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Author: Gemma James
FREE
Contemporary Romance
He’s flying home to confront his cheating wife.
She’s running from her life in shame.
Neither expected to fall in love 35,000 feet in the air. ✈️💔
With my heart and reputation in ruins, I can’t afford to make another mistake. Boarding a flight to Seattle is supposed to give me a clean slate, but from the moment Cash Montgomery slides into the seat next to mine, I’m captivated by his steel eyes that see too much. I ache for this stranger in a way I’ve never ached for anyone. 🔥
But I didn’t know he was married, and I sure as hell didn’t see the curveball fate had in store. My clean slate in Seattle isn’t so clean after all because my new boss is the man forbidden to me. 💼⚡
And the only man I want.
The only man I’ll do anything for, even if it means breaking the promise I made to myself when I fled my old life in shame.
I wasn’t supposed to fall for a married man, but I did. 💕
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Trashy Foreplay is a steamy forbidden romance suitable for mature audiences only. Though the subject matter deals with adultery, there are no innocent parties here. Book 1 in the Trashy Affair duet.
What makes this special: Gemma James delivers unapologetically steamy forbidden romance that doesn’t shy away from morally complex territory. The “Trashy” in the title isn’t false advertising—this is romance for readers who want their angst messy, their steam scorching, and their moral lines deliciously blurred. 😈 The airplane meet-cute is electric, but James adds a brilliant twist: he becomes her boss in Seattle, creating forced-proximity tension that ratchets up the forbidden factor. Her note is important: “there are no innocent parties here” signals this isn’t about a poor victimized hero—everyone has baggage and everyone makes questionable choices. Perfect for readers who loved Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us or Penelope Douglas’s morally gray romances, this offers the emotional intensity and sexual tension that makes forbidden romance so addictive. The duet format means you’re getting a complete story arc across two books. If you want safe and fluffy, look elsewhere. If you want complicated and combustible, buckle up. 🔥📚
Author: Lorna Dounaeva
FREE
Psychological Thriller
IndieReader.com’s Best Indie Books of 2013 🏆
She acts like she’s your new best friend, but is she really a deadly enemy? 🔥👭
When I nearly run over mysterious Alicia, I am ridden with guilt. I help Alicia get a job at the supermarket where I work, and soon, Alicia is acting like my new best friend. Then fires break out all over town, and I suspect Alicia knows more than she’s letting on. 🚒 So why do the police suspect me? In order to survive, I must question my own innocence, my sanity, and the very fabric of my morality.
Lorna Dounaeva’s debut novel is a sizzling psychological thriller that will make you question how well you can ever really know a person. Perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, Rachel Abbott and Mark Edwards 💀🔍
Here’s the deal: Lorna Dounaeva’s debut earned recognition as one of 2013’s best indie books for good reason—this is psychological suspense that keeps you guessing about everyone, including the narrator herself. 🎭 The setup is brilliantly unsettling: a guilty good deed (helping someone you nearly killed) that spirals into nightmare territory when fires start burning and suspicion turns inward. Dounaeva plays with the unreliable narrator trope expertly, making you question not just Alicia’s motives but the protagonist’s own grip on reality and morality. The title FRY works on multiple levels—literal fire, psychological pressure, and the slow burn of paranoia. This is dark domestic noir in the tradition of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, where female friendship becomes a weapon and trust is the ultimate liability. The supermarket setting adds working-class authenticity often missing from psychological thrillers. If you love twisty plots, gaslighting dynamics, and endings that make you want to immediately reread the book, this indie gem deserves your attention. 🔥📖
Author: Henrietta Harding
FREE
Historical Regency Romance
Despite being born of English parents, Amelia Wright had lived all her life in Madras, India. She had never stepped a foot in England and never expected to do so. To her surprise, this changes when the news of the deaths of only living relatives arrive. 📜💔 Her uncles had left no heirs behind, which makes Amelia the rightful person to take over the title of Countess. Until she marries though, the handsome Duke Wentworth has been assigned as her guardian. But what happens when the person who captures all her attention is the dashing Duke and not her intended? 👑💕 Will she give into this powerful temptation, defying all consequences?
