Romance Books

Beast: Former hip-hop artist Ebony “The Beast” Trent has wrapped her persona around herself like a protective wall of bitterness. Belinda Jansen is confident, intelligent, sexy, and—to Ebony's fascination—not the least bit intimidated by Ebony’s beastly demeanor. Can Beauty truly tame The Beast?

Awaken: Local celebrity chef Chayse Carmichael has achieved a level of success she’d only imagined while learning to cook. But when free-spirited Georgia peach Serena Frasier walks into her restaurant, Chayse realizes that success doesn’t always bring happiness if you don’t have someone special to share it with. Does love at first sight truly exist?

Stiletto: Music mogul Cass Phillips barely has a moment to sleep, let alone build a relationship. But an unexpected encounter with shoe designer Faith Shaw leads her to believe that maybe fairy tales do come true. Can true love really conquer all?

Six women find themselves in their own real-life fairy tales when true love finds them in the most unexpected ways.

Praise from Publishers Weekly: "Shade twines together three sensual novellas, each based on a classic fairy tale and centering black lesbian love....The fairy tale connections put a fun, creative spin on these quick outings. Readers looking for sweet and spicy lesbian romance will be pleased."

Elizabeth Rosseau and Abigail Lester were best friends. At twenty-one, they confess their feelings for each other before leaving for winter break. It should have been a love story, only Abigail never came back.

Six years later, Elizabeth contacts her one last time, and to her surprise, Abigail answers. Their chemistry is undeniable, but Abigail is hesitant to see her in person. She was in an accident that left her a monster, a wendigo. Now she’s in a support group for other inhuman cannibals and is mostly convinced that she could avoid eating Elizabeth, but Abigail doesn’t trust herself, and even more, she’s terrified that if Elizabeth finds out the truth, she’ll never want to see her again. 

They want nothing more than to be together, but they belong to different worlds, different lives, and different food groups.

Lynn Monroe is finally living life on her terms. The niece she raised as her own has finished medical school and started an internship, and she’s healing from a painful divorce that was long overdue. But when she runs into a ghost from her past, the stable life she’s worked so hard to build begins to crumble.

Dr. Maggie Randall is focused, driven, and in love with her best friend’s aunt. When she unexpectedly bumps into Lynn it’s like no time has passed. She’s sure it’s a sign they’re meant to be. But all Maggie ever wanted in life is to raise children, and Lynn’s not ready to start a second family.

The choice between love and family has never been so difficult, and different visions of the future may end their romance before it’s begun.

In an instant, Brittany Yardin’s view in the mirror changed forever. A tragic accident as a preteen left permanent physical scars, but teasing by the mean girl clique left deeper emotional ones. Years later, Brittany has made a life for herself on a tiny remote island, and the last person she expects to run into is high school mean girl and secret crush, Amy Jansons.

Amy, aka Erika James, longs to be more than just a pretty face. As a top fashion model her beauty is the benchmark most women long to attain. She travels the world and wears the latest designer clothes, but as her fortieth birthday approaches, so does the end of her career, and she’s determined to keep her place at the top.

When Amy needs help during a shoot, Brittany puts the past aside and friendship blooms. But so does the attraction neither of them can deny, and life on a remote island is no place for a serious model trying to save her career.

Far from her Midwestern roots, Kathleen Schmitt is living in Tokyo as the project head for Personal Love Companion, a synthetic love robot made to match a customer's preference in personality and appearance. When Kathleen receives her own beta model for testing, she’s shocked to find her personalized robot is the exact replica of her neighbor, Yuriko Vellucci. 

American-born engineer for the PLC project, Yuriko is sympathetic to Kathleen’s difficulties adjusting to Tokyo’s culture, but quickly realizes Kathleen will need her help if this transition—and the PLC project—is to be a success. With Yuriko to show her the way, Kathleen learns to socialize at an izakaya, find the best onsen in Nikko, party at a matsuri, buy doujinshii in Akihabara, fall in love with Japan, and, perhaps, fall for the person who showed it to her.

First Bold Strokes Books edition; previously published 2016.

Lauren Prescott had dreamed of being an actress since she was cast as Wendy in her middle school production of Peter Pan. Yes, her nightgown snagged and brought the set tumbling down, but she was hooked. After years of unsuccessful auditions, performing just wasn’t in the cards. Instead, Lauren established herself as a successful stage manager at the esteemed McAllister Theater. Unfortunately, the resident director has cast celebrity Carly Daniel: headstrong, entitled, and always late. So why is their chemistry turning her the hell on?

