When his brand new luxury resort in California receives a scathing review from a leading travel magazine, billionaire CEO Bryce Royal decides that a little revenge is in order. Unlucky in love resort reviewer Vivian Holte summons up the courage to get back on the dating scene after writing that scathing review, only to receive her own terrible review on a hot, trending dating app. Vivian smells a rat—a six foot, three inch tall, handsome as sin rat whose touch she will never forget. Jessica Gregory launches the Royal Resorts romantic comedy series with a delicious premise: lovers to enemies to lovers and everything in between, fueled by professional rivalry and personal attraction. 🏨The setup is gloriously petty in the best way: successful businessman gets bad review, tracks down reviewer, creates fake dating profile to give her a taste of her own medicine. But Gregory understands that the best enemies-to-lovers romances happen when the initial antagonism is built on genuine attraction that both parties are fighting. Bryce and Vivian’s first meeting clearly involved chemistry that neither has forgotten, which makes their subsequent battle of reviews and revenge simultaneously frustrating and thrilling for both of them. The more they plot against each other, the more they reveal why they connected in the first place. 💕
Be warned this is a wicked and super steamy book. Gregory delivers a romantic comedy that’s heavy on both the comedy (the escalating revenge plots) and the romance (the undeniable chemistry neither can escape). Room for Improvement works both as literal reference to the resort review that started this war and as metaphor for two people who need to improve their ability to be honest about what they actually want. The Royal Resorts setting provides multiple locations for future books while this standalone delivers complete satisfaction for readers who want billionaire rom-com with bite, steam, and the kind of banter that comes from two intelligent people who are equal matches. 🔥
What makes this irresistible rom-com: Gregory combines billionaire romance with enemies-to-lovers while adding the unique twist of professional rivalry in the travel industry. For readers who love Helen Hoang’s wit, Christina Lauren’s steam, or any rom-com where smart, successful people behave ridiculously because of attraction they’re trying to deny, this delivers. The standalone nature means complete resolution while the Royal Resorts series promises more luxury settings and romantic chaos. Vivian and Bryce’s journey from professional antagonism to personal connection is as steamy as it is funny. 💋
One red shoe can ruin your whole day—especially when it’s attached to a body in the alley behind your new donut shop. Forty-something Maggie Sharpe has returned to her quaint childhood town of Dogwood Mountain, Missouri, nestled in the beautiful Ozark Mountains. She recently inherited Dogwood Donuts along with a cute little cottage from her Aunt Marjorie and is ready to keep the business running and settle into a new, peaceful life. Emma Ainsley understands that cozy mystery protagonists never actually get peaceful lives—they get dead bodies and small-town secrets instead. 🍩Maggie throws herself into running the bakery, but the baking grinds to a halt when a body is discovered in that alley and a whole host of small-town secrets surface as a result of the investigation. With the police on her doorstep every time she turns around, she’s thrown into an even bigger mess than the glaze on her favorite donut when an important clue is found in the worst possible place—her donut shop. Ainsley writes cozy mysteries that understand the genre requirements: amateur sleuth who can’t help investigating, small-town setting where everyone knows everyone’s business, and a protagonist whose new beginning becomes entangled with murder most inconvenient. 🔍
The Raised and Glazed series title is pure cozy mystery gold—a pun that works on multiple levels while establishing the bakery setting. Maggie’s inheritance was supposed to be a fresh start, a chance to honor her aunt’s legacy while building a life in the town she remembers fondly from childhood. Instead, she’s defending her shop from suspicion, uncovering secrets her neighbors have been hiding for years, and trying to figure out who killed someone in her alley while also perfecting her glazed donut recipe. The juxtaposition of everyday bakery operations with murder investigation is classic cozy comfort. 🕵️♀️
What makes this a delightful series start: Ainsley delivers all the cozy mystery elements readers love—small-town Ozark setting, inherited business providing both livelihood and investigation headquarters, protagonist whose age and life experience make her relatable, and the promise of recurring characters and ongoing community dynamics. For readers who love Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen series or any bakery-based cozy mystery, this offers sweet treats, small-town secrets, and a protagonist learning that returning home means confronting more than just memories. Dogwood Donuts is open for business—and apparently for murder investigations too. ☕
The porn star, the murderer, and the disappearing wife—those are just a few of the family members Oakland P.I. Jeri Howard finds herself investigating in a puzzling missing persons case that sprawls throughout the grittier sections of Northern California. For a woman who told her husband she had no relatives, Renee Foster’s actually well-stocked with them, and doozies at that. The whole family—criminals, abusers, and kindly aunts alike—comes alive in Janet Dawson’s first novel, prompting the New York Times to hail it as “a welcome addition to this tough genre.” There’s clearly a lot more here than the simple matter of a wife disappearing with the grocery money. 🔍Smelling a rat or two right from the beginning of this complex and intriguing mystery, the red-haired private detective follows many a twisty trail as Dawson weaves an equally twisty tale that just keeps winding back on itself, revealing brand new secrets as fast as ancient skeletons can fall out of closets. What begins as a basic missing person case—husband claims wife disappeared—quickly becomes an investigation into who Renee Foster really is and why she lied about having no family. Each new relative Jeri discovers adds another layer to the mystery, and none of them are what they initially appear to be. Some are sympathetic, some are dangerous, all are hiding something. 🕵️♀️
