Maddy Carmichael faces a career-ending crisis: someone has stolen priceless jewels from the Thompson Presidential Center, including pieces belonging to the Queen of England. As acquisitions manager, the museum’s reputation rests squarely on her shoulders, and if news of the theft leaks before the jewels are recovered, her professional life is finished. She turns to Blackwell Asset Recovery Services, a firm known for their “whatever it takes” approach to client satisfaction—though when she meets model-handsome Phin Blackwell, she wonders exactly how far that policy extends. 💎
For Phin, this case represents the opportunity of a lifetime. Successfully recovering the Queen’s jewels could cement BARS as one of the top asset recovery agencies in the field, transforming his family business from respected to legendary. He jumps at the chance to land the Thompson case, approaching it with professional detachment and strategic focus. Everything stays strictly business—until he meets Maddy and her blue eyes and tempting curves make professional detachment impossible to maintain. 🔥
As they work together to track the stolen jewels, professional boundaries blur in ways neither anticipated. The chemistry between them intensifies with each lead they pursue, each close call they survive, and each moment they spend in forced proximity. But just when Maddy thinks recovering the jewels and exploring whatever’s developing with Phin might both be possible, the FBI turns their investigative spotlight directly on her. 🕵️
Suddenly Phin faces an impossible choice: help the woman who’s becoming the most important person in his life and risk bringing down his family’s company, or play it safe and protect BARS while abandoning Maddy to face federal investigation alone. The jewels are still missing, Maddy’s innocence is questioned, and the attraction between them complicates every decision. Adrienne Giordano delivers romantic suspense where stolen royal jewels, family loyalty, and dangerous attraction collide as Phin and Maddy race against time to recover priceless artifacts and protect what matters most—including each other. ⚡
What makes this exciting: Adrienne Giordano’s romantic suspense follows acquisitions manager Maddy Carmichael and model-handsome Phin Blackwell of Blackwell Asset Recovery racing to retrieve stolen jewels—including the Queen of England’s pieces—from the Thompson Presidential Center, but their professional chemistry combusts as the FBI investigates Maddy and Phin must choose between love and protecting his family’s company.
Pax is a street rat without a class, surviving by his wits in a city constantly threatened by monstrous beast waves that could devour entire neighborhoods if defenders fail. He’s cunning, resourceful, and dedicated to keeping his crew safe and fed—especially after his family vanished without a trace, leaving him responsible for the only family he has left. Life on the streets isn’t glamorous, but Pax has perfected the art of staying alive when most people like him don’t. ⚔️
Everything changes when his best friend is captured on the eve of the Awakening, the event that determines every citizen’s magical destiny. Pax risks everything to save him—including his own freedom—and gets caught in the process. Instead of the streets he knows, Pax finds himself thrust into the Astan Empire’s war machine, specifically their elite mage academy where nobles train to become the empire’s most powerful defenders. 🔥
Survival in the academy requires adapting to a world Pax doesn’t understand and barely trusts. He must harness the forbidden magic surging within him—power that shouldn’t exist in someone of his status—while avoiding the attention of corrupt leaders determined to maintain their iron grip on power by snuffing out any hint of rebellion. Ancient secrets and long-lost spells are at stake, and Pax realizes the empire’s elite education comes with deadly strings attached. 💀
As Pax learns to wield his unexpected abilities, he faces fearsome monsters, ruthless competitors, and political machinations that make street survival look simple by comparison. He’s fighting for more than personal success—he’s fighting to secure a future for himself and the crew he left behind. Against a ruthless empire that sees him as disposable, Pax must prove that the defiant street rat they captured is capable of challenging the system itself. M. Zaugg delivers LitRPG fiction where forbidden magic, elite academy politics, and one determined underdog collide in a fight against impossible odds. ⚡
What makes this addictive: M. Zaugg’s LitRPG adventure follows Pax, a cunning classless street rat captured after trying to save his best friend, who’s thrust into the Astan Empire’s elite mage academy where he must harness forbidden magic, survive corrupt leaders determined to crush rebellion, and defeat monsters while securing a future for his crew against impossible odds.
