Digging for Destiny

By Jenna Jarvis

Pirates
Friends & Community
Food
Asexual/Aromantic
Good girls/Bad girls
Magic
Enemies to Lovers Romance
Disability
Military
Close Quarters
Animals 
Friends to Lovers Romance
Dragon Circle Series | Book 2
Financial gap/Class disparity
Other Worlds
Bisexual
People of Color

Kella Mabaki, dragon slayer extraordinaire, devoted sister, and celebrity hero of Jeenobi, has become a nobody by choice. Unable to continue hunting the dragons still tormenting her people and distanced from a brother she no longer understands, Kella is adrift in the city that was once her home. When she’s captivated by a rumor that could mean the end to the dragon sickness plaguing her land, she becomes obsessed with learning the truth of it. Nobody or not, she’s never been one for standing still.

Dragonrider Litz is torn when Kella reappears in her life, devoted to a quest she appears to have invented. Despite her beloved cousin’s disappearance and her growing doubts toward the empire she serves, Litz is experiencing an unexpected period of stability in her life. Kella’s arrival and the brewing war between their nations forces Litz to make a choice. Her country, career, and family, or the chance of making a better world with the woman she hasn’t been able to forget?

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Hot Hires

By Nan Campbell and Others

When business turns to pleasure, romance ignites. 

In New York is Losing Hope by Nan Campbell: With thirty-five on the horizon and still single, Hope Mason is abandoning her beloved New York City to try her luck in bright, shiny Los Angeles. One problem. This New Yorker is terrified of driving, an essential skill for Californians. She hires instructor Val Caceres to teach her how to drive off into the sunset, but Val could be the one thing she doesn’t want to leave behind.

In Two Women, Two Weddings by Alaina Erdell: Aarti Singh’s brilliance in cardiology hasn’t diminished her longing to be an event planner, even if familial expectations demand a career in medicine. Meanwhile, Jo Samuels’s love life has taken a back seat to her demanding chef career and her desire to keep her life simple. When Aarti hires Jo to cater a wedding, their attraction is undeniable, but how can they fall in love when they’re struggling to be true to themselves?

In For Love or Money by Jesse J. Thoma: Short-seller Frances “Frankie” Sender has always been good at picking winners, but her skills might make her the ultimate loser when a company she is researching frames her for a crime. Her only chance at staying alive is Dakota “Oz” Osborne, a woman with a million-dollar reason to toss her in jail. They’ll have to trust each other and avoid the easy cash out if they want the stock to rise on a chance at love.

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McCall

By Patricia Evans

A McCall Romance | Book 1

Sara Brighton, Savannah’s rising star in the competitive culinary scene, is devastated when her historic riverside restaurant burns to the ground. Finding herself without the creative chaos that has defined her world for the last decade, she impulsively decides to pack up her life and return to McCall, Idaho, the last place she remembers being truly happy. 

Sam Draper, head of the Lake Patrol division of McCall Police Department, is less than pleased to see another entitled tourist putting down roots in her picturesque hometown. Still, Sara surprises her by helping her swerve a professional disaster, and Sam returns the favor by teaching Sara to drive the ski boat languishing at the marina. 

Their chemistry heats up under the summer sun, and they are falling in love, at least until Sara decides to buy her late father’s iconic diner and turn it into yet another pretentious gastropub. Can they build a future amid the ghosts of the past that surround them?

Reprint. Originally published Sapphire Books Publishing, August 2018.

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One and Done

By Frederick Smith

California
Enemies to Lovers Romance
Close Quarters

One night of passion and possibly one more chance at love…

Determined, motivated, goal-driven, and eternally single, Dr. Taylor James is an accomplished university administrator in San Francisco determined to get his campus successfully through an upcoming accreditation process. The process could set him up for his ultimate career goal–to be one of the only Black and openly queer university presidents in the US. Taylor gives himself just one day a week to have fun and let loose with friends–a one and done Sunday Funday brunch in the Castro District.

Dustin McMillan is a consultant and project manager who reluctantly returns to the Bay Area, his hometown, for an assignment. The first in his family to finish college, earn a healthy six-figure income, and have choice and agency in his life’s direction, Dustin is fearful that returning home could mean falling back into roles that he’d thought he’d resolved by moving miles away…and equally fearful of falling back into bed with one sexy and toxic ex-boyfriend who still lingers in his memories.

One chance encounter. One night of passion. Will Taylor and Dustin leave it at one and done?

