Ellen believes lasting love comes from logic—not luck—so she turns to Detailed Dating, a compatibility-based site designed to eliminate surprises through algorithms, personality tests, and data-driven matchmaking. After enough disappointing relationships built on chemistry that fizzled or attraction that masked incompatibility, Ellen’s ready to let science handle her love life. No more trusting butterflies or gut feelings that lead nowhere good. The app promises matches based on compatibility metrics, shared values, lifestyle alignment—everything that actually matters for long-term success. But a surprise dash to the emergency vet with her neighbor’s panicking dog leads her to Henry, a charming dog owner with a playful smile and absolutely no credentials for long-term success according to any algorithm Ellen’s ever trusted. 🐕

Drawn in by Henry’s easy charm and the way he handles crisis with humor rather than panic, Ellen finds herself enrolling in dog obedience classes just to see him again—which is completely irrational behavior for someone who’s committed to logic-based dating. She doesn’t even have a dog. She’s literally signing up for pet training classes as an excuse to spend time with someone her carefully selected dating app hasn’t matched her with, which violates every principle of her systematic approach to finding love. But there’s something about Henry’s presence that makes her laugh, makes her feel alive in ways her algorithm-approved dates don’t. 💕

As their connection deepens through quiet moments at the dog park and laughter over their pets’ antics, Ellen begins to question if she should stick with her plan—the safe, logical, data-driven approach that should theoretically lead to compatible partnership—or take a leap of faith on the man who makes her feel truly alive but doesn’t check any of the boxes her spreadsheet says matter. The dogs bring them together, but the chemistry between Ellen and Henry is decidedly human and decidedly not something that shows up in compatibility algorithms. ❤️

Susan Hatler delivers opposites-attract contemporary romance that examines whether love can be systematized or if the best relationships require trusting instincts over data. Ellen’s journey from logic-driven dating to following her heart mirrors a broader cultural tension between algorithm-based matchmaking and organic connection. This is heartwarming romance about unexpected love, canine chaos that forces proximity, and learning that sometimes the person who looks wrong on paper is exactly right in person. The Better Date than Never series launches with the reminder that compatibility might matter, but so does how someone makes you feel when algorithms aren’t watching. 🌟

What makes this essential: A contemporary romance launching the Better Date than Never series where logic-driven Ellen uses compatibility algorithms to find love, but a surprise emergency vet visit introduces her to charming Henry—forcing her to choose between data-driven dating and the man who makes her feel alive despite checking none of her boxes.

She came to find answers—she discovered a trail of secrets. When Jenny Williams took a job as the new constable in an outback opal mining town, she thought she’d be hunting down clues to find her missing aunt and cousin who disappeared from this exact community years ago without a trace. The official investigation went nowhere, questions were dismissed, and Jenny’s family has lived with uncertainty ever since. Taking the constable position seemed like the perfect cover for conducting her own investigation—legitimate access to files, authority to ask questions, proximity to people who might know what really happened. But when a young woman’s body is found at the bottom of a mine shaft, a possible murder forces Jenny’s personal agenda to take a back seat to immediate police work. 🏜️

Jenny goes head to head with her new commanding officer over how to handle the case. He doesn’t want to ruffle feathers in a tight-knit mining community where everyone’s protective of their claims and suspicious of outsiders, so he rules the death as Death By Misadventure—accident, not murder, case closed, no need to upset the locals. But Jenny is sure the dead woman met with foul play. The positioning of the body, the suspicious circumstances, the way people in town react when questioned—everything points to homicide, not accident. Her boss’s eagerness to close the case without proper investigation feels less like cautious police work and more like deliberate avoidance. 💎

Risking her job and her chance at solving her family mystery, Jenny will go behind her boss’s back to investigate the mine shaft death properly. She uncovers not only evidence pointing to a killer but also a lead that could reveal a decade of corruption in this opal mining town—land grabs, claim jumping, suspicious disappearances that were never properly investigated. Suddenly her aunt and cousin’s disappearance doesn’t look like isolated tragedy but potentially connected to a pattern of crimes that powerful people have worked hard to keep buried. ⛏️