Why you’ll love this: Henrietta Harding brings a fresh twist to guardian-ward romance by giving her heroine an Anglo-Indian upbringing that makes her an outsider in English society despite her new title. 🌏 Amelia’s journey from Madras to becoming a Countess offers classic fish-out-of-water appeal, while the forbidden guardian romance delivers all the tension readers crave. The Duke as guardian trope is Regency catnip—the power imbalance, the “we absolutely cannot” declarations, the inevitability of him falling for his ward despite every propriety saying no. Harding taps into the tradition of Mary Balogh and Julia Quinn, offering clean Regency romance with emotional stakes and social commentary about women’s independence and arranged marriages. The India connection adds exotic flavor and potentially more progressive views clashing with rigid English society. Perfect for readers who love a good grovel, slow-burn attraction that fights against duty, and heroines who must choose between obligation and desire. This is Regency romance comfort reading at its finest. ✨👗
Author: Virginia Woolf
FREE
Classic Women’s Historical Fiction
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” 📚✨
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is one of the most influential works of feminist thought and literary criticism ever written—a visionary essay that explores the relationship between creativity, independence, and gender. 💡👩🎨
Based on a series of lectures delivered at Cambridge University in 1928, Woolf reflects on why women had been historically excluded from literature and art. Through a blend of wit, insight, and poetic prose, she argues that financial freedom and personal space are essential for artistic creation—and that the world must change to make such freedom possible. 💪
From her imagined figure of Shakespeare’s sister to her analysis of forgotten female writers, Woolf dismantles centuries of bias and gives voice to the struggles, silences, and potential of women artists. Her reflections transcend their time, resonating deeply in every generation that continues to fight for equality and creative expression. 🌟
More than an essay, A Room of One’s Own is a manifesto for freedom of thought, imagination, and identity—a timeless call for every individual to claim the space to dream and create. 🎭💫
Why I’m including this: This isn’t just a classic—it’s THE foundational text of feminist literary criticism and arguably the most important essay about women’s creativity ever written. 👑 Virginia Woolf, one of the giants of modernist literature (Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse), delivered these lectures at Cambridge in 1928 when women still couldn’t eat in the dining halls with men or access certain libraries. Her central argument—that women need financial independence and private space to create—remains revolutionary and relevant nearly a century later. The “Shakespeare’s sister” thought experiment is devastating: imagine if Shakespeare had a sister with equal genius. What would have happened to her? Woolf’s answer exposes centuries of silenced female talent. Her prose is stunning, her wit sharp, and her insights eternal. This influenced everyone from Simone de Beauvoir to contemporary feminist scholars. Essential reading for writers, feminists, students, and anyone who’s ever felt that systemic barriers stood between them and their dreams. Short enough to read in a sitting, profound enough to change your life. 📖💎
Author: Devney Perry
FREE
Contemporary Romance Fiction
A small town, secret identity romance from #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Devney Perry. ⭐🏔️
Duke Evans didn’t expect to find a beautiful woman in a staring contest with a bison on his favorite hiking trail. 🦬😂 He also didn’t expect to see her again after rescuing her from the surly beast. As the sheriff in Calamity, Montana, he’s had his fair share of surprises but none as pleasant as pulling over a shiny black car and finding his mysterious hiking companion behind the wheel.
Only she lied to Duke. She gave him a name as fake as her hair color. According to her driver’s license, her real name is Lucy Ross, the famous country music singer whose sudden disappearance has been a hot topic on the radio over the past two weeks. 🎤💫
He’s not sure why Lucy lied about her identity or why she’s in Calamity. And she’s not talking. Instead, she offers him a bribe to keep her secret. Duke doesn’t want her money. He wants to know why this beautiful woman is on the run. And as long as the star shines on his badge, he’s going to find out. 🌟👮♂️
What pulled me in: Devney Perry is a romance powerhouse with multiple #1 New York Times bestsellers, and her small-town Montana series delivers exactly what readers crave: rugged small-town settings, protective heroes with badges, and heroines running from something. 💪 The bison staring contest opener is comedy gold and immediately establishes Lucy as a fish-out-of-water city girl in the Montana wilderness. Perry adds the delicious secret identity angle—he’s the sheriff sworn to uphold the law, she’s a celebrity on the run offering him a bribe—creating instant conflict and sexual tension. Duke is peak Perry hero: honorable, alpha without being controlling, and determined to protect his woman even from herself. The Montana setting provides gorgeous backdrop for their inevitable romance. Perfect for readers who loved Virgin River, Linda Lael Miller’s Montana Creeds series, or anyone who fantasizes about escaping fame/city life for a hot small-town sheriff. This is comfort romance with just enough angst to keep it interesting. 🏔️📚
wants to know why this beautiful woman is on the run. And as long as the star shines on his badge, he’s going to find out.