Dawson establishes Jeri Howard as a private investigator in the classic mold: smart, thorough, willing to follow leads into uncomfortable places, and possessed of enough street smarts to navigate both Oakland’s criminal underworld and the respectable suburbs where secrets fester behind nice facades. The title “Kindred Crimes” works on multiple levels—crimes committed by relatives, crimes that bind family members together in conspiracy, and the way criminal behavior can run through family lines like genetic inheritance. Jeri’s investigation reveals that family ties can be weapons as easily as lifelines. 👨👩👧👦
What makes this essential PI fiction: Dawson launched the Jeri Howard series with acclaim for good reason—this is intelligent, well-plotted private investigator fiction with a capable female protagonist navigating 1990s Oakland. For readers who love Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone or Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski, this offers that same combination of tough female detective, complex plotting, and California setting with realistic grit. The New York Times recognition confirms what mystery readers discovered: Jeri Howard is a detective worth following through multiple books. The family dysfunction at the heart of this case provides both motive for murder and reason for lies. 📚
The Somme: Herosim and Horror in the First World War
At 7:30 am on July 1, 1916, the first Allied soldiers climbed out of their trenches along the Somme River in France and charged into no-man’s-land toward German barbed wire and machine guns. By day’s end, the British army alone would lose 20,000 men. Over the next 138 days, 310,000 men would die in a fifteen-mile-long territory that became the epicenter of the Great War. Martin Gilbert, one of our most distinguished historians, delivers an authoritative and vivid account of the most devastating WWI battle—a turning point in military history that saw the first appearance of tanks on the battlefield, the emergence of air war as a decisive factor, and more than one million total casualties. Among the wounded was a young Adolf Hitler. 🎖️Gilbert tracks the Battle of the Somme through the experiences of everyone involved: footsoldiers (known to the British as the PBI, for Poor Bloody Infantry), generals making impossible decisions, medics overwhelmed by carnage, and support personnel witnessing unprecedented destruction. The genius of Gilbert’s approach is refusing to reduce the battle to strategic analysis or casualty statistics. Instead, he interweaves photographs, journal entries, original maps, and documents from every stage of planning, creating a mosaic that captures both grand strategic failures and intimate human costs. The result is history that feels immediate and personal rather than distant and abstract. 📖
What makes this the definitive account: Gilbert combines scholarly rigor with narrative immediacy, creating military history that honors both strategic complexity and human experience of war. The integration of primary sources ensures readers understand the battle from multiple perspectives simultaneously. For history enthusiasts or anyone trying to understand WWI’s devastating impact on an entire generation, this is essential reading. The most authoritative and affecting account of one of history’s most destructive battles. 🪖
For Emily, accepting Philip Ashton’s proposal was an easy escape from her overbearing mother’s grand society match schemes. When her dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief—after all, she barely knew him. Nearly two years later, she discovers Philip was far different from the man she married so cavalierly. His journals reveal a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who was deeply in love with his wife. Emily becomes fascinated with this new image of her dead husband, immersing herself in ancient history and beginning to study Greek. 🏛️Emily’s quest to understand Philip takes her to the quiet corridors of the British Museum, one of his favorite places. There, amid priceless ancient statues, she uncovers a dark and dangerous secret involving stolen artifacts from the Greco-Roman galleries. To complicate matters, she’s juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond the marrying kind. As Emily sets out to solve the crime, her investigation reveals more surprises about Philip and forces her to question the constrained role Victorian society has assigned her as a woman. 🔍
What makes this a stellar series launch: Alexander has created a protagonist who grows into her own power through intellectual curiosity and criminal investigation, challenging Victorian gender restrictions without anachronistic modern feminism. The combination of historical detail, art world intrigue, romantic tension, and genuine mystery makes this appeal to multiple audiences. For readers who love British historical mysteries with strong female leads—fans of Deanna Raybourn or Anne Perry—this offers sophisticated plotting, authentic period detail, and a heroine whose journey from shallow society wife to independent thinker is as compelling as the mystery she’s solving. The brilliance of Alexander’s setup is making Emily’s personal journey inseparable from the larger mystery. 📚
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