Fiona Tarr launches the Opal Fields series with Australian outback mystery that uses the isolated mining community setting for both atmosphere and claustrophobia—everyone knows everyone, outsiders are noticed, and secrets stay buried unless someone’s willing to dig. Jenny’s dual motivation—solving a current murder while investigating her family’s cold case—creates tension between her professional obligations and personal mission. This case could be the link she’s been hoping for, the connection that finally explains what happened to her missing relatives. But it might just end her career before she gets answers, because challenging her boss and powerful community members over a death they want forgotten is exactly how constables get transferred or fired in small towns where loyalty matters more than justice. 🔍

What makes this essential: An Australian outback mystery launching Opal Fields where new constable Jenny Williams investigates her missing aunt and cousin, but a body in a mine shaft forces her to choose between her career and uncovering corruption—risking everything to prove murder when her boss wants the case closed.

The girl who loves Christmas falls for the Grinch—it’s a Christmas miracle. What started as a dumpster fire of a blind date turns into a deal neither of them saw coming. In truth, it probably didn’t help that I showed up dressed like an elf, but that’s a story for another time involving holiday spirit, questionable costume choices, and my refusal to let December pass without maximum festive commitment. Our start was rocky at best, which is why it’s so frustrating that I can’t stop thinking about Andrew’s sexy British accent, or the way his chest and arms fill out his suit, or his perfect hair with that single streak of grey at the front that makes him look distinguished and slightly dangerous. 🎄

Santa likes lists and so do I, so here’s all the reasons why Andrew and I aren’t right for each other: He’s my brother’s best friend, which creates automatic complications and family dinner awkwardness. He’s the biggest grump I’ve ever met, treating holiday cheer like a personal affront to his sensibilities. And most damning of all—he hates Christmas. That last one is huge for a girl like me who thinks the entire month of December should be a national holiday, who decorates on November 1st, who has themed outfits for every week of the season. How do you date someone who actively despises your favorite thing? 🎅

So when he calls asking for help planning his firm’s holiday party, I can’t pass up the opportunity to grow my small event-planning business. The bonus? We make a deal: I’ll plan his party, and he agrees to attend three holiday events with me so I can make him fall in love with Christmas. As if I’d pass up an opportunity to make a Grinch’s heart grow three times its size. Operation Convert the Christmas Hater is officially underway, armed with hot cocoa, twinkling lights, and my unwavering belief that nobody actually hates Christmas—they just haven’t experienced it properly yet. 🎁

Piper Rayne delivers holiday romantic comedy with the grumpy/sunshine dynamic amplified by Christmas setting. The brother’s-best-friend complication adds forbidden-romance tension, while Andrew’s British accent and grey streak give him that distinguished-gentleman appeal that contrasts perfectly with the narrator’s elf-costume enthusiasm. This is forced-proximity holiday romance where business deal becomes excuse for emotional intimacy, and where converting a Christmas cynic becomes mission and metaphor for opening someone’s heart to love. Single and Ready to Jingle celebrates the power of holiday spirit while acknowledging that sometimes the best Christmas gift is someone who challenges your assumptions—even if they think tinsel is tacky and caroling is torture. ❄️

What makes this essential: A Christmas romantic comedy where a holiday-obsessed woman makes a deal with her brother’s grumpy British best friend Andrew—she’ll plan his firm’s party if he attends three holiday events so she can make him love Christmas, launching Operation Convert the Grinch with elf costumes and unwavering festive spirit.

