Trying something different this year and breaking up by genre, so if you’re looking for SFF/H, Crime Fiction, or Graphic Novels, just keep scrolling! (Yes, some of those distinctions are a little fuzzy. I did my best.) Romance will still be getting its own post, though, so do keep an eye out for that in the coming days!
Literary/Upmarket Fiction
Is This a Cry for Help? by Emily Austin (January 13th)
Darcy’s life turned out better than she could have ever imagined. She is a librarian at the local branch, while her wife Joy runs a book binding service. Between the two of them, there is no more room on their shelves with their ample book collections, various knickknacks and bobbles, and dried bouquets. Rounding out their ideal life is two cats and a sun-soaked house by the lake.
But when Darcy receives the news that her ex-boyfriend, Ben, has passed away, she spirals into a pit of guilt and regret, resulting in a mental breakdown and medical leave from the library. When she returns to work, she is met by unrest in her community, and protests surrounding intellectual freedom, resulting in a call for book bans and a second look at the branch’s upcoming DEI programs.
Through the support of her community, colleagues, and the personal growth that results from examining her previous relationships, Darcy comes into her own agency and the truest version of herself.
Fire Sword & Sea by Vanessa Riley (January 13th)
The Caribbean Sea, 1675. Jacquotte Delahaye is the mixed-race daughter of a wealthy tavern owner on the island of Tortuga. Instead of marriage, Jacquotte dreams of joining the seafarers and smugglers whose tall-masted ships cluster in the turquoise waters around Tortuga. She falls in love with a pirate, but when he returns to the sea, Jacquotte decides to make her own way. In Haiti she becomes Jacques, a dockworker, earning the respect of those around her while hiding her gender.
Jacquotte discovers that secret identities are fairly common in the chaotic world of seafaring, which is full of outsiders and misfits. She forms a deep bond with Bahati, an African-born woman who has escaped slavery and also disguises herself as a man to navigate the world. They join forces with Dirkje De Wulf, a fearless adventurer who also lives as a man at sea. As Jacques, Jacquotte falls in love with Lizzôa d’Erville, a beautiful courtesan who deals in secrets and sex. While others see their work clothes as a disguise, Lizzôa’s true self is as a woman.
For the next twenty years, Jacquotte raids the Caribbean, making enemies and amassing a fortune in stolen gold. When her fellow pirates decide to increase their profits by entering the slave trade, Jacquotte turns away from piracy and the pursuit of riches. Risking her life in one deadly skirmish after another, she instead begins to plot a war of liberation.
Sheer by Vanessa Lawrence (January 13th)
It’s 2015 and Maxine Thomas, the founder and creative director of the cult makeup company Reveal, has just been suspended by her own Board for a scandalous transgression. Housebound in her New York City apartment, where she awaits the verdict on her future, Max recounts her version of the events that have brought her to this moment.
From her start as a precocious suburban child in the eighties to her decades as a workaholic visionary, Max proselytizes a sheer, dewy look—cosmetics through a female gaze—all while battling sexist investors, the whiplash of cultural change, and the mounting pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. But when Max’s story catches up to her present, she must contend with the cost of true transparency. Who has she become in her relentless pursuit of success? And what will happen if she loses it all?
The Iridescents: Stories by Emrys Donaldson (January 15th)
Steeped in a fabulist version of the American South, The Iridescents highlights how the LGBTQ+ community transforms everyday acts of support and survival into miracles, redefining sainthood and spiritual history through the lens of queer resilience and fierce joy. A trans man visits a donut shop with his ailing dog to pray for advice. Genderqueer lovers search the desert for a ballerina saint. Three-hundred-year-old crustacean oracles predict the future of our oceans. Blending irreverence with reverence, these stories explore the contemporary yearning to find meaning in something larger than ourselves.
Steppe by Oksana Vasyakina, translated by Elina Alter (January 20th)
A decade after her father walks out on her family, the narrator of Steppe, now a literature student, decides to spend some time with him on the road as he makes deliveries across the vast plains of Russia. She’s attracted and repulsed by his rugged life as a trucker, eager to reckon with the ways he’s imprinted on her, to understand the person who made her, to witness their family likenesses.
But the prematurely aged, drug-ruined man secretly being consumed by AIDS who meets her at the train station has little revelation to offer her yearning heart. As he drives her across a severe landscape in his freight truck, the narrator reflects on her father’s role as a small piece of the extensive, violent patriarchal structure of Russian society and the post-Soviet chaos of the 1990s. Always humming in the background, the austere beauty and mercurial nature of the steppe reminds her of the contradictions at the heart of their relationship—both natural and forced; intimate and estranged.
Oksana Vasyakina’s second novel of aching familial hurt pierces the surface of human relations and reaches into the depths of shame, longing, and grief that lie beneath. In simple, precise prose she paints a vivid portrait of estrangement and situates it in the broader context of her country’s attempts to reckon with its troubled history.
George Falls Through Time by Ryan Collett (January 20th)
Newly laid off George’s internet bill is in his ex-boyfriend’s name. He’s got a spider-infested apartment, and two of the six dogs he’s walking in London have just escaped. It’s pure undiluted stress that sends him into a spiral—all the way to the year 1300.
When he comes to, George recognizes the same rolling hills of Greenwich Park. But the luxuries and phone service of modernity are nowhere. In their place are locals with a bizarre, slanted speech in awe of his foreign clothes, who swiftly toss him in a dungeon. Despite the barbarity of a medieval world, a servant named Simon helps George acclimate to a simpler, easier existence. But rumors of a dragon haunting the countryside and a summons from the King threaten to send his life up in flames—this time, literally.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno (January 20th)
A woman haunted by a dark inheritance returns to the woods where her mother vanished, in this queer Gothic novel.
Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her family’s deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods. But a quick, practical trip takes a turn for the worse when the rot and creak of the forest starts to creep in around the edges of Sam’s mind. It starts, as it always does, with a beer.
As Sam dips back into the murky waters of dependency, the inexplicable begins to arrive at her door and her body takes on a strange new shape. As the borders of reality begin to blur, she senses she is battling something sinister—whether nested in the woods or within herself.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Under the Umbrella Bookstore
On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield (January 27th)
When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own.
Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer.
But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.
Missing Sam by Thrity Umrigar (January 27th)
One night after a party, old grievances surface between married couple Aliya and Sam and the night ends badly with a heated argument. Sam goes for a run early the next morning to clear her head—and doesn’t come back.
Aliya reports her wife missing, but as a gay, Muslim daughter of immigrants, she can’t escape the scrutiny and suspicion of those around her. Scared and furious and feeling isolated as strangers and acquaintances alike doubt her innocence, Aliya makes one wrong choice after another. She must fight to prove her innocence in the public eye even as she is torn between her fear that Sam is dead and her desire to find and save her wife. But is safety ever truly possible for them?
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements (January 27th)
A feral shut-in discovers a disturbing internet porn video of what seems to be herself. A seance of coked-up artists summons unearthly forces in a studio apartment. The staircase of an exurban marketing company descends endlessly beneath the earth.
In Aoife Josie Clements’ electric, nightmarish, intricately layered novel, the impossibility of goodness crowds in upon two young trans women barely surviving on sex work and zero-hours contracts. Below the familiar evils of capitalism and the bottomless depths of internet culture, a darker horror awaits. What curse follows these women? What are they escaping? What are they running towards?
Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Howarth (February 3rd)
This is the US edition.
In this follow up to the award winning Sunburn, a claustrophobic tale of obsession, family, and identity…
In January, 1965, the growing town of Ballycrea has four new residents.
The O’Leary siblings arrive in their new village under suspicious circumstances. Desperate to make a new start and leave their troubled life behind, the O’Learys offer few, contradicting details about their past.
As they slowly settle in to town, the siblings are taken under the wing of Betty and Bill Nevan, a wealthy couple in their forties who have always wanted children. However, as one O’Leary sister grows close to Betty, lines are crossed and their intense relationship becomes difficult to define. All the while, the O’Leary’s buried secrets keep bubbling up, threatening to ruin their new future.
Night Terminus by Ellis Scott (February 3rd)
Beginning with a chance encounter in 1985, an unnamed narrator embarks on a physical and spiritual sojourn over four decades. From a one-night stand in Paris with the troubled and enigmatic Louis; to Montreal, through a divided Europe, and into the Iranian desert with the sick yet determined Yuri; and finally to Provence, where he meets the gregarious but wistful Frank, the narrator encounters a cast of exiles, fugitives, rebels, and artists. In a journey across continents and decades, we watch the impacts of one of the greatest health crises of the last hundred years through the eyes of those who both survived it and must now remember those who didn’t.
So Very Lucky by Caitlin Devlin (March 1st)
You knew her. You loved her. Then she vanished…
When celebrated singer Calista plunges to her death during a concert in Rio, her former girlfriend Stevie is watching, along with the rest of the world. But while millions of fans mourn, Stevie can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right.
Then Calista returns―alive, a little changed, but wanting Stevie back in her life for the first time in years. At first, seeing her again feels like a miracle. But as Stevie is drawn deeper into Calista’s world of smoke and mirrors, she begins to question everything: Calista’s overprotective team, the gaps in her memory and the clues that don’t add up about what really happened the night she fell.
As she gets closer to the truth, Stevie is also falling for Calista all over again. Stevie must decide: is uncovering the truth worth losing the person she loves twice?
That’s What Friends are For by Wade Rouse (March 3rd)
Theodore Copeland has created a fabulous life in the desert oasis of Palm Springs, where he shares a fabulous pink mid-century home with three fabulous friends: Barry, a former actor still clinging to his youth, his hair, and the memory of the dream role that killed his career; Ron, an uprooted Christian from the Midwest with a big heart but no one to give it to; Sid, who, after coming out late in life, has never found love. Teddy is the caustic, unspoken leader of “The Golden Gays”—the foursome’s monthly drag tribute to The Golden Girls. Despite their foibles and bickering, they have turned their golden years into a golden era.
But the harmony of their desert enclave becomes a carousel of emotional baggage when Teddy’s estranged sister, Trudy, shows up on their doorstep, her dramatic teenage granddaughter in tow. While Teddy keeps Trudy at arm’s length, she manages to wheedle her way into the lives of the Golden Gays, until the real reason for her visit is revealed and the secrets they’ve all been keeping from each other unravel faster than a hastily stitched hemline.
The Disappointment by Scott Broker (March 3rd)
It’s the night before a much-needed vacation, and Jack—a former playwright mourning his failed career—catches his husband, Randy, packing his mother’s urn. They had agreed: no mother on this trip. Parents, living or otherwise, aren’t the ideal guests for romantic getaways. But Randy has been carrying his mother’s remains everywhere since her death, and he isn’t ready to let go now.
Despite its natural beauty and kitschy charm, the Oregon coast does not provide the respite the couple seeks. Instead, their surroundings and encounters with locals grow increasingly surreal as the days pass. An overly -dedicated Method actor, tantra-obsessed neighbors, and a child environmentalist who may be able to communicate with the dead are but a few of the characters whose presence exposes long-simmering tensions that threaten to undo Jack and Randy’s marriage—to say nothing of their hold on reality.
Bloom by Robbie Couch (March 3rd)
Morris Warner is withering away. After the sudden death of his husband, Fred, he has shut himself off from the world. No more going to movies with friends, or swims in Lake Michigan, instead preferring the quiet loneliness of his history books and Jeopardy episodes with only the cat to hear his answers.
Morris’s stepdaughter, Sloan, feels like she has nowhere to grow. She’s about to get married to the man of her dreams, if only her mother will let her actually plan her own wedding and trust her to build her own life after her father’s death.
Jade is drying out. Literally. As a plant in Morris’s home, she and her plant housemates have been slowly wasting away, leaf by falling leaf, since Fred’s death and Morris’s lack of care. She needs to come up with a plan to make her new owner come back to life, no matter what it takes.
Whidbey by T Kira Madden (March 10th)
Birdie Chang didn’t know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it, only that it was about as far away as she could get from her own life. She’s a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend’s eyes—and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and who’s now resurfaced. On her way, she has an unnerving encounter with a stranger on the ferry who offers her a proposition, a sinister solution, a plan for revenge.
But Birdie isn’t the only girl Calvin harmed back then. There’s also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir. Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book’s spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, on the other side of the country, Calvin’s loving mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered.
Calvin’s death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers. A complex whodunnit told from alternating points of view, Whidbey is searingly perceptive and astonishingly original. Exploring the long reach of violence and our flawed systems of incarceration and rehabilitation, this is a tense and provocative debut that’s sure to incite crucial questions about the pursuit of justice and who has real power over a story: the one who lives it, or the one who tells it?
I Love You Don’t Die by Jade Song (March 17th)
For as far back as she can remember, Vicky has been fascinated and obsessed with death as the only inevitable thing in life. From living above a Chinatown funeral parlor to working at a celebrity start-up for bespoke urns, she has surrounded herself with death—in her home, in her work, and in her ever-growing collection of zhizha, paper creations meant to be burned for the dead, adorning the walls of her apartment. Yet, though living in Manhattan and working her dream job is all she ever wanted, she still struggles to have meaningful connections—or find any meaning at all—in her life. Too often she spends the day in bed, only drawn out from time to time by her best (and only) friend, Jen.
