The Murders at Sugar Mill Farm

By Ronica Black

Food
Age Gap

Danica Wallace, one of southern Louisiana’s top detectives, must solve a series of missing person cases in the small town of Sugar Mill Farm, and the lack of progress has her seeking answers from a bottle. Bones are discovered in a nearby sugar cane field and Danica fears the worst. 

When Lyra Aarden, a beautiful and accomplished bioarcheologist, stumbles upon the remains, she’s sure the bones belong to more than one person.

Desperate for answers, Danica asks her former lover, forensic anthropologist Dr. Eleanor Stafford, to consult on the case. As Danica, Lyra, and Eleanor work to uncover buried secrets, they’re set on a dangerous collision course with a serial killer.

Can they solve the case, or will unexpected feelings and unwelcome jealousies lead them straight into the crosshairs of a killer?

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An Atlas to Forever

By Krystina Rivers

People of Color
Friends & Community
Animals 
Big City

Ellie Efron is heartbroken when her best friend suddenly passes away. How can she possibly refuse her friend’s last request to take care of her rescue dog, Atlas, so he doesn’t end up back at the shelter? Ellie reluctantly agrees but ends up in over her head with the 100-pound, reactive Atlas. Desperate not to let her friend down, she seeks help from an animal behaviorist. 

For Hayden Brandt, impermanence is the only constant in life. She’s already lost everyone important to her. Instead of dwelling on her losses, she focuses on helping animals overcome traumas so they can live their best lives. Content, she spends her evenings with simple pleasures such as a glass of wine, a good book, and the occasional no-strings hook-up.

Ellie and Hayden’s chemistry is instant, though neither is ready to make any promises. But Atlas knows a thing or two about grief, and he just might find a way to give this busy, hopeless romantic and commitment-phobic vet a roadmap to forever.

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A Talent Ignited

By Suzanne Lenoir

Financial gap/Class disparity
The Valmoran Series | Book 2
Other Worlds
Magic

Evelyne, a disowned noblewoman, and Annika, a peasant girl with unusual powers, made the choice to be together in a kingdom where men make the rules. Now the Temple elders want Annika for murder and mercenaries want Evelyne for theft. But when Evelyne is abducted and Annika believes she has been abandoned, they must risk everything to find each other again.

Annika discovers the Temple has imprisoned children with abilities like hers, and she alone stands between them and death. She’s forced to face her fear of her own powers and soon learns to use them with the help of Zuri, a former slave who is also gifted with magic. Evelyne, no longer entitled to the favors and respect bestowed on the nobility, must convince her beautiful captor to help her return to Annika. 

Doubt and questions plague them both, but one thing is for certain. The Temple has a long memory, and a familiar foe is coming for them.

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Bait and Witch

By Clifford Mae Henderson

Ghosts
Magic
Amateur Sleuths
Animals 
California
Other Worlds
Children / Families

Zeddi's cursed with bad luck. A housing shortage in the Bay Area’s Tres Ojos has left Zeddi and her nine-year-old daughter, Olive, living in a van. Working as a housekeeper, trying to save money, Zeddi worries about Olive’s welfare. When she finds her friend and housekeeping client Mags dead—and something about her death doesn’t sit right—she faces her biggest worry of all.

Mags’s longtime lover, Ida, confirms her suspicions of foul play, revealing that Mags served as high priestess to a dwindling coven of old witches—who are positive that Mags was murdered. Zeddi owes it to Mags and Ida to uncover the truth, but the more she digs, the more she fears that Mags’s love for Olive may have unintentionally made Olive the killer’s next target.

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Buried Secrets

By Sheri Lewis Wohl

Tuesday Johnson spent her career helping the Spokane, WA, community as a probation officer and a search and rescue K9 handler. After suffering a career-ending gunshot wound, all she wants is to heal and spend quiet time with her mother during her last days of battling cancer. Instead, visions of murder disrupt her hopes for peace, and family secrets shake up everything she thought she knew.