She left LA to open a coffee shop. She didn’t expect to serve up murder. After a failed acting career and a cheating ex, Lisa Chance is ready for a quiet life back in Moss Creek, Arizona—far from auditions that went nowhere, relationships that imploded spectacularly, and a city that chewed her up without apology. Her dream? Turn the historic mansion known as The Folly into the coziest coffee shop in town, complete with artisan lattes, homemade pastries, and absolutely zero drama. She’s trading headshots for espresso shots, memorized lines for menu items, and Hollywood chaos for small-town peace. ☕

But before she can serve her first latte or hang the grand opening banner, a body is found on the property—and Lisa becomes the prime suspect. Suddenly her fresh start looks less like escape and more like jumping from one disaster into something exponentially worse. The local police are treating her as their primary person of interest, which makes sense from their perspective: she’s the new owner, she’s from out of town, she has access to the property, and she discovered the body. From Lisa’s perspective, this is a nightmare that threatens to destroy her coffee shop dreams before they even begin. 🔍

With the help of her opinionated mother who has Thoughts about everything from Lisa’s life choices to proper investigation technique, a curious cat that showed up with the mansion and refuses to leave, and a few nosy locals who can’t resist inserting themselves into the drama, Lisa must clear her name before her fresh start becomes a dead end. The cat seems to know more than it should, her mother’s advice ranges from helpful to hilariously counterproductive, and the locals all have theories about who committed murder and why The Folly has always been unlucky. 🐱

Estelle Richards launches the Lisa Chance Cozy Mysteries with a protagonist trading Hollywood failure for small-town coffee shop ownership, only to discover that murder investigations aren’t in the business plan. Lisa’s acting background gives her skills in reading people and performing confidence she doesn’t feel, while her failed LA career means she’s desperate for this coffee shop to succeed—making the murder investigation existentially threatening to more than just her freedom. This is cozy mystery for readers who love ambitious heroines starting over, curious cats with investigative instincts, and the realization that sometimes leaving Los Angeles for a quiet Arizona town just means trading one kind of drama for another—the kind that involves dead bodies and prime suspect status. 🌵

What makes this essential: A cozy animal mystery launching the Lisa Chance series where a failed LA actress opens a coffee shop in The Folly mansion in Moss Creek, Arizona, only to find a body before opening day—forcing her to clear her name with help from her opinionous mother, a curious cat, and nosy locals.

Stolen livestock. A determined heir. A fateful choice. Alex spends his days learning to manage the family sheep ranch in Southwestern Wyoming, absorbing everything his parents teach him about land management, animal husbandry, and the traditions that have sustained their family since the Westward Expansion. He wants nothing more than to take over when his parents retire, to continue the legacy that’s been passed down through generations of his family who’ve owned and worked this land for over a century. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s honest, meaningful, connected to something bigger than himself. 🐑

But all is not well in Southwestern Wyoming. Five neighboring ranches have been raided over recent months, all their livestock stolen without a trace—each theft occurring on a new moon when darkness provides maximum cover. The pattern is obvious, the threat is escalating, and Alex feels in his gut that his family’s ranch is next on the list. When the next new moon approaches, Alex decides to spend the night with the flock, armed and alert, determined to protect what his family has built. That decision changes his life forever in ways he absolutely cannot anticipate. 🌑

How will Alex survive in an alien society? Because the livestock thieves aren’t rustlers—they’re extraterrestrials conducting raids on Earth ranches for reasons Alex doesn’t understand. When he confronts them during their theft attempt, he’s taken along with the sheep, transported off-planet into a society so foreign that his Wyoming ranching experience provides exactly zero useful context. Robert M. Kerns launches the Shepherd Security Services series with first contact that’s neither diplomatic negotiation nor invasion scenario, but accidental abduction during livestock theft—a wonderfully absurd premise that asks how a determined rancher would handle suddenly becoming the alien in someone else’s civilization. 🚀

The space opera elements focus less on military conflict and more on Alex’s adaptation to alien culture while trying to figure out how to get home, or at least how to survive long enough to understand what’s happening. His ranching background—resourcefulness, animal handling skills, understanding of herd dynamics—becomes unexpectedly relevant in contexts he never imagined. This is epic space opera adventure for readers who want their protagonists practical rather than specially chosen, their alien encounters absurd rather than apocalyptic, and their series launched with the question of whether a Wyoming sheep rancher can turn livestock protection skills into survival advantages among the stars. 🌌

What makes this essential: A space opera adventure launching Shepherd Security Services where Wyoming rancher Alex guards his flock during a new moon to stop livestock thefts, only to discover the thieves are aliens—leading to his accidental abduction and the question of how a determined heir survives in an alien society armed only with ranching skills.

