If you’re new to Hide Your Wallet, this is where we list new releases we’re pretty excited for in the coming month.
Each reviewer has a book maximum (five per person), and we’ve separated HYW into two parts. The first HYW of the month will cover books that release from the 1st to the 14th. The second HYW will cover books released from the 15th to the end of the month.
We also think this will help us feature books from smaller publishers who don’t have buy links up as early as the bigger trade houses.
As always, if we missed any books that you’re particularly looking forward to, tell us all about them in the comments.
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Below Zero
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Released: July 5, 2022 by Berkley
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Novella, Romance
Series: The STEMinist Novellas #3It will take the frosty terrain of the Arctic to show these rival scientists that their chemistry burns hot.
Mara, Sadie, and Hannah are friends first, scientists always. Though their fields of study might take them to different corners of the world, they can all agree on this universal truth: when it comes to love and science, opposites attract and rivals make you burn…
Hannah’s got a bad feeling about this. Not only has the NASA aerospace engineer found herself injured and stranded at a remote Arctic research station—but the one person willing to undertake the hazardous rescue mission is her longtime rival.
Ian has been many things to Hannah: the villain who tried to veto her expedition and ruin her career, the man who stars in her most deliciously lurid dreams…but he’s never played the hero. So why is he risking everything to be here? And why does his presence seem just as dangerous to her heart as the coming snowstorm?
To read Mara and Sadie’s stories look for the novellas Under One Roof and Stuck with You available now from Berkley!
Elyse: I love Ali Hazelwood.
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What Souls Are Made Of
Author: Tasha Suri
Released: July 5, 2022 by Feiwel & Friends
Genre: Gothic, Historical: European, Romance, Young Adult
Series: Remixed Classics #4What Souls Are Made Of, British Fantasy Award-winning author Tasha Suri’s masterful new take on Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, will leave readers breathless.
Sometimes, lost things find their way home…
Yorkshire, North of England, 1786. As the abandoned son of a lascar—a sailor from India—Heathcliff has spent most of his young life maligned as an “outsider.” Now he’s been flung into an alien life in the Yorkshire moors, where he clings to his birth father’s language even though it makes the children of the house call him an animal, and the maids claim he speaks gibberish.
Catherine is the younger child of the estate’s owner, a daughter with light skin and brown curls and a mother that nobody talks about. Her father is grooming her for a place in proper society, and that’s all that matters. Catherine knows she must mold herself into someone pretty and good and marriageable, even though it might destroy her spirit.
As they occasionally flee into the moors to escape judgment and share the half-remembered language of their unknown kin, Catherine and Heathcliff come to find solace in each other. Deep down in their souls, they can feel they are the same.
But when Catherine’s father dies and the household’s treatment of Heathcliff only grows more cruel, their relationship becomes strained and threatens to unravel. For how can they ever be together, when loving each other—and indeed, loving themselves—is as good as throwing themselves into poverty and death?
Aarya: I love this author so much and the cover sparks incoherent joy.
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A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting
Author: Sophie Irwin
Released: July 12, 2022 by Pamela Dorman Books
Genre: Historical: European, RomanceA whip-smart debut that follows the adventures of an entirely unconventional heroine who throws herself into the London Season to find a wealthy husband. But the last thing she expects is to find love…
Kitty Talbot needs a fortune. Or rather, she needs a husband who has a fortune. Left with her father’s massive debts, she has only twelve weeks to save her family from ruin.
Kitty has never been one to back down from a challenge, so she leaves home and heads toward the most dangerous battleground in all of England: the London season.
Kitty may be neither accomplished nor especially genteel—but she is utterly single-minded; imbued with cunning and ingenuity, she knows that risk is just part of the game.
The only thing she doesn’t anticipate is Lord Radcliffe. The worldly Radcliffe sees Kitty for the mercenary fortune-hunter that she really is and is determined to scotch her plans at all costs, until their parrying takes a completely different turn…
This is a frothy pleasure, full of brilliant repartee and enticing wit—one that readers will find an irresistible delight.
Sarah: Another “Someone’s Guide” book, this time fortune hunting (obvs). I wonder what the total tally is between “First name Last Name Is/Does a Thing” title and “A Someone’s Guide to Something” titles!
Aarya: Fun regency romance that doesn’t reinvent the wheel; it’s kisses only and focuses more on the hijinks/banter, less on the romantic relationship (they don’t officially get together until very late in the book).
