Contemporary Books

Would you trade the life you have for a chance at a life you’ll love?

Devri Cahn is poised on the knife edge of getting everything she’s always wanted: an enviable rental empire in Brooklyn, guaranteed top-tier income, and elevated social status in the cutthroat world of the NYC lesbian elite. It’s finally all at her fingertips, so why does she want to leave it all behind?

Siobhan Byrne has returned to her tiny rural fishing village on the southern coast of Ireland with one goal: to buy the rundown cottages by the sea and turn them into slick, modern holiday rentals. After university in Dublin and some real-world experience, she’s determined to reach her goal of marketing Ireland’s undeniable pull to rich American tourists. It’s about time Ireland stepped into the twenty-first century, and she’s the woman for the job, especially if she gets filthy rich doing it.

Devri and Shiv never expected their feelings for each other to linger, but sometimes the search for what you’ve always wanted leads home, to the one you've always needed.

Explore the angst and excitement of forbidden love few would dare in this heart-stopping novella collection.

In Her Boss's Wife by Gun Brooke, January Wild needs a letter of recommendation to finally move to her dream job. Only she’s caught in the crosshairs of her bosses’ messy divorce and has a dangerous crush on her boss’s wife. Will they risk everything for a chance at forever?

In Her Therapist's Daughter by J.J. Hale, with the help of her therapist, Freya embarks on a journey of self-discovery that leads to a serendipitous meeting and an unexpected connection. Unbeknownst to them, Freya’s therapist is the same woman advising her daughter to follow her heart, straight into Freya’s arms.

In Her Brother’s Girlfriend by Aurora Rey, Hadley Devine always knew she’d find her way back to the family restaurant and take over as head chef. She didn’t count on working alongside Brianna Kerns, her brother’s girlfriend, and the woman she’s been in love with since high school.

The last thing rock star Harper Cushing needs right now is this attraction to her grandmother’s helper, Frankie, even if she is sneaky-good on the guitar. Returning to her favorite childhood spot, Gram’s nostalgic general store, Harper confronts life-altering decisions: Gram’s future welfare, selling the store, and reassessing her own fast-paced “high life.” If only she could pull it all off without breaking everyone’s heart—including her own.

Having made her own life-altering decision three years ago, Frankie Cosgrove is guardedly single and set to harvest her first cranberry crop. She’s devoted to her elderly storekeeper friend, so when the famous Harper arrives, hell-bent on making changes, Frankie’s defenses rise.

At least they admit to mutual concerns for Gram and the store, and even each other’s heartfelt intentions. But the unexpected musical accord they strike sounds a whole lot like falling in love. Has harmony finally found them?

When Lucinda “Lucky” Chance lands the client of a lifetime, she promises to give it her all. Little does Lucky know that the woman she’s been flirting with from her window all summer long is the client, Brianna Jameson. Not only does Lucky have to prove she can do the job, but she’s desperate to impress the gorgeous woman who has occupied her thoughts.

Brianna Jameson is bored with her stagnant life. Her friends are busy raising kids and walking away from promising careers. Not Bri. She’s worked too hard to throw it away on something as fleeting as love. But work and romance collide as Lucky stirs up feelings Bri would rather avoid. When Lucky gets fired for all the wrong reasons, Bri reaches out to support her for all the right ones.

Love at first sight is for dreamers, but the more time they spend together, the more they realize the chemistry of a gaze can make anything possible.

Jess Black has life all figured out. She has a job that she loves, and her boyfriend is handsome and successful. That’s why it comes as a shock when she meets a woman on the train who makes her pulse race. Maybe it would’ve been possible to put the surprise attraction behind her, but that becomes impossible when the woman she’s been trying so hard to forget moves into her spare room.

Sydney Fletcher has hit the reset button on her life after a devastating breakup necessitates a move. Her sister’s place is barely big enough for her sister and her nephew, so when Sydney spots a room to rent, she jumps at it. Imagine her surprise when her new housemate just happens to be the same woman who has been on her mind for weeks. But everything quickly turns sour and confusing when Jess gives her the cold shoulder. Maybe Sydney had read the signals all wrong that day?

Jess fights to keep her feelings at bay and Sydney tries to keep her heart from getting involved. But the more time they spend together, the harder it gets to ignore how perfect they are for one another.

Eli Thomas is going home for Christmas just like she does every year—only this time it’s different. Her grandmother has died, and she’s forced to reckon with her past, her broken relationships with her remaining family, and Aracely Hernandez, the girl who got away.

A seemingly purposeful error in Grandma’s will keeps Eli in town for longer than she planned and brings all the conversations she’s been avoiding for twenty years to a culmination. While her attraction to Aracely has never faded, Eli remains apprehensive to follow her heart and risk having it broken again.