Emily Ammerman has always felt at home amid the ski runs and slopes of Snowdrift Summit, the Colorado resort her family has operated for decades. Snow is her element—she grew up on these mountains, knows every run intimately, and doesn’t hesitate when a new client asks her to train him to ski The Plunge, one of Colorado’s most treacherous runs. It’s dangerous work, but Emily’s qualified and professional. She’s trained dozens of skiers to handle challenging terrain. This should be just another client, just another job. ⛷️

But Zach Ryder is no regular client. On screen, he’s famous for starring as a daring CIA officer who always saves the day—the kind of action hero who makes audiences swoon and box offices explode. In real life, he’s just as handsome and charming as his alter ego, though not everyone in Snowdrift Summit is impressed. Some locals are concerned about what kind of impact these slick showbiz types will have on their quiet mountain town. Hollywood brings attention, tourists, and disruption to communities that value peace and authenticity. As for Emily, she’s got a secret she can’t reveal to anyone, especially not to Zach: she’s his biggest fan. But she’s also a professional who’ll train him till he’s ready to tackle any slope without falling in love with him the way so many others have. 🎬

Still, not everything in life can be planned, and sometimes no matter how hard you try, you just can’t help but fall. The more time Emily spends with Zach on the slopes, the more she discovers the man behind the movie star persona—someone genuinely interested in mastering the mountain rather than just getting footage for social media, someone who listens when she explains technique, someone who makes her laugh between runs. The professional boundaries she established start blurring as their training sessions become something more personal. ❤️

Fern Michaels delivers holiday romance that uses the Colorado ski resort setting for both gorgeous atmosphere and genuine stakes—The Plunge isn’t metaphorical, it’s an actually dangerous run that requires skill and trust between instructor and student. Emily’s conflict between maintaining professionalism and acknowledging her attraction feels authentic rather than manufactured. This is comfort reading with snowy mountain charm, celebrity romance grounded by small-town values, and the reminder that sometimes falling—whether on slopes or in love—is exactly what you need. ⛄

What makes this essential: A Colorado ski resort holiday romance where instructor Emily Ammerman trains famous action star Zach Ryder to ski The Plunge while hiding that she’s his biggest fan and trying not to fall in love—delivering celebrity romance with small-town mountain charm and professional boundaries that blur with every run.

Press Start to Solve. Skye Sanders, tech mage and owner of Digital Sentinel Security, understands machines far better than people. Social cues remain a mystery, small talk is torture, and navigating human interaction feels like playing a game without the instruction manual. Thankfully, she has video games—and her wisecracking magpie familiar Bob—to keep her company in a world where she excels at code but struggles with conversation. Her photographic memory and love of puzzles make her brilliant at security work, even if client meetings require scripts she’s mentally rehearsed a dozen times. 🎮

But when her latest high-profile security job goes sideways and a body turns up, Skye has to solve the case before her budding reputation goes up in flames. The client—a brooding vampire with a stare that’s way too intense for comfort—wants answers about how someone bypassed her supposedly impenetrable security systems. Someone tampered with her tech, and that’s not just an insult to her professional abilities, it’s a declaration of war. For Skye, compromised code is personal. Her systems don’t fail unless someone deliberately breaks them, which means this isn’t accident or incompetence—it’s sabotage with murder as the endgame. 💻

Armed with her love of puzzles, photographic memory, and maybe a little luck, Skye is about to find out if she can pull off a Sherlock Holmes-worthy investigation or if she’s in over her head. After all, code is predictable—variables behave according to rules, bugs can be traced and fixed, systems operate with beautiful logic. People? Not so much. Humans lie, have irrational motivations, act on emotions rather than logic, and don’t come with debugging tools. Investigating murder requires understanding human nature, which is precisely Skye’s weakest skill. 🔍