That changes when a dating app leads her into a throuple with an artist and a labor organizer, who offer exactly the kind of love she needs. For some time, it’s perfect, but no one understands better than Vicky that all things must end. As doubts grow over the love in her life, her friendship with Jen, and her professional success, the oddly comforting abstraction of death starts becoming something else altogether. With everything beginning to feel hollow and temporary, Vicky must decide how to keep moving forward. To try and hold on to what she has, or to once again do what she does best: destroy.
My Lover, the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum (March 17th)
A psychosexual relationship between a rabbi and the man devoted to him goes off the rails.
The rabbi is, to the untrained eye, far from desirable. Lofty and disorderly, aging and constantly losing members of his flock, he is nonetheless the singular object of obsession for the self-abjecting narrator of My Lover, the Rabbi. From the start of their psychosexual affair, the two men torment, pleasure, and manipulate each other with ardor. When they’re apart, the narrator manically contemplates every element of the rabbi’s being: his alluring adopted son, his false erudition, his patrilineage, his broken-down Pontiac, his out-of-state husband (who the narrator has also slept with), and, maybe most of all, the universe between the rabbi’s legs. Spending time together in the narrator’s bed, in a tiny town near Hoboken, New Jersey, that our narrator is “devastated to admit is my personal address,” a tender, volatile intimacy brews and curdles. To sustain it, the narrator continues on an unrelenting, increasingly urgent quest to understand the mercurial, ardent rabbi’s mysterious past―that is, until he begins to question reality itself. In the process, conflicting truths about the rabbi emerge, with drastic consequences for both men and those around them.
I Am Agatha by Nancy Foley (March 17th)
Agatha, a bristly painter fleeing her own darkness, decamps to rural New Mexico to live the reclusive life of a small-town curmudgeon. It is there she meets Alice, a mild widow with a deepening case of dementia who keeps steady vigil at her daughter’s backyard grave. Despite Agatha’s rough edges and fierce aversion to sentimentality, she surprises herself by falling in love, and her well-worn convictions begin to upend.
As Alice’s condition worsens, Agatha hatches a plan for them to live together at her remote residence at Mesa Portales. But when Alice’s wayward son comes along with different ideas—and Alice suddenly goes missing—Agatha takes matters into her own hands with the help of a faithful thirteen-year-old-neighbor, a pair of shovels, and her trusty pickup, embarking on an unusual mission that calls into question whether some secrets are better kept buried.
Sharp, watchful, at once thrillingly perceptive and hidden from herself, Agatha is as imposing as the vast landscape her rustic adobe home overlooks. Loosely inspired by the life of Agnes Martin, I Am Agatha introduces us to this irascible, indelible character who learns—over a stretch of strange, singular days—new ways to fathom life, death, and her own heart.
Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (March 24th)
Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur in Paris, 1978. Erica is a student, relishing her first summer abroad before beginning university at home in England. Laure is studying for her PhD at the Sorbonne, drinking and smoking far too much, and sleeping with a married woman. The moment the two women meet, the spark is undeniable, but their encounter turns into far more than a summer of love. It is the beginning of a relationship that will define their lives and every decision they have yet to make…
Erica and Laure’s love story spans decades, marriage, children, secret trysts, and the agonizing changes—both personal and political—that might mean they can be together, after all. But when life brings them within touching distance again, will they be brave enough to seize a future together?
The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann (March 24th)
“Nobody was surprised at Anne’s conviction. The world loves to put a woman in her place.”
The Beheading Game begins in the hours after Anne Boleyn’s beheading, when she wakes to find herself unceremoniously laid to rest in a makeshift coffin, her head wrapped in linen at her knees. Discarded by King Henry VIII for being unable to give him a male heir and reviled by Cromwell for being too smart for her own good, she was ultimately executed based on trumped-up charges of adultery, incest, and high treason.
Anne escapes the Tower of London, sews her head back on, then sets out on a quest to kill Henry VIII before he can marry her own lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour. The stakes are high—if Jane gives birth to a rival heir, Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, will lose her claim to the throne. Traveling the streets of London in the guise of a commoner, with the help of a prostitute who becomes a trusted friend (and perhaps something more), Anne soon realizes how little she knew about life in the real world.
A Good Person by Kirsten King (March 31st)
Lillian and Henry have been enjoying each other’s company, especially in bed. Even though Lillian’s best friend calls it a “situationship,” Lillian is determined to lock Henry down—and she has a plan. She’ll be the best, most accommodating version of herself until he falls in love with her. But when Henry blindsides Lillian with a breakup, Lillian exacts revenge by performing a drunken hex on him.
Lillian expects Henry to come crawling back to her. What she doesn’t quite anticipate is becoming a prime suspect in his murder case when he’s found dead. As Lillian grapples with the loss of her sort-of-boyfriend, she’s hit with another reckoning: That Henry had a long-term girlfriend he also left behind.
Desperate to control the narrative, clear her name, and assume her rightful place as Henry’s mourning girlfriend, Lillian’s pursuit of the truth will throw her into a dangerous tailspin.
Work to Do by Jules Wernersbach (April 7th)
When Eleanor founded Guadalupe Street Co-op in the early 1980s, she was in her mid-twenties and madly in love with her girlfriend, Meg. Together, they envisioned an idyllic grocery store owned by its workers and customers.
Forty years later, Guadalupe Street Co-op is an iconic Austin business with a loyal customer base, an antiquated business model, and a disgruntled staff. Roz, one of the store’s senior managers, is too caught up stalking her ex-wife online to notice that her girlfriend, Molly, is plotting with her coworkers to unionize. Roz also doesn’t see that Molly is not-so-secretly in a situationship with Randy, the dairy manager leading their collective.
Unfolding over the course of a single week during Texas hurricane season, Work to Do pings between the co-op’s first year and present day, as the unionization bid reaches fever pitch. The wind howls, the power goes out, and water creeps through the front door as questions of who owns the grocery store and who has a right to its future are posed. And will the workers ever be paid enough to buy the organic groceries they shelve?
Surrender by Jennifer Acker (April 14th)
Lucy Richard has enjoyed a two-decade-long, successful career in public relations in New York City when she feels compelled to move back to rural Massachusetts to try to save her father’s farm. Returning to her childhood home at age 47 is hard enough, but the difficulties multiply once she’s settled in: her determination to raise dairy goats and make cheese is hampered at first by her total inexperience, and then by the sudden loss of her farming mentor. To make matters worse, her husband, Michael, who followed her to the farm reluctantly and who has made a disastrous financial decision, is suddenly in severely declining health.
Lucy finds solace in Sandy, a girlhood companion who quickly becomes more than a friend, but their new intimacy places the Richard farm in the crosshairs of Sandy’s employer, a solar energy company. How Lucy contends with the precariousness—at once financial, physical and emotional— of her new life, and with the competing passions and obligations that grow within and around her, is at the heart of this intimate drama of love and loss, of desire and friendship, and of the alluring possibilities of second acts.
American Spirits by Anna Dorn (April 14th)
Thirty-eight-year-old Blue Velour has finally achieved the critical acclaim she’s long been chasing. Over the last decade, she’s released six studio albums to mixed reviews, landing her somewhere between performance artist and niche legend. But her latest album, Blue’s Beard—a cheeky reference to the subreddit fanatically dedicated to her suspected secret relationship with longtime producer Sasha Harlow—has rocket-launched her reputation. Blue hires nerdy superfan Rose Lutz as her assistant to handle the pressures of the upcoming tour.
When the pandemic shuts down the tour, however, Blue decides to hole up in the redwoods with Sasha to make another album. An aspiring singer herself, Rose is frothing at the mouth to be isolated in a cabin with these two legends, but what begins as a creative retreat spirals into a flurry of chaos and betrayal—culminating in a tragic act that changes their lives forever.
Temporary Palaces by Jeff Miller (April 21st)
In the fevered summer of 2001, charismatic activist Rob and his collective set up a squat in an abandoned house. His bandmate and lover, Ben, watches anxiously as his own plans are threatened by Rob’s choice of radical politics over music. Meanwhile, photographer Alex finds herself torn between documenting the chaos of the scene and saving the friendship that binds them together. When the police break up the squat, Rob vanishes, and the dream dies.
Ten years later, Alex and Ben find each other again―she’s conquering Montreal’s contemporary art world, he’s running a thriving restaurant in Ottawa. But their success feels hollow. As they excavate their shared past, they must confront the ghost of Rob’s disappearance and the trauma that pushed them apart.
Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell (April 21st)
And who did I think I was, trying to teach the troubled youth how to write?…
I would say I was Dan Moran, a Korean adoptee, single, approaching forty, once plain-in-appearance as a woman, now ugly as a man, that’s who or what I thought I was.
Most importantly, I was no longer useless, I was a writer.
Five years after the death of his youngest brother, Dan Moran is now the published trans author of the autofictional novel Sorry to Disrupt the Peace. He is teaching fiction in Brooklyn and working on his next book–a psychological thriller–when a mysterious envelope arrives for him in the mail. Addressed to the wrong name, it includes a childhood photo of his deceased brother. But who would send such a thing, and why?
Against his better judgment, Dan returns to his childhood home on the eve of his brother’s memorial dinner. His estranged family is surprised to see him, but he ignores them. He drives around in his brother’s Honda Accord, believing he is a detective. He searches for a constellation of unidentified women who may have been involved with his brother, all while being mistaken for another man. He hopes his investigation will reveal exactly who he was to his brother, but in a series of unsettling and destabilizing encounters, what he discovers is the irrevocable distance between who we are and how we are perceived.
The Castle of Stories by Matt Cain (April 28th)
Stories don’t always unfold quite the way you expect them to, and Adam Webb has reason to be glad of that. Out of the blue, he’s inherited a farmhouse and castle in Tuscany from a great uncle he never met. It’s the catalyst for Adam to give up his HR job in Manchester and fly out to Italy for the summer to do repairs on the home he hopes to turn into a rental. The best part: he’ll be sharing this summer of adventure with his partner of two years, Theo. It’s a fairytale in the making.
But there’s a last-minute twist, in the shape of Theo’s three children. Theo’s ex-wife can’t take them for the summer after all, so Callum, Mabel, and Archie are coming to Italy too. Their open hostility to their dad’s boyfriend isn’t helped by the lack of Wi-Fi and the mounting chaos of renovation problems and bad plumbing, not to mention the resident lizards and mice.
Despite everything, Adam finds himself falling in love with the place, whether he’s watching golden sunsets from the castle ruins with Theo, sipping coffee on the patio, or driving around the neighboring medieval towns. And as they sort through Uncle Wilf’s possessions, another story begins to take shape—one that will help Adam navigate the family secrets that have marred his past and the decisions that will shape his future. What emerges isn’t a fairytale, but it’s a rich, complex narrative of love, acceptance, and second chances that could pave the way for the best kind of happy ever after.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
Fat Swim by Emma Copley Eisenberg (April 28th)
With a brash and stylish voice that implicates and confronts the reader, Emma Copley Eisenberg wades into the contradictions, joys, and violence of a modern world shaped by looking and watching, examining how our hungers can both hijack and crack open our lives. In the title story, a young girl looks to a group of fat women at her local pool to teach her about her changing body. In “Swiffer Girl,” a woman agrees to try for a baby with her partner, only to suddenly find herself haunted by the viral sex video that made the rounds during high school—a video indelibly tied to her own sense of self. In other stories, an obscure fat makeup vlogger’s strange friendship with a middle schooler forces her to reflect on her past life at a toxic beauty startup, a boomer retiree tries to understand her nonbinary child’s gender and polyamory, and a trans librarian takes a job as assistant to a famous science fiction writer only to find himself screening hookups on his octogenarian employer’s behalf.
For better or for worse, these stories counsel, none of us can leave our bodies behind: they remind us what it is to be alive. As the characters in Fat Swim dance into and out of each other’s lives—and through and around Philadelphia—they seek connections and experiences that remind them of that fact, culminating in a reality-bending, tour de force finale, “Camp Sensation.”
John of John by Douglas Stuart (May 5th)
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal begrudgingly resumes his old life, stuck between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for several decades. Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything seems poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly knotted.
Homebound by Portia Elan (May 5th)
It’s 1983 and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. She’s nineteen, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete—one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness.
Little does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. All are bound together by their search for connection—and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space.
Beloved Disciples by Mario Elias (May 12th)
In a sun-bleached Caribbean town, Simón is haunted by the ghost of his lover Albi, by the weight of family, and by a faith that no longer comforts. Once bound together by whispered prayers and saltwater kisses, Simón and Albi carved a secret world from the shadows. But when Albi dies unexpectedly, that world begins to unravel.
