Flea has always been different from other students in school in ways he can’t quite explain and everyone else won’t let him forget. He’s not smart or athletic enough to stand out in good ways, he’s shorter than kids half his age which makes gym class absolute torture, and his facial features are strangely pointy in ways that make people stare. His foster mother always warns him to avoid attention and keep his head down, though Flea has absolutely no idea who’s supposedly after them or why they’d care about a weird kid nobody likes anyway. 🎄
But Flea discovers several abilities that change his life forever and make him question everything about who he is. Snowy weather follows him wherever he goes—which seems impossible until it happens consistently. He can stop snowballs in mid-flight with just his mind, which makes him either a superhero or a freak depending on who you ask. And he can build literally anything in shop class in a matter of minutes with perfect precision, despite his complete lack of training or any logical explanation for how he knows what to do. His hands just know. ❄️
An appearance on The Great Build-Off—a popular construction game show where contestants build elaborate projects under time pressure—leads him to a magical place he only thought existed in Christmas stories and shopping mall decorations. Turns out, the North Pole is real. Santa is real. Elves are real. And Flea might be one of them, which would explain the pointy features and the weird abilities and why he’s never quite fit in with regular kids. 🎅
At the North Pole, Flea feels even more like an outsider, which is saying something given his track record. The storybook village reminds him of every school he’d ever attended, complete with overachievers who make everything look easy, underachievers who’ve given up trying, popular elves who run everything, and outcasts who eat lunch alone. Turns out, even magical Christmas villages have social hierarchies and cliques and mean kids who make you feel small. ⛄
But during his training to become a proper builder elf—learning the ancient techniques passed down through generations, mastering the magic that makes toys come alive—he discovers the North Pole has an arch-nemesis bent on invading elfish lands and ending Christmas forever. The South Pole isn’t just a geographic location, it’s apparently headquarters for everything anti-Christmas, and they’ve been planning their invasion for decades. With a war looming against forces that want to destroy everything the North Pole represents, Flea’s sudden appearance is no coincidence. ⚔️
As he questions his role in the fate of the world’s greatest holiday—is he the chosen one, or just a weird kid who happens to have elf powers?—Flea must figure out if he’s ready to fight for a place that still doesn’t quite feel like home, for people who still don’t quite accept him, and for a holiday he’s never really experienced properly given his foster care situation. 🌟
Why kids will love this: Kevin George launches Flea’s Five Christmases with a middle-grade adventure combining magic, Christmas mythology, chosen one tropes, and an outsider protagonist proving that being different might be exactly what saves the holiday—perfect for young readers who love their Christmas stories with action and heart.
At a genetics lab where a revolutionary strain of wonder food crops is being developed that could supposedly end world hunger, FBI Special Agent Jack Dawson’s best friend and fellow agent, Sheldon Crane, is brutally murdered in ways that suggest whoever killed him was desperately searching for something. The killer tore his body apart trying to find very special seeds that Jack’s friend had taken from the lab—seeds that are apparently worth killing for, worth torturing for, worth destroying a friendship over. 🌾
Jack is immediately convinced that Naomi Perrault, the beautiful geneticist who leads a group of suspected eco-terrorists with concerning manifestos about corporate agriculture, is behind the murder. She had motive—Sheldon was investigating her group. She had means—access to the lab and knowledge of what he’d taken. And she definitely had opportunity. But when FBI agents who aren’t quite who they claim to be show up on Jack’s doorstep after a bomb devastates the FBI lab in Quantico, destroying all the evidence from his friend’s murder in a way that seems way too convenient, Naomi becomes Jack’s only hope of survival. 💣
Framed for murder he didn’t commit and confronted by the terrifying truth of what the genetically engineered seeds stolen by his friend are truly designed to do—and it’s not feeding the hungry like the press releases claim—Jack joins Naomi in a desperate battle that takes them across half the globe. From corporate boardrooms to remote villages, from government facilities to underground bunkers, they’re running from people who have infinite resources and zero conscience. 🌍
Because these aren’t miracle crops that will save humanity from starvation. They’re a weapon. A biological weapon hidden inside innocent-looking grain, designed to do something so horrifying that Jack can barely process it when he finally understands the full scope of the plan. Someone with more money than God and less morality than a snake wants to use these seeds to trigger a controlled population reduction—corporate-speak for mass extinction targeted at specific populations. 😱
As Jack and Naomi race to expose the conspiracy before the seeds get distributed globally through normal agricultural channels, they realize the plot goes higher than they imagined. Government officials are involved. Corporate titans are funding it. Scientists who should know better are enabling it. And the clock is ticking because planting season is coming, and once these seeds are in the ground across multiple continents, there’s no stopping what comes next. 💀
Jack’s best friend died trying to stop this. The question is: can Jack finish what Sheldon started before humanity’s harvest becomes our extinction? ⚡
What makes this terrifying: Michael R. Hicks launches the Harvest Trilogy with a technothriller exploring the nightmare scenario of weaponized agriculture, proving that the deadliest threats come wrapped in promises of feeding the hungry—perfect for readers who love their conspiracies grounded in actual science.