After partying her way through her twenties and ruining a successful film career, Carly Daniel has to take whatever she can get. If schlepping it onstage will raise her star again, she’ll listen to her pesky agent. Added bonus: the uptight stage manager is a sexy distraction.

When Carly’s costar is sidelined, Lauren must decide whether renewing a long-forgotten dream will jeopardize what she has percolating with Carly. Is the limelight big enough for two?

Ashleigh McAllister’s life is a total disaster. Her ex dumped her for a guy, and she can’t seem to stop bumping into them in their suddenly way too small Brooklyn neighborhood. At least Mother Nature is on her side. Summer is here and the forecast is all sun. Ashleigh needs a little excitement, and things get exponentially hotter when Kellan Dwyer walks into her life.

Fresh out of the army, Kellan is killing time apartment sitting before returning home to a scripted future in Colorado. Her itinerary consists solely of having a blast.

Ashleigh and Kellan decide friends with benefits is hot, and fun, and sexy as hell, but romance? Terrible idea.

With the New York City skyline as their backdrop, the summer heats up fast. They just have to keep their feelings in check before someone gets hurt. When opposites attract, can a summer of passion lead to a lifetime of love?

Kitty Kerr is a high-flying lawyer when her career plans are derailed by the luscious blackberries from Lucy Shen’s Country Mouse Farms. Kitty can’t get enough of the fruit, or of Lucy. Suddenly, she’s wanting things she never dared to want—Lucy, and the life on the farm. But how will being an artisan cook/farmer fit with her legal ambitions and city habits?

Between her beautiful farm and her sculpture, Lucy’s life is set. Falling for a big city lawyer is not part of the plan. Even as Kitty helps make her dreams of spotlighting her farm’s produce in restaurants a reality, Lucy’s terrified that she and the farm aren’t enough to keep Kitty interested in love and the simpler things in life.

Pulled in two different directions, will the city kitty and country mouse be able to make it work?

Dylan Prey is willing to risk her life and her cover to help Homeland Security and the CIA bring wanted terrorist Carol O’Brien to justice. Deep undercover inside the Russian mafia, Dylan does whatever it takes to secure her place in the mafia’s upper ranks. Finding love amidst the lies, manipulation, and violence isn’t easy.

NSA cyberstalker Emma Quinn has just joined the team responsible for taking down O’Brien’s top lieutenants, but they'll need every ounce of her genius to find and capture O’Brien herself. Emma is shy, awkward, and brilliant. Dylan is fierce, charismatic, and unyielding. Their dynamic is exactly what the team needs to complete the mission, but it spells disaster for the attraction that simmers between them.

The race is on to bring Carol O’Brien to justice before more lives are lost. Friendships will be tested, relationships strained, and one of the team may pay the ultimate price.

One seemingly ordinary evening, Angeline Vallencourt is ripped from life as she knows it and thrust into a world she doesn’t understand. As a newly turned vampire, the only one she can turn to for help is the vampire who becomes her worst nightmare.

Megan Denham is in the wrong place at the wrong time. After ending up the victim of a robbery-gone-wrong, her life is turned upside down by the strange and beautiful Angeline. If Angeline is telling the truth about who she is, then everything Megan believes about the world is a lie. If Angeline is lying, then she will have to walk away from the first person to set her heart on fire.

When suspicious deaths begin to occur in their small town of Fog Hollow, Angeline and Megan find themselves as unlikely allies, with an even more unlikely attraction.

Love is never easy.

But once you add a complicated ex-wife and eight-year-old daughter, you’re playing with a new set of rules. Madisen’s just beginning to figure out those rules when she meets Rae in what becomes an all-consuming affair filled with late nights and exhausted euphoria. Rae is charming. Madisen is smitten. And life couldn’t feel more perfect.

At least, that is, until her ex-wife begins to have second thoughts.

Attorney Abby Keane’s vacation is perfect, especially her steamy interlude with a beautiful stranger. But her newfound zen crumbles when her biggest client, a chain of bridal stores, leaves hundreds of brides without dresses. As if reentry isn’t bad enough, a new wedding blogger is doing her best to stoke the anger of the already unhappy brides, and has chosen Abby as the villain.

Roxanne Daly’s blog has finally hit the sweet spot, and her popularity is soaring. With a regular TV spot on the line, she’ll do whatever it takes to impress the network producers. Running point for a horde of angry brides against a hotshot lawyer seems like the perfect plan until her crusade collides with Abby, the woman she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about since she left her in a tropical paradise.

