Grave Consequences

By Sandra Barret

Close Quarters
Financial gap/Class disparity
Disability
Children / Families

When Tamar Richler, an unlicensed necromancer, raises someone from the dead, she is forced to earn her license from researcher and top necromancy expert in the state, Maddy Wu. Maddy is both beautiful and unreachable, with lofty standards Tamar feels she can never meet.

Maddy knows better than anyone the dangers of unlicensed magic. After an accident years before leaves one brother dead and the other mysteriously uninjured, Maddy attempts a resurrection herself before the ambulance and licensed necromancer can arrive. The result leaves her with chronic illness and fatigue, and her brother in a coma. Now her only goal is to right her wrong and bring him back. 

When Tamar connects the dots to what really happened, the two of them must fight against the most politically powerful necromancer in the state to save a life and prevent the threat to their own survival.

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Haunted by Myth

By Barbara Ann Wright

Age Gap
Celebrity
International Setting
Magic
Close Quarters
Ghosts

Chloe knew her future would be boring. Every job pales in comparison to the family legacy: hunting monsters and banishing ghosts. But that birthright belongs to her mother and sister, leaving Chloe forever outside looking in. Until her sister dies without warning. Chloe gets the family magic, a lack of self-confidence, a grieving mother, a sarcastic spirit guide, and room for nothing else, especially love. And lately, someone seems to be summoning ghosts and protecting monsters, and all clues point to one very famous face: Helen of Troy.

Helen has spent hundreds of years running a sanctuary and rehab for the last mythical creatures on earth. And she has a huge chip on her shoulder about that whole Trojan War thing. Neither she nor Chloe has time for the other’s philosophy or to see if their growing attraction is more than skin-deep, not when there are some monsters that won’t be sent to the Underworld without a fight.

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Invisible

By Anna Larner

Friends & Community
Virgins/First Love
Coming Out
Children / Families
Ghosts

Violet Unwin is convinced she is invisible. Overlooked by her adoptive family, her only solace is her uncle’s costume shop. By day, she’s an assistant no one remembers, but after hours, in the wonder of her imagination, she becomes explorer, warrior, queen. Devastated by news of the shop’s imminent closure, Violet finds comfort in an unlikely companion, the ghostly figure of her namesake, the suffragette Vi Unwin.

Medical school dropout Phoebe Frink’s life is in disarray. She has no idea who she is anymore, what to do about it, or how to tell her parents. Taken under the wing of the infamous drag king Mr. Duke, owner of the struggling Banana Bar, fate steps in when Phoebe seeks Violet’s help with costumes for the bar’s fundraising Christmas Ball.

Phoebe is captivated by beautiful, shy Violet, and for the first time in her life, Violet experiences what it is to be truly seen. But for love to be possible, Violet and Phoebe must take a risk on a future they’ve never dared to imagine.

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Like They Do in the Movies

By Nan Campbell

Age Gap
Actors/Artists
Celebrity
Bisexual
California

The Dream: rich and famous screenwriter of hilarious sapphic rom coms.

The Reality: pushing out trashy celebrity gossip for cash.

The Grand Plan: advance career by engineering a celebrity takedown. 

Fran Underhill’s adoration for the entertainment industry is in flames, transformed into a loathing of celebrity culture and all those who benefit from it. When a personal assistant gig for one of Hollywood’s most popular actresses falls into her lap, Fran is determined to use the experience to her advantage with a series of tell-all articles. Just enough clickbait to get her next screenplay sold. Now if only she can ignore that ferocious and inconvenient attraction to her new employer.

Chelsea Cartwright—actress, mother, and ex-wife to Hollywood royalty—is struggling. A competent new assistant will do much to ease her burdens, but who could predict the intense and long-buried feelings Fran would awaken. And what will the fallout be when she finds out Fran is a member of the gossip media—with Chelsea’s public destruction in her sights.

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Limelight

By Gun Brooke

Age Gap
Music
Celebrity
Big City
New York City

Liberty Bell has been on her own for almost a decade after her father and his new family rejected her. With only one thing she cares about, there’s no backup plan. She needs to sing. Her dreams could come true when she makes it onto the latest TV talent show where famous vocalists coach her as she performs a new song each week. Liberty doesn’t trust easily, and she can be all thorns, which she proves when she is on the receiving end of the rude and sarcastic coach Palmer Elliston’s scathing feedback.

Palmer was one of the most sought-after producers and songwriters until she made a mistake that cost her everything. Now she leads a very different life. Jaded and disillusioned, she’s persuaded by an old friend to coach on a new reality talent show in the hope it might rejuvenate her former career. What she doesn’t expect is the prickly Liberty or the unexpected emotions that surge between them whenever Liberty sings. There’s no way Palmer will ever act on her attraction. She’s already made one career-ending mistake and isn’t looking for an encore.

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Playing with Matches

By Georgia Beers

Marriage of Convenience/Fake Relationship
Bisexual

Cori Stratton’s a small-town girl. She loves making candles, and her little gift shop is her pride and joy. But when the shop’s building goes up for sale, she might lose her home and everything that makes her happy. The worst timing of all? Her landlord’s daughter Elizabeth Brennan—popular, smart, and oblivious to Cori’s existence in high school—has breezed back into town.

Life has not gone according to plan for Elizabeth. Laid off from her job in the city, she’s forced back home to help her mom run the family’s B and B during a week-long wedding celebration…for Liz’s ex. Not wanting the groom to know the shambles her life is, she grabs the nearest person—Cori—and tells him how happy they are together.

A chance to live out her high school fantasy of Liz as her girlfriend is unexpected, but it keeps Cori playing along. And helping her one-time crush survive this wedding? Just for the week? She can do that. Besides, there’s no way this fake relationship will turn into the real deal.

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The Memories of Marlie Rose

By Morgan Lee Miller

Actors/Artists
Music
Celebrity
Amnesia
New York City
California

Would you want to forget the only woman you’ve ever loved? Marlie Rose does.

Everyone thinks Broadway legend Marlie Rose has it all: a fabulous career spanning over five decades, all the major awards, and a lifetime in the spotlight. Only Marlie knows the heavy weight of her memories. When a new, experimental procedure promises to relieve trauma and heartbreak by erasing unwanted memories, Marlie signs up, desperate to let go of her tumultuous childhood, grief, and broken heart.

As Marlie recalls her memories and decides which ones to keep and which to erase, she unexpectedly reunites with Eleanor Olson, the woman she’s been in love with for forty-seven years. As her heartbreak fades and her heart races anew for Eleanor, Marlie discovers their love isn’t as dead as she thought it was, and she starts regretting the procedure.

Eleanor might be the only person who can help her restore her memories, but remembering might break her heart all over again.

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The Murders at Sugar Mill Farm

By Ronica Black

Age Gap
Food

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

Friends & Community
People of Color
Big City
Animals 

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
Magic
The Valmoran Series | Book 2
Other Worlds

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 
Other Worlds
California
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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Ride with Me

By Jenna Jarvis

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

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

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

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

Close Quarters
Friends & Community
Owen Station Romance Series
Food

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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