Now, Simón finds Albi everywhere: in the rectory where they made love, in the queer sanctuaries of their found family, in the ache of things unsaid. As his estranged Catholic mother reappears with promises and expectations, Simón is torn between the love that consumes him and the version of himself he’s been running from. Past and present bleed together, memory distorts, and reality slips into something more uncertain—more sacred.
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Kitchen Venom by Philip Hensher (May 12th)
As a senior clerk in the House of Commons, John is a man of gravitas, a well-respected widower with two grown-up daughters, who upholds establishmentarian codes of morality and decency. What his colleagues don’t know is that he harbors a secret predilection for rent boys. Afternoon assignations in his current squeeze’s discreet Earl’s Court flat are one thing, but when his reputation, his job, and his relationship with his friends and family are all threatened, John takes desperate measures to protect himself. Set during the last days of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, and ingeniously narrated by an all-knowing incarnation of the Prime Minister herself, Kitchen Venom is a lethally entertaining story of sex, secrets, and scandal.
A sensation when it was published in the UK in 1996, Kitchen Venom cost Philip Hensher his own job as a clerk in the British House of Commons—an achievement “all the more remarkable,” the Independent noted, given the vehicle of this ruination was “a stunningly intelligent, assured and compelling novel.”
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All Them Dogs by Djamel White (May 19th)
A young Irish gangster is caught in a brutal dance between love and loyalty
Tony Ward is back in Dublin. After five years in England, where he fled after murdering a rival gang member, he returns to find that his mentor is dead and his best friend has gone straight.
Keen to reestablish himself, he jumps at the chance to work for the enforcer of a local crime boss. But Flute Walsh is a far cry from the boy Tony once knew. Drawn to Flute in ways he never expected, Tony finds that the boundaries he thought he understood are beginning to break down. Is there room for connection in a world where nothing stays buried and where retribution is just a bullet away?
The House of Now and Then by Edward Underhill (May 19th)
Harlowe could use a break. With his academic future over, just like his relationship with his long-term boyfriend Jackson, a suspiciously cheap summer rental on the Cape feels like just the escape he needs.
But when he arrives at the picturesque seaside cottage, he’s alarmed to find his discouraging former professor in the living room. His father making coffee in the kitchen. And a handsome young repairman fixing things in the bedroom. Worst of all, Jackson is in the bathroom. None of them will leave. No one else can see them. And they won’t leave him alone.
The house isn’t magic only for Harlowe, and as the summer grows hot and thick with tourists, old wounds and fresh secrets—both in and outside its walls—begin to transform him. It’s clear the house is trying to tell him something, and he’s sure it has to do with the mysterious repairman who suddenly seems to be everywhere he looks… But can Harlowe let go of the past long enough to listen?
All Us Saints by Katherine Packert Burke (May 19th)
Exactly 19 years ago, in May of 1992, 17-year-old Roland St. Cloud fatally stabbed his twin sister Edna’s three best friends. The slaying became instant tabloid fodder leading to a bestselling true-crime book and horror movie franchise. Each year on the anniversary of her family’s undoing, Edna reenacts the murders. She is joined by her husband, Roger, the night’s definitive chronicler; her younger sister Calla, a failed playwright who spends her days lost in online gaming; her younger brother James and his girlfriend Heather; and her teenage daughter Wren. Together, the St. Cloud family seals the windows and doors of the house and lights a grim candle. After their macabre theatrics there’s nothing to do but wait for dawn, talk among themselves, and remember.
Take Me With You by Steven Rowley (May 19th)
College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband Norman get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and . . . disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly . . . will he ever return? Jesse knew they were longing for something, both feeling stuck. But had Norman been so stuck that his only option was to leave Jesse behind?
As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole?
When Norman’s sister Lally lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.
Decomposition Book by Sara Van Os (May 19th)
Spiraling from a disastrous falling-out with her best friend, Savannah retreats to her parents’ empty lake house in upstate New York to tend her wounds. Isolated and reeling from rejection, she spends her days in a fog, drinking and overthinking in equal worrisome measure. Until she wakes up one morning in the woods behind the house—next to a dead body.
Instead of calling the police, Savannah reads the journal she finds nearby, reliving the last desperate months of this woman’s life lost in the wilderness, fighting for survival. Ava, as it turns out, is more than just a cold, lonely corpse. She was funny. She was smart. And Savannah has finally found someone she can talk to…
As she pushes deeper into Ava’s harrowing story, Savannah notices a change, a shift in her reality. Each page brings her closer to the Ava from the journal…and the ghost before her now. Before long, Savannah feels something for Ava she hasn’t felt for anyone else—and there’s a good chance letting go would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Is Savannah finally losing her grip? Or has she found the friend she’s needed all along?
The Dinner Party by Cat Fitzpatrick (May 19th)
The Dinner Party returns to the chaotic and adorable world of trans femme. The title piece begins… “The ‘Rona being now at last abated,” and continues with cameo portraits of the seven guests she plans to invite, including:
Together, as we had in days gone by.
I asked Rakshasi, clad in black, so thin,
So eager for some trouble to get in,
Of any kind, and Sophie, blunt and dry,
Who often ended up the night so pissed
She’d trip and fall when climbing up the stairs,
And learned Bridget, sweet, beset by cares,
Who always talks about her therapist ––
My besties. Plus I asked along a pair
Of mascs: Adonis, such a charming youth,
More interested in beauty than in truth
Who drives a motorbike and braids his hair,
And Dominic, less young, but full of poise,
A trickster with a most provoking grin,
More pleased with contradiction than with sin,
And even more with argument than boys,
Joining “The Dinner Party” are several other themed pieces, including “A Stay in the Country,” a short arcadian pageant, “Baby Book,” about the trials and tribulations of making babies as queer and transsexual couples, “Letter to Crabstick,” an epistolatory friendship, and “Uxorious Sonnets,” a collection of eight love poems, among them Sonnet 6 in which she writes:
it’s almost terrifying when we fuck
how there I am, how in that jostle and shove
of flesh, my thoughts, that mostly run amuck,
contract to simply shouting Love You Love.
No God But Us by Bobuq Sayed (May 26th)
Two gay Afghan men—cast out of their respective countries of birth by circumstances beyond their control—collide in Istanbul, a city that will test their willingness to sacrifice everything for the ones they love.
When Delbar—a hapless twenty-something with dreams of becoming a drag queen—is spectacularly outed, he flees the insular immigrant-dense suburbs of Washington, DC to seek refuge with his sympathetic aunt in Istanbul. There, he discovers a vibrant community of dissidents, sex workers, activists, poets, and heretics. Among them are Leif and his boyfriend, Mansur, with whom Delbar quickly develops a blazing fascination.
But Mansur also nurses a wounded heart, having left his own family, and his first love, behind in Iran. This time, Mansur’s learned not to dream bigger than his own survival. He’ll keep a low profile, work hard to send money back, and remain faithful to Leif—at least until his refugee status is granted.
When riot police descend on attendees of the annual Istanbul Pride march, Mansur and Delbar are thrust into dangerous proximity. With the country surging into authoritarianism, each person must ask themselves: what constitutes a life well-lived, and how high is the price of freedom?
The Maidenheads by Benny B. Peterson (May 26th)
Jamie is bad at endings, which is why she’s stuck at a dead-end Baltimore newspaper job, continuing to have break-up sex with her first-ever hetero partner, and haunted by the what-ifs of her ex-girlfriend Mari—a charismatic and brilliant musician—and their former band together, the Maidenheads. Since they (and their band) broke up a decade ago, Jamie hasn’t been able to sing.
Then an unexpected opportunity to perform in DC with Mari’s successful new band arises, and Jamie jumps at it. What begins as a return to music becomes a reckoning—with the weight of unfinished love, the voice she long buried, and her own complicated past. But as Jamie channels more of her energy into the band, other threads in her life begin to fray, and she must make some urgent choices about her future.
Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You by Julián Delgado Lopera (May 26th)
Isolated in a dreary Bogotá apartment, Ignacio’s light has dimmed, leaving his teenage daughter Valentina to raise herself in the wake of her mother’s death. Valentina longs to discover the details of her mother’s drowning and for Ignacio to snap out of his depression―his listless afternoons spent smoking cigarettes in long blonde wigs, telenovelas humming in the background, haunted by memories of the young man he loved and betrayed.
From Ignacio’s dark past emerges the luminous Mamadora Eléctrica, the wise travesti who introduced Ignacio to the city’s queer scene years prior. Stepping into a maternal role for Valentina, Mamadora fears the worst: that Ignacio’s self-loathing may have unleashed a curse on them all.
There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood by Rasheed Newson (June 2nd)
Xavier C. Barlow, one of Hollywood’s young Black stars taking the industry by storm in the late 1950s, is Skyline Studios’s ambitious attempt to rival Sidney Poitier’s burgeoning success. His arrival into the industry is calculated, his charm is magnetic, and his seductive screen presence appeals to both audiences and celebrities across generations.
But years later, after Xavier dies at the height of his fame, Aaron Touissant—Skyline’s designated backlot fixer who helps the studio’s stars stay as deep in the closet as humanly possible—is finally ready to expose the powerful culprits responsible for his untimely death.
They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame (June 2nd)
It’s the fall of 2024, and twenty-four-year-old Cat isn’t asking for too much: all she wants is three boyfriends, to write her little novels, and to survive another chaotic presidential election. She’s in an open relationship with her college sweetheart Jay, but nonmonogamy isn’t just a hot trend she’s trying. It’s her sliver of freedom in a world eager to wrestle it from her for being a Black woman going after what she wants with reckless abandon.
While political tensions roil the campus where Cat is slowly earning her creative writing degree, she finds herself drawn to Jay’s best friend, Tristan, who’s smart, super hot, and…in a monogamous relationship. And then she meets Tristan’s girlfriend, Nia, a captivating art student with her own gravitational pull.
Friends and family urge her to just be happy with Jay, but Cat is determined to have it all—or blow up her life trying. As she falls for all the wrong people, racking up lies, betrayals, and terrible drafts of her novel, she tries to write her way to a happy ending. But in art, politics, and love, true liberation may take more than rewriting the old scripts. It may mean inventing something entirely new.
Girl’s Girl by Sonia Feldman (June 2nd)
Fifteen-year-old Mina’s whole world is her two best friends, but after an unexpected kiss, the established dynamics of their trio quickly unravel. Everything that was once shared openly, from clothes to secrets, now feels impossibly fragile. Loyalties shift and tensions simmer across the long days of this pivotal summer, where the girls have nowhere new to go and everything new to feel.
Looking back, an adult Mina traces the undercurrents of longing that shaped her first experience of desire. The rituals of girlhood—gossip, selfies, sleepovers, and videogames—become threads in a delicate, volatile web of intimacy, in which everything feels achingly fleeting and permanently etched. Loving one person, Mina learns, can change the way we love everyone else—including ourselves.
Intrusive Intentions by Sebastian J. Plata (June 2nd)
Life back home might’ve been boring and predictable, but it was safe…
Coming to terms with his sexuality and craving adventure, twenty-one-year-old American Daniel begins a semester abroad in Kraków, Poland. It’s not only a stunning city full of culture, but Daniel also hits the jackpot with his host family.
Young couple Henryk and Aneta Lis, and their little son Kuba are wonderful―and ultra-wealthy! Daniel can’t believe his luck. But the more time he spends with beautiful and charismatic Aneta, the more he senses that his fairy tale experience is turning dark . . .
He’s soon sucked into a powerful and dangerous web of obsession, deceit, and connivance that will make him wish he’d never left his quiet hometown . . .
We Are Gathered Here Today by Bobby Finger (June 16th)
But this next wedding will test their decade-old tradition in more ways than one. Now, one of their own is getting married—Fin’s beloved cousin, Elaine—at a Wild West-themed venue in the sweltering Texas summer heat that is as meticulously itineraried as it is kitchy. Reserving opinions won’t be easy, and on top of that Fin has a secret that threatens his officiant duties: he’s just gotten engaged to the man of his dreams, and a sense of unease has him questioning if he believes in the institution of marriage at all.
As Fin joins the rambunctious and increasingly unhinged “queer table”, old friendships are tested and new relationships are formed. Will each guest hold back their particular views on love, commitment, and the wedding before Elaine can say “I do”? And if not, could those confessions ultimately give Fin the courage to uncover his truth?
Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn (June 23rd)
The only thing Susan loves more than music is Eliza, and both keep breaking her heart.
The first time Susan and Eliza meet, it’s 2005, and Susan is barreling down the Long Island Expressway driving a group of friends to an indie rock show. Eliza is a surprise addition to the backseat, and she doesn’t quite fit in; she’s a little too pretty, and she doesn’t know anything about music, but Susan is drawn to her anyway. Their flying sparks lead to combustion when Susan recognizes Eliza as the girl from a nude photo boys have been sending around. They part ways, and Susan assumes that’s the end of it. Susan goes off to college and onto a career in Brooklyn’s indie music scene, where she navigates a toxic job at a small record label and learns hard lessons about who exactly has the privilege of making art under late-stage capitalism.