The neighbourhood watch leader has been murdered, and suddenly everyone’s a suspect… 🔍
With Julia South-Brown enjoying her newborn daughter’s every milestone safe in her cosy cottage—first smiles, tiny giggles, that new baby smell that makes sleep deprivation almost worth it—and with maternity leave cutting her off from the rumour mill of her café where all village gossip flows freely, she doesn’t realize just how much local news and drama she’s missed. Between a concerning wave of break-ins and thefts that have residents installing security cameras and triple-checking their locks, Peridale isn’t quite the safe little village she remembers from a few months ago. ☕
But when the leader of Peridale’s Eyes, the local neighbourhood watch group that takes itself very seriously, meets her end on the same day Julia’s neighbour Leah’s house is broken into and robbed, Julia finds herself pulled back into the familiar world of clues, suspects, and motives she swore she was done with—not to mention navigating her gran’s rival neighbourhood watch group that’s been waiting years for this exact opportunity. Because of course Gran has opinions about proper surveillance techniques. 🕵️
Dot South knows this is her moment to shine in ways she’s been dreaming about for decades. For years, she’s been hoping for a chance to start a neighbourhood watch group of her own, one that actually knows what it’s doing unlike those amateurs in Peridale’s Eyes. Now, with a murder on her doorstep providing the perfect catalyst, and a bunch of hapless volunteers bungling every attempt at solving it with their clipboards and whistles, who better to form and lead a newer, better, more competent version of Peridale’s Eyes? 👵
Or should she say… Dot’s Detectives? Because branding matters, even in amateur sleuthing, and Dot’s never been one for false modesty. As Julia investigates the murder while bouncing a baby and dodging her gran’s increasingly elaborate surveillance schemes, she discovers that neighbourhood watch drama runs deeper than petty turf wars. Someone in Peridale wanted the watch leader dead badly enough to kill her, and they’re perfectly comfortable with everyone thinking it’s connected to the recent robberies. 🚨
But Julia suspects the murder and the break-ins are separate crimes that happened to coincide conveniently, and untangling which crime connects to which suspect while her gran recruits half the village into her new detective agency is giving Julia a headache that no amount of coffee can fix. Especially when she realizes the killer might be someone she knows, someone she serves scones to regularly, someone who’s been hiding in plain sight in this supposedly peaceful village. 💀
Why this delights: Agatha Frost serves up British cozy mystery combining neighbourhood watch drama, a café owner juggling motherhood and murder, and a gran who’s finally getting her detective agency dreams—perfect for readers who love their mysteries with tea, village gossip, and amateur sleuths who refuse to retire.
Of Glass and Lavender: The Ascension Rising Series – Book 1
Death always wins. That’s not philosophy—that’s the lesson I’m learning the hard way. ⚰️
I’m racing to figure out a way to outrun death, which sounds impossible because it is. The problem is death doesn’t play fair, and each day it gets closer to what it wants most: me. Time’s ticking down like a countdown I can’t see but can definitely feel, and I’m completely out of places to hide, out of tricks to buy myself more time. The only option I have left is entrust my life to four of the most devastatingly handsome, and undeniably dangerous, men I’ve ever met. 🖤
Vampires. They’re walking embodiments of sin and power, with scars that run as deep as my own and secrets that make my problems look manageable by comparison. Putting my life in their hands is risky at best—they’re predators with their own agendas. And trusting them with my heart? That’s completely out of the question, off the table, not happening. I’ve been hurt enough to know better than to let anyone that close, especially immortal beings who measure lifetimes in centuries while I’m counting days. 💔
Now with fractured memories of my past looming over me like storm clouds—glimpses of things I don’t quite remember, faces I should know but don’t, deaths I might have already died—and death itself literally on my heels, I have no choice but to fight for my life if I want to keep it. What else am I going to do, just give up and die trying? 🌙
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve died, actually. That’s the really complicated part. The memories are fragmented, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been through this before—death, resurrection, running. It’s like I’m stuck in some cosmic loop, and these four vampires might be the key to breaking it. Or they might be part of the trap. Hard to tell when you can’t trust your own memories and death is breathing down your neck. ⚡
As I navigate training with these four impossibly compelling vampires—learning to fight, learning to trust, learning that maybe not everyone who says they’ll protect you is lying—I realize the real question isn’t whether I’ll survive. It’s whether I’ll remember why survival matters. 🔥
What makes this addictive: K. R. Rainbolt launches the Ascension Rising series with reverse harem vampire romance combining fractured memories, death personified, and four dangerous immortals who might be her salvation or her doom—perfect for fans of why-choose romance with genuine stakes.