After twenty-five years of searching, private detective Addie Caine has all but given up hope of finding her brother alive. When the last known sighting brings her to Spokane and a routine search uncovers a decades-old burial ground, the hunt for her brother means pursuing a serial killer. Tuesday and Addie, along with Tuesday’s dog, Tripper, struggle to solve a twenty-five-year-old mystery while searching for love and redemption along the way.

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Come Find Me in the Midnight Sun

By Bailey Bridgewater

Louisa Linebach Mysteries | Book 1

It’s just another day on the job for state trooper Louisa Linebach. Hundreds of young men go missing from Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula every year, so when Lee Stanton and Branden Halifax both disappear within days of each other, Louisa doesn’t think much of it. One appears to be a simple suicide, but the other defies all explanation, with the victim’s footprints literally vanishing along an abandoned mountain runway.

As Louisa and her partner investigate, they encounter alien conspiracy theories, a town where all the inhabitants live in one building, and signs of a drug trade that’s inextricably mingled with the tourist industry around Seward. Their investigation is further complicated by a police chief who’s unwilling to let his friend be investigated and Louisa’s feelings for Anna Fenway, the local medical examiner.

When a body is identified and buried, Louisa thinks the case is coming to a close. She’s wrong.

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Death on the Water

By CJ Birch

A body count is never a good vacation selling point.

In a world of luxury and relaxation, the Ocean Summit stands out during its inaugural cruise, but not for reasons the cruise director would like. 

Forced by her agent and publisher to take a much-needed cruise vacation, investigative journalist Claire Mills finds work harder to forget than she anticipated when the cleaning staff discover her neighbor dead on the first day of sailing. The ship’s authorities have ruled it a suicide, but Claire suspects murder. With the help of the delightful assistant cruise director Moira, Claire conducts her own investigation. 

But the deeper they get, the more clues they collect, and the danger escalates. With the killer on their trail, Claire and Moira must decide what’s more important, finding the killer or surviving eight days together at sea.

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Living for You

By Jenny Frame

Magic
A Wild for You Novel | Book 4

In the final installment of Jenny Frame’s Wild For You series, danger and desire are impossible to avoid in the end game of good versus evil. 

Eternity is a long time, but for Serenity Debrek, immortality has been one long party. As little sister to Byron Debrek, the leader of the Debrek vampire clan, Serenity has never wanted for anything. If only she could be useful to her sister and be taken seriously, especially as she accidentally endangered the clan during their last encounter with the dark witch Anka.

Bhal has lived all eternity serving the Debreks. She has only one rule to avoid inevitable tragedy: never fall in love again. But Serenity haunts her dreams. Bhal shouldn’t love, and Serenity hates her it seems.

When Serenity falls into a path of self-destruction, only Bhal can save her and show her she has everything to live for. But in the end game of good versus evil, will they be able to find reasons to live, and love?

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Mississippi River Mischief

By Greg Herren

Gangsters
Friends & Community
A Scotty Bradley Mystery
New Orleans 

Spring has returned to New Orleans, bringing with it the swarming termites! First-time homeowner Scotty Bradley is feeling like he may have made the biggest mistake of his life buying in the French Quarter. Between dealing with the Vieux Carré Commission rules, termite damage, and contractors, it’s a relief when his best friend David brings the accidental sleuth a case: one of his students is being harassed by a much older man who turns out to be a big wheel politician in one of the parishes outside of New Orleans, up to his neck in corruption.

When the politician turns up dead and Scotty’s client is the most obvious suspect, Scotty and his friends set out to prove his client’s innocence. Lots of people wanted the man dead, but someone doesn’t want all the corruption in St. Jeanne d’Arc Parish exposed. And if that's not bad enough, someone from Scotty's past returns, making him question what he thinks he knows about himself and his own history...

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Ride with Me

By Jenna Jarvis

Close Quarters
Financial gap/Class disparity
Music
Las Vegas
Lawyers
Friends & Community
New Orleans 
California
Bisexual

Returning home after years of living as far from her wealthy family as she can, Lucy wants her great American road trip before she settles down. The vintage VW bus her arrogant older brother Jordan is selling off seems like the perfect vehicle for it.

