Happy Tuesday!
We have a crop of brand new book releases, from some buzzy titles to self-published and novella length reads. There is lots of variety this week!
What books are you excited for? Let us know in the comments!
-
Books and Broadswords, Volume One
Author: Jessie Mihalik
Released: June 11, 2024 by NYLA
Genre: Fantasy/Fairy Tale Romance, Novella, Romance, Science Fiction/FantasyThis novella-length volume includes two romantic fantasy stories set in a shared world, each with a guaranteed happily ever after, plus a new bonus epilogue.
Books & Broadswords
The only thing Feora likes more than stealing the king’s gold is using it to buy books. But when a handsome, persistent knight interrupts her day, Feora must decide if saving his life is worth revealing her true nature.Rocks & Rapiers
Zenira never wanted to sell her rock collection, but when the new landowner raises her rent, she’s out of options. Armed with a sketchy rumor about a collector who will pay for stones others might consider worthless, Zenira sets out, but she’s met with an icy scowl, a muddy manor, and the overwhelming urge to mend the mess—owner included.Amanda: Jessie Mihalik is giving fantasy a try!
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous
Author: Mae Marvel
Released: June 11, 2024 by St. Martin's Griffin
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, RomanceAn actress home for the holidays makes a bet with her former best friend-turned-online sensation.
Katie Price is known in every living room in America. A small-town Wisconsin girl who became an A-list star, she rarely makes it home, but this year is different… Little does she know it will lead her straight into the piercing blue-eyed gaze of Wil Greene.
A lot has happened in the decade since those cold Wisconsin nights when Wil and Katie drove around in Wil’s Bronco senior year. Since then, Wil’s law career hasn’t taken off. Her father passed away. And what started as a personal challenge―kissing a new person twice a week, every week―has made her a growing sensation, but her life is still stuck in phase one. Through the years, the two have never left each other’s thoughts and desires, but now suddenly, they are back in each others’ lives. Their reconnection is instantaneous and the passion is palpable… but can it stand the test of time?
Witty, emotional, and steamy, Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous is an unforgettable romantic read for everyone who almost kissed their best friend. And then finally did.
Aarya: Mae Marvel is a pseudonym for Ruthie Knox (About Last Night) and Mary Ann Rivers (The Story Guy) writing together; Rivers now goes by Annie Mare.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
The Ghost of Us
Author: James Sutter
Released: June 11, 2024 by Wednesday Books
Genre: LGBTQIA, Paranormal, Romance, Young AdultEighteen-year-old ghost hunter Cara is determined to escape life as a high school outcast by finding proof of the supernatural. Yet when she stumbles upon the spirit of Aiden, a popular upperclassman who died the previous year, she learns that ghosts have goals of their own. In the wake of his death, Aiden’s little sister, Meredith, has become a depressed recluse, and Aiden can’t pass on into the afterlife until he knows she’ll be okay. Believing that nothing pulls someone out of a slump like romance, he makes Cara a seduce Meredith out of her shell and take her to prom, and Aiden will give Cara all the evidence she needs for fame. If not, well―no dates, no ghost.
Wooing the standoffish Meredith isn’t going to be easy, however. With Aiden’s coaching, Cara slowly manages to win Meredith over―but finds herself accidentally falling for her in the process. Worse as Meredith gets happier and Aiden’s mission nears completion, his ghost begins to fade. Can Cara continue to date Meredith under false pretenses, especially if it means Aiden will vanish forever? Or should she tell Meredith the truth, and risk both of them hating her? And either way, will she lose her only shot at proving ghosts are real?
Dahlia: I really liked Sutter’s debut, Darkhearts, which was an m/m romance about music and grief, so I’m excited to see what he does with a haunting Sapphic relationship in this next one.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
Heartwaves
Author: Anita Kelly
Released: June 11, 2024
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance
Series: Greyfin Bay #1Mae Kellerman is content. After forty years of ups and downs, she has a meaningful job at a queer community center in Portland, Oregon. She has an apartment full of plants, a ride-or-die group of friends.
