Crossing the Wide Forever

By Missouri Vaun

Cody Walsh leaves Arkansas for California. Lured by stories of opportunity, even for women, Cody disguises herself as a man and prepares for the arduous journey west. 

Lillie Ellis leaves New York to accept a post as a schoolteacher on the frontier near a small homestead she just inherited from her uncle. Lillie’s ultimate desire is to become a painter, and she hopes the Kansas frontier will offer her the freedom to follow that dream. In the nineteenth century, a young woman has few options in the East that don’t revolve around marriage and motherhood. Lillie is interested in neither. 

Cody rescues Lillie after a chance encounter in Independence, Missouri. Their destinies and desires become entwined as they face the perils of the untamed West. Despite their differences, they discover that love’s uncharted frontier is not for the weak in spirit or the faint of heart.

 

"Crossing the Wide Forever is a near-heroic love story set in an epic time, told with almost lyrical prose. Words on the page will carry the reader, along with the main characters, back into history and into adventure. It’s a tale that’s easy to read, with enchanting main characters, despicable villains, and supportive friendships, producing a fascinating account of passion and adventure." –Lambda Literary Review

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Fake It Till You Make It

By M. Ullrich

Workplace Romance
Second Chance at Love
Coming Out

Can the truth really set you free? Genevieve Applegate is tired of her stagnant life and she’s ready to make a change by going after her dream job in New Jersey. The listing seems ideal when Genevieve scans it, but a big surprise comes at her interview: Out Shore Magazine is an LGBT publication. She’s willing to work around this detail with an innocent lie, one she’ll keep from her longtime boyfriend as well as her new boss, Harper Davies. Out Shore has been Harper’s main focus since her heart was broken years ago, but Genevieve may be the one to change that with her fresh perspective and charm. While both women enjoy what they learn about each other, Genevieve is most surprised by what she learns about herself. Pretending to be a lesbian has never felt more honest.

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Shameless

By Kris Bryant and Others

Firefighters

Fire Investigator Emery Pearson doesn’t have time for a relationship. Her career is everything, so the rest of her life is put on hold until she reaches her professional goals. Sex is always on the table, though. Finding the perfect woman who only wants a quick hookup seems like a fantasy, but when she meets Lily online, the fantasy turns to reality when they agree to meet. Their tête-à-tête at the museum is more than Emery could imagine—satisfying, exciting, and passionate. Can Emery walk away from sex this good with no strings attached? Or will the lure of lust keep her going back for more?

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The Practitioner

By Ronica Black

Actors/Artists
Age Gap

Johnnie Hamilton has conquered a lot in life. An anxiety disorder, loss of her business, and homelessness have been difficult to overcome. But Johnnie has come through the other side to find success as an artist. Now, however, she’s lost her creative drive and she’s struggling to produce.

Elaine Taylor has an interesting job. She’s a “creative practitioner,” known to awaken her client’s creative side by using many different approaches, including a sensual or sexual approach. Most of her clients are male and she likes it that way. Women are the last thing she wants in her life, having lost the most important woman she’s ever known, her wife.

Fearing she’ll lose all she’s worked so hard for, Johnnie takes her friend’s advice and calls a lone number on a business card, steps into Elaine’s office, and shakes up both their worlds forever.

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Unlikely Match

By Fiona Riley

A Perfect Match Novel
Financial gap/Class disparity
Children / Families
Workplace Romance

Shelly White is a coding genius who has mastered the IT world but hasn’t quite mastered dating. While she searches for Ms. Right with the help of Samantha Monteiro’s matchmaking agency, Shelly embraces her inner nerd, and when one of her newest ideas turns into a creative goldmine, she hires PR exec Claire Moseley to help her professional dreams become reality. But is Claire the girl of her dreams in more ways than one?
 
Being raised by four brothers has made Claire tenacious. Her assignment to Shelly’s high-profile project focuses her desire to prove her worth, even though she secretly fears she’s out of her depth. And she absolutely, positively isn’t going to let her growing attraction to Shelly White derail her career.
 
When passions and ambitions overlap, Shelly and Claire must decide whether mixing business and pleasure can result in a perfect match.

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Where Love Leads

By Erin McKenzie

Friends to Lovers Romance
Second Chance at Love
Coming Out
Children / Families

Sarah O’Shaughnessy, a high school counselor, is very good at taking care of others. What she hasn’t mastered is how to take better care of herself. Four years after the death of her wife, Sarah’s life has settled into a safe, solitary rut. That is, until the arrival of a new student and her mom.
 
Lauren Emerson and her teen daughter, Kat, move back to Lauren’s hometown in Central New York, fleeing her unsupportive husband and Kat’s traumatic bullying experience. Lauren is determined to create a better life for them both. She soon discovers that the compassionate Ms. O’Shaughnessy is someone in whom she can confide.
 