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Promises to Protect

By Jo Hemmingwood

Friends & Community
Animals 

Park ranger Maxine Ward has a duty to protect the colony of people who live on the Georgia state park in-holding. They call themselves Tree City and treat Max as one of their own. The conservation work they do is important, and Max is more than happy to run interference between Tree City and the city of Blue Falls, Georgia.

Her commitment to protect Tree City is put to the test when social worker Skylar Austen takes a special interest in the commune. Her style of care isn’t exactly endearing herself to the community. Skylar, like Max, is a Blue Falls local and her reputation precedes her. Just not in the way she would like. Max remembers Skylar’s famed exploits from high school and is reluctant to have her anywhere near Tree City. It may have a little something to do with Max’s unresolved feelings for Skylar, but she’s never going to admit it.

As their feelings for each other deepen and outside pressures arise to threaten Tree City, Max and Skylar must put their differences aside to protect the people they care for, including each other.

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Sacred Ground

By Missouri Vaun

Amnesia
California
Bisexual

Demon hunter Jordan Price has a sacred calling she can’t escape. But when her target turns out to be an innocent, the truth shakes the foundations of her belief. Betrayed, conflicted, and badly wounded, Jordan retreats to consecrated ground to recover.

Grace Jameson wakes in a shallow grave, terrified and alone. She stumbles toward a light in the thick woods with no memory of how she got there. The light from a cabin window guides her through the darkness until she collapses.

The last thing Jordan needs is a beautiful stranger showing up in the one place she thought was truly safe. She’s certain Grace is not who she claims to be, but as the days pass, an overwhelming attraction builds between them. Doubts are vanquished by desire until Jordan discovers Grace’s demonic secret. Jordan is honor bound to hunt her, but Grace may be the only thing standing between Jordan and certain death.

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The Land of Death and Devil’s Club

By Bailey Bridgewater

Police / Cops
Medical Romance
Louisa Linebach Mysteries | Book 2

Special Liaison to the FBI Louisa Linebach may have defied all odds by identifying the bodies of three missing men in the Kenai Peninsula, but she won’t be satisfied until the man she’s sure is responsible for their murders is behind bars.

Mr. Drew is secretive, smart, rich, and well-connected, and it’s going to take more than regular police procedure to catch him. Louisa has a plan—a stakeout with Kenai Fjords National Park as home base. As Louisa watches Mr. Drew’s crew coming and going, she begins to put together how the operation works with the help of Seward Police Chief Mikey Harper; Louisa’s love-interest, medical examiner Anna Fenway; and National Parks Service ranger Dolly Agapov, who has a very personal reason for wanting the mysteries surrounding Mr. Drew solved.

The case is turned upside down when Dolly’s grandchild, Ryne, goes missing—and it’s not clear whether Ryne’s been ensnared by the crime ring, or if they’re risking their life to help Louisa. Only one thing is for sure. If Louisa doesn’t catch Mr. Drew soon, the body count will rise.

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When You Smile

By Melissa Brayden

Have you ever had a crush on your babysitter? Taryn Ross sure did. Sixteen-year-old Charlotte was sophisticated, thoughtful, gorgeous, and fun. Taryn counted the minutes until they’d hang out. But Charlotte and her family moved away. 

Now a transfer student at Hillspoint University, Taryn is ready to officially come out when she runs into a familiar face at a party. Charlie, now a grad student, insists on walking a drunk Taryn home. To the detriment of Taryn’s heart (and libido), Charlie has only grown kinder (and hotter) with time.

Charlie Adler has a five-year plan: finish her MFA without any hiccups, figure out a timeline for her engagement, and become an acclaimed fiction writer. Easy, right? That is until Taryn shows up at Hillspoint and shakes up her world like a snow globe. This Taryn is different: soulful, brooding, and all grown up. Charlie’s never been attracted to a woman before, and isn’t dating your one-time charge against the rules? If only their toe-curling, mind-dulling, body-aching chemistry would calm the hell down.

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Adrift

By Sam Ledel

California
Financial gap/Class disparity
Bisexual

Janeth Castro never expected to be the most prominent bootlegger in Southern California. After growing up in Central Mexico and falling into her role in the business, she’s torn between supporting her family values and living life on her own terms. The last thing she needs is a white woman protesting at her door.

Alice Covington is many things: a pickpocket, a drifter, and now a daughter of the Prohibition movement. Under her mother’s cruel eye, she follows the protests to a mysterious mansion by the sea. Determined to play by her parents’ rules—which include not falling in love with a woman—she is surprised to find the great house host to the most surprising, and attractive, rum smuggler in town.