Until the day her best friend and mentor actually does up and die. Leaving Mae with a hole in her heart—and a shocking amount of money from his inheritance.
Before she can think about the cash, she has to focus on throwing his perfect death party, followed by spreading his ashes on the Oregon coast. Only then does she take a breath, and in the process, stumbles upon an empty storefront for sale in the tiny whale-watching town of Greyfin Bay. Overnight, an old dream surfaces…and her newfound inheritance could make it possible.
If only Dell McCleary didn’t stand in her way.
Real estate agent and owner of said storefront, Dell only sells property to the folks actually invested in the best interests of Greyfin Bay. Not some Portlander with pink hair who breezes in on a whim. A Portlander who, irritatingly, refuses to take no for an answer.
As Mae upends her life for the pursuit of opening a queer-owned bookstore in a conservative coastal town, she and Dell are forced to work together, navigating prejudices and past traumas along the way. But as opening day of Bay Books grows nearer, Mae’s heart grows increasingly tangled with her landlord’s—even if his own heart might already belong to someone else.
Heartwaves is a contemporary queer romance that explores the risks and rewards of life in any landscape, and the freedom to lift the limitations we put on love.
Aarya: This author packs an emotional wallop in novellas.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself
Author: Glynnis MacNicol
Released: June 11, 2024 by Penguin Life
Genre: Memoir, NonfictionWhen you’re a woman smack in so-called “middle age” you are not promised anything at all other than that everything will get worse. But what if everything you’ve been told is a lie.
Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists, and a thirst for long overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets.
After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged 46, unmarried with no children, spent 16 months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt like less of a risk than a necessity.
What follows is a decadent, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.
The weeks in Paris are filled with friendship and food and sex. There is dancing on the Seine; a plethora of gooey cheese; midnight bike rides through empty Paris; handsome men; afternoons wandering through the empty Louvre; nighttime swimming in the ocean off a French island. And yes, plenty of nudity.
In the spirit of Deborah Levy and Annie Ernaux, I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expands far beyond the personal narrative. MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission.
The pursuit of enjoyment is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. Enjoying yourself—as you are—is not something the world tells you is possible, but it is.
Here’s the proof.
Sarah: Memoir about pleasure and enjoyment – Yes please! I learned of it on BluSky where publishing folks were exclaiming over the cover, because it’s extremely hot.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
Not in Love
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Released: June 11, 2024 by Berkley
Genre: Contemporary Romance, RomanceA forbidden, secret affair proves that all’s fair in love and science.
Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.
Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through—and he’s a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can’t stop thinking about. The woman who’s off-limits to him.
Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business—one that plays for keeps.
Amanda: Hazelwood so far has had more misses for me than hits, but this one is speaking to me.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
The Rom-Commers
Author: Katherine Center
Released: June 11, 2024 by St. Martin's Press
Genre: Contemporary Romance, RomanceShe’s rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own?
Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies—good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates—The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!—it’s a break too big to pass up.
Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone—much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t even care about the script—it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.
But Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter—even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules—and comes true?
Katherine Center’s latest!
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
The Stardust Grail
Author: Yume Kitasei
Released: June 11, 2024 by Flatiron Books
Genre: Science Fiction/FantasySave one world. Doom her own.
Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future.
Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.
Maya sets out on a breakneck quest through a universe teeming with strange life and ancient ruins. But the farther she goes, the more her visions cast a dark shadow over her team of friends new and old. Someone will betray her along the way. Worse yet, in choosing to save one species, she may condemn humanity and Earth itself.
Amanda: They had me at “anti-colonial space heist.”
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
Books & Broadswords, Volume One was $2.99 from $9.99 on Amazon, so picked that the heck up
@Janette Davis, thank you! I just picked up “Books & Broadswords, Volume One,” too!