Kirby Jackson’s business partnership with his best friend ends in the worst possible way: murder. One day they’re running their comics and coffee shop together, the next his best friend is dead and Kirby is suspect number one. The timing couldn’t be more damning—Kirby had been planning to metaphorically stab his friend in the back by cutting him out of the business, and now the police think he upgraded to literal stabbing. ☕
The evidence against Kirby looks catastrophically bad. Motive? Check—everyone knows about their business disagreements. Opportunity? Check—they worked together daily. The fact that Kirby hadn’t yet executed his plan to force his friend out doesn’t matter to investigators who see a clear case of partnership gone murderously wrong. Perhaps things wouldn’t look quite so bleak if half the town didn’t already know about Kirby’s intentions. 🔍
The shop’s mascot, a stubborn dachshund named Gambit, might hold the keys to solving the case—if only he could communicate something besides his demands for treats. Gambit witnessed everything, his beady little eyes tracked every customer and interaction, but his woofs remain frustratingly indecipherable. Or are they? The more time Kirby spends with the obstinate dog, the more he suspects Gambit knows exactly what happened and is choosing to be difficult about sharing information. 🐕
Kirby must prove his innocence while learning to decode Gambit’s particular brand of canine communication, navigating a murder investigation that threatens to destroy everything he’s built. The not-so-dynamic duo faces suspicious customers, aggressive questioning from police, and the uncomfortable reality that someone Kirby trusted enough to call friend might have been hiding secrets worth killing over. Christine Zane Thomas delivers a cozy mystery where comics, coffee, and murder collide while a man and his inherited dachshund form an unlikely investigative team racing to solve the case before the killer strikes again. ⚡
What makes this fun: Christine Zane Thomas’s cozy mystery follows Kirby Jackson, whose business partnership ends when his best friend is murdered and Kirby becomes suspect number one—especially damning since he’d planned to cut his friend out of their comics-and-coffee shop—forcing him to solve the case with help from stubborn dachshund Gambit, who might hold the keys to everything.
Maisie Dobbs Bundle #3: The Mapping of Love and Death and A Lesson in Secrets
August 1914. Michael Clifton is mapping land he’s just purchased in California’s stunning Santa Ynez Valley when war explodes across Europe. Duty-bound to his father’s native country, the young cartographer sets sail for England to serve in the British army, leaving behind his California dreams and the life he’d just begun building. Three years later, in the mud and horror of the Western Front trenches, he’s listed as missing in action—another statistic in a war that devoured an entire generation. 🗺️
April 1932. When Michael’s remains are finally unearthed in France, his grieving parents retain London psychologist and private investigator Maisie Dobbs, hoping she can identify the unnamed nurse whose passionate love letters were discovered among their son’s belongings. It’s the kind of case that seems straightforward—find a nurse, provide closure, allow a family to complete their mourning. Except nothing about Michael Clifton’s death is straightforward, and the quest leads Maisie back to her own bittersweet wartime love and the memories she’s worked hard to bury. 💔
As Maisie investigates, she makes a stunning discovery: Michael Clifton wasn’t killed in combat or by artillery fire. He was murdered in his dugout, deliberately and coldly, by someone who knew him. Suddenly, in the charged atmosphere of post-WWI London where veterans struggle with trauma and the nation tries to forget what it endured, an exposed web of intrigue and violence threatens to ensnare Michael’s family and even Maisie herself as she digs deeper into secrets people killed to protect. 🕵️
This bundle delivers two interconnected Maisie Dobbs mysteries where investigation becomes intensely personal. As Maisie attempts to cope with the impending loss of her beloved mentor and the unsettling awareness that she’s falling in love again despite her determination to remain independent, she must untangle murder plots rooted in the war’s aftermath. Jacqueline Winspear masterfully weaves historical detail with psychological insight, creating mysteries where solving the crime means confronting the past’s hold on the present—and where Maisie’s greatest challenge isn’t just identifying killers but allowing herself to heal from wounds that war inflicted on everyone who survived. ⚡
What makes this riveting: Jacqueline Winspear’s bundle pairs two 1930s mysteries featuring psychologist-investigator Maisie Dobbs: uncovering a WWI soldier’s murder disguised as combat death while searching for his nurse lover, and confronting her own wartime trauma as investigation threatens her emotional walls and mentor’s declining health.