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Touchstones
Author: Stephanie Burgis
Released: July 11, 2022
Genre: Fantasy/Fairy Tale Romance, Science Fiction/FantasyThe glass molded to my foot as neatly—and as chillingly—as if it had been made for me.
“This,” I said, “is a most unfortunate coincidence…”
From tongue-in-cheek fairy tale reframings to forbidden Victorian-era romance and contemporary ghosts, dive into an immersive world of magic. Touchstones is a collection of sparkling short fantasy fiction from Stephanie Burgis, including two new stories as well as fourteen short stories and novelettes that have been previously published in magazines and anthologies.
This collection includes The Wrong Foot, Undead Philosophy 101, A Cup of Comfort, Dreaming Harry, Offerings, Dancing in the Dark, The Disastrous Début of Agatha Tremain, The Wildness Inside, The Art of Deception, Midnight, Clasp Hands, Crow, True Names, Good Neighbors, Love, Your Flatmate, and House of Secrets.
Aarya: Charming short story collection with various magical creatures (they’re not all romantic, but a majority are and end happily).
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A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
Author: Becky Chambers
Released: July 12, 2022 by Tor.com
Genre: Novella, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Series: Monk & Robot #2After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.
Becky Chambers’s new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?
Sarah: The sequel to A Psalm for the Wild Built! Yes please.
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Bet On It
Author: Jodie Slaughter
Released: July 12, 2022 by St. Martin's Griffin
Genre: Contemporary Romance, RomanceThe first time Aja Owens encounters the man of her dreams, she’s having a panic attack in the frozen foods section of the Piggly Wiggly. The second time, he’s being introduced to her as her favorite bingo buddy’s semi-estranged grandson. From there, all it takes is one game for her to realize that he’s definitely going to be a problem. And if there’s anything she already has a surplus of, it’s problems.
In Walker Abbott’s mind, there are only two worthwhile things in Greenbelt, South Carolina. The peach cobbler at his old favorite diner and his ailing grandmother. Dragging himself back after more than a decade away, he’s counting down the days until Gram heals and he can get back to his real life. Far away from the trauma inside of those city limits. Just when he thinks his plan is solid, enter Aja to shake everything up.
A hastily made bingo-based sex pact is supposed to keep this…thing between them from getting out of hand. Especially when submitting to their feelings means disrupting their carefully balanced lives. But emotions are just like bingo callers—they refuse to be ignored.
Jodie Slaughter’s Bet on It is a heart-stoppingly fun, emotional romance that will have readers falling in love until long after the last page is turned.
Aarya: Really interested in trying Slaughter’s first trade pub release.
Shana: Jodie Slaughter is an autobuy author for me.
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The Night Shift
Author: Natalka Burian
Released: July 12, 2022 by Park Row
Genre: Time Travel, Science Fiction/FantasyOnly by traveling into the past can Jean find a happy future…
Hidden behind back doors of bars and restaurants and theaters and shops all over New York City are shortcuts—secret passageways that allow you to jump through time and space to emerge in different parts of the city. No one knows where they came from, but there are rules—you can only travel through them one way, and only at night.
When Jean’s work friend Iggy introduces her to the shortcuts, it’s to help shorten her commute between her night shifts bartending and working at an upscale bakery. Jean is intrigued but has a hard time shaking the side effects—the shortcuts make her more talkative, more open to discussing her past and recalling memories she’s tried hard to forget.
When Iggy goes missing, Jean believes it’s somehow related to the shortcuts and his growing obsession with them. But as she starts digging into their origins, she comes to find a strange connection between herself and the shortcuts—casting her past in a new light and altering her future.
Amanda: This sounds trippy and fun!
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The Romance Recipe
Author: Ruby Barrett
Released: July 12, 2022 by Carina Adores
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, RomanceA fiery restaurant owner falls for her enigmatic head chef in this charming, emotional romance
Amy Chambers: restaurant owner, micromanager, control freak.
Amy will do anything to revive her ailing restaurant, including hiring a former reality-show finalist with good connections and a lot to prove. But her hopes that Sophie’s skills and celebrity status would bring her restaurant back from the brink of failure are beginning to wane…
Sophie Brunet: grump in the kitchen/sunshine in the streets, took thirty years to figure out she was queer.
Sophie just wants to cook. She doesn’t want to constantly post on social media for her dead-in-the-water reality TV career, she doesn’t want to deal with Amy’s take-charge personality and she doesn’t want to think about what her attraction to her boss might mean…
Then, an opportunity: a new foodie TV show might provide the exposure they need. An uneasy truce is fine for starters, but making their dreams come true means making some personal and painful sacrifices and soon, there’s more than just the restaurant at stake.
