AppSumo deal on 100 credits for DepositPhoto for only $49 is still going!
Sarah: This is my favorite of the AppSumo deals.
I bought this about two years ago and I still haven’t used all the credits. The credits do not expire, and the DepositPhoto collection includes vector images and stock photos, too. Most of the images on the site that aren’t custom designed begin with DepositPhoto options. Seriously, 100 credits will last you a very long time.
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Mann Cakes
Mann Cakes by Mysti Parker is 99c at Amazon! Come on, with a title like that, you know I had to include this in sales. The heroes are two brothers who open up a rival cupcake shop in their small hometown. Readers really enjoyed the premise and thought it was cute and fun, but some felt they never really connected with the characters.
Love makes men do desperate things, if desperate things means opening a rival cupcake shop to drive your ex-girlfriend crazy.
Twin brothers and Air Force vets, Tanner and Garrett Mann, return from deployment to find their thriving business burned to the ground. Time for Plan B: Move back to their hometown of Beach Pointe to start over.
But that means running into Paige and Morgan Baxter –gorgeous, curvy, and owners of Two Sisters Cupcakes.
There’s an old diner for sale across town, Garrett’s a great cook, and Tanner has an idea. They’ll make savory cupcakes that men would like. We’re talking bacon and Cheez Whiz. Even better? They’ll call it Mann Cakes. Problem is, they end up attracting an unexpected crowd.
Paige is furious. Every man in her life has left her behind, including Tanner. She’s sacrificed everything for her shop. She won’t lose it over some egotistical ex-boyfriend, even if he does have an Air Force-chiseled body. Her younger sister, Morgan, isn’t helping matters. She’s been gaga over Garrett since high school.
To hell with that. If it’s a fight Tanner wants, it’s a fight he’ll get. But how much is Paige willing to risk to win a cupcake war?
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Sins of a Wicked Duke
Sins of a Wicked Duke by Sophie Jordan is $2.49! This is the first book in The Penwich School for Virtuous Girls series and features a heroine who disguises herself as a footman. Both the hero and heroine had difficult upbringings, which adds an element of angst to the romance, and the book features a tall heroine!
She works to live . . .
One would think the last place a beauty like Fallon O’Rourke could keep her virtue was in the Mayfair mansion of London’s most licentious duke, the notorious Dominic Hale. Yet Fallon—who’s endured nothing but lecherous advances since her father’s tragic death—is perfectly safe there . . . disguised as a footman! Beneath the notice of the dark-haired devil with his smoldering blue eyes and sinful smile, Fallon never imagines her secret will be discovered. But how long can her deception last when she begins to wish she is one of the many women traipsing in and out of the sinful rogue’s bedchamber?
He lives to sin . . .
Most men envy the duke, never suspecting his pleasure-loving ways are a desperate attempt to escape, however briefly, the pain of a past that’s left him with a heart of stone. Only one woman can break down his defenses. Only one woman can win his love . . . if she reveals her secret and succumbs to the sins of the wicked duke.
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Damaged Like Us
Damaged Like Us by Krista & Becca Ritchie is $1.60 at Amazon! This book was recently recommended on our Instagram podcast with Ryanne of Berkley Romance. It’s a gay romance between a young billionaire and his bodyguard. So what I’m trying to say is that there’s a whole lot of catnip.
Don’t date your bodyguard.
It was the one rule he had to break.Maximoff Hale is a force of nature. A ship unwilling to be steered. Headstrong, resilient, and wholly responsible — the twenty-two-year-old alpha billionaire can handle his unconventional life. By noon, lunch can turn into a mob of screaming fans. By two, his face is all over the internet.
Born into one of the most famous families in the country, his celebrity status began at birth.
He is certified American royalty.
When he’s assigned a new 24/7 bodyguard, he comes face-to-face with the worst case scenario: being attached to the tattooed, MMA-trained, Yale graduate who’s known for “going rogue” in the security team — and who fills 1/3 of Maximoff’s sexual fantasies.
Twenty-seven-year-old Farrow Keene has one job: protect Maximoff Hale. Flirting, dating, and hot sex falls far, far out of the boundary of his bodyguard duties and into “termination” territory. But when feelings surface, protecting the sexy-as-sin, stubborn celebrity becomes increasingly complicated.
Together, boundaries blur, and being exposed could mean catastrophic consequences for both.
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Paranormalcy
Paranormalcy by Kiersten White is $2.99! This is a YA urban fantasy novel that gives me “Veronica Mars if it had supernatural elements” vibes and has been on my TBR pile for ages. Readers recommend this for any and all Buffy fans, but some felt the heroine bordered on a Mary Sue. Have you read this one?