In 2015, in her twenties, Susan has a chance run-in with Eliza on a dating app, and they finally embark on a relationship. But Eliza is plagued by her traumatic past, which involves people Susan is still involved with, and that’s where it all falls apart again. Over the next few years, Susan’s career takes off, she helps dismantle a predatory work environment, and meets someone new who might actually be good for her. Yet she can’t stop thinking about Eliza. What might have been, if things had gone differently? And who might Susan become if she could only let Eliza go?
Skin Contact by Elisa Faison (June 23rd)
A newly open marriage brings discovery, excitement, and upheaval to a young couple, and to the friends and lovers in their orbit.
Thirty years old and reeling from her mother’s recent death, Frances feels as if she’s lost her sense of purpose, her joy; her husband, Ben, will do anything to help her. So when she suggests that they open their marriage, he’s willing—and maybe even a little intrigued. They invite a young woman into their bedroom, create a joint dating profile, and go on dates with other exploring couples, with mixed but often exciting results. Over the next five years, they explore their sexualities, navigating through jealousy, betrayal, desire, and obsession—and the friends and lovers in their circle find themselves asking new questions about their own lives and relationships. When Ben finds himself falling in love with another woman, just as Frances realizes she’s ready to settle down and have a baby, they’re forced to confront the consequences of their experiment.
Little Wild by Laura Evans (June 23rd)
Suffolk, 1937. As the English countryside swelters in a historic heat wave, preparations for a party at Snare House are in full swing. The Winthers’ only daughter, Joanie, is returning from a summer in Europe, a flying visit before she leaves for university in Oxford. Only Margaret, long-time ward of the family and Joanie’s closest friend, knows the truth: Joanie won’t be going to Oxford. Instead, the two will be leaving the stultifying society they know to live together in London, as lovers.
Then the pair is discovered, and everything goes wrong. Banished to a cabin in the nearby woods, Margaret is alone with her estranged father. As summer curdles into autumn and magpies throng the forest, Margaret begins to lose herself. Her dreams turn dark and terrifying, and she wakes from them with dirt on her soles and scratches on her back. Everything suggests that a perverse power is awakening within her―perhaps the very one which led to her mother’s ostracism and eventual death. If she can harness it, Margaret may be able to secure an approximation of the love she’s always craved―but at what cost?
Wasp’s Nest by Kat Stoddard (June 30th)
Tess wants nothing more than for her upcoming society wedding to overshadow the failure of her first marriage. Her fiancé Warren, a steady soon-to-be state senator, is nothing like her first husband. Tess’s relationship with working-class artist Peter was a passionate crash-and-burn, and a chapter of her life that she’s ready to forget.
Peter hasn’t seen Tess in five years, so he’s shocked to receive an invitation to her wedding. But he’s moved on too, and it wouldn’t hurt to prove it by showing up with a handsome younger man as his plus-one. Mitch, an aspiring writer, is intrigued by Peter and jumps at the chance to pry into the lives of his Waspy ex-in-laws. What he’s not bargained for is developing serious feelings for both Peter and Peter’s ex—Tess, the bride. But Peter and Tess have complex desires of their own, and Mitch is dangerously close to uncovering them.
SFF/H
Jackson Alone by Jose Ando (January 6th)
Four Black Japanese gay men team up against a culture where discrimination is deep-seated and revenge is just a click away.
Nobody at the corporate offices of Athletius Japan knows much about the massage therapist Jackson—but rumors abound. He used to work as a model. He likes to party. He’s mixed race—half-Japanese, half-somewhere-in-Africa-n. He might be gay. Fueling the gossip is the sudden appearance of a violent pornographic video featuring a man who looks a lot like Jackson.
When Jackson serendipitously meets three other queer mixed-race guys, he learns he’s not the only one being targeted. Together they concoct a plan: find out who’s responsible and, in the meantime, switch identities and play tricks on people—a boyfriend, a boss—who’ve wronged them, exploiting the fact that nobody can seem to tell them apart.
Into the Midnight Wood by Alexandra McCollum (January 13th)
There are at least 100 things wrong with Meredith Schwarzwelder. In fact, keeping track of these things is the only way David Carew has managed to remain living with him for as long as he has. Meredith is an irredeemable eccentric who flirts with everyone in his path (#3 on the list), cries at anything (#35), makes the worst coffee in the world (#70), and talks to mice, or imagines he does (#50).
It’s bad enough living with such a person on the edge of the Midnight Wood, but when magic starts to seep from the wood and a dark being emerges with a sinister plan involving Meredith, David decides that it’s time to leave the cottage, and his roommate, behind. Then Meredith’s brother gets engaged to the daughter of David’s boss, and David sees an opportunity: If he can insert himself into the festivities, maybe he can advance his career and get himself out of a personal rut.
With wedding bells sounding and the dangers of the Midnight Wood encroaching, David realizes there’s much more hiding beneath the surface of his roommate’s seemingly carefree charm, and that perhaps his own exasperation carries more fondness than he’d like to admit.
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The Book of Blood and Roses by Annie Summerlee (January 13th)
“Then her red eyes are on mine, gentle, deadly. . . . She takes her time, kissing my neck. . . . I pull her closer, and I say, Bite me.”
In the mists of the Scottish Highlands is a university where vampires study alongside humans.
Rebecca Charity is a vampire hunter undercover at the university, searching for the mysterious Book of Blood and Roses, a lost compendium of ways to kill vampires. If she finds it, she’ll be one step closer to avenging her parents, who were slain by those creatures of the night.
But when Rebecca arrives, she finds something unexpected: a coffin. Her new roommate is Aliz Astra, scion of one of the most powerful vampire families . . . and the most beautiful woman Rebecca has ever met.
The maddeningly gorgeous Aliz is everything that Rebecca has always hated but also everything she’s ever wanted, and now Rebecca doesn’t know if she wants to kiss or kill her.
When one moonlit night Aliz rescues her from a vampire attack, she accidentally makes Rebecca her Familiar. Now they must work together to break the curse—but as they get closer to solving the mystery, Rebecca and Aliz get closer, too.
Can a vampire hunter ever fall in love with a vampire?
City of Others by Jared Poon (January 13th)
In the sunny city of Singapore, the government takes care of everything—even the weird stuff.
Benjamin Toh is a middle manager in the Division for Engagement of Unusual Stakeholders (DEUS), and his job is straightforward: keep the supernatural inhabitants of Singapore happy and keep them out of sight. That is, don’t bother the good, normal citizens, and certainly don’t bother the bosses. Sure, he’s overworked and understaffed, but usually, people (and senior management) don’t see what they don’t want to see.
But when an entire housing estate glitches out of existence on what was meant to be a routine check-in, Ben has to scramble to keep things under control and stop the rest of the city from disappearing. He may not have the budget or the bandwidth, but he has the best—if highly irregular and supernaturally inclined—team to help him. Together, they’ll traverse secret shadow markets, scale skyscrapers, and maybe even go to the stars, all so they can just do their goddamn job.
How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days by Jesse Sylva (January 20th)
What if cottagecore and goblincore fell in love?
When a halfling, Pansy, and a goblin, Ren, each think they’ve inherited the same cottage, they make a bargain: they’ll live in the house together and whoever is driven out first forfeits their ownership.
Amidst forced proximity and cultural misunderstandings, the two begin to fall in love.
But when the cottage – and their communities – are threatened by a common enemy, the duo must learn to trust each other, and convince goblins and halflings to band together to oust the tall intruder.
The Wolf and His King by Finn Longman (January 27th)
A noble knight hiding the beast inside. A lonely king isolated by his courtiers. Between them an impossible gulf surmountable only by the twists and turns of relentless destiny in this spellbinding retelling of Marie de France’s classic 12th-century tale of romance and adventure.
The wolf-sickness strikes always without warning, stealing Bisclavret’s body and confusing his mind. Since boyhood, he hasn’t dared leave his isolated holdings—not to beg the return of his father’s lost estate, not to seek brotherhood among the court, not even to win the knighthood he yearns for. But when a new king ascends, Bisclavret must deliver his kiss of fealty or answer for the failure.
Half an exile himself, the young king is intrigued by this uneasy, rough-hewn nobleman. Bisclavret seems a perfect knight: bold, strong, and merciful. But he keeps his secrets close, and the king’s longings are not for counsel alone. As his fascination grows, the barriers between them multiply, until one day Bisclavret vanishes beyond reach. Battling desperation and grief, the king stands alone to face the greatest threats to his kingdom, with only duty to his people between him and ruin—duty, and the steadfast loyalty of the strangest wolf . . .
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Passage to Tokyo by Poppy Kuroki (January 27th)
In the second book in the Ancestor Memories historical fantasy series, a young woman finds herself back in 1920s Tokyo as Japan enters a new and dangerous era—and a deadly tragedy awaits her city.
Yui Sanada struggles to raise her twelve-year-old brother, Hiro, while contending with the antics of their neglectful, alcoholic mother. During a trip to Ueno Park, Hiro runs away from his sister into a strange passage beneath a samurai statue. Yui chases after him and soon finds herself in a Tokyo far removed from the familiar world of 1995.
When Yui emerges from the tunnel, she cannot find Hiro but meets a young woman named Chiyo and her family and learns she has traveled back through time to 1923. As feelings between the two women develop, Yui and realizes it’s just weeks before the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake will happen, killing tens of thousands and leveling the city. Will Yui be able to find her brother and save her new family from the coming disaster?
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Strothers (February 3rd)
In Which Many Dangerous and Homosexual Things Happen.
All his life, Sir Cameron has stayed as far away from danger as possible. He is quite frankly too handsome to die a pointless death in battle. But then the Church hands down a prophecy to his fellow knights: the only way to defeat their nemesis, the mad sorcerer Merulo, is to kill Sir Cameron. Short of ideas, Cameron throws himself on the mercy of the one person who now actually wants him to survive: the mad sorcerer.
Merulo isn’t thrilled to be babysitting a spoilt, attention-seeking knight, but transmogrifying him into a vulture is at least entertaining. Cameron, meanwhile, is on a voyage of self-discovery. It turns out he’s really, really into surly sorcerers who lock him up and tell him what to do. Who knew?
As a legion of knights surround their stronghold, the sorcerer’s poisonous ambitions draw ever closer to fruition. Cameron is quite invested in not dying, but he finds he’s also invested in Merulo. And sometimes, supporting the sorcerer you care about means taking an interest in their hobbies. Even if that hobby is trying to kill God.
Even if it might get you killed, too.
Nightshade & Oak by Molly O’Neill (February 3rd)
An Iron Age goddess must grapple with becoming human in this delightful historical fantasy of myth and magic.
When Malt, the goddess of death, is accidentally turned human by a wayward spell, she finds she’s ill-equipped to deal with the trials of a mortal life. After all, why would a goddess need to know how to gather food or light a fire?
Unable to fend for herself, she teams up with warrior Bellis on a perilous journey to the afterlife to try to restore her powers. Frustrated by her frail human body and beset with blisters, Malt might not make the best travelling companion.
But as animosity slowly turns to attraction, these two very different women must learn to work together if they are to have any hope of surviving their quest.
Saltswept by Katalina Watt (February 5th)
A pirate faces the gallows drop. A farmer is given a terrible ultimatum to save her daughter. An acolyte ascends to priestesshood, only to find that a blessing really can be a curse. These unlikely bedfellows band together with an inscrutable pickpocket and a talking ottercat in pursuit of the most hopeless of causes: to sail into the Maelstrom, a raging whirlpool from which no one has ever escaped, and find the mysterious treasure hidden within it.
The quest will test their fragile allegiance to its limits, but there is more at stake here than getting rich: the magic of the world is in peril, and the barrier between life and death has never been so thin. And in the Bastion, the seat of power in Paranish, the queen has an unquenchable thirst that threatens the world and everyone in it.
Can there be honour amongst thieves? Without it, they might never see another sunrise.
Buy it: Blackwell’s
A Slow and Secret Poison by Carmella Lowkis (February 10th)
1922, Wiltshire: When Vee Morgan accepts the job of gardener at a crumbling stately home in southwest England, she’s hoping it’s a fresh start.
But Harfold Manor is shadowed by its own grief and the memories of long-faded glory, its rooms haunted by the only surviving member of the family, Lady Arabella Lascy. Vee is fascinated by her enigmatic new employer, a woman obsessed with the curse she believes has killed her family one by one and is coming for her next. Her only hope for escape is a local folktale: the elusive dancing hare that gave her ancestor its blessing and the house its name.
But even as Vee falls deeper under the thrall of Harfold and Lady Arabella, her own dark past finally catches up to her.
The Obake Code by Makana Yamamoto (February 17th)
An all-new, stand-alone sci-fi caper from the author of Hammajang Luck: a bored hacker is forced by vicious gangsters to take down a crooked politician…only to find herself up against a code she might not be able to crack.