Janeth and Alice are caught in storms that neither can seem to escape. Obligation, fear, and old guilt claw daily at their hearts, and their chance meeting leads to an unexpected romance that may be just what they need to find safe harbor.

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A Heart Divided

By Angie Williams

Enemies to Lovers Romance
Military
Non-Binary Gender
Virgins/First Love
Bisexual
Children / Families

Wanda Baker’s life was never the same after killing her abusive stepfather. With nowhere to hide, she steals a soldier’s uniform and falls in with a battalion of Confederate soldiers, redefining herself as Jack Logan. Even though done out of necessity, he soon realizes living as a man reflects his true self in more ways than just the clothes he wears. The world finally sees him as the man he knows he is.

After the war, Jack finds work on a horse ranch owned by the widow of a Union soldier, Emma Stevens. She’s the most beautiful woman Jack has ever seen, but being a veteran of the Confederate army that killed her husband isn’t the only thing keeping them apart.

Emma hates that she needs the enemy’s help to manage her husband’s beloved ranch, but with fewer qualified men left after the war, she's forced to accept she has no choice. She and her young son must place their trust somewhere, and Jack is her best hope of keeping the ranch and her husband's legacy intact.

Their differences are too hard to ignore, but only love can heal a heart divided.

 

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Cabin Fever

By Tagan Shepard

Close Quarters

Morgan Allen arrives at her first national trade show expecting to make a splash and a ton of sales. She didn’t expect her biggest rival, Shelby Howard, to be there, stealing her thunder and all her clients. Why couldn’t Shelby just stay home and let Morgan have this one? After all, Shelby doesn’t believe in her product, not like Morgan does. She’s just successful because she’s charming and magnetic with a killer smile and legs for days.

Still, Morgan has a heart. When a major snowstorm cancels both their flights home and Morgan snags the last rental car, she offers Shelby a ride. That kindness turns into a nightmare when bad cell reception and a missed exit leaves them stranded in a secluded hunting cabin with a wrecked car and no way to call for help.

The longer they’re stuck together, the more their feelings grow. Could Morgan really be falling for the woman who might just cost her everything? And that’s nothing compared to the question that plagues them both once they’re finally rescued. Do they really have feelings for each other, or was it just cabin fever?

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Clean Kill

By Anne Laughlin

Police / Cops

Nicky Sullivan is the resident manager of a sober living home in Chicago. There she rides herd on ten newly sober addicts and alcoholics, trying to point them in the right direction while keeping their chaos to a minimum. But when one of her residents is murdered, Nicky turns to the investigative skills honed during her past career as a homicide detective. She calls on her old police partner who has been assigned the murder investigation along with his new partner, a woman beautiful enough to give Nicky pause. The body count starts to mount as it becomes clear a serial killer is at work, targeting newly relapsed women, all of whom have some connection to Nicky. Each death makes her feel she’s wielded the knife herself. In the midst of the tragedy, she finds herself falling in love.

With the lives of fragile women in the balance, Nicky finds her own sobriety threatened. Can Nicky save her lover and find the killer? How many others must die before she does?

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Only a Bridesmaid

By Haley Donnell

Virgins/First Love
Friends to Lovers Romance

A fake bridesmaid, a socially anxious bride, and an unexpected love—what could go wrong?

It’s the strangest job that actress Meli has ever been offered—posing as a bridesmaid for an apparently friendless woman at her upcoming Caribbean wedding. Then she meets the shy bride-to-be, Hannah, and feels an instant connection that makes her put her doubts aside. She’s not only doing this because Hannah is gorgeous, even though she really is. Too bad she’s straight.

Hannah is ten steps beyond shy. Even connecting with her fiancé is difficult, despite how badly her religious parents want her to marry. But something about Meli makes her feel safe. A close encounter with Meli at the bachelorette party leaves Hannah shivery and warm, and wondering if she’s making a mistake by getting married.

To chase her real happily-ever-after, Hannah has to not only defy expectations she’s conformed to all her life, but also risk her heart getting broken and find the words—and the courage—to be her true self.

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Primal Hunt

By L.L. Raand

Shifters
Midnight Hunters | Book 9

When power struggles between the Queen of Faerie, those who seek to usurp her throne, and a deposed Vampire Queen threaten to spill into the Human realm—and that of the Weres and Vampires—wolf Alpha Sylvan Mir calls for a War Council. A coalition is forged between Liege Jody Gates’s Vampires, the Snowcrest wolf Weres, the mountain cat Weres, and Sylvan’s Timberwolves to take the battle to the enemy in Faerie. But before war can be waged, another alliance is needed—the wolf Weres must agree to provide blood for their Vampire comrades once inside Faerie.