P L Matthews launches the Digital Detective series with a neurodivergent protagonist whose tech expertise becomes investigative advantage while her social challenges create genuine obstacles rather than quirky charm. Skye’s relationship with Bob the magpie provides both comic relief and emotional support as she navigates a murder investigation that requires decoding human behavior as much as computer systems. This is humorous fantasy that takes both the tech elements and the mystery seriously, proving that understanding machines doesn’t automatically translate to understanding murderers—but puzzle-solving skills work regardless of whether you’re debugging code or catching killers. 🦅

What makes this essential: A humorous fantasy launching the Digital Detective series where tech mage Skye Sanders—who understands machines better than people—must solve a murder after her security system is compromised, armed with her wisecracking magpie familiar Bob and the realization that code is predictable but humans aren’t.

Lucas is thrilled when his grandmother comes to live with him—she’s his best friend after Justin from down the street, the person who makes him feel understood in ways his parents sometimes don’t. Only it turns out she’s dying, and no one—not his parents and certainly not seven-year-old Lucas—is ready to accept that. Then one night, his grandmother pulls out a memory and makes a seemingly straightforward request: she wants to see her sister one last time before she dies. Simple enough, except Lucas’s mom insists a sister never existed, and besides, something else is clearly bothering his mom that no one will explain to Lucas. 👵

If no one else believes his grandma, how can Lucas fulfill her dying wish? Stuck between two possible truths—his grandmother’s memory and his mother’s denial—he turns to his other grandmother, one estranged from the family for reasons that are mysterious to Lucas but obviously painful to his parents. Maybe she can help him sort it all out, or maybe her presence will make everything worse by reopening old wounds that never properly healed. Lucas just wants to make his grandmother happy before she dies, but the adults in his life seem more concerned with protecting secrets than granting a dying woman’s final wish. 🤔

Lucas’s innocence brings a unique perspective to the very adult dilemmas and challenges swirling around him. At seven, he doesn’t have the tools to understand family estrangement, the complexity of memory versus denial, or why his mother would lie about something so important. But he has the clarity that comes from not yet learning to accept that some questions don’t get answered. His determination to help his dying grandmother see her sister cuts through the adult rationalizations and forces everyone to confront truths they’ve spent decades avoiding. 💙

Mary Ellen Bramwell delivers coming-of-age fiction that examines family complexity through a child’s eyes without condescending to young Lucas or oversimplifying the adult conflicts. The mystery of whether the sister exists becomes secondary to the question of why Lucas’s mother would deny her existence, and what that denial costs everyone involved. This is heartwarming storytelling about the value of family—both biological and chosen—and how a seven-year-old boy’s simple desire to make his grandmother happy can force an entire family to face uncomfortable truths about love, memory, and what we choose to forget. 🌟

What makes this essential: A coming-of-age story where seven-year-old Lucas tries to fulfill his dying grandmother’s wish to see her sister one last time, except his mother insists no sister exists—forcing him to navigate adult secrets and family estrangement through innocent determination and a child’s unique clarity.

A retired SEAL is about to face his toughest assignment yet: being a nanny. Brann Calder spent his military career as catastrophe’s specialist—fixer, bodyguard, advocate, whatever the mission required. As a member of Torus Intercession, a security firm guaranteed to right what’s wrong, he’s expected to play all these roles and more. Five months out of the service, Brann is still finding his way in civilian life where threats don’t announce themselves with gunfire and success isn’t measured in completed missions. A new assignment might be just what he needs to find his footing, unless it includes two things sure to make a seasoned, battle-trained veteran nervous: life in a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, and playing caregiver to two little girls. 🎖️