After the heist of a lifetime, Malia has it all: a loft apartment aboard the massive Kepler Station, expensive clothes, and a dev credit in her favorite video game. She’s also bored as hell. Three years after retiring her mantle as the Obake, the most infamous hacker in the quadrant—and arguably the galaxy—Malia hasn’t taken well to civilian life. So what’s the harm in rigging a few cybernetic prizefights and making a little cash on the side?
When Malia’s scheme is uncovered, she runs afoul of Jeongah Song—the dangerous leader of a local gang with a reputation for brutality. Malia is ready for retribution. But what she gets instead is an offer she can’t refuse: take down the local politician leading a “clean up the streets” campaign displacing residents and hindering Jeongah’s operations on the space station… or die. Without another way out, Malia takes the deal.
Luckily, she has some friends she can call on in times of need: a master thief, a street racing wheelman, and a femme fatale grifter. But as Malia digs deeper into the politician’s shady dealings, she finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy that might be too big for her to handle. One that has roots in her own rise as the Obake—a cybernetically enhanced superhacker created by a power-mad genius… a superhacker whose mods are rapidly degrading. Faced with threats on all sides, Malia may finally be in over her head…or stuck—forever—inside her own mind.
Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi (February 24th)
YOU KNOW MY NAME, BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.
Your historians call me seductress, but I was ever in love’s thrall.
Your playwrights speak of witchcraft, but my talents came from the gods themselves.
Your poets sing of my bloodlust, but I was always protecting my children.
How wilfully they refuse to concede that a woman could be powerful, strategic, and divinely blessed to rule.
Death will silence me no longer.
This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived.
The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (February 24th)
In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears most: the terrible Beast of Gévaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.
Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel – who takes payment in living hearts – it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.
Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.
But Gévaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastian’s unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastian’s arcane activities – not to mention his demonic counterpart – have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war.
The Faithful Dark by Cate Baumer (February 24th)
This is the city of miracles, but not everything miraculous is good.
In a holy walled city where sin and sanctity are revealed through touch, Csilla – a girl born without a soul – is worth little to the Church that raised her. But when a series of murders corrodes the faithful magic that keep the city safe, the Church elders see a use for her flaw: she can assassinate their prime suspect, a heretic with divine heritage, without risking the stain of sin.
The heretic, however, makes Csilla a counteroffer: clear his name by helping him catch the real killer, and he’ll use his angelic gifts to grant her very own soul. Meanwhile, ruthless Ilan, desperate to earn back his position as Church Inquisitor, sees the case as his chance at redemption: he’ll bring in the murderer – or, failing that, Csilla and the heretic – and regain his title.
But as the death toll rises, and their hunt pits them against the all-powerful and callous Faith, Csilla finds herself torn. Will her salvation come at the cost of everything she believes in?
Black As Diamond by U.M. Agoawike (March 3rd)
A cursed warrior. A reckless healer. A chance to save the world―or condemn it.
Like the rest of the winged eresh keyel, warrior Asaru has spent his life fighting the remnants of a long-dead enemy. When his brother’s squadron disappears from a border keep, Asaru travels into the human realm to investigate, only to become ensnared by a fatal—and unbreakable—curse that could wipe out his people.
When he inadvertently commits a terrible crime, Asaru is thrown into the path of Wren, an emotionally tortured former healer playing with dangerous magic. Bound to one another by a spell gone wrong, and on the run from freelance killers, they set out to find the Chronicler, keeper of the eresh keyel’s history who could bring them answers, redemption, and the cure to Asaru’s curse. But the truths they uncover about the past have the power to break the world into pieces, ending human civilization and settling its remnants into something entirely new.
Ruinous Creatures by Jessi Cole Jackson (March 10th)
In a sanctuary for magical creatures hidden deep within a valley, magic is born from the bones of extraordinary creatures. For generations, a privileged few have siphoned this magic by wearing the skulls of these creatures and wielding their power.
Adela spends her days meticulously preparing these skulls to be matched, ensuring the magic endures and the valley sustains. But when she discovers two phoenix skulls—creatures she had believed only legend—she can’t resist the pull of their dormant magic. Defying the warnings of her mentor, Adela awakens the skulls, unleashing a shockwave of power that throws the valley into chaos.
Meanwhile, determined novitiate Kian prepares for the upcoming matching ceremony, but harbors a secret: he is only participating in order to destroy the magic of the skulls to avenge the death of his parents at the hands of this tradition of power.
As Adela and Kian’s fates intertwine in the matching hut, the connection between them grows deeper and the power of the phoenix skulls grows louder. An impulsive kiss seals their fate—to each other and each to one of the phoenix skull masks. As they grapple with the consequences of their powerful new magic, their fated connection becomes the key to either the valley’s salvation or its ultimate collapse.
Nobody’s Baby by Olivia Waite (March 10th)
This is the sequel to Murder by Memory
Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.
A wild baby appears! Dorothy Gentleman, ship’s detective, is put to the test once again when an infant is mysteriously left on her nephew’s doorstep. Fertility is supposed to be on pause during the Fairweather’s journey across the stars―but humans have a way of breaking any rule you set them. Who produced this child, and why did they then abandon him? And as her nephew and his partner get more and more attached, how can Dorothy prevent her colleague and rival detective, Leloup, a stickler for law and order, from classifying the baby as a stowaway or a piece of luggage?
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The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White (March 10th)
Anneke has a complicated relationship with her father, Abraham Van Helsing—doctor, scientist, and madman devoted to the study of vampires—until the night she comes home to find him murdered, with a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. A woman who leaves no trace behind, other than the dreams and nightmares that now plague Anneke every night.
Spurred by her desire for vengeance and armed with the latest forensic and investigatory techniques, Anneke puts together a team of detectives to catch this mysterious serial killer. Because her father isn’t the only inexplicable dead body. There’s a trail of victims across Europe, and Anneke is certain they’re all connected.
But during the years spent relentlessly hunting the killer, Anneke keeps crucial evidence to herself: infuriatingly coy letters, addressed only to her, occasionally soaked in blood, and always signed Diavola.
The closer Anneke gets to her devil, though, the less sense the world makes. Maybe her father wasn’t a madman after all. Diavola might be something much worse than a serial killer . . . and much harder to destroy. Yet as Anneke unearths more of Diavola’s tragic past, she suspects there’s still a heart somewhere in that undead body.
A heart that beats for Anneke alone.
Witch of the Shadow Wood by Tori Anne Martin (March 10th)
Fifteen years ago, a little girl’s father bartered her away to the old witch in the woods for some magic. Abandoned by her brother, Hans, who promised to keep her safe, Greta learns to embrace her new life as an apprentice to the witch, and starts a new life as Miria.
Two years ago, she rescued a young woman who was lost in those woods, and she fell in love.
Just now, she learned that woman was engaged–against her will–to a man who once was complicit in trading his little sister, who’d used the magic her life had bought to give her former family wealth and power beyond measure, and then forgot all about her.
Soon, the young witch will leave the woods. Stop the wedding. Save the woman she loves. Get revenge.
But beyond the woods, nothing is ever that simple.
Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall (March 10th)
They are monsters, legends, gods.
They are our prey.
Earth is dead. Which leaves us stuck living in atmospheric domes on planets that will kill us if we blink wrong, or run out of fuel. And by “fuel” I mean “the cerebrospinal fluid of gargantuan, quasi-psychic space monsters”.
I joined the hunt hoping to get paid and maybe laid, but mostly paid. Instead, I followed a captain chasing abominations in the skies of Jupiter.
We battled the Möbius Beast itself, there in the red eye of the world.
Spoiler: we lost.
Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran (March 10th)
In 1928, Emily Locke’s final year at the isolated Briarley School for Girls is derailed when Violet, the school’s brightest star (and a cunning beauty for whom Emily would do anything), falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday. Emily and her buttoned-up rival Evelyn are, for once, in agreement: Violet’s death was no accident. There’s an obvious culprit, the French schoolmistress with whom Violet was getting a little too close—they only need to prove it.
Desperate for answers, Emily and her classmates turn to spiritualism, hoping for a glimpse of wisdom from the great beyond. To their shock, Violet’s spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium. And Violet has a warning for them: the danger has just begun.
Something deadly is infecting Briarley. It starts with rotten food and curdled milk, but quickly grows more threatening. As the body count rises and the students race to save themselves, Emily must confront the fatal forces poisoning the school. Emily’s fight for survival forces her to reevaluate everything she knows: about Violet, Evelyn, Briarley, and, ultimately, herself.
Sweetbitter Song by Rosie Hewlett (March 17th)
One summer night, within the palace of Sparta, a young slave girl stumbles across a grey-eyed princess. Despite living worlds apart, Melantho and Penelope are instantly drawn to one another, and a powerful friendship blossoms. But the Spartan royals do not approve of this bond, and soon Melantho and Penelope find themselves viciously torn apart, their trust irreparably shattered.
Years later, their paths cross once again upon the rocky shores of Ithaca, where Melantho is sent to serve Princess Penelope and her new husband, Prince Odysseus. Embittered by life as a slave, Melantho is determined to keep her distance. But, once again, the two women find themselves drawn to one other, pulled by the echo of their friendship, and something far stronger they are too afraid to name.
When war blazes across Greece, Odysseus and the men of Ithaca are driven to foreign lands. In their absence, Melantho finds a new world opening up before her – one where women rule, where family can be found, and where a forbidden love is finally given the space to bloom.
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Daughter of the Hunt by K Arsenault Rivera (March 17th)
This is the second book in the Oath of Fire series
When a Goddess falls for her sacrifice, can their love survive?
Iphigenia Pelops lives only to serve her family. As the eldest child, it is her responsibility and privilege—as well as the only safeguard against the family curse. So when Artemis, Queen of the Court of the Wild, demands a sacrifice from the Pelops in exchange for her blessing in a dangerous power struggle, Iphigenia is the natural choice.
However, Artemis is horrified when she learns that Iphigenia’s family offered Iphigenia without her consent. As recompense, she takes Iphigenia as her disciple and teaches her the ways of the hunt—and soon, the ways of the body, as feelings blossom between them.
Only Iphigenia cannot forget her precious siblings, doomed to misfortune by the Pelops curse—and freeing them will require a terrible cost.
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Gods Beneath the Ice by Alexandra Kennington (March 17th)
This is the sequel to Blood Beneath the Snow
Heartbroken and grappling with unwanted powers, Revna must work with the person she swore to forget if she’s to lead her people and unravel the secrets behind her new magic in this page-turning conclusion to the Blood & Souls Duology.
After winning the Bloodshed Trials, Revna has the crown she wanted. What she didn’t want was the newfound Lurae abilities she manifested. Still, she’s determined to bring equality to her people and end the holy war draining her kingdom’s resources. But the godtouched fear her, the godforsaken don’t trust her, and her best friend doesn’t know the truth she’s been hiding. When the war-ending treaty is signed, Revna will reveal her secrets and finally put the Hellbringer behind her.
Except the Kryllian Queen refuses to sign the treaty when she discovers how volatile Revna’s bloodsinging is. Desperate for any alliance, Revna begrudgingly agrees to the queen’s proposal: if Revna can learn to control her magic in three weeks, negotiations will resume. But there’s a catch—the queen’s general will be the one training her.
Revna will work with the Hellbringer once more, though she won’t make it easy. But when the general discovers that the dead are unable to pass on, they realize there’s more at stake than their tangled relationship. Ancient, powerful secrets tie the realm—and Revna and the Hellbringer—together, and their only hope of lasting peace is to unweave them.
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Afterbirth by Emma Cleary (March 24th)
In the wake of a fraught and ill-omened romance, Brooke arrives in Vancouver to care for her sister Izzy, who is preparing to undergo reproductive surgery. But Izzy’s rapidly decaying apartment building, its hallways stalked by an ominous figure known only as Medusa, offers little of the refuge the sisters need.
Seeking solace in the horror movies her ex-girlfriend loved, Brooke soon finds traces of horror bleeding from the screen into their lives. Old wounds reopen and new tensions surface. When Brooke begins to exhibit strange symptoms of her own, the line between self and sister blurs, and their concern for each other twists into a tangled obsession.
This Will Be Interesting by E.B. Asher (March 24th)
Galwell True was the perfect hero, the legend who sacrificed himself to save the realm…only for his friends to unexpectedly resurrect him ten years later. These days, he’s feeling less “Galwell the Great” and more “Galwell the Lost.”
River Pricemark is an excellent assassin. When the Deathrose Guild, an organization known for banishing evil, tasks her with eliminating Galwell, she sees her chance to climb the ranks. So, it’s bad luck when her ambush is interrupted by Celine Hazelton, a scribesheet reporter who questions why the Guild is targeting Galwell at all. It’s worse luck that Celine is also her childhood crush.
Queen Thessia of Mythria is tired of being the damsel. She’s just married the kind and handsome King Hugh and is meant to live happily ever after—but her story feels incomplete. Upon learning Galwell, her ex, is in danger, she turns her royal honeymoon into a rescue, bringing everyone overseas to the opulent land of Vestriya.