Anya, a young wolf warrior, finds herself paired with Rafe, one of the most powerful Vampires in the Americas, in an erotic union of blood and sex that ignites her primal instincts in a way she never imagined.

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Puzzles Can Be Deadly

By David S. Pederson

A bizarre old woman who worships the memory of her lost son.

A nun with hidden secrets.  

A spinster housekeeper with a secret of her own.  

An angry young man with a troubled past.

A neighbor who claims to talk to dead people at seances.

Skip Valentine and Henry Finch encounter these eccentric people on their weekend trip to visit Henry’s uncle. When they learn of the groundskeeper who died in a mysterious fire shortly before they arrived, strange occurrences are imbued with ominous portent. The peculiar accidents, ghostly barking, a pounding heard late at night in the creepy old mansion, and a strange old box buried behind the burned-out carriage house all add up to something.   

Skip yearns to investigate. It’s all so perplexing. But when another death raises the stakes, the puzzle turns deadly. The solution may lie in a curious rhyme told by the groundskeeper before he died, but first Skip and Henry must decipher it.

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Snake Charming

By Genevieve McCluer

Freddie Bauer has never made a good decision in her centuries of life as a vampire, and ripping off the local mob was far from the worst of them. She needs to get out of Berlin for a while and heads to Toronto, the city of fiends, hoping for a chance at a better life, and hopefully more fun.

Phoebe has recently discovered her girlfriend has been lying to her for their entire relationship, while also damaging Phoebe’s image with her online followers by leaking revealing photos showing that she’s a lamia, a half snake, half human. Her friends are there to support her, and she’s ready to give up on love.

A chance encounter has Freddie and Phoebe hitting it off, but neither are looking for more than an amazing hookup. Freddie still has unfinished business, and Phoebe has an unfinished ex. Freddie’s past quickly catches up with her, along with feelings she hasn’t had in decades, and hitmen for the mob. If that wasn’t enough, her next encounter with Phoebe leaves them both questioning if a future together is even possible. Can they overcome their troubled pasts, or will it be same heartbreak, different century?

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Spirits and Sirens

By Kelly & Tana Fireside

First Responders
Ghosts
Multicultural 
Owen Station Romance Series
People of Color
Small Town Romances

Elena Murphy tried to escape the ghosts by moving as far away from Owen Station as she could get. It didn’t work. So when her dad asks her to manage the front-of-the-house at Murphy’s Mortuary Funeral Services, which her cold-as-ice brothers are burying, she packs up her art studio and comes home. This time, though, she’s not the town weirdo but an up-and-coming photographer who has embraced her sixth sense—and learned how to use it.

Allison Jones is the charismatic new assistant fire chief—and maybe the only person not happy Elena’s back. Not only is Al the first woman to hold this post in Owen Station, but she is up to her eyeballs in swirling conspiracy theories that are thwarting efforts to prevent wildfires during a record-breaking Southwest summer. The last thing she needs is somebody with Elena’s profile telling ghost stories.

Elena’s not too wild about the chief, either. No one can be that upbeat all the time and not be hiding something, right? But when Elena needs Al’s help to solve a 70-year-old mystery and finally give her tortured family peace, sparks fly. Will it be enough to melt the ice between them and let love ignite?

Advance praise from Publishers Weekly: "Kelly and Tana Fireside tantalize in their third Owen Station queer romance....[W]hen [Al and Elena] band together to solve a decades-old mystery, sparks fly. Readers will warm to Al, Elena, and the solid supporting cast, especially Elena’s feisty grandmother, who seems to know more about the mystery than she should. This quirky and tolerant small town remains a joy to visit."

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A Case for Discretion

By Ashley Moore

Age Gap
Lawyers
Financial gap/Class disparity

What happens when your carefree spring fling shows up to work as your newest summer intern?

When Gwen Strickland and Etta Monroe agree to a steamy anonymous fling, they make three promises: No names. No details. No feelings.

Gwen’s a prominent Atlanta attorney who wants nothing more than to be the next justice on the Georgia State Supreme Court. Etta is fully focused on getting out of law school unscathed. A relationship is not on the agenda, but somehow, they can’t help totally falling for each other.

Then Gwen discovers Etta has accepted a summer internship at her law firm. Logic and ethics say they should end their relationship. But logic and ethics are no match for their unstoppable attraction. Sneaking about, clandestine dating isn’t a long-term solution, but the promise of a future with Etta means Gwen must risk her biggest goal for a younger woman whose life—and plans—could change.

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