Okay, this is petty as all hell, so I apologize in advance, but: I grew up on the Oregon Coast, and whenever I see blurbs set there, I grit my teeth, because the fake towns all have these twee names like Tierney Bay and Greyfin Bay that sound completely wrong. Most coastal Oregonian town names are either taken from local languages/names or are very stolid-sounding. All the “X Bay” names I know involve the former: Coos Bay, Depoe Bay, Yaquina Bay. The only local place names I can think of that lean twee-er are of the form “X Beach” or “X Rock” (and I’m not sure the latter ever belong to towns), so I might accept “Greyfin Beach,” although I can’t find any evidence that tuna are referred to as “greyfin” locally and therefore remain suspicious.
Does anyone else have a pet peeve around some very tiny setting detail like this? It can’t just be me (I hope). I have NO IDEA why something so trivial annoys me this much.
Nothing on my tbr this week, but I did just discover that my all-time favorite Alexis Hall book, FOR REAL, is re-releasing today with expanded content. It’s a BDSM romance, so beware if that’s not your jam, but beautifully done with lovely interplay between the younger, smaller dom and the older, bigger sub. Highly recommended.
One (or perhaps I should say ten) more: a new multi-author, ten-book hockey series, THE GAMES WE PLAY, debuts June 12 with L.A. Witt’s RED LINE; and then a subsequent book releasing every week after that through August 7. I didn’t look at every one of the books, but I think they’re all m/m.
@Star, also an Oregonian, and I hear you (like Annabeth Albert, also a PNWerner has a Rainbow Cove series set on the Oregon coast, and kind of hilariously, the only two Oregon towns with cove in their names are not on the coast….). I get wanting a fictional town so as not to have the readers make constant comparisons between the real town and what is different. But yet authors don’t tend to do the same thing when setting something in a big city, even if their restaurants or parks or whatever might often be just fictional.
That said, Anita Kelly lives in the PNW and has some other books set here (Moonlighters is about a karaoke bar in Portland, and then Something Wild and Wonderful is set on the Pacific Crest Trail) and she definitely gets the PNW right.
BTW, the Goodreads link for the Books and Broadswords goes to a general search for books.
@dePizan: I believe that’s an issue with Goodreads, as I think using an ampersand breaks the search autofill! We can change the title on our end.
Loved THE ROM-COMMERS. It did have some typical traumatic sublayers, as her books do, and I wasn’t in a good headspace when I read it because of a family member, but I plowed through.
The whole package was worth it.
@dePizan You get it!
The part that really gets me is that this is preventable: just get a list of names in the region you’re targeting and then come up with something that sounds like it belongs there. Hell, you could even use ChatGPT to help you; this is one of the things it’s actually pretty good at. It’s harder if you’re aiming for something in a local language, for sure, but not prohibitively so, and some of those names are delightful to say, so hunting down word lists for local languages could be rewarding. (My favorite has always been Tillamook, but Salishan and Coos are pretty good too.)
The worst offender for this is definitely Elle Kennedy naming her fake Ivy League school “Brier University,” though.
Finished Books & Broadswords already (Hi, Bad Decisions Book Club) and it was lovely. The first novella was more of a short story and didn’t have a lot to it, but was still enjoyable. The second novella was a lot of fun. The 2 bonus epilogues (my goodness this book has a lot of parts to it) also set up more stories in this world, without being even remotely cliffhanger-y. Just all around happy sighs, especially for $2.99.
@Star I don’t know much about Oregon, but I have this issue with books set in Michigan as that’s my home state. Names definitely, but then today I was recommended a book on BookBub set at the beach on Lake Michigan, and there are PALM TREES on the cover…I just can’t even with that stuff.
Sky Kilean’s Queer Romance New & Recent Releases: June PRIDE Edition list is out at https://skyewritesromance.com/new-queer-romances-june-2024/
Her list focuses on indie and small press books and authors and rep that don’t tend to get as much buzz. Plus she says what she’s looking forward to, which I always appreciate. Obviously read the samples but I’ve found some real gems in the past.
Worth noting that the re-release of the Alexis Hall book is part of a revision of the whole Spires series and includes extensive annotations/footnotes from the author which are insightful and funny (and sometimes just outrageous!). Very much enjoying my re-read.
@spinsterrevival, I’m glad I’m not the only person irritated when covers don’t match content.