Harald Darrowdelve has squandered every gift life gave him—privilege, wealth, opportunities that lesser men would kill for—frittering away his potential through weakness, indecision, and directionless existence. He’s the disappointing son, the useless noble, the man everyone expected greatness from who delivered only mediocrity. Then he enters the dungeon beneath the city of Flutic and receives a demon’s dark blessing that changes everything. Weak no more. Directionless no more. Now Harald commands powers forged in literal darkness. ⚔️
Each new ability he gains, each hard-won level he achieves, drags him deeper into the ruthless politics of noble houses where alliances shift like shadows and betrayal is standard operating procedure. Shadowy rivals emerge who see Harald’s transformation as a threat to their own ambitions. The celestial war burning beneath the city’s streets—a conflict between divine and infernal forces that predates human civilization—suddenly becomes his problem as both sides recognize what he’s becoming. 🔥
With every victory in the dungeon’s depths, Harald feels himself reshape from the inside out. The powers are intoxicating. The strength is addictive. But the transformation comes with a price he’s only beginning to understand. Each demon-granted ability pulls him further from his humanity, each level gained makes him question whether he’s truly master of his fate or merely a puppet dancing to darkness’s tune. The dungeon doesn’t just grant power—it fundamentally alters those who seek its gifts. 💀
As Harald ascends the path of power, navigating noble intrigue and dungeon dangers alike, the central question becomes impossible to ignore: Will he remain in control of the darkness within, or will he become its servant? Phil Tucker delivers a dark coming-of-age fantasy where privilege transforms into power through demonic blessing, exploring whether gaining everything you wanted means losing everything you were. This is progression fantasy with genuine stakes, where every level gained might cost a piece of your soul. ⚡
What makes this addictive: Phil Tucker’s dark progression fantasy follows Harald Darrowdelve, a weak privileged noble who receives a demon’s blessing in a dungeon beneath Flutic, gaining intoxicating powers that drag him into ruthless noble politics and celestial war—while questioning whether he controls the darkness or serves it.
Whistling past the graveyard—that’s what Daddy called it when you did something to keep your mind off your worst fear, when you pretended everything was fine even when terror clawed at your throat. In the summer of 1963, nine-year-old Starla Claudelle has become an expert at whistling past graveyards both literal and metaphorical, living under her strict grandmother’s oppressive Mississippi roof after her mother abandoned her at age three to chase singing stardom in Nashville. 🎵
Starla’s destination is clear: Nashville, where her mother supposedly became the famous singer she’d always dreamed of being. Never mind that Starla has no money, no plan, and no real understanding of how far Nashville actually is from rural Mississippi. She just knows she can’t stay one more day in her grandmother’s house with its endless rules and suffocating disappointment. Walking a lonely country road in the sweltering heat, she accepts a ride from Eula, a black woman traveling alone with a white baby—a combination that’s not just unusual in 1963 Mississippi but actively dangerous. 🚗
What follows is a road trip that will shatter every assumption Starla’s nine years have built about how the world works. Through Eula’s eyes and experiences, Starla sees life as it really is for the first time—the brutality of segregation, the courage required to simply exist while Black in the Jim Crow South, and the complex realities that her sheltered, white childhood never prepared her to understand. The baby’s presence adds layers of danger and mystery that force Starla to grow up faster than any child should have to. 💔
As they navigate back roads where kindness and cruelty exist side by side, where helping the wrong person can get you killed and looking the wrong way at the wrong person can end in violence, Starla reaches for a dream of how life could one day be—a world where a Black woman and white child can travel together without fear, where mothers don’t abandon daughters, and where singing your truth doesn’t require leaving everything behind. Susan Crandall delivers a powerful coming-of-age story set against the Civil Rights era, where one girl’s journey to find her mother becomes a revelation about America’s deepest wounds and most necessary transformations. ⚡
What makes this powerful: Susan Crandall’s coming-of-age novel follows nine-year-old Starla escaping her strict Mississippi grandmother in 1963 to find her mother in Nashville, accepting a dangerous ride from Eula—a Black woman with a white baby—on a transformative road trip revealing segregation’s brutal realities and possibilities for change.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3