The newly forged friendship between Sarah and Lauren provides support and encouragement, yet neither is prepared for the undeniable attraction that ignites between them. When the future looks like nothing they had planned, will they find the courage to go where love leads?

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Her Best Friend's Sister

By Meghan O'Brien

Friends to Lovers Romance
California

At twelve years old, Claire Barker developed a massive crush on her best friend Sarah’s older sister, the handsome, butch Alex Williams. Now twenty-seven and a successful entrepreneur, Claire’s interest hasn’t waned—despite Alex’s fashion photography career keeping her overseas for months at a time. When Alex moves home unexpectedly, she and Claire end up enjoying a surprise, wine-fueled reunion that alters their relationship forever.

Are Claire’s dreams about to come true, or will real life prove to be more complicated than her fantasies?

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Letter of the Law

By Carsen Taite

Lone Star Law Romance
Animals 
Federal Agents
Friends & Community
Financial gap/Class disparity
Good girls/Bad girls
Enemies to Lovers Romance
Lawyers
Children / Families
People of Color

Federal prosecutor Bianca Cruz has spent her life balancing motherhood with the call of her career. As she draws closer to making the case against the notorious Vargas brothers, danger casts dark shadows over her family. When her case leads her to a gorgeous horsewoman with a mysterious background, will she take a chance at love even if it means risking everything she’s worked her entire life to protect?

To horse breeder Jade Vargas, happy family is a fiction. Unlike her privileged half sister, she grew up knowing her heritage was rooted in darkness, yet she’s managed to live in the light despite the looming criminal enterprise ever poised to drag her down. When crisis strikes, will she burrow back to her past or will her undeniable attraction to the prosecutor investigating her family pull her out of the darkness once and for all?

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Royal Rebel

By Jenny Frame

Bodyguard/Protection Romances
Financial gap/Class disparity
Royalty
A Royal Romance Story | Book 2
Celebrity
International Setting

Princess Rozala of Denbourg enjoys her reputation as a wild child, especially when it annoys her father, the King. When Roza’s latest girlfriend brings scandal to the palace doors, her father sends her to Britain, in the hopes that time with her cousin Queen George and the new Queen Consort will finally make her face her responsibilities.

After overcoming personal demons and quitting the high-stakes world of finance, Lennox King is content to keep her life simple. As the new director of a hospice charity, she uses a strict business approach to help the charity grow and prosper.

When Roza comes to work at the charity under orders from the Queen Consort, babysitting a spoiled princess is definitely not on Lennox’s agenda. But when passion flares between them, will Lennox’s past stop their relationship in its tracks, or will a twist of fate bring a new future that neither was expecting?

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Where the Light Glows

By Dena Blake

Second Chance at Love
California

Izzy Calabrese wants to make her restaurant a success. She has a passion for cooking and life in general. Romance is the furthest thing from her mind when she finds Mel Thomas crying after being abandoned by her husband…again. She tries to distance herself from Mel, but she keeps showing up. 
 
Clients know Mel Thomas as the CEO of her own consulting firm. She’s smart, engaging, and successful. Anyone who knows her would never think she’s insecure, but she’s more fragile than anyone knows. Her marriage on shaky ground, she doesn’t know how, or if, it can be salvaged. All she’s ever wanted in a relationship is someone’s attention. She thinks she may have found the person who can give that to her. Never in her wildest dreams did she expect it to be Izzy.

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Forget Me Not

By Kris Bryant

Animals 
Vacation
International Setting

When Grace Danner finds out her great-aunt has passed away leaving her a flower shop in Ireland, she is anxious to get it off her hands as quickly as possible. Her career with the most prestigious advertising firm in Dallas has her busy six days a week, and she doesn’t have time to step away from her life to handle her aunt’s estate. She plans a quick trip to sign papers and save family heirlooms, hoping to return home before the end of the week.

She meets real estate agent Kerry Mulligan who was consigned to the property quite by accident. Their relationship starts off rocky, and as much as Grace wants to get to know the red-haired Irish beauty in the short time she is there, Kerry is nothing but business. Can Grace break through Kerry’s icy disposition and open her up to a quick affair? Even if Grace manages to seduce Kerry, can she return unscathed to the life she left in Dallas?

 

Praise from Lambda Literary Review: "This story is filled with loving familial interactions, caring friends, romantic interludes and tantalizing sex scenes. The dialogue, both among the characters and within Grace’s head, is refreshing, original, and sometimes comical. Forget Me Not is a fresh perspective on a romantic theme, and an entertaining read."

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Strawberry Summer

By Melissa Brayden

Small Town Romances
Reunion Romance
Second Chance at Love
Virgins/First Love
Homecoming

Just because you’re through with your past, doesn’t mean it’s through with you.  

Margaret Beringer didn’t have an easy adolescence. She hated her name, was less than popular in school, and was always cast aside as a “farm kid.” However, with the arrival of Courtney Carrington, Margaret’s youth sparked into color. Courtney was smart, beautiful, and put together—everything Margaret wasn’t. Who would have imagined that they’d fit together so perfectly? 