Carina Adores is home to romantic love stories where LGBTQ+ characters find their happily-ever-afters.
Aarya: I’m a little burned out on foodie romance, but this premise is too good to resist.
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What Moves the Dead
From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.
What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.
Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.
Amanda: New Kingfisher horror!
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Oh damn, I love T Kingfisher and can’t handle horror, what to do, what to do…
I am going to try to avoid this because Poe creeps me out and I do not need fungal nightmares, but I have very little temptation resistance. It speaks very highly of her writing that I am in the frankly incomprehensible position of finding the prospect of fungal nightmares tempting.
If you’re able to suspend your disbelief that humans would ever say “of course, sorry, go be free, we’ll respect your boundaries” in response to a (robot) labor revolution, Becky Chambers has created a very low-stress world to pass some time in.
A number of books that had June release dates have been postponed until July. Here’s hoping they will show up—although there are several writers whose release dates are often more aspirational than actual. Anyway, as of right now, here’s what I have on my July tbr:
BRAINWASHED by Nyla K (July 7) is the third in her very dark & twisty Alabaster Penitentiary series. This one features a serial killer and the doctor who is attempting to help/understand him. Nyla K isn’t a writer for everyone—her work is full of triggers and transgressive behaviors. I’ve enjoyed some of her books and had to DNF others. I’ll have to wait until July to see where BRAINWASHED lands.
Last month I said if THE CRASH by Skye Warren & Amelia Wilde failed to make its June release date, I wouldn’t be surprised: it didn’t and I wasn’t. Right now THE CRASH (a couple-against-the-elements story when the plane piloted by the hero crashes on the way to taking the geologist heroine to a remote jungle site) is scheduled for July 12. Warren’s books frequently miss their scheduled publication dates, so only time will tell.
Sybil Bartel’s ZULU was also postponed from June release and is now scheduled for July 14. Zula is the latest in Bartel’s romantic-suspense Alpha Elite series. Bartel writes to a template (beyond-gonzo alpha heroes; resilient heroines in trouble through no fault of their own; lots of fire power & high body counts; and plenty of sexy-times with a D/s dynamic). If you don’t like the template, her books will not be for you. But if, like me, you do like Bartel’s style, ZULU will be a good read.
Serena Bell’s A LITTLE WILDER (July 19) is the fourth in her Wilder Adventures series. This one features an unplanned pregnancy–the result of a Vegas one-night-stand between a Wilder brother and a woman who is later hired by Wilder Adventures to redesign the company’s RVs. Current events are now making the unplanned pregnancy trope problematic to say the least, but Bell can always be relied on to write smart, sexy romances and I’m expecting A LITTLE WILDER to be a great read.
Amelia Wilde’s BLACKMAIL arrives July 26. As the title indicates, there’s blackmail afoot as the temp heroine is caught embezzling money (this is a romance, so you know it’s for a good reason: she’s supporting her younger siblings) from her wealthy boss. He won’t call the police and break up her family, but he will demand, um, other things. Amelia Wilde writes really hot dark romance, and BLACKMAIL appears to be exactly what it says on the tin.
C.M. Nascosta’s MOON BLOODED BREEDING CLINIC (July 28) is part of her Cambric Creek series of romances set in a world similar to our own but featuring humans, mythological characters, and anthropomorphized animals who live, work, and have relationships with each other. In MBBC, the heroine is a human and the hero is a werewolf. They meet when the heroine is trying to get pregnant (if you’ve read MORNING GLORY MILKING FARM, you know that werewolves in Cambric Creek have a great track record of helping women conceive). I’m expecting a fun read with lots of heat and heart.
A.E. Via’s RAYNE (July 29) is the third & final book in her True Lover’s Stories series of m/m romances. Via could never be described as a great prose stylist, but her books have a lot of heart, sincerity, and passion. Another thing I like about Via is that her stories are set solidly in the working class (no secret billionaires here). In RAYNE, one hero is pushing 50 and owns a landscaping business; the other hero is a recovering sex addict (there’s a vague indication in the blurb that he’s been a sex worker at some point). I liked the little peek we got of this couple’s dynamic in the previous book (WOOD), so I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out in RAYNE.
I’m looking forward to Mary Balogh’s REMEMBER LOVE, the first book in a new series, releasing July 12. Also, A LADY’S GUIDE TO FORTUNE-HUNTING looks fun — I’ve added it to my list!