Between underground lairs, magical grottos, horseball matches, and masquerades, Galwell must rely on his newfound questmates—including beautiful Vestriyan criminal Mona Grandhart, who seems determined to corrupt him in more ways than one. Good thing he’s set a single rule for everyone on this quest: no romance.
But we all know how this ends, don’t we?
Wretch by Eric LaRocca (March 24th)
After his husband dies, Simeon Link finds himself overcome by grief and seeking comfort in an unusual support group called The Wretches, who offer an addictive and dangerous source of relief. They introduce Simeon to a curious figure known as Porcelain Khaw—a man with the ability to let those who are grieving have one last intimate moment with their beloved…for a price.
Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas (March 31st)
Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mold of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Over three hundred pounds, he carries the weight of his childhood trauma and millennial ennui around his waist and in his soul. After trying every diet under the sun, he remains stuck—in his dead-end job, in love, and in his body.
Desperate for help, he enrolls in a clinical trial for a new weight loss product called Obexity. The treatment is as horrifying as the results are miraculous and as Emmett sheds pounds at superhuman speed, every part of his life improves overnight.
Unfortunately, Obexity comes with some killer side effects, including lost stretches of time and overwhelming cravings. Worse, people who were cruel to him have started disappearing and when the police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, he fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster. But how can he give it up now that people are finally starting to treat him like he’s human?
Year of the Mer by L.D. Lewis (April 7th)
The fairy tale mermaid Arielle might have gotten her happily-ever-after, but her granddaughter Yemi is having a much harder time. Her father, the king of Ixia, was assassinated years ago, her mother is slowly dying of a poisoned wound, and she faces whispers and slights from her own people. Yemi has been raised as the shield of the kingdom and is soon to inherit the throne, but she cannot shake her fury at how Ixia has treated her family after all they’ve sacrificed. Only her patient mother and steadfast personal bodyguard (and fiancée), Nova, help Yemi rein in that fury…most of the time.
When the kingdom’s discontented rumblings reach a fever pitch, a coup erupts and Yemi’s throne is usurped, stripping her of her family and forcing her into exile. Now, only one being has the power to help her: Ursla.
Like her grandmother before her, Yemi is tempted by a deal with the sea-witch. With powerful and ancient magic behind her, Yemi could avenge her family, take back her throne, and protect the love of her life. But she should know more than anyone that there is always a price. As much as Yemi wants vengeance, Ursla has been waiting a very, very long time for her own—and it may take more fortune than Yemi possesses to keep her from losing everything all over again.
The Impossible Garden of Clara Thorne by Summer N. England (April 7th)
Most stories end with a happily ever after. But mine? Well, it begins with one . . .
After a lonely childhood, Clara Thorne is living out her happy ending as the magically gifted gardener for the town of Moss. Sure, her closest companion is a surly hedgehog, and she’s forever stuck on the first line of her novel, but she has a home. That is, until The Goddess chooses Clara for an important quest—travel to the cursed town of Dwindle and grow them a garden. In less than a month.
Only Clara’s hiding a terrible secret: her magic doesn’t work outside Moss. Worse, The Goddess has assigned the absurdly sexy, annoyingly cheerful Hesper Altanfall to keep her safe. Clara would rather eat thorns than accept help—especially since Hesper insists that Clara’s magic is bound to her heart, not her home.
Nevertheless, the two can’t help growing closer as they traverse enchanted woods and share tavern beds. But with an ancient evil threatening from the shadows, saving Dwindle will require more than enchanted crops. Clara will need to unearth a magic she’s always believed impossible.
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What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed (April 7th)
On the planet Scythia, plants give birth to insects and trees can drag you to your death. Artificial monsters stalk the desert, and alien basket-men have wandered into town.
John Maraintha has been abandoned here, light-years from the peaceful forests that he loves.
The desert is harsh and the people in thrall to a barbaric custom called marriage.
He must find some way to make a life here.
But on Scythia, survival means transformation―and not everyone is willing to change.
Princeweaver by Elian Morgan (April 14th)
Their marriage is to save a warring kingdom. But in the process, it might destroy them both.
Born with forbidden, nature-infused magic in an occupied land, anxious apothecary Meilyr survives by keeping his head down. Until he ends up engaged to invading prince Osian in order to save his brother’s life. Now, he is in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse to hide his true self.
When nobles in Osian’s court are gruesomely murdered by the same magic that flows through his veins, Meilyr realises someone is seeking revenge for his homeland. As suspicion towards him grows, he and the prince work together to uncover the killer or risk losing the crown – or their lives.
Between court politics, unwieldy magic and a murderer on the loose, Meilyr must keep his wits about him. Especially as his feelings for Osian grow deeper with every passing day…
An Elixir for Wanderlust by Alistair Reeves (April 14th)
This is the third book in the Rune Tithe series
Having once escaped the dark waters that cursed him, a young witch returns home to face the evil targeting his loved ones—whatever the consequences.
After almost a decade away, Taliesin Ashborne has come home to attend his grandfather’s funeral. While past tensions still linger between him and his family, a stiff drink and a steamy encounter with Kessian, the gorgeous man who approaches him at the wake, really takes the edge off.
But the old magic of Shearwater Spring has left more scars on Tal than he realized. Nine years ago, twenty-four townspeople, including Tal and his father, mysteriously walked into a deep river one night—and only Tal returned.
To this day, something dangerous lurks in Shearwater’s black waters. It’s hunting down everyone Tal loves, and after it got his twin, he couldn’t stand to lose anyone else. Hoping to rid him of this curse once and for all, his sibling Fae urges him to see the town’s new healer . . . who just so happens to be Kessian.
Trying to keep his emotions in check—for not only his own benefit but also Kessian’s safety—will be anything but easy for Tal after nine years of isolation. Now, with a wraith hot on his trail, he must uncover what corrupted the ancient magic of the river so he can finally come home for good.
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Honor & Heresy by Max Francis (April 21st)
Roy Dawnseve, the prospective heir to Dawnseve Manor, cares more for philosophy than battle. However, in a society that shuns literature and promotes violence, his fate is compromised. But Roy is given a choice: he can either brave the front lines and fight the Old Ones, the mysterious, black-armored soldiers invading Northgard—or he can investigate their identity in the Orphic Basilica, an ancient, abandoned library.
When Roy chooses to unravel the mystery, it soon becomes clear that the Orphic Basilica isn’t without its own horrors. Strange voices echo down the halls, ghosts with burning red eyes roam the bookshelves, and those who stepped foot in the library have either emerged insane or were driven to their own demise.
Roy’s only companion—and his partner in the investigation—is Percival Atherton, a manipulative, enigmatic and distractingly charming scholar who has no qualms about belittling Roy. As a fierce snowstorm sinks its claws into the city, isolating them from civilization, Roy and Percival must grapple with their tormented pasts, an unexpected romance, and an age-old conspiracy whose secrets are certain to wipe Northgard from history.
Our Rogue Fates by Sarah Glenn Marsh (April 28th)
When he isn’t training as a Warden to become half the hero his father was, Griff Sayer is in the business of breaking hearts all across the town of Mayfair, although that slows down after settling in with his current boyfriend. Griff’s ex-best-friend, Mal Pryce, meanwhile, is in business with whatever or whoever puts good money in his hands. Now in their mid-20s, Griff and Mal have only exchanged scathing looks and carefully barbed jabs since the fight that sent them their separate ways years ago. But all that begins to change when an attack Mal plotted for his shady boss leaves Griff near death and their childhood friend Alys is his savior, forcing them back into each other’s orbit.
Livid at his boss, Mal makes a deal to earn his freedom and Griff’s safety. He has just four weeks to retrieve an ancient treasure from Rotrose Mire, a remote swamp known for its ghostly and beastly dangers, the same treasure Alys’s beloved father Rhun had been searching for when he disappeared for good. Armed with a map and a broken blade of Rhun’s, Mal sets off—with Alys and a reluctant and newly single Griff in tow.
Yet the explosive tension between the two men—along with the dangers of the mire pressing in around them—make for a more difficult journey than any of them could have anticipated. As Griff and Mal peel back their tough facades, and shared feelings heat up in unexpected ways as they learn to trust again, they also realize that someone—or something—seems to be following their path. Someone who doesn’t want them to succeed, no friend to their parents’ old enemies, but also no friend to would-be heroes…
We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune (April 28th)
The road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky….
Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they’ve experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world.
Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they’ve ever known will be gone.
Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They’re in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it’s all over.
On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how—impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends.
And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough.
Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes?
Love Galaxy by Sierra Branham (May 5th)
Temmi, a young trash collector stuck in a dead-end job on a garbage planet, finds herself with a golden ticket she never expected: an opportunity to compete in an intergalactic dating show starring the brother and sister heirs to the galactic empire. Twenty-four women will compete on a televised program to marry the prince and princess—and future emperors—and to win the dynasty’s favor for their home planet.
Temmi may have been hand-picked to date the quiet, bookish prince, who is immediately taken by her brash personality and their shared passion for the sciences. But she can’t seem to keep away from the princess—and even though it couldn’t be a worse idea, their chemistry is undeniable.
But when contestants start turning up dead, and conspiracies begin to swirl around anti-imperial motivations of several contestants, Temmi among them, so much more than feelings are at stake.
In fact, very few of the participants of Love Galaxy have come on the show to find love. Sexy, snarky, and revolutionary, this fast-paced thrill ride will hook lovers of reality TV, fans of thoughtful sci-fi, and anyone who lives for drama.
Shy Trans Banshee by Tony Santorella (May 5th)
Brian, Nik, and Darby—three friends well-versed in battling supernatural crime (when Brian isn’t busy committing it once a month as a werewolf)—are dispatched to London to track down a missing colleague. But prowling the city leads them straight into a clairvoyancy smuggling ring.
Who is kidnapping all the fortune tellers in Soho, and why? And is it a coincidence, fate, or something far more sinister that Maeve—a timid trans woman searching for her birth mother—arrives on their doorstep with the uncanny ability to predict what’s coming next?
Vile Lady Villains by Danai Christopoulou (May 12th)
With the consequences of her murderous actions closing in, Lady Macbeth turns to the three witches for help, who give her a potion that transports her to an unknown realm. Desperately lost, she opens a door and comes face to face with a beautiful woman drenched in blood.
Klytemnestra, Queen of Mycenae, is exacting bloody vengeance on her husband. Yet as she revels in her triumph, an otherworldly door appears and a strange woman steps in. Thinking this stranger a spirit, she chases Lady Macbeth into the realm of stories.
Hunted by screaming wraiths into worlds that are hell bent on their demise, this murderous pair are forced to form an alliance or perish. Yet the realm’s goddess, The Mistress of the House of Books, claims to hold the key to saving them. As every threat brings our vile lady villains closer, turning ill intentions into fiery attraction that no author dare write, they have a choice: remain within the confines of their original tales. . . Or burn down the world to pen a new story together. . .
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Blackwell’s
Radiant Star by Ann Leckie (May 12th)
The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has always been a source of both conflict and hope for the people of Ooioiaa. However, the imperial Radch see it only as an inconvenience, an antiquated religious site soon to be absorbed into their own, superior culture. But local politics is complicated, and the Radch have made a final concession: One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a “living saint”.
But this decision will ripple out to affect every part of the city. Amidst a slowly worsening food shortage, riots, and a communication blackout from the rest of the Radch Empire, a religious savant will entertain visions of his own sainthood, a socialite will discover hir comfortable life upended, and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape.
Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffman (May 12th)
Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories more than anything in the world. But on Callisto, a generative AI company called Inspiration owns everything, including all the media, and only Inspiration determines which stories can be told.
Kelli has a rare and coveted job where her autism is to her advantage: She precisely edits AI output into “appropriate” stories for Inspiration’s massive TV audience. Her proudest creation is the pirate Orlando―a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.
Reenter Kelli’s ex-boyfriend Rowan, the person Kelli based Orlando on. Back when they were teenagers, their relationship was a secret. Kelli had thought that Rowan, a trans man, was her schoolmate Am, a girl.
Rowan is tangled up in the black market after he needed to get money for gender reassignment surgery. He needs Kelli’s help with something . . . illegal. So, now Kelli has to decide: Will she risk the safe, tidy story of her life now for the world she once wished for? What would Orlando do?
Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen (May 19th)
Acrasia is in the ultimate long-distance relationship: with Opus Zhao, a man from another universe. She was a trans girl who was also an intergalactic moth-goddess. He was a trans guy who piloted a giant robotic tiger. They hated each other, then fell in love, then their universes moved apart. Now, years later, he’s turned up in her dimension again. What won’t she do to keep him there?
Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England (June 2nd)
When Oaklin Nettlewood accidentally joined an evil world-ending cult, mind control magic forced them to do unspeakable things. Years later, the realm’s heroes have finally saved the day, defeated the villain, and shattered the last remnants of the spell…leaving destruction in their wake. And so, with a spell-damaged memory and whole bushel of trauma, Oaklin escapes to a small farm on the edge of Mossley’s Rest and swears an oath: After all the things they were forced to do with their magic, they will never use it again. Ever.