Teacher By Teacher: The People Who Change Our Lives
Author: John B. King Jr.
Regularly $5.99, Today $2.99
Education Policy
National Bestseller 🏆
Teacher By Teacher traces the remarkable journey of the tenth U.S. Secretary of Education and is a deeply personal love letter to all the teachers in our lives. 📚💕
The story of John B. King Jr.’s inspiring path to President Obama’s Cabinet begins the day that his mother died. He insisted on going to school that day, knowing he would find comfort in his classroom. 🏫 As he navigated living alone with a father dying from undiagnosed Alzheimer’s, it was public school teachers who saved his life. King’s teachers believed in him and saw his potential. They made school a safe, supportive, and engaging place where King could be a kid despite the challenges at home. 💪
While some might have dismissed a rebellious young Black and Puerto Rican teen whose life was in crisis, King’s teachers and counselors gave him a second chance.
King went on to earn degrees from Harvard, Columbia, and Yale and committed his career to trying to do for other young people what educators did for him. Teacher By Teacher is an inspiring account of how dedicated educators—both King’s own teachers and the phenomenal teachers who he has encountered throughout his career as a teacher, principal, and education policymaker—can profoundly shape the lives of their students. King’s experiences constantly reinforce the role of schools as places of survival, healing, and hope. ✨🎓
Why you’ll love this: John B. King Jr. was the first African American male U.S. Secretary of Education under President Obama, but before that achievement, he was a traumatized kid who lost both parents by age 12—and was saved by teachers who refused to give up on him. 🌟 This memoir is both heartbreaking and hopeful, showing education policy through the lens of lived experience rather than abstract theory. King doesn’t just theorize about what good teaching looks like; he shows you the specific teachers (Mr. Osterweil, Ms. Carrozza) who literally kept him alive and gave him purpose. The book is a powerful counter-narrative to teacher-bashing rhetoric, demonstrating how educators are often the safety net for students experiencing homelessness, abuse, hunger, and trauma. King’s trajectory from at-risk youth to Harvard to Obama’s Cabinet proves his central thesis: teachers change lives. Essential reading for educators needing affirmation, policymakers making education decisions, and anyone who’s ever had a teacher who believed in them when no one else did. This is Educated meets Between the World and Me in the education policy space. 📖💎
Author: David Coggins
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
Nature Writing & Essays
In The Optimist, David Coggins makes a case for the skills and sensibility of an enduring sport and shares the secrets, frustrations, and triumphs of the great tradition of fly fishing, which has captivated anglers worldwide. 🎣✨
Written in wry, wise, and keenly observed prose, each chapter focuses on a specific place, fish, and skill. Few individuals, for example, have the visual acuity required to catch the nearly invisible bonefish of the Bahamas flats. 🐟 Or the patience to land the elusive Atlantic salmon, “the fish of a thousand casts,” in eastern Canada. Pursuing these challenges, Coggins, “a confirmed obsessive,” travels to one fishing paradise after another, including the great rivers of Patagonia, private chalk streams in England, remote ponds in Maine, and New York City’s Jamaica Bay. 🌊 In each setting, he chronicles his fortunes and misfortunes with honesty and humor while meditating on how fishing teaches focus, inner stillness, and a connection to the natural world.