Melissa Brayden’s “The Last Lavender Sister” (sapphic contemporary romance) is out on July 12th.
Plot blurb: “When your parents name you and your three siblings after flowers, the world is stacked against you. At least, that’s how Aster Lavender feels. The youngest daughter, Aster always keeps her head down and lets her siblings stand in the spotlight. She sells her gourmet doughnuts from Hole in One, the small drive-through stand in sleepy Homer’s Bluff, Kansas, and daydreams about seeing the big beautiful world. Love is never going to happen, especially when the only other lesbians in town are already married to each other.
Beautiful Brynn Garrett arrives to fill in for Homer Bluff’s only veterinarian, and suddenly every pet in town is sick. Brynn’s older, smarter, and way out of Aster’s league. Plus, she’s only in town temporarily and definitely running from something. Aster didn’t plan for a connection so strong it knocks the wind right out of her, but Brynn makes her feel like anything but a wallflower.”
A T. Kingfisher set in Ruritania. Will Rupert of Hentzau be making an appearance?
I don’t know if I could get my antipathy towards Heathcliff even though that first one sounds pretty good.
@DiscoDollyDeb
Amazon is showing Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic (by C.M. Nascosta) as being available on August 27 (not July 28). According to Amazon, Nascosta does have a different Cambridge Creek book (Run, Run Rabbit) available on July 15.
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield comes out on July 12.
Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.
By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that compels us nevertheless toward one another.
Eclipse the Moon by Jessie Mihalik is coming out on the 12th, it’s the second book in her sci-fi trilogy, with each book featuring a different couple. The first book in said trilogy was amazing so I’m really looking forward to this one.
@Michael I: thank you for the update. I had checked all of the upcoming July dates last week and MOON BLOODED BREEDING CLINIC was still showing July 28, and I didn’t double-check before posting today. There are so many factors right now that make publication dates somewhat unpredictable. Oh well, off to revise the July (and August) tbr!
The Romance Recipe and What Souls Are Made Of both landed A-s’s from me; both are fun. Everything else is on my TBR.
@kkw I also love T. Kingfisher but am squeamish about horror. Her last book, Nettle & Bone, was also classified as horror, but it just read like a regular fantasy to me. It might be safe.
@Sunflower – So much yes! I loved the first one in this new series and can’t wait for the sequel.
Bolu Babalola has a new book coming out on July 4th. Her debut, Love In Color, was my happiest reading experience last year. I’m VERY excited!
I know this isn’t the right category, but just wanted to mention that Lucy Parker’s “Battle Royal” is $1.99 on Barnes and Noble. I was so made the last time I missed this deal, so I snapped it up.
I have read a Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting and I really enjoyed it! It didn’t reinvent the wheel but I appreciated the focus on the heroine saying “Look what ARE my options here? You are a rich dude and I’m a gentlewoman with FOUR sisters who aren’t all old enough to get acceptable jobs and NO MONEY and people about the repossess the house in 6 weeks – so what am I supposed to do to keep us all together and alive until we can all be maids/governesses?” When the Hero was getting all pissy and self righteous over her fortune hunting.
@shem you just sold it so much better than the marketing! That “entirely unconventional heroine” line in the blurb set off all my “not like other girls” AND “not like other romance novels” alarms but now I’m into it
I enjoyed Bet on It.
TW for childhood trauma PTSD and authentic anxiety attacks.
Reading a lot lately…LOVED:
1. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. A MUST READ.
2. The Surgeon’s Daughter by Audrey Blake (read The Girl In His Shadow First).
3. The Living and The Lost by Ellen Feldman. Set in 1945 Berlin
I really LIKED a lot:
1. The Woman On Fire by Barr
2. The Keeper of Happy Endings by Barbara Davis
3. Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez
4. How To Fake It in Hollywood by Ava Wilder (Hollywood trope)
5. Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman (Hollywood trope)
6. A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong (time traveling cop)
Disappointed:
1. The Perfect crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian. Not really a stand-alone. Her books are getting repetitive for me.
2. A Lady For The Duke by Alexis Hall. DNF for me, but gets hi marks.
3. The Lost Summers of Newport. The 3 W’s usually a fun read. This one melodramatic and forced for me,
4. You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle. Interesting premise, but too long, too little happens for my taste
Next up—Horse by Geraldine Brooks and The Bodyguard by Katherine Center!!
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