But the bus in question is fiercely beloved by its real owner, Emma, Jordan’s wife. She’s not ready to let the bus go, but she is ready to get out of her marriage—and isn’t above hijacking her own bus to make that happen.

When Lucy’s vacation to find herself becomes Emma’s chance to remember herself, they realize that everything they’re looking for might already be sitting right next to them—if they’re willing to reach for it.

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Rivals for Love

By Ali Vali

New York City
Friends & Community
New Orleans 
Friends to Lovers Romance

Brooks Boseman, born into privilege in an old New Orleans plantation home, could have opted for an easy life just like her siblings, but after a broken heart, she escapes to New York where no one knows her name.

A call from the family matriarch changes everything. Her brother Curtis is getting married, and Brooks needs to be at the engagement party. Only she can’t possibly go, not with Curtis set to marry the secret love of her youth, Fallon Goodwin. Unable to find a way to refuse, Brooks returns to discover the family business is in jeopardy. In the face of her father’s struggles with Alzheimer’s and her brother’s well-intentioned blunders, she’s forced to step in to save the family fortune.

As far as Brooks and Fallon are concerned, romance is for storybooks, but as hard as they try to resist, neither can deny their feelings still linger. Family ties have never been more binding as they fight for the business, and maybe even for each other.

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Whiskey and Wine

By Kelly & Tana Fireside

Food
Close Quarters
Friends & Community
Owen Station Romance Series

Lace Reynolds has a three-month rule for a reason. Long-term romantic relationships get complicated. And Lace doesn’t do complicated. She’s had enough of that in her life. Besides, she’s too busy running Frisky Business, just voted Best Sex Toy Shop in Arizona, and she’s got big expansion plans in the works. If she’s helping others find pleasure and connection, she’s happy. Right? 

Tessa Williams has moved from California to Arizona wine country to escape a cheating ex and launch her own vineyard. When she’s not battling wine snobs and fighting water wars, she’s wrangling a sulky teenage daughter and an Australian Shepard named Bleu. She doesn’t have time to go looking for love. Not that she could hold on to it, even if love found her. 

Lace and Tessa have been friends almost from the moment they met. But when Tessa opens a tasting room right next to Frisky Business, it gets harder to ignore the heat between them. The last thing they need is romance messing up a good thing. Maybe with a little help from their friends and the town’s friskiest ghost, they’ll be able to discover if love is a risk worth taking.

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Hands of the Morri

By Heather K O'Malley

When Nibs’s human is abused by his father because of his gender and runs off with an all-female group of warriors called the Hands, Nibs is worried and takes flight to follow. Someone has to keep the young man out of trouble.

However, trouble finds them. Discovering she is a Lost Sister and growing acquainted with her new body, the now renamed Asche learns how to be a warrior and commune with the Goddess the Hands serve, the Morri. Asche works hard on her steel so she can be truly strong, and as the motto for the Hands goes, forge herself anew.

That found strength will be tested as the Hands discover they are being targeted by slavers and must defend their village in a Holy war. Battling against bandits and the God supporting them, Nibs isn’t sure all Asche’s training will be enough to save her.

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I Know About You

By Erin Kaste

Elementary school teacher Cary Smith thinks she has finally outrun her secrets. She’s avoided attention all her life, but the moment beautiful Tina Flores joins the faculty, Cary wants to be noticed. Although the school has a zero-tolerance policy toward anything “immoral,” Cary dares to pursue Tina, and they begin a relationship nobody can know about—not Cary’s friends, co-workers, or ex-girlfriend.

But then strange things begin to happen, and before long, Cary isn’t sure who she can trust. When someone begins leaving ominous messages and finally breaks into her apartment,   Cary fears losing her job or even her life. With her stalker inching closer to the truth, she’s forced to face the past she’s tried desperately to forget.

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Mate of Her Own

By Elena Abbott

Bisexual

Heather McKenna has no idea how to be a werewolf. Her wolf might be free from its cursed cage but has shut the door between the two of them, leaving Heather still reeling from the emptiness. When Heather discovers her mother is in the hospital, she is certain that closure from the person who cursed her in the first place will settle her wolf’s grudge and is quick to pack a bag. 

