Kindergarten teacher Ivie McKie has a bad day that escalates dramatically: an encounter with a goat, a confrontation with her cheating fiancé, and then — somewhat unexpectedly — she turns him into a skunk. The actual animal. This is not a metaphor. 😂
Erica Lucke Dean writes paranormal comedy with the kind of escalating chaos that keeps things moving at a pace that doesn’t allow for second thoughts. Ivie enlists her shopaholic best friend Chloe and a sexy club magician named Jackson Blake to help reverse the spell before she ends up arrested for the suspicious disappearance of a man who is technically still alive, just very furry. 🦨
The romance between Ivie and Jackson develops amid increasingly unhinged magical mishaps — every new spell triggers fresh complications, including what the book memorably calls Post Magical Syndrome. Dean keeps the humor sharp and the heat genuine, which is exactly the balance this kind of paranormal comedy requires. 🔮
What makes this irresistible: A kindergarten teacher accidentally turns her cheating fiancé into a skunk and must reverse the spell before anyone notices — paranormal comedy romance with a chaotic energy, a magician hero with excellent timing, and a heroine whose learning curve is both literal and magical. Genuinely funny series opener.
Detective Joe Horseman had a glittering rugby career before a wrecked knee brought him back to the Fiji police force — not quite the comeback he had in mind. When a young maid’s body turns up snagged on the reef at a high-end island resort, he’s handed a case that needs solving fast, before the resort’s reputation takes a hit it can’t recover from. 🌺
B. M. Allsopp uses the Fijian setting with real specificity — this isn’t just a generic tropical backdrop but a fully realized place with its own culture, pressures, and rhythms. Horseman is a compelling protagonist: a man carrying the particular weight of a sporting career cut short, trying to find his footing in a different kind of arena. 🌊
The case doubles in complexity when a second body surfaces just as he finds his first real lead, and his ambitious new partner proves to be a variable he hasn’t quite figured out how to account for. Allsopp balances the procedural elements with the atmospheric setting beautifully. 🔍
Why this grips from page one: A former rugby star turned Fiji detective investigates a maid’s murder at a luxury island resort — before a second body surfaces. International crime fiction with a genuinely fresh setting, a hero worth following, and the kind of atmospheric detail that makes you feel the heat off the page.
Tiffany is running from a dangerous past under a new identity, stranded in a seaside tourist town that was never part of the plan. Jake is the local shopkeeper still grieving his sister, not remotely looking for complications. Then she walks in, and everything gets complicated anyway. 🌊
Stacy Claflin builds the romance carefully — Tiffany’s walls are high for very good reasons, and the way she slowly allows herself to believe in Jake, and in the possibility of a different future, gives the love story genuine emotional weight. The small-town seaside setting is rendered with warm affection throughout. ☀️
When Tiffany’s violent ex tracks her down, the romantic suspense elements kick in with real urgency — Jake has to find a strength he didn’t know he had, and Tiffany has to decide whether she’s done running. Claflin handles the transition from slow burn to genuine danger with a sure hand. 💙
What makes this special: A woman hiding from her past finds unexpected love in a seaside town — until her violent ex arrives to reclaim what he sees as his. Warm romantic suspense with a heroine rebuilding her life, a hero who surprises himself, and a showdown that earns its emotional resolution.
On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 85 Years Old
Hendrik Groen is eighty-five, a little more wobbly than last year, still grieving the death of his beloved friend Eefje — and absolutely not done causing trouble. The Old-But-Not-Dead Club is back, and when rumors surface that their care home may be facing demolition, Hendrik and his fellow residents decide to do what they do best: intervene with maximum mischief and minimum regard for what anyone else thinks. 😄
If you’ve read the first Hendrik Groen book, you already know what you’re getting — warm, funny, quietly moving, with a narrator whose curmudgeonly exterior barely conceals an enormous heart. If this is your first encounter with him, you’re in for a treat and will immediately want to go back and read everything from the beginning. 📖
Fans of Fredrik Backman and Graeme Simsion will find themselves completely at home here. Hendrik is one of fiction’s great company. ☀️
What makes this special: Hendrik Groen returns at eighty-five — still sharp, still mischievous, and still leading the Old-But-Not-Dead Club into glorious battle, this time against the threat of their home being demolished. Funny, warm, and quietly profound, exactly as advertised.
Flight 472 departs Dubai on what should be a routine long-haul back to the UK. Thirty minutes after takeoff, a passenger falls violently ill — then attacks. Within minutes the infection is spreading. Blood, screams, and then a terrible silence. D.C. Wolfe locks the action inside an aircraft with real skill, and the confined setting makes everything feel horribly immediate. ✈️
Captain James Morgan and his crew fight to contain the outbreak at 35,000 feet, only to realize that the world below is already falling apart. Borders closing. Communications failing. Every runway a potential death trap. The decision to divert toward an old Soviet airbase in Eastern Europe turns out to be the beginning of an entirely new nightmare. 🧟
Wolfe balances the midair horror with the larger apocalyptic canvas effectively, keeping the human stakes — trust, survival instinct, impossible decisions — at the center throughout. Strong series opener for zombie thriller fans who want their action with genuine tension. 💥
Why this grips from page one: A zombie outbreak erupts aboard a transatlantic flight, and the crew must survive both the skies and whatever is waiting for them on the ground below. Fast, tense, and relentlessly paced — zombie apocalypse fiction with a genuinely fresh setting and a captain worth rooting for.
Years ago, a killer called Father Silence terrorized the town of Twisted Tree, disguising himself as a priest to prey on the vulnerable. When police finally found his house of horrors, nineteen bodies were recovered — and one survivor, a boy now locked away in a hospital for the criminally insane. Nearly two decades later, Father Silence is executed. By the next morning, the detective who put him away is dead. 😨
J. H. Markert builds his horror with patience and atmosphere, and the legacy-of-evil structure — a new killer calling himself the Outcast, claiming credit and continuing the work — gives the book a creeping dread that accumulates steadily. The detective’s daughter Tess, haunted by childhood trauma and now facing the kidnapping of her own daughter, makes for a heroine with genuine emotional depth. 🕯️
The trip back to Twisted Tree — to visit the surviving boy and dig through the tangled wreckage of his mind for clues — is where the book really finds its darkest register. Markert knows how to make small towns feel sinister. 🌑
What makes this a must-read: A detective’s daughter must revisit the legacy of a childhood monster to save her own kidnapped child — paranormal suspense with deep roots in small-town horror, a layered heroine, and the kind of atmosphere that lingers well after the last page.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3