gives it distinct texture and atmosphere. The combination of relentless pacing and genuine emotional stakes puts it a cut above standard action fare. ⚡
Why this grips from page one: A father-driven revenge thriller with real emotional depth and a protagonist whose love for his daughter makes every violent choice feel costly rather than cool. Series launch that immediately establishes Finn Og as a name to watch in the vigilante thriller space.
A teenage girl and her boyfriend are stabbed on a local bus in broad daylight. She happens to be the mayor’s niece. The attack sends shockwaves through the community and puts the police under a level of pressure that makes clear thinking nearly impossible — which is precisely when clear thinking matters most. 🚔
Charlie Gallagher is a former police detective, and that background shows on every page of the Langthorne series. The procedural details feel authentic, but more importantly, the psychology feels real — the institutional pressures, the shortcuts taken under media glare, and the gap between what gets reported and what actually happened. 🗞️
When a local lowlife conveniently confesses to the attack, the brass is relieved. Detective George Elms is not. He knows the Effingell Estate better than anyone, and he knows that convenient confessions rarely solve inconvenient crimes. His investigation into the layers beneath the surface puts him at odds with colleagues who’d prefer the case stay closed. 🔦
Gallagher gives us a protagonist worth following in George Elms — methodical, stubborn, and quietly troubled by a system that too often settles for answers instead of truth. This is British crime fiction with real teeth, in the tradition of authors like Mark Billingham and Peter James. 🇬🇧
Why this grips from page one: A taut British police procedural written by an author who actually wore the badge, featuring a detective whose instincts refuse to let a convenient confession close an inconvenient case. Strong series launch with a fully realized setting and authentic insider detail.
A Death in Diamonds (Her Majesty The Queen Investigates Book 4)
England, 1957. Young Queen Elizabeth II is navigating the delicate work of repairing postwar relationships with foreign governments while managing a court full of her father’s old advisors — men she’s beginning to suspect don’t have her best interests particularly at heart. Someone among them appears to be deliberately sabotaging her public appearances. That much she’s sure of. 👑
Then two bodies turn up in Chelsea, and the Queen finds herself used — unwillingly — as an alibi for someone very close to her. With the reputation of the monarchy at stake and no one in the palace she can fully trust, she makes the logical decision: recruit former code-breaker Joan McGraw to help untangle the truth before it tangles around the Crown entirely. 🔍
SJ Bennett has constructed one of crime fiction’s most quietly delightful premises — Queen Elizabeth II as a sharp, discreet, utterly determined amateur detective operating behind the scrupulous facade of constitutional propriety — and the fourth installment delivers everything the series has established: period atmosphere, genuine mystery, and the particular pleasure of watching one of history’s most recognizable figures prove considerably more formidable than anyone around her suspects. 🏰
The clock is ticking, the danger is closer than either woman realizes, and the secrets being uncovered have roots that reach back further than the Chelsea murders alone. 💎
What makes this captivating: SJ Bennett’s historical mystery finds young Queen Elizabeth II navigating sabotaged public appearances and old courtiers she doesn’t trust — until two Chelsea murders make her an unwilling alibi for someone dangerously close to the throne, forcing her to enlist ex-code-breaker Joan McGraw to uncover a conspiracy that threatens the monarchy before the clock runs out.
When Melanie Simpson loses her grandmother, she loses her anchor. What she gains — unexpectedly — is a purpose: her grandmother’s will leaves her an inheritance specifically designated to purchase a crumbling house in Rosemary Bay, the coastal village they visited together every summer. The dream was always to turn it into a bed and breakfast. Now it falls to Melanie alone to make it real. 🌊
On her first night in her new hometown, she meets Josh Claiborne — local contractor, landowner, eyes that match the sea. He’s exactly the right person to help restore the wraparound porch and the peeling white paint faded by years of coastal sun, and the work of renovation begins to feel like something more than construction. 🏡
Then Melanie discovers a stack of yellowing letters hidden in a closet. The looping handwriting inside them reveals a buried history of the rickety old house — a past that reaches into every corner of Rosemary Bay and touches people Melanie is only beginning to know. Whether those secrets bring her closer to Josh or create a fault line between them depends entirely on what they say, and neither of them is prepared for the answer. 💌
Jenny Hale writes coastal romance with the warmth and specificity that makes fictional places feel like somewhere you’ve actually been and want to return to, and the mystery of the letters gives this love story a satisfying second layer of intrigue. ☀️
What makes this enchanting: Jenny Hale’s coastal romance follows grief-stricken Melanie Simpson inheriting a crumbling Rosemary Bay house her grandmother dreamed of turning into a bed and breakfast, meeting contractor Josh Claiborne whose eyes match the sea — then discovering a hidden stack of yellowing letters whose buried history reaches through the entire village and threatens to reshape everything she’s only just beginning to build.
Camille Taylor’s husband dies unexpectedly, and the life she built so carefully in Washington, D.C. simply stops working. After nearly a year of struggling, she does the only thing that makes sense: packs up her daughter and heads back to the Alabama coast where she grew up, where the salt air and slow rhythms of Mobile Bay can do what the city couldn’t. 🌊
The coast soothes. But it also complicates. Local fisherman Mack Phillips is fighting a lawsuit against the owners of an abandoned development site whose runoff is poisoning the water — and among those owners is Camille’s father. She joins his defense team because family loyalty demands it, but the more she learns about the case, the less certain she is that she’s standing on the right side of the line. 🎣
Mack’s fearless resolve and sterling ideals are the opposite of comfortable, particularly for someone trying to rebuild a life on the foundations of what she thought she knew. The attraction that develops between them arrives at exactly the wrong time, from exactly the wrong direction, and Audrey Ingram doesn’t let either of them take the easy way through it. 💙
This is the kind of Southern women’s fiction that takes environmental stakes seriously alongside emotional ones — the threat to Mobile Bay’s ecosystem is as real and urgent as anything happening in Camille’s personal life, which is precisely what makes the novel feel substantial. 🌿
What makes this resonant: Audrey Ingram’s family fiction follows widowed Camille Taylor retreating to her Alabama coastal hometown with her daughter, only to find local fisherman Mack Phillips suing the owners of a polluted development site — her father among them — forcing her to choose between family loyalty and what she increasingly knows is right, while falling for the man on the opposite side of the fight.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3