The no-nonsense ghost granny who lives in Oaklin’s house has other ideas. As she coaxes Oaklin out of their shell and back into the world, they find companionship (a grumpy horse and a very good dog), friendship (a local bard and magical baker who should just kiss already), and tentative romance (a paladin-librarian who makes Oaklin’s heart come alive for the first time in ages.) Magic even seems possible again―though strictly for foraging magical mushrooms and protecting the farm from bugs.
Healing comes in gentle waves, and Oaklin doesn’t have to do it alone. So what does it mean when an inquisitor comes to town to hunt former cultists just as Oaklin begins to think that maybe, just maybe, they deserve a happy ending after all?
The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher (June 2nd)
For as long as they can remember, Briar Jones dreamed of attending the Temple School of Thaumaturgy. Behind its looming ornate gates, the elite prep school—the place that has produced the most CEOs and Prime Ministers in British history—is whispered to be magical.
Briar’s best friend, Sebastian Wolfe, never cared about Temple or believed in the rumors. He just wanted them to stay together forever.
When, at age 11, Seb gets an acceptance letter and Briar doesn’t, their childhood friendship is shattered. Seb vanishes onto Temple’s grounds and Briar resigns themself to a mundane life. But they can’t completely forget their yearning for Temple, for the extraordinary, to be one of the chosen in the ivory tower.
Seven years later, a summer job advert appears: a temp position sorting through the junk in Temple’s attics. Briar takes it. And they discover that quiet, sensitive Seb, the boy they once loved more than anything else in the world, has become Bastian: a beautiful, arrogant villain feared by most of the school. And worse, the secrets Temple is hiding might not be so magical after all, but a dark conspiracy with implications that extend far beyond the gates.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Blackwell’s
Fellas, is it gay to kiss your bff while on a quest through the forest you’re unqualified for?
Juniper O’Reilly is good at only two things: demolishing a pint of mead and finding the perfect skincare routine. Everything else—taking care of the farm, bartering for goods, any sort of manual labor—falls to Juniper’s best friend, the absurdly capable, endlessly patient Mo Elmthorn.
But when Juniper accidentally volunteers them both for a quest to kill a fearsome monster, he knows he’s finally gotten in over his head. Juniper hates camping, he hates the dark, and there’s no way all these foraged mushrooms are going to sit well in his stomach. One thing he doesn’t hate? How good Mo’s thighs look in his questing pants—he doesn’t have time to think about that, though, with a monster to hunt and their futures on the line.
But monsters come in all shapes and sizes. When Juniper and Mo realize that the terrifying beast they’ve sworn to kill is just a scared little girl torn from their family, they’re off to find not only the true villain of the story, but maybe even a happy ending.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
For the Love of the Quest by Alexandra Ammon Parthun (May 26th)
Lady Edith Darling is supposed to live a quiet life in her family’s manor. She is not supposed to go unchaperoned on a quest to find Excalibur. But Edith won’t let that stand in her way, especially not when she’s on this mission to honor her beloved grandmother’s dying wish. Determined to prove her grandmother right, Edith packs her satchel with Arthurian legends, pastries, and her grandmother’s ashes, and runs off to hire a mercenary.
Thomasin Shaw leads the most feared gang in London. For years, she had the constabulary safely in her pocket, until a scandal involving the chief inspector’s wife was brought to light. Now he’s demanding an enormous sum of money–without which Thomasin will lose the protection of the police along with her criminal empire. But when the rich Lady Edith waltzes into her life seeking an escort for a treasure hunt, Thomasin sees a willing kidnapping victim and a massive ransom.
As Edith’s clues lead them to underground chambers booby-trapped with arrows, doors locked with arcane puzzles, and even Arthur’s fabled round table, Thomasin finds herself swept up in the quest, and in Edith herself. Edith is also drawn to Thomasin, despite the ruthless mask she wears. But the chief inspector won’t let Thomasin forget her crimes, and Edith’s father is intent on bringing her home. Every legendary quest has an ending, but finding Excalibur might not be enough to make this a happy one.
Bone of My Bone by Johanna van Veen (May 26th)
The year is 1635.
Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying man: the gilded skull of a saint.
It is said that if you reunite the saint’s skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic’s power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing truth: the magic they seek comes at a cost.
At the journey’s end, they’ll face an impossible choice―one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.
The Disco at the End of the World by Nathan Tavares (June 2nd)
In 1977—a world where America launched its space program shortly after WWII—Mitch Ward is a grunt in the US Spaceguard. Stationed in a backwater base on the Moon, his only friends are Gloria, who performs “Lady Stardust” for fellow soldiers, and Flynn.
Following a visit from an unseen, terrifying but also maybe euphoric being, they find themselves quickly discharged from the army, and sent back to earth. Moving to Los Angeles to chase their dreams, Mitch and Gloria scrape by, finding their joy at the discos in the city.
But when Flynn crashes back into their lives, claiming to be the host for a traveler and emissary of a utopian civilization, he comes with an offer for Mitch – to join him, ad claim power so that he, and his friends across the queer community, never have to live in the shadows or face oppression again.
As the forces of prejudice and oppression seek to push their community back into hiding, keeping them out of sight and oppressed, it’s down to this community of disco-loving outcasts to stand up for what is beautiful and right.
Endless Blue Beneath by Shannon K. English (June 9th)
Eppie has never quite understood why the world hates her—all she did was kiss a girl. Must that mean she suffers isolation, with whispers and glares following her at every turn? She tries to focus on her duty to her family, but options are limited for a woman alone, and life in the seaside village of Hwenfirth is agonizingly mundane.
One day, as Eppie walks along the beach, she spies someone drowning in the shallows. Without thinking, she runs to rescue the poor soul—but when she gets up close, instead of a sputtering victim she finds an inhuman creature smiling up at her with rows of sharp, white teeth that snap closed on her arm and drag her beneath the waves.
When Eppie awakes in a deep ocean cave, she finds her own body has changed: she can breathe underwater, her skin is turning scaly, her teeth have been replaced by fangs, and she is suddenly ravenous for human flesh.
She has become a dreaded creature of the ocean—a mermaid.
Things aren’t all bad, though. The mermaid colony is mesmerizing and Eppie’s new sisters are fiercely loyal. And when Eppie meets Marie, a stunningly beautiful mermaid with a past as shadowed as her glossy, raven-black scales, she finds she no longer needs to resist the desires that were denied to her on land.
But the mermaid hunters are coming, and Eppie must decide whether to protect the new, monstrous family she’s found or leave it all behind for a chance to live above the waves once again.
The Way it Haunted Him by Laura R. Samotin (June 9th)
Guilt. Grief. Obsession.
Michael Stein arrives at the Schechter Institute for Judaic Studies battered and broken, blaming himself for the tragic accident that took his boyfriend’s life. He is haunted by his guilt and grief, but is determined to repent while at Institute by completing his boyfriend’s research into demonic entities.
But instead of being welcomed by the archivist, Michael is met by Jacob Schechter—the archivist’s enigmatic, brooding grandson, who has inherited the Institute after his grandfather’s death. As Michael explores the archive, delving into cryptic texts and whispered histories, shadows from the past begin to seep into the present. Tormented by demons both real and imagined, Michael’s grief warps into something far darker—an intoxicating, yet increasingly toxic obsession with Jacob, whose own secrets threaten to destroy them both.
Now, Michael must confront the terrible truth behind his boyfriend’s death—and his obsession with Jacob—before the darkness they awaken in each other claims more than just their love, and consumes them entirely.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Blackwell’s
The Bloodweaver by C.N. Kuster (June 23rd)
A divisive magic. A shattered family. A brewing war.
In a world where some can manipulate life with a single touch, siblings fight on rival sides, forced to reckon with the choices that led them there.
Three generations ago, ancient and mysterious beings introduced the world to the arcane art of Bloodweaving, which allows its practitioners to manipulate life with merely a touch. Now, Bloodweavers must hide in plain sight or risk being hunted by violent regime soldiers known as Breakers, who will stop at nothing to eradicate weaving once and for all.
Though his family’s vineyard has flourished thanks to Bloodweaving, Kerick DeLuvena has kept his powers a secret from everyone, including his beloved fellow triplets, Mel and Emiel. When a squad of Breakers arrives on the day of Emiel’s wedding, Kerick weaves himself a new face and flees to protect his family, setting out in search of the Ravel, a secret society of Bloodweavers who stand on the precipice of an uprising.
Meanwhile, Mel’s girlfriend is identified as a Bloodweaver and arrested. Devastated by so much loss, Mel hatches a plan to get captured in the same raid, hoping to protect her love at all costs, even if it means allying herself with the Breakers’ ruthless commander and serving the very force that tore her family apart.
As the consequences of the siblings’ diverging paths ripple across a divided and hostile world, both must eventually face the same question: Is Bloodweaving a miracle―or a curse?
Crime Fiction
You’ll Never Forget Me by Isha Raya (January 13th)
Struggling actress Dimple Kapoor wouldn’t call herself a murderer, per se—she’d prefer the term “opportunist.” Years ago, she did what had to be done to get herself out of a bad situation. And now, after accidentally killing her Hollywood rival, Irene Singh, at a party, she’s simply seizing the chance to nab her dream leading role and resuscitate her career in the process. Thereʼs only one problem: Someone else at the event witnessed the crime . . . and caught it all on camera.
With everything she’s ever wanted within reach, Dimple will stop at nothing to keep stardom in her grasp. But Irene’s parents have hired Saffi Mirai Iyer, one of the best private investigators in the business. Living up to her reputation, Saffi immediately zeroes in on Dimple, who feels she has no choice but to raise the stakes. Playing along with Dimple’s facade, Saffi invites her on to the case, suggesting she act as bait to draw out the killer—and as the two women’s cat-and-mouse game intensifies, Saffi starts to wonder if she may have finally met her match.
With their careers at risk, both women must fight the potent chemistry drawing them closer together. Dimple needs Saffi dead and for her theories to die with her. And Saffi needs Dimple behind bars, but catching her elusive prey won’t be so easy—especially as emotions begin to cloud her judgment. When ambition and desire collide, only the most cunning will survive.
Divine Ruin by Margot Douaihy (January 13th)
This is the third book in the Sister Holiday Mystery series
It’s a steamy, restless end of the school year in New Orleans. Sister Holiday is finishing her music classes and preparing for her permanent vow ceremony, a pivotal moment in her journey of faith. But when one of her favorite students is found dead of a fentanyl overdose, Sister Holiday and her partner-in-PI, Magnolia Riveaux, are determined to track down the drug dealers. As students continue to fall prey tothis sinister drug, Sister Holiday becomes more desperate to stop the epidemic—while facing her own past with addiction, a demon that is never too far.
The Case of the Murdered Muckraker by Rob Osler (January 27th)
This is the second book in the Harriet Morrow Investigates series.
Chicago, 1898. In the midst of the Progressive Era, twenty-one-year-old junior detective Harriet Morrow is determined to prove she’s more than a lucky hire as the Prescott Agency’s first woman operative. But her latest challenge—a murder case steeped in scandal—could become a deadly setback . . .
As the Windy City thaws from a harsh winter, Harriet Morrow finds herself doubting her investigative skills when she’s assigned to solve a high-stakes murder case well above her pay grade. And there’s also a catch. Harriet must somehow blend in as an “unremarkable” young woman—one who feels confident in skirts, not men’s clothing—on a quest to infiltrate the immigrant community at the center of the grisly crime . . .
The mystery has more twists and turns than her morning bike commute, with a muckraker found murdered in a southside tenement building after obtaining evidence of a powerful politician’s corruption. While Harriet gains the trust of the tenement’s women residents to gather clues, the undercover mission reveals an innocent mother might have been framed for the crime—and exposes ties to another violent death . . .
Harriet soon realizes she has few allies as new dangers explode around her. Enlisting the help of Matthew McCabe, her only true confidante at the agency, and growing more protective of her budding relationship with the lovely Barbara Wozniak, Harriet will need to survive rising threats to assert her place in a world that’s quick to dismiss her—and out a killer who’s always one step ahead . . .
Out of the Loop by Katie Siegel (February 10th)
For the past two years, Amie Teller has been stuck in a time loop. Each day, she wakes up and it’s September 17th. Same day, same weather, same people, same conversations. Until, one day, it’s September 18th, and Amie is free.
Before she can celebrate, Amie learns her neighbor was murdered the day before—the day Amie has lived hundreds of times. Amie knows she has to help; nobody knows yesterday like she does. But acclimating to her new non-repeating life proves to be more difficult than expected. How does one resume their life after a time loop, anyway?
Assisted by an ex-girlfriend who wants to make their friendship work, and a grumpy neighbor who spends his days building Rube Goldberg machines, Amie sets out to track down who killed (and killed and killed and killed) Savannah Harlow.
Secrets of Dorley Hall by Alyson Greaves (February 17th)
This is the sequel to Welcome to Dorley Hall
A closeted trans girl has successfully infiltrated a secret underground forced feminisation programme. Now she has to deal with what comes next.