V Raines sees the problems with werewolf society all around them. Despite being a nonbinary outcast in their own pack, they still have the responsibilities of being the Alpha’s only child. When their father attempts to pair them off with a dominant male pack member, V is all but ready to abandon their pack.

When V is called to the hospital to take care of a possible rogue shifter, they aren’t ready for the consequences of finding their true mate in Heather. V’s all in as Heather worries she’s not wolf enough to stand between V’s intense pack and her true mate. Fate just made their lives a lot more difficult.

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Pumpkin Spice

By Tagan Shepard

Blue Collar
Children / Families

Nicki Russell has never been smooth. More like a bumbling, awkward mess always falling short of her dreams. Good college? She never had the money. Post-grad? She’ll get around to it someday. Happy ever after with the perfect woman? One major heartbreak is enough to have her swearing off love forever. Current life plan? Avoid all unnecessary human contact. That goes double for Carter, the hot new butch in town.

Unfortunately, Carter works at the town’s pick-your-own pumpkin patch and Nicki's niece is obsessed with Halloween. So obsessed she ropes her favorite aunt into organizing the school Halloween festival, hosted by Carter Farms. Volunteer weekends are scary enough, but Carter seems to be everywhere Nicki goes, and it’s just a matter of time before she discovers Nicki's more likely to trip over a chair than successfully flirt.

But Carter can’t seem to get enough of her company, and as their accidental encounters slowly simmer into romance, Nicki begins to believe she’s not a complete disaster after all. The date of the festival is fast approaching, and this pumpkin spice season is turning out sweeter than expected.

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Sweat Equity

By Aurora Rey

People of Color
Food
Blue Collar
Friends & Community
Animals 
A Renovation Romance | Book 1

Burned-out chef Sy Travino never expected to wind up on a goat farm in rural Vermont, but that’s exactly where she lands after leaving the restaurant world to become a cheese maker. It’s a great place to flex her muscles and make a name for herself, though. Too bad the house she bought is practically unlivable.

Maddie Barrow can’t believe anyone would be dumb enough to buy a house sight unseen, but she’s not about to turn down the job of renovating it, especially since her best friend just hired Sy to turn Grumpy Old Goat into the chèvre everyone is talking about. When the estimate on the house exceeds Sy’s budget, Maddie puts her to work. 

It doesn’t take long for Sy and Maddie to admit their chemistry is off the charts, but having fun doesn’t always lead to forever. Could it be a foundation for love or nothing but a teardown?

 

Praise from Publishers Weekly: Rey stresses the importance of building something to last in this torrid home renovation romance....Rey makes the chemistry between Maddie and Sy obvious and immediate, leading naturally to plenty of creative and exciting sex scenes, but tempers the hot-and-heavy goings-on with emotional intelligence that makes the relationship feel as sturdy as a load-bearing wall. Readers will never doubt that a happy ending is on its way, but they’ll love watching it come together.

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Taking the Plunge

By Amanda Radley

When the marketing agency Regina Avery worked for declares bankruptcy, she’s forced to take a temporary position at a women’s fashion brand. She’s never worn anything more fashionable than a polyester suit, but beggars cannot be choosers. She definitely didn’t choose to work with her ex-girlfriend Margot. Margot never got over the whole forgot-her-parents'-names incident more than a decade ago, because she assigns Regina to a marketing campaign within the lingerie department. Not that there’s anything wrong with lingerie exactly, but Regina’s blushing modesty makes her less than ideal for the position.

When Regina meets model Grace Holland—the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen—between rows of fancy knickers, she doesn’t have a clue how to flirt, date, or hold on to a relationship. In fact, she can barely maintain eye contact with Grace, who seems to be going out of her way to bump into Regina.

Never feeling more like a fish out of water, Regina must take the plunge with Grace and hope she manages to swim before Margot or her own shyness sinks her chance at love.

 

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