But first loves can scar. 

Margaret hasn’t seen Courtney in years and that’s for the best. But when Courtney loses her father and returns to Tanner Peak to take control of the family store, Margaret comes face-to-face with her past and the woman she’s tried desperately to forget. The fact that Courtney has grown up more beautiful than ever certainly doesn’t help matters.

 

Named one of The 10 Best Romance Books of 2017 by Vulture: "This small-town second-chance romance is full of tenderness and heart."

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What Matters Most

By Georgia Beers

Starting a new life in a new city is never easy, but Kelsey Peterson is managing. She owns her own specialty shop, she’s made some new friends, and she’s finally feeling like she’s ready to put down some roots in this small Chicago suburb. She’s even struck up some regular flirtatious banter with that sexy blonde she continually runs into at Starbucks. But when her business and personal life unexpectedly collide, Kelsey’s confidence in her newfound happiness starts to slip through her fingers, and the hardest part is figuring out what matters most...

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Secret Hearts

By Radclyffe

Workplace Romance
Age Gap
New York City
Financial gap/Class disparity
Big City

Kip Kensington owes four hundred hours of community service for a joyride gone wrong. Jordan Rice has no time for younger women with trouble written all over them no matter how sexy they might be, even if she is in desperate need of more hands—and more funds—to keep her community garden project alive. Kip’s past follows her into Jordan’s carefully constructed, and safe, world, disrupting Jordan’s orderly life and threatening to uncover all the secrets she’d locked away: secrets she guarded as closely as her heart. Together they discover the only way to build a future is to make peace with the past.

 

FIRST PLACE WINNER of the 2018 Book Buyers Best Contest, sponsored by the Orange County Chapter of the Romance Writers of America (Contemporary Romance)

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Troop 18

By Jessica L. Webb

A Dr. Kate Morrison Thriller | Book 3
Federal Agents
Women in Uniform
Police / Cops
First Responders
Medical Romance
Coming Out

Andy can’t seem to stop worrying about Kate. Instead of obsessing over things she can’t control, Andy takes on a unique case involving a troubled troop of cadets from the RCMP training academy. The troop is tightly bonded, especially since the recent death of a fellow cadet. They are also hiding a secret, and Andy has been tasked with uncovering it. When Kate unexpectedly shows up as part of the team supporting the troop, Andy has to find a way to balance her job and her heart. As the conspiracy is exposed, a medical emergency brings Kate and Andy closer together even as the troop begins to fall apart.

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Amounting to Nothing

By Karis Walsh

A Mounted Police Romance
Women in Uniform
Veterans
Sports
Police / Cops
Animals 

Mounted police officer Billie Mitchell has come back from the memories of war to a place of peace: a job she loves, partners she trusts, and a new home in Tacoma’s rough and neglected Hilltop Area. But when a businessman is murdered and one of her neighbors becomes a suspect, her calm shatters yet again. 

Heiress Merissa Karr has earned her own fortune working in urban renewal. After she witnesses her boss’s murder, she becomes the next likely target, and for once, money can’t buy her out of trouble. She needs to rely on Billie and other Hilltop residents—people who amount to nothing in her social circles—for her very survival.

On pristine polo fields and run-down city blocks, two worlds collide. Can hearts and minds open wide enough for acceptance and friendship to expand into love?

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Crescent City Confidential

By Aurora Rey

People of Color
Food
Financial gap/Class disparity
New Orleans 
Celebrity

Best-selling mystery writer Sam Torres loves jetting around the world, researching her next plot, and enjoying local culture, cuisine, and women. Her next stop: the Big Easy. Tess Arceneaux is a New Orleans native who likes life simple and uncomplicated. That includes shucking oysters for wealthy tourists and singing at the neighborhood bar—no pretense and no pressure. 

When Sam saunters in looking for company in addition to dinner, she sets her sights on Tess. Although Tess is hardly inclined to get involved with a woman who’s just passing through, Sam proves very persuasive. But when casual dates hint at something more, strange and sinister things ensue. Someone doesn’t want them together and will go to extreme lengths to make her point. Will looming danger bring them closer or drive them apart for good?

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The Right Kind of Wrong

By PJ Trebelhorn

Second Chance at Love
Friends to Lovers Romance

Quinn Burke loves being a bartender. She meets new women every night and has her choice of bed partners. That’s fine with her because she isn’t interested in anything serious after having her heart shattered eighteen months ago.

Grace Everett is perfectly content owning a bookstore, but not so much in her personal life. She wants forever, but hasn’t had much luck with relationships. She’s hoping the newest woman in her life will be the one.

When Quinn’s mother falls ill, something shifts in the twenty-year-old friendship for both women. Quinn struggles with old feelings for Grace, and Grace is seeing Quinn in a different light. They know falling for their best friend is wrong, but could it be the right kind of wrong?

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