Perfect for the novice, the enthusiastic amateur, and the devoted angler alike, The Optimist offers a practical path to enlightenment while providing “a rueful, thoughtful, and very funny examination of an elegant obsession” (Jay McInerney). 💫
Here’s the deal: David Coggins is a writer and contributing editor who brings literary sensibility to outdoor writing, making this accessible to non-anglers while deeply satisfying to devotees. 📚 The Optimist joins the tradition of contemplative fishing literature like Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and The Habit of Rivers by Ted Leeson—books that use fishing as meditation on patience, observation, and finding meaning in ritual. Coggins’s globe-trotting approach takes readers from the Caribbean flats to Patagonian rivers to English chalk streams, making this both fishing instruction and armchair travel. His prose has the wry sophistication of travel writing (hence Jay McInerney’s endorsement) while maintaining genuine reverence for the natural world. The “confirmed obsessive” label is perfect—this captures both the absurdity and the transcendence of spending hours trying to outsmart a fish. Perfect for anyone who loved H is for Hawk, Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, or readers seeking nature writing that’s philosophical without being pretentious. You don’t need to fish to appreciate this meditation on attention, patience, and the healing power of wild places. 🏔️📖
Author: Andy Stanley
Regularly $5.99, Today $2.99
Personal Growth & Christianity
Set yourself up for success in every season of life, for the rest of your life. 🎯✨
Discover five game-changing questions to ask every time you make a major decision regarding your finances, relationships, career, and more. 💡
Good questions lead to better decisions. And your decisions determine the direction and quality of your life—they create the story of your life. And while nobody plans to complicate their life with bad decisions, far too many people have no plan to make good decisions. 💭
In Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets, Andy Stanley—pastor and bestselling author of Irresistible and Not In It To Win It—will help you learn from experience and stop making bad decisions by integrating five questions into every decision you make, big or small. 💪
This book will help you live differently by showing you how to:
✅ Develop a decision-making filter that reveals which choices will likely lead to positive results.
✅ Avoid selling yourself on bad ideas and making quick decisions when time is short.
✅ Find truth and clarity in any tricky decision.
✅ Improve relationships and heal division through better decisions.
✅ Discover the reasons behind your decisions so you can move forward with positive changes.
✅ Consider the long-term impact of your choices so you can write a life story worth celebrating.
✅ Easily identify any red flags that signal which decisions may result in future regrets.
What pulled me in: Andy Stanley is one of America’s most influential pastors, founding North Point Ministries (one of the largest churches in the US) and writing bestsellers that blend biblical wisdom with practical application. 🙏 Unlike many Christian living books that stay abstract, Stanley offers a concrete framework—five specific questions—that you can actually use when facing decisions. The brilliance is in the simplicity: having a consistent filter prevents decision fatigue and impulse choices that lead to regret. Stanley writes for Christians but his principles apply universally—these questions work whether you’re deciding about a job offer, a relationship, a financial investment, or where to live. The focus on “writing a life story worth celebrating” reframes decision-making from risk-avoidance to purpose-creation. Perfect for readers who loved Atomic Habits by James Clear, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or anyone tired of looking back with regret and ready for a practical system to make better choices. This is wisdom literature that actually changes behavior. 💎📚
Author: Alice Walker
Regularly $19.99, Today $1.99
African American Women’s Fiction
Short fiction about the female experience from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Color Purple, “one of the best American writers of today” (The Washington Post). 💜✨
Here are stories of women traveling with the weight of broken dreams, with kids in tow, with doubt and regret, with memories of lost loves, with lovers who have their own hard pasts and hard edges. Some from the South, some from the North, some rich and some poor, the characters that inhabit In Love & Trouble all seek a measure of self-fulfillment, even as they struggle with difficult circumstances and limiting social conventions. 💔
Why I’m including this: Before The Color Purple made Alice Walker a household name and Pulitzer Prize winner, she published this stunning story collection that showcased her genius for portraying Black women’s interior lives with unflinching honesty. 🏆 Published in 1973, these stories capture Black female experience across class, geography, and circumstance—from Southern poverty to Northern migration, from traditional marriages to radical self-discovery. Walker writes with both tenderness and clear-eyed realism about women navigating impossible choices within oppressive systems. The title itself is revelatory: love and trouble are inextricable for women whose emotional lives must exist within racism, sexism, and economic hardship. Walker’s prose is spare yet lyrical, delivering emotional gut-punches in deceptively simple sentences. This collection established themes Walker would explore throughout her career: female resilience, the cost of love, the search for selfhood against societal constraints. Essential reading for understanding one of America’s greatest living writers, and for anyone seeking short fiction that’s both beautiful and brutal, hopeful and heartbreaking. Perfect for fans of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, or Jesmyn Ward. This is American literature at its finest. 📚💎