In the world of tattoos, once the ink dries, there’s no going back. Some marks are permanent. 🖊️
Returning to her hometown for a class reunion was supposed to be a brief escape for Willow—just a weekend sandwiched between the cracks of her carefully constructed life and the relationship she left hanging in limbo back in the city. A chance to breathe, reminisce, maybe remember who she was before she became who everyone expects her to be. She wasn’t planning on anything life-changing. She definitely wasn’t planning on him. 🏠
Benjamin Davis knows permanence intimately. It’s in every line he draws at his tattoo studio, in the way each design becomes part of someone’s story forever. It’s in the promises he keeps to his daughter—promises about showing up, about being present, about being the kind of father his own father never was. His life is structured, stable, and predictably imperfect in ways he’s made peace with. He’s not looking for complications. He’s definitely not looking for her. ✨
When they cross paths at a local bar during the reunion weekend—him unwinding after a long day at the studio, her trying to decide if she’s made the right life choices—neither expects the immediate pull between them. That recognition that happens when two people just click despite all the logical reasons they shouldn’t. Or the impossible choice it presents when the weekend ends and real life comes calling with all its obligations and expectations. 💕
Some marks fade with time, like the temporary tattoos kids get at carnivals. While others become part of who you are—the ink seeping into your skin, changing you on a cellular level, becoming inseparable from your identity. The question neither of them can answer yet is: which kind will they leave on each other? Will this weekend be a beautiful memory that fades, or the beginning of something permanent that requires completely rewriting the story they thought they were living? 🎨
Because Willow has a life waiting for her elsewhere. Benjamin has a daughter and a business rooted in this town. And choosing each other means someone loses everything they’ve built. But walking away means losing something that might be worth the risk. ⚡
Here’s what you’re getting: Iesha Bree and Kimberly Brown deliver contemporary African American romance about unexpected connections, the permanence of choices, and discovering that sometimes the best art is the life you create when you’re brave enough to change everything.
Convicted by a lie. Redeemed by love. ⚖️
**Gavin Lake**
Ever since Jamie Evans swung her piercing eyes my way in the courtroom during sentencing, I haven’t been able to stop drawing them. I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me with such utter hatred, such absolute certainty that I’m a monster. Her eyes haunt my sketchbooks—page after page of those eyes that condemned me. But I never blamed her for the hatred. She believed a lie. So did the jury. So did everyone. 👁️
Convicted of a murder I didn’t commit at the age of nineteen, I’ve spent sixteen years in prison with her loathing eyes haunting my dreams and filling my sketchbooks. Sixteen years of appeals that went nowhere, of lost time I’ll never get back, of watching life pass through bars while the real killer walked free. Now I’m out on parole, trying to rebuild a life from nothing, hoping that one day I can convince her I’m innocent. 💔
And then maybe, just maybe, I can change the way she looks at me. Turn that hatred into something else. Anything else. 🎨
**Jamie Evans**
For half my life, I’ve despised Gavin Lake with every fiber of my being. The monster who murdered my mother in cold blood, who took her from me when I was just a teenager who still needed her. Until the day someone else confesses to the crime—a deathbed confession that changes everything I thought I knew about that terrible night sixteen years ago. 😱
Now Gavin’s out on parole, and it’s up to me to tell the man I’ve hated for sixteen years that I know he’s innocent. That I helped put an innocent man in prison. That my testimony, my certainty, my hatred contributed to stealing sixteen years of his life. And that I’m the one who’s going to fight to overturn his wrongful conviction, even if it takes the rest of my life to make it right. ⚡
But I didn’t count on him chipping away at the prison walls I’ve erected around my heart—walls built from guilt, grief, and the realization that I destroyed someone’s life. I didn’t count on discovering that the man I thought was a monster is actually kind, talented, and impossibly forgiving. And I’m not sure I can stop him from breaking through my defenses, or even if I want to. Because maybe some of us deserve a second chance. 💕
Why this grips: Darcy Daniel delivers emotional romantic suspense about wrongful conviction, the courage it takes to admit you were wrong, and two people finding love in the wreckage of injustice—perfect for fans of redemption arcs and second chances built on painful truths.
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