Evie’s always thought of herself as a normal teenager, even though she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she’s falling for a shape-shifter, and she’s the only person who can see through paranormals’ glamours.
But Evie’s about to realize that she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.
So much for normal.
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Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor is $2.99. A couple of people already beat me to mentioning it in the Harry Potter rec league post.
They should have called the rival cupcake shop Beef Cakes instead! Mann cakes makes no sense grammatically (I am German and too picky). Why can’t US men (esp. in mainstream contemporary romance novels) enjoy anything considered feminine? I thought having a sweet tooth would be gender independent.
Positively Pippa by Sarah Hegger has been 99 cents for a while, so the sale might end soon. I’m reading it now. Disgraced makeover show host returns to small town and hooks up with hot construction company owner.
Early on, the hero’s sister and another woman are bashing the heroine for what happened on the show. He doesn’t believe she’d do what she’s accused of, so he goes over to the house to ask her what really happened because WHEN YOU WANT TO KNOW SOMETHING, YOU ASK. I fairly swooned at the novelty there.
Does anyone really want a bacon and cheese wiz cupcake? Is that truly what men crave?!
@Lizzy: When I hear “savory cupcake,” I think something more like a cornbread muffin, which would be amazing with bacon and pasteurized processed cheese food. Given a choice between that and most varieties of sugar-filled frosted sugar sprinkled with sugar, I’d pick the bacon-cheez bomb, and I’m a delicate flower of ladyhood.
Harlequin is having a sale. According to their Instagram over 500 books for .99 to 1.99. There goes my book budget.
@Mona: ugh, cosigned. I’m sooo tired of every man having to be a testosterone-pumped stereotype. People talk a lot here about how feminist the romance genre is but mostly (aside from plenty of other problems) I see that male characters are constrained to constantly express nothing but MANLINESS, in everything down to their taste in baked goods apparently. Heroines have a bit more freedom to have traditionally “masculine” interests and traits, but God forbid a man show the slightest sign of femininity, because femininity is so disdained and devalued, even in a community that is supposedly so accepting of it.
Do romance readers really recoil in horror from a man who has “feminine” traits and interests? A man who isn’t fearless in all circumstances no matter how dangerous? A man who’s on the short side and more “pretty” than “hunky”? Is the super manly alpha male really a universal fantasy? (He’s seldom mine. Is this unusual? Is this because I’m bi?)
I’ve certainly seen plenty of men in m/m who don’t fit the mold of MANLINESS – but largely excluding such men from m/f is… a problem. It implies that only gay and bi men are allowed to have any feminine qualities, which is both othering to them and confining for straight men. It also alienates readers who are put off by rigid gender roles and readers whose taste in men does not run toward the emotionally constrained tough guy with no interest in anything that might possibly be deemed girly.
I’m really confused by the “fulfills 1/3 of his fantasies” thing. What are the other 2/3? Do they involve dolphin shifters? Baby oil? Circus acrobats?
Riptide has a series of sales this month for their anniversary. This weekend all YA/NA are 60% off.
I particularly recommend Marie Sexton’s Trailer Trash – ya mm set in 1980s Wyoming. It’s probably the best book she’s written and it covers class issues, homophobia and small town stuff really well. Some bad things happen and I wasn’t sure how she’d be able to pull off a realistic feeling happy ending, but she did.
And I also really enjoyed Heels Over Head by Elyse Springer – na mm about two divers training for the Olympics under the same coach. I recommend this for Cutting Edge fans – they become synchro partners and there’s a lot of glowering turning into flirting over long hours of practicing. The writing’s a little uneven but I enjoyed it.
Here’s the link for th Riptide sale – http://www.riptidepublishing.com/6th-anniversary-new-adult
@althea You are so right. Where are our gender fluid heroes? A man who knows he is a man and enjoys exploring his feminine side? He can play sports and seduce women as well as bake bread and knit and dress well and knows the name of unusual colors such as mauve. I’d read that. (disclaimer – I also find that I am raising one of these.)
@Mona, @Althea and @Vicki:
Fourth-ed, or whatever the word is. I don’t dare ask for gender-fluid protagonists*, but for language variety in descriptions. Handsome heroines, pretty heroes. Hard women and soft men. Attraction to the person, aside from the “overwhelming masculinity” or “graceful feminity” of the other.
Or I’ll be able to finish my novel, and get an editor and self-pub it before publishers dare to take the risk.
*Though, if Rick Riordan gets to write a gender-fluid character who also happens to be a Potential Love Interest in a YA saga, I do dare hope for more. In a complete tangent, is it me or is Riordan using the Magnus Chase saga to showcase minorities? I mean, between the formerly homeless teen, the Deaf elf, the Muslim Valkyrie, the genderfluid love interest… it’s a big change from a guy who started out with an allwhite cast).