Author: Jonathan Evison
Regularly $5.99, Today $2.99
Coming of Age Fiction
**”Jonathan Evison’s voice is pure magic. In Lawn Boy, at once a vibrant coming-of-age novel and a sharp social commentary on class, Evison offers a painfully honest portrait of one young man’s struggle to overcome the hand he’s been dealt in life and reach for his dreams. It’s a journey you won’t want to miss, with an ending you won’t forget.”**
—Kristin Hannah, author of The Nightingale 🌟
For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work—and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew—he knows that he’s got to be the one to shake things up if he’s ever going to change his life. But how? 🤔💭
In this funny, angry, touching, and ultimately deeply inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young man on a journey to discover himself, a search to find the secret to achieving the American dream of happiness and prosperity. That’s the birthright for all Americans, isn’t it? If so, then what is Mike Muñoz’s problem? 💪 Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can’t seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it. And it’s looking really good. ✨
Here’s why this matters: Jonathan Evison (West of Here, This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!) is one of contemporary fiction’s most empathetic voices, and Lawn Boy is his masterwork of class consciousness and the American Dream’s broken promises. 📚 Mike Muñoz is a character you’ll never forget—funny, frustrated, flawed, and fighting against a system rigged against working-class people of color. Evison captures the exhausting reality of being stuck in low-wage jobs while everyone tells you to just “work harder” and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” The novel is both hilarious and heartbreaking, angry and hopeful, offering social commentary that rivals Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed while maintaining the warmth and humor of a character-driven coming-of-age story. With Kristin Hannah’s endorsement, you know this delivers emotional resonance alongside its social critique. Perfect for readers who loved The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, There There by Tommy Orange, or anyone seeking fiction that tackles class, race, and the American Dream with honesty, humor, and heart. Mike Muñoz deserves to be counted among contemporary literature’s most memorable protagonists. 🌟📖
Author: Phyllis A. Whitney
Regularly $8.99, Today $1.99
Gothic Romances
From the New York Times–bestselling “master of suspense”: A woman’s mysterious past is unearthed during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (Mary Higgins Clark). 🌋💔
Sara Bishop was raised in Chicago, but her heart belongs in San Francisco, where her childhood sweetheart, Ritchie Temple, has moved to pursue a career in architecture. Convinced he feels the same way for her, she hopes his fiancée, the manipulative Judith Renwick, is just a passing fancy. And now Sara has packed her bags to prove it. 🏙️✨ Sarah’s mother is not only concerned by her daughter’s pursuit of an elusive romance, she’s also scared of the city itself—and the secret she and Sara’s father buried there years ago.
Once Sara arrives on the far side of the Golden Gate, she finds herself in the midst of a tantalizing puzzle involving Ritchie, Judith, and Judith’s mysterious brother. She soon discovers a monstrously wicked matriarch nursing a strange and unfathomable vengeance in her Nob Hill mansion. 🏰 And one fateful morning, when the earth moves and the city is set afire, the pieces of Sara’s past will emerge from the ashes—but will it be too late to save her? 🔥⚡
What makes this special: Phyllis A. Whitney is a legend of gothic romance and romantic suspense, winning Edgar Awards and writing over 70 novels that defined the genre for generations of readers. 📚 The Trembling Hills showcases Whitney at her finest: historical setting (1906 San Francisco earthquake!), family secrets buried in the past, a love triangle with genuine stakes, and a matriarch villain nursing vengeance. Whitney understood that gothic romance needs both atmosphere and genuine danger—the earthquake provides literal world-shaking drama while the family secrets provide emotional devastation. The Nob Hill mansion setting is perfect gothic territory, and the buried secret that Sara’s parents fear will emerge adds layers of mystery beyond the romantic plot. Whitney influenced everyone from Mary Higgins Clark (who provides the endorsement) to modern romantic suspense writers. This is vintage gothic romance for readers who love Victoria Holt, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, or anyone seeking historical romantic suspense where natural disaster mirrors emotional upheaval. Whitney delivers atmosphere, mystery, romance, and disaster—what’s not to love? 🌹📖
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2