Now she has to decide if avoiding her hometown forever is worth losing the people who used to mean the most to her.

What if you had to choose between facing your past and finding your future?

Loch Battersby is the kind of famous that everyone in Manhattan wants to be. The first woman in the fashion industry to work exclusively as a men’s fashion model, she’d become internationally ranked and instantly recognizable by the age of twenty-six. Then, in the span of a single day, her life spins out of control, and she winds up in Innis Harbor on the rocky coast of Maine, where she’d spent idyllic summers as a child. As the city smog finally clears, she realizes that not everything in her life was as it seemed.

Amir Farzaneh built her Innis Harbor construction company from the ground up, despite the challenges of being a woman of color in a field dominated by men and ever-present opinions of her conservative Persian community. When she meets and falls in love with Loch, a dark secret lurking in her past reappears, threatening the life she’d managed to build and the happiness she’d just started to believe could be hers. Reprint. 

CEO Eleanor Clairice Beauchamp’s rules for business:
#1: Business always comes first
#2: Succeed
#3: Don’t fail
#4: Never fall in love

Clairice “Claire” Beauchamp has spent her adult life escaping poverty and reaching the top of her industry by adhering to her rules. But staying there may prove to be the most difficult challenge yet. Lotus Enterprises’ next big project requires owning an entire city block, and one last property owner refuses to sell. So, Claire goes undercover to scope out the café owner. She expects to discover the source of her resistance and negotiate a deal. She doesn’t expect to be so drawn to her.

Abby Pita is finally her own boss after achieving her dream of owning Sunshine and Sweets Café. She has no interest in the buyout offers, especially not as her attraction to her newest customer, Claire, is growing. Claire seems to feel their connection too, and Abby has hope that there could be a future for them.

When the truth is revealed, will Claire break all her rules, or both their hearts?

Nic Gallagher has it all: a great job, supportive family and friends, and a sweet dog. Everything changes after an unexpected reorganization at work makes Lee Stone her supervisor.

Lee is beautiful, outstanding at her job, and has quickly catapulted to head of sales. According to the rumor mill, she’s also a bit of an ice queen who’s left a line of broken men in her rise to the top.

Nic and Lee got on well in new hire training and haven’t been able to stand each other since. Nic seethes silently as Lee gets promoted while she’s stuck at manager. That is, until she’s downsized in a strategic layoff, and her simmering anger finally burns openly.

They have good reasons for keeping their distance. So why does their growing attraction seem more like a love-hate relationship?

Casey Stevens needs distance from her movie producer parents and her social media starlet ex-wife. When she lands in Rocky Springs with a bruised ego and a pile of cash, the quaint tourist town seems like the perfect place for a fresh start. But is it the right place to make her dream of owning a classy sex shop a reality?

Tara McCoy knows a thing or two about licking her wounds. She never wanted to move back home, but she’s making the most of it, turning her family’s sleepy bakery into a cupcake destination. The last thing she wants next door is some seedy sex store, even if it’s promoting self-care as much as sex. And especially if the new owner is drop-dead gorgeous.

With the busy holiday season heating up, neither can afford to be petty or lose a customer. But when their reluctant truce melts into a little bit of sugar and a whole lot of spice, will love prevail, or will their differences be too hot to handle?

Chef Stef’s passion for her profession is being severely tested. After a disastrous appearance on a cooking competition show, she has become a meme. The entire Internet now knows her as the Kitchen Bawler. Her ascent through the fine dining kitchens of New York City has been thoroughly derailed, but she has a plan to get her career back on track. She’ll make cooking videos on YouTube to foil the algorithm and overhaul her search engine results. One problem: she knows nothing about creating video content.

Enter Mallory Radowski. She’s a talented filmmaker currently earning a living as a wedding videographer, with complicated reasons of her own for her reluctance to help Stef. Mallory lives with anxiety, and is the pickiest eater imaginable. Food—Stef’s love language—is untranslatable to her. How can she make Stef’s food look delicious if she won’t eat any of it?

Stef has to trust that Mallory’s videos can get her cooking food she’s proud of again, but it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire when she starts to fall for her.

Bronwyn Charles had everything she’d always wanted: a handsome fiancée, the career in fine arts that she adored, and an enviable home in Notting Hill, London. Everything was perfect until she ran into Jaq Bailey, her first love, during a classmate’s wedding in the English countryside. Suddenly, her carefully constructed life started to seem like it belonged to someone else, and she’s forced to decide whether she’s brave enough to let herself remember how it felt to be truly loved.

Jaq Bailey, a mathematics savant from a rundown trailer park in east Texas, attended Stratford Academy in London on a scholarship and fell in love with Bronwyn the moment they met. Despite being forced apart by Bronwyn’s wealthy family when their romance was discovered, Jaq never forgot her. After the wedding, their lives become entwined again as dangerous secrets emerge and Bronwyn’s seemingly perfect life starts to unravel.

