Western | LGBTQ Reads

Today on the site I’m delighted to reveal the brand-new cover of Bloom Town: Genesis by Ally North, which is being traditionally published for the first time by Dell on November 24th! Here’s the story:

Ally North’s viral BookTok sensation follows a preacher’s daughter with a secret, an outlaw running from the gallows, and a thrilling sapphic love story spanning vast oceans and wide deserts.

June 1852. When Abby Proctor is kidnapped from a train in the middle of the desert halfway to her new life in California, she makes a promise to herself—she will escape. Abby is leaving Iowa and all its oppressions behind for a reason, and she refuses to be someone’s prisoner again. Especially when that someone is the infamous female outlaw Joey “JT London” Taylor—Abby’s brash, brooding, and inconveniently beautiful captor.

As Abby plots her escape, she stumbles upon a larger conspiracy behind her kidnapping—a complicated revelation considering her growing feelings for Joey, who might not be the ruthless criminal everyone believes her to be. Suddenly Abby doesn’t want to go back to the confines of her religious father or her suffocating husband.

Then Abby realizes it’s all connected—her kidnapping, the secrets she left behind in Iowa, even her plans in California—and she must decide between returning to a life of obedience and unhappiness or trusting an enigmatic outlaw bound for the gallows.

And here’s the gorgeous cover, illustrated and designed by Sophia Chunn!

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | PRH

Ally North (she/her) is a queer writer who has been writing fiction her entire life. During the pandemic, she began writing sapphic romance out of pure chaotic boredom and discovered an untried knack for the genre. She lives in America, but occasionally she lives in England. When she isn’t writing, Ally can be found cooking with obscene amounts of garlic, traveling someplace new, rescuing animals, and feeding Jean-Claude, the wild possum who lives under her shed.

Today on the site, we’re revealing the cover to Aaron S Bentzel’s LifeBringer, officially closing out the fantasy western Prime Wranglers Saga with its release on April 12th! Here’s the story:

Cazo Briggs used to be somebody. He had a handsome boyfriend in Zee, and a legendary Prime who wanted to be his partner. And then it all fell apart at Echo Rock.

Now, defeated, Cazo and his allies seek refuge in the desert fortress of the Acanti people. But that is not all that they seek there.

The Acanti have a Prime that controls water, the scarcest and most vital element in the desert. They call it the LifeBringer, and now the Republic has their eyes on it.

The same Republic that drove Cazo out. The same Republic that forced his Redhand allies onto reservations and killed their sacred Primes. The same Republic that seduced his beloved Zee away from him.

Having fought the Republic before, Cazo and friends know what a relentless foe they can be. The only way to win a lasting peace in an independent West is to set the LifeBringer free. But can they convince the Acanti prince?

And without Zee, does Cazo still have the will to fight? Or will he yield to the doubts that hound him and lose the West for them all?

LIFEBRINGER is the stunning conclusion of the Prime Wranglers saga, a fantasy western set in a reimagined West. Here, powerful creatures known as Primes roam the frontier, and daring wranglers risk their lives to capture them.

And here’s the cover, designed by Ebook Launch (www.ebooklaunch.com)!

Buy it: Amazon

From Atlanta, GA by way of Albany, NY, Aaron has been writing books for the past 10 years. An omnivore when it comes to story, he takes inspiration from such diverse works as Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, daytime soap operas, and the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

When not curled up on his rattan chair with a 5-subject notebook on his lap, he can usually be found boiling water for tea, walking up and down the banks of the Chattahoochee River in his orange-billed baseball cap, or singing show tunes to himself in the bathroom mirror.

Queering up your shelf, one rec at a time!