Emery Dodd is drowning in the responsibility of single fatherhood after losing his wife. He’s picked up the pieces, kept his daughters fed and loved, and is ready to move on now with his engagement to a local patriarch’s daughter—a match that will enrich his community and grant his daughters the stability they desperately need. It’s practical, sensible, the right decision for everyone involved. The only thing standing in Emery’s way is that he can’t seem to keep his eyes—and hands—off the former soldier he’s hired to watch his girls until the wedding. Every interaction with Brann feels charged with something Emery can’t acknowledge without destroying the future he’s carefully planned. 👨‍👧‍👧

Emery’s future is riding on his upcoming nuptials, but being with Brann makes him and his family feel whole again in ways his practical engagement doesn’t. The girls adore their new caretaker, Emery can’t stop thinking about him, and suddenly the wedding he thought he wanted feels like a compromise rather than a celebration. Too bad there’s no way for them to be together—Emery has community obligations, family expectations, and daughters who need stability. Falling for the temporary nanny would destroy everything he’s built since his wife’s death. ❤️

Mary Calmes launches the Torus Intercession series with military romance that subverts the nanny trope by making the caregiver a former SEAL uncomfortable with domestic responsibility and the employer a widowed father whose engagement is more duty than desire. Brann’s adjustment from military precision to the chaos of parenting two girls provides both humor and emotional depth. This is M/M romance about found families, second chances at happiness, and the courage it takes to choose what you want over what’s expected—even when everyone’s watching in a small town where privacy doesn’t exist. 💕

What makes this essential: A military M/M romance launching Torus Intercession where retired SEAL Brann Calder becomes nanny to widower Emery Dodd’s daughters, falling for the father who’s engaged to another woman—examining duty versus desire, small-town expectations, and whether a battle-trained veteran can handle the toughest assignment: love and family.

Charming and heroic, there’s nothing about Gabriel Woodruff that Avery Burke doesn’t love. His warm brown eyes, his generosity, that small scar above his lip that makes him look slightly dangerous but approachable. The newspaper photo of him carrying her from a burning home only adds to the romance of it all—literal knight in firefighter gear saving the damsel in distress. A fairytale beginning where the hero rescues you from flames practically guarantees a picture-perfect marriage and a ride into the sunset. But every relationship has flaws, and what they ignored while they were busy being flawless eventually surfaces with devastating clarity. The unraveling begins with the smallest tug on the tiniest string. 🔥

Their fall is spectacular, the kind that makes the paper—ironically, the same paper that once celebrated their romance with that dramatic rescue photo. When everything that looked perfect from the outside collapses, it collapses publicly and messily, leaving Avery and Gabriel to sift through the wreckage of what they thought was a solid marriage. The fairytale went up in smoke not because of one dramatic betrayal but because of accumulated small failings neither wanted to acknowledge when acknowledging meant admitting their perfect love story wasn’t so perfect after all. 💔

When the fairytale burns down, Avery and Gabriel are forced to ask themselves hard questions. What does “for better or worse” really mean when you’re living through the “worse” and can’t remember why you signed up for this? Is this their second chance at a once-in-a-lifetime love, or are they just prolonging inevitable failure? What do we keep when we lose it all—the relationship, the trust, the version of ourselves we were when everything was good? Can you rebuild from ashes, or do some things stay burned forever? 🤔

Jennifer Millikin delivers firefighter romance that examines what happens after the rescue, after the wedding, after the part where most romances end. This isn’t about the meet-cute or the falling in love—it’s about the falling apart and the decision of whether to rebuild or walk away. Avery and Gabriel’s story explores the difference between the relationship you present to the world and the reality you live with, the small resentments that accumulate into catastrophe, and whether love is enough when everything else has burned. This is second-chance romance about examining what went wrong and deciding if you have the courage to build something authentic from the ruins of something that only looked perfect. ❤️‍🔥

What makes this essential: A firefighter romance examining what happens after the fairytale when heroic Gabriel Woodruff and Avery Burke’s picture-perfect marriage spectacularly collapses—forcing them to ask whether “for better or worse” means rebuilding from ashes or accepting some things stay burned forever.