Stef Riley worked hard to get into the Royal College of Saint Almsworth to find out what happened to the women who live at the mysterious Dorley Hall.
But now the plan is falling apart because the other kidnapees are being tortured and Stef can’t just ignore their suffering.
What’s worse, Stef is growing closer to one man in particular. A man who isn’t, if the Sisters have their way, going to be a man for much longer…
Buy it: Amazon
Love a Comeback by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare (February 24th)
This is the second book in the TV Detectives series
Since the hugely successful reunion special for their hit show Craven’s Daughter, TV detectives Bex and Sam find themselves busier than ever—but, unfortunately, two thousand miles apart for long months. So much for quickly coaxing the long-simmering spark between them into flame. Finally back in L.A., though, all bets are off, and Bex and Sam are looking forward to some IRL time by the pool—at least until Bex’s sister, Frankie, brings home a truly juicy bit of gossip garnered from her nepo baby girl
squad . . .
Ramona Watts was once the Gen X It Girl—Hollywood darling, household name, muse, and coolest of the cool, until the “Icon with Issues” spectacularly crashed and burned, disappearing for a good 20 years. But a new hit horror series, The Howling, convinced her to sign on, and bring all her charm and 90s nostalgia to the role. Suddenly, Ramona Watts is a Name again—except that she fails to show up on set for Season 3.
It’s none of their business, of course, but Bex and Sam are curious. And they both have Hollywood connections left, right, and center stage, some of whom would love to see them sleuthing again. Plus, spending that kind of time together means another chance at a real romance. So what if they’re not actual detectives? In Los Angeles, isn’t everyone playing a role?
The Best Little Motel in Texas by Lyla Lane (March 3rd)
After a childhood spent combing the dive bars of Sarsaparilla Falls to collect her fun-loving momma, Cordelia West now enjoys a simple, respectable life in Dallas. Then one phone call from the hometown she’s spent years trying to forget throws it into chaos.
Cordelia’s great-aunt Penelope has passed away, naming Cordelia the sole heir to the Chickadee Motel. She has no memory of a great-aunt and no interest in hospitality, but the will stipulates that the motel can’t be sold until its residents leave or pass away – so she reluctantly heads back down to Sarsaparilla Falls to figure out who’s living in the Chickadee, and how to get them out.
But upon her arrival, Cordelia discovers the Chickadee isn’t a motel—it’s a brothel, housing three women in their sixties known as the Chicks. For decades, Daisy, Arline, and Belinda Sue have entertained the men of Sarsaparilla Falls (with their wives’ blessings)—including the upright Pastor Reed-Smythe, who thunders against the town’s favorite sins when he’s not indulging. Cordelia doesn’t want to be a hotel manager or a madam, but she can’t just sell the only home the Chicks have known—especially not after the pastor is found poisoned in Daisy’s bed.
With the Chicks—and the town—on the verge of a breakdown, Cordelia steps up to mop up the mess. For a small town, there are plenty of suspects: could it be the obsessed nurse with access to arsenic? Developers eager to gobble up the land? The righteously angry town librarian? Things are heating up in Sarsaparilla Falls, and with the Pastor’s obnoxiously attractive son Archer—Cordelia’s childhood nemesis—investigating the Chicks and getting close, straightlaced Cordelia may just have to get a little dirty to make a killer come clean.
Never Say Die by Meredith Doench (March 10th)
Detective Rory Scott was in college when six-year-old Savannah Armitage vanished and the body of a missing teen was found nearby in a shallow grave. The case went unsolved, but Rory’s stepfather was convicted in the court of public opinion. When Rory’s mother refused to leave her husband, Rory broke familial ties.
Six years later, Rory has built a life with her girlfriend Cade. When another child disappears and the unidentified body of a missing teen is found nearby, Rory knows it’s more than a coincidence. She steps in as the lead investigator, determined to find the killer and bring home the missing girls. As media swarms law enforcement for details, the state steps in, and a rookie special agent yanks Rory’s case.
In a renegade move, Rory teams up with Savannah’s mother, a woman still desperate to find her daughter alive. When the investigation leads to the two people Rory most wants to avoid—her own mother and stepfather—Rory must face the fallout of her estrangement.
As Rory’s personal and professional lives converge, it’s a race against time to find the connection between the cases and bring the killer to justice.
Robbie McNeil’s Hit List by Brianna Heath (March 24th)
For this hitwoman, curiosity may be killer.
Contract killer Robbie McNeil never asks questions. Her mission is simple. Do the job. Get paid. Get back to running the karaoke bar she co-owns with her queerplatonic partner and fellow contract killer, Dee. And it works… Until their ambitious new theatrical venture breaks the bank.
When a mysterious new client hires Robbie for a hit, she takes the job, even though it’s sketchy as hell he won’t tell her anything but the target’s name. But hey, she didn’t build her reputation by being curious, and she desperately needs the cash.
Except something about this new target doesn’t add up. When he disappears with no record he ever existed, she chucks her no-questions-asked policy out the window, determined to figure out who this target really is. But the price for asking questions is high and might just cost Robbie everything she holds dear.
A Murder Most Camp by Nicolas DiDomizio (April 28th)
Rustic cabins. Lakefront bonfires. A painfully hot lifeguard. And a murder? Summer has never been this camp.
Mikey Hartford IV has coasted through his twenties in a distracted blur of yachts and sex and partying. But when his father discovers his latest million-dollar impulse buy and changes the terms of his trust, the party’s finally over. Now, unless Mikey can make a positive contribution to the world before his thirtieth birthday―one that doesn’t involve throwing cash at his problems―he’ll never see another yacht again. (Or even so much as a canoe.)
Enter: Camp Lore, a struggling summer camp in upstate New York where Mikey has to work as the oldest, least-qualified staffer to prove that he can “do good” alongside his twelve-year-old aunt. (Yes, aunt.) But Mikey isn’t sure he’ll be able to survive the camp’s ramshackle living conditions, let alone the gaggle of preteens who won’t leave his side. And when his campers become obsessed with a local legend set at an abandoned cabin on the grounds, Mikey’s chances of not making it through the summer become dangerously real―because it turns out there’s a murder hidden beneath Camp Lore. And someone there will stop at nothing to keep it that way.
Solving a decade-old cold case will surely be enough “good” for Mikey to earn his inheritance. He just has to stay alive long enough to do it…
The Disaster Gay Detective Club by Lev A.C. Rosen (June 2nd)
Brandon is a hopeless romantic. So when a handsome stranger named Jon checks in at the hotel he works at and invites Brandon to his room, Brandon ignores the advice of his crew―a group of loveable and messy queer twenty-somethings―and accepts. What follows is a tale as old as time: they hook up, Jon promises to text, Brandon falls in love, and Jon ghosts. Case closed―or is it?
When Jon checks out early, leaving behind a bag of belongings and his cellphone, Brandon takes the phone and sets out to find him, thinking that this must at last be his Cinderella story.
But he gets more than he bargained for when he witnesses a murder―and sees Jon fleeing the scene.
Determined (and not in over their heads whatsoever), Brandon, Ollie, Nicole, and Ian decide to solve the mystery of the murder and uncover Jon’s true identity…they just have to figure it out before a target falls on their own backs.
Missing in SoHo by Holly Stars (June 2nd)
This is the second book in the Misty Divine Mystery series
A missing photographer. A megalomaniacal millionaire. A drag queen hellbent on saving her club. The latest glittering mystery from the author of Murder in the Dressing Room…
Misty Divine is bold, beautiful and back in action. She’s barely settled into her new role as the glamorous hostess of Lady’s Bar when a private detective arrives out of the blue. He’s been stabbed. With what might be his final breath he whispers a cryptic message. “You’re in danger, Misty… you must find Jeremy.”
As Misty dives wig first into the investigation, she gets up close and personal with a number of shady characters, including a notorious televangelist, a group of mysterious financiers, and a bunch of drunken bachelorettes at a drag brunch. And when it becomes clear that Misty’s beloved Lady’s Bar is under threat, she’ll have to seek help in the unlikeliest of allies to solve the case, save the bar, and find Jeremy before he disappears for good.
Can Misty find Jeremy and save Lady’s Bar? And what, or who, might she lose in the process? Her club, her career, her relationship… everything’s at stake. No-one is safe and there’s a young photographer Missing in Soho.
Graphic Novels
A Thing Called Truth by Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli (January 6th)
This is a complete volume of chapters 1-10 of the comics series
Dr. Magdalene Traumer, a brilliant scientist with the noble dream of saving the world, meets Dorian Wildfang, a free-spirited wanderer who fears nothing . . . except her own destiny. Together, they embark on a wild adventure across Europe, chasing a mission that proves that life is about the journey and not the destination. Along the way, these seemingly polar opposite companions find common ground on a journey that sparks an unexpected romance as they navigate the complexities of self-discovery and the challenges of a world on the brink of chaos.
This volume collects all 10 chapters of the groundbreaking comics series A Thing Called Truth, including parts 6–10, previously only available through Kickstarter.
Fish and Water by Gengoroh Tagame (June 23rd)
FISH AND WATER is a new graphic novel from Eisner award-winning graphic novelist Gengoroh Tagame. He asks: What if The Odd Couple were Japanese, living in the middle of COVID, and just might be . . . gay?
From Gengoroh Tagame, the brilliant mind behind My Brother’s Husband and Our Colors, comes Fish and Water, which follows the unlikely love story of two “straight” friends. Having met at a mutual friend’s wedding, Akira, a business sales administrator, and Koji, a freelance writer, quickly become close buddies. One day, during a visit with a farm client, Akira is offered a case of freshly picked cabbage. Since no one at his office wants it, and he is no cook, Akira decides to see if Koji (who loves to cook) might be interested. Koji accepts and invites Akira to join him. Lonely and in the midst of pandemic-related shutdowns, Akira welcomes the chance and one meal becomes many. Once they get past how to be COVID-cautious, they become quite relaxed with each other, creating an amusing but emotionally perplexing scenario. Eventually, Akira and Koji grapple with deciding if they are just friends, or something more.
Paperback Rereleases
The In-Between Bookstore by Edward Underhill (January 6th)
When Darby finds himself unemployed and in need of a fresh start, he moves back to the small Illinois town he left behind. But Oak Falls has changed almost as much as he has since he left.
One thing is familiar: In Between Books, Darby’s refuge growing up and eventual high school job. When he walks into the bookstore now, Darby feels an eerie sense of déjà vu—everything is exactly the same. Even the newspapers are dated 2009. And behind the register is a teen who looks a lot like Darby did at sixteen. . . who just might give Darby the opportunity to change his own present for the better—if he can figure out how before his connection to the past vanishes forever.
Six Wild Crowns by Holly Race (February 10th)
As tradition has it, the king of Elben must marry six queens and magically bind each of them to one of the island’s palaces or the kingdom will fall.
Clever, ambitious Boleyn is determined to be her beloved Henry’s favorite queen. She relishes the games at court and the political rivalries with his other wives. Seymour is the opposite―originally sent to Boleyn’s court as a reluctant spy and assassin, she ends up catching Henry’s eye and is forced into a loveless marriage with the king.
But when the two queens become the unlikeliest of things―friends and allies―the balance of power begins to shift. Together, they uncover a dark and deadly truth at the heart of the island’s magic. Boleyn and Seymour’s only hope of survival rests on uniting all six of the rival queens―but Henry will never let that happen.
Love Story by Afsana Mousavi (February 10th)
She moves to New York for whatever reasons. Then she starts hormones and steps out at night. Everything else falls away. How had it never not been this?
Quickly, Io—freshly feminized and hardly clothed—is yanked into the glamor and vagaries of her times by her obsessive parasocial relationship with a fellow trans woman and renowned DJ. In nightlife she quickly discovers the stakes of living so close to cultural production—fashion, art, literature, it all flashes and dies as her bank account stays empty and her health waxes and wanes.
The lines between transition and cultural capital begin to blur and the currency of femininity demands to sell or be sold. Io must decide how far she will go to attain the dreams of upward mobility free-wheeling through the cloaca of the City.
Buy it: Amazon
This Vicious Hunger by Francesca May (March 10th)
Thora Grieve finds herself destitute and an outcast after the sudden death of her husband, but a glimmer of hope arrives when a family friend offers her the chance to study botany under the tutelage of a famed professor. Once at the university, Thora becomes entranced by a mysterious young woman, Olea, who emerges each night to tend to the plants in the private garden below Thora’s window.
Hungry for connection, Thora befriends Olea through the garden gate and their relationship quickly and intensely blossoms. Thora throws herself into finding a cure for the ailment confining Olea to the garden and sinks deeper into a world of beauty, poison, and obsession. Thora has finally found the freedom to pursue her darkest desires, but will it be worth the price?
Woodworking by Emily St. James (May 26th)
Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she’s told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn’t exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.
Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She’s also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations.
As their unlikely friendship evolves, it comes under the scrutiny of their community. And soon, both women—and those closest to them—are forced to ask: Who are we if we choose to hide ourselves? What happens once we disappear into the woodwork?