Legal Affairs: one law firm, three best friends, three chances to fall in love.

Praise from Publishers Weekly: "Taite combines legal and relationship drama to create this realistic and deeply enjoyable lesbian romance....The reliably engaging Taite neatly balances romance and red-hot passion with a plausible legal story line, well-drawn characters, and pitch-perfect pacing that culminates in the requisite heartfelt happily-ever-after."

Rebekiah Kearns’s passion is photography—erotic images of sex, love, and the boundaries between them. Still wounded by the death of her best friend, she’s locked her heart away and forges her only meaningful connections through the lens of her camera.

Lindsey Blackwell never stops. Her work as a wealth management consultant takes her all over the world, and she just doesn’t have time to make a relationship work. Women always end up asking for more than she can give.

When Rebekiah receives a huge inheritance, all she wants to do is get rid of it, but Lindsey has other ideas. Their professional relationship quickly turns personal when Lindsey agrees to pose for Rebekiah. With every click of the shutter, Rebekiah finds it harder and harder to keep Lindsey in focus without getting too close.

Lisa Tobias dreams of coaching women’s basketball at a major university and possibly advancing to the pros. She’ll never get there if she stays where she is, coaching for a small-town college. She wants to move on and move up, so a relationship is the last thing on her mind.

English professor Celeste Bouchard is exactly where she wants to be teaching at Glassell University. Popular and on a first-name basis with her students, Celeste loves her job. She doesn’t love the gossip and rumors that followed her disastrous romance with a fellow professor, but she’s never getting involved with a coworker again.

When Lisa’s star player has trouble in Celeste’s class, they have to work together to find a solution. The attraction is off the charts, but Lisa and Celeste are determined to block another shot at love.

Airline captain Kerri Sullivan has a perfect life. Only one thing is missing—a woman to share it with. She's had plenty of women on the road to success, but she's never met "the one." Flight attendant Janine Case is beautiful beyond measure, but comes across as aloof and untouchable. When Kerri and Janine are crewmembers on a flight to Hawaii, an unexpected kiss leads to smoldering attraction.

After Kerri is forced to make an emergency water landing mid-flight and the two women survive a harrowing rescue mission, all Kerri wants to do is follow her heart into Janine’s arms. But Jeanine is hiding a dark secret from her past, one that makes falling in love impossible. She’s on the run from her abusive ex-husband, and she’ll stop at nothing to protect her daughter, even if the cost is her own happiness.

Jamis Bachman never stays in one place for too long. Retired from the reality TV show Ghastly Incidents, she’s now a social media sensation, chasing ghosts, demons, and inter-dimensional aliens—in an effort to avoid her own.

When a desperate young couple sends Jamis a video of a poltergeist disturbance, she jumps on a plane to Sage Creek, Utah, not knowing her world is about to change forever. Ghost stories she can handle, but a violent poltergeist, a brutal unsolved twenty-five-year-old murder, and meeting the love of her life? She’s in way over her head.

Jamis thought she was the one chasing ghosts, but it seems as though something is chasing her…

Justice might be satisfying, but revenge is far sweeter.

Computer programmer Rachel Portola has a target on her back. She’s developed a top-secret program and her boss, Justin McKinney, wants it and the millions it will bring on the open market. Even if it means murder.

When Rachel’s plane crashes and she and her friends are forced to hike through the Alaskan wilderness to survive, she thinks the worst is over. Rachel can finally focus on her attraction to her best friend, Claire, and the unexpected love they share.

But Justin’s not giving up. Armed with only her instincts and a sharp knife, Rachel’s in for the fight of her life to protect what’s hers. The odds are impossible, the future looks bleak, and with everything that matters on the line, Rachel’s not letting anything get in her way.

Hazel Abbot spent her whole life unaware she was a witch. When a spell thrusts her great-aunt Sarah Hutchinson forward from the Salem witch trials of 1692 and lands her in Hazel’s bookstore, everything Hazel thought she knew about herself changes. Complicating matters, Raven Dare, a supernatural hunter, informs her that they’ve all been summoned by the Queen Witch, Morgan le Fay.

Morgan compels Hazel, Sarah, and Raven to correct the shift in the realms of good and evil by ridding the world of the evil that followed Sarah into modern day. If they fail, the forces of white magic will be extinguished forever. But completing the perilous mission, convincing Sarah to return to Puritan life, and resisting their growing attraction for each other might prove more difficult than Hazel and Raven ever anticipated.