Are they strong enough to hold on to true love, or will they lose each other again, this time forever? Reprint

It’s Christmastime and everyone is in the holiday spirit at no-kill animal shelter Junebug Farms.

When Junebug sponsors the annual Christmas parade to raise money and awareness for their shelter, the staff have a plan: the king and queen of the parade will spend the holidays filming adorable Christmas vignettes to bring in donations and find forever homes for lovable pups before Santa comes.

What they don’t know is that Mia Sorenson, volunteer dog walker and superior matchmaker, is about to rig the voting so that her granddaughter, Samantha, and Sam’s friend Keegan, win queen and queen of the parade. Sam and Keegan have been dancing around each other for years, and if Mia doesn’t do something, they might never realize they’re meant to be together. But can Sam and Keegan ever forget the Big Embarrassing Thing that makes romance a nope?

It’ll be all paws on deck to bring them a miracle and make this Christmas one to remember.

Actor Davis Hart’s career is in a death spiral after her drunken sleep-and-tell outs the star of their hit television show. Hoping time and distance will offer a new start, Davis returns to her small hometown where it’s Christmas year-round and the community theater where she honed her acting skills draws thousands of tourists every year. Only everything has changed. The theater is struggling to stay open, and its last hope is a mesmerizing hazel-eyed woman with a grant to produce an original holiday play.

Playwright and director Asia du Muir is serious and very focused on her career. She’s finished her education at Columbia University and hopes a fellowship grant to write and produce a play at a community theater will launch her career. She’s not going to let some party girl actress ruin her best chance to get noticed by a Broadway critic.

Neither of them expects the feelings they can’t deny, but everyone knows personal and professional relationships shouldn’t be mixed. Is their love destined to wait in the wings?

Grace can't find a desperately needed roommate, so she takes a gamble and decides to host an exchange student. When the student turns out to be in college and just a few years older than her, not to mention extremely cute, Grace is flustered and withdraws. When an accident forces her to spend time with Lenka, she realizes just how much they have in common.

Lenka is so excited about her year in America. She's going to love New York not only because she wants to work for the UN, but also because it's where her girlfriend lives. She plans to practice her English with a large host family, so when she's matched with a single woman living in Portland, she's crushed. Only it turns out that she loves Portland, things with her girlfriend aren't as they seem, and Grace's house begins to feel like home.

Grace and Lenka never expected to fall in love. Is home really where the heart is if it means giving up your dreams?

Quinn Collins is ready for her Off-Broadway debut. With her modeling days behind her and a contract secured for her one-woman show at the prestigious Horizon Theater, she’s eager for a fresh start.

Alex Anders was born into the world of theater. Her father owns one of Manhattan’s most distinguished theater companies, and Alex has spent her life performing. Now the managing director for Horizon, Alex is content to be around the stage, even if she’s not on it.

As Quinn prepares for her opening night and Alex works to clinch Horizon’s coveted executive director position, ghosts from Alex’s past may jeopardize both their goals.

Neither of them can afford a romantic distraction, but the pull of their attraction is hard to resist. Their love story may be the encore performance of Alex’s worst fears or the one act that could change their lives forever.

While running the dance program at a summer camp for neurodivergent kids, Haley Tyne bumps into the mysterious woman who ghosted her after a life-altering date two years ago, and their connection is undeniable. Cal O’Shea took a job at the camp to watch over her sister. She never anticipated seeing the woman who left a beautiful mark on a terrible night in her past.

When Haley’s dance partner is injured and their end-of-summer show is in jeopardy, Cal steps in, reviving memories from the past better left behind. With passion igniting in stolen moments, their dance becomes more emotional than anticipated. As past and present intertwine, their dance of destiny may bind their hearts or become just another fleeting step in their separate journeys.

Alessia Cavalii is a rising star in the competitive international wine scene, and one of only twenty-six female master sommeliers in the world. Her home is a gorgeous, renovated winery on the sun-soaked southern coast of Italy, she has a career she adores, and she has finally managed to end a long-term toxic relationship. But Alessia is hiding a dangerous secret—and she’s edging dangerously closer to losing the beautiful life she’s worked so hard to create.

Parker Haven is a captain in the US Army and stationed at the NATO military camp in Italy. A detective with the military police, she’s recruited to help solve a string of murders in the city and becomes inexplicably drawn into Alessia’s world. As the intrigue surrounding the case—and Alessia—spins dangerously out of control, Parker must choose between her military career and the woman she’s falling in love with.

How can we be sure we truly know the people we love?

Reprint. Previously published as The Last First Kiss.