Contemporary Books

Sawyer Noel’s car troubles leave her coasting into the dreamy town of Ladybug Junction, Alabama, on her way to the Fetch Veterinarian Conference. She tries to make the most of it, but cell phone signal is limited, and the library is the only reliable place for Wi-Fi. The attractive, carefree librarian with her wild, curly hair and infectious smile helps the time go by quickly, and suddenly Sawyer isn’t in such a rush.

Macey Burr loves helping people. She happily throws herself into her work solving problems and enriching the lives around her. When a sexy stranger rolls through town, Macey goes out of her way to make the doctor feel at home. It’s easy to see past Sawyer’s hard exterior and impossible to ignore her full lips, sparkling blue eyes, and brilliant mind.

When life seems to be too good to be true and love is within reach, Sawyer and Macey discover the truth about Ladybug Junction, and the cold light of reality tests the hearts of these dreamers.

It’s been almost two years since Sarah Osborn’s wife, Julie, died. She never expects that the email she sends to Julie’s old account, hoping for closure, would end up in someone else’s inbox.

Lindsey Cooper is deeply touched when she receives an email meant for someone else. She writes back, explaining the mistake and tries to ignore the immediate connection she feels to the sender. A handful of emails later, their growing online connection leads to a real-life meeting.

Even though Sarah wants to be ready for her growing feelings for Lindsay, her guilt over moving on after Julie’s death stands in her way. A simple mistake brought them together, but if Sarah is to embrace a future with Lindsey she never dreamed possible, she must find a way to let go of her lost love.

Allison, a Vancouver gallery owner, boards a small plane bound for Dawson City to meet a promising young First Peoples artist. Tour guide Mike is returning home to enjoy a well-deserved rest after tourist season. She’s skeptical of the sophisticated city slicker who sits next to her on the flight. The woman looks like she hasn’t camped a day in her life.

Neither the pilot nor the weather forecasters foresee the monstrous storm that forces their plane to crash-land somewhere in the Yukon wilderness, far from any town or road. As the only survivors, Allison and Mike must help each other and overcome their prejudices to survive and get home safely.

 Facing hunger, cold, and a terrifying encounter with a bear, mutual respect begins to blossom, and with it, desire neither expects.

Seventeen-year-old Jen’s best (let’s face it, only) friend Deanna is five years older and big on parties. Jen has been trying to live in Deanna’s world, but she’s coming to realize guys, drinking, and drugs aren’t really her thing. Just as she’s figuring out how to tell Deanna the truth, tragedy hits, leaving Jen struggling to figure out who she is and what’s important to her.

Consumed by grief and guilt, Jen finds support in unexpected places. Stephanie’s sociable, smart, and upbeat—all the things Jen is not. Yet she seems to want to be Jen’s friend. Stephanie is also a lesbian, and when she takes Jen along to an LGBTQIA+ club, Jen starts to see not only her past with Deanna in a new light, but more importantly, her feelings about Stephanie.

Emma Wilson has it all figured out. She’s the starting point guard for the Alder Lions. She’s got a post-grad job lined up. Every queer woman on campus wants her. And she’s definitely over her old flame. The one she never even got to date.

She’s coasting. 

Until the new basketball coach arrives on campus and clearly dislikes her. So does Lake Palmer, the arrogant new player the coach brought with her. Sure, Lake’s gorgeous, and Emma wants to kiss those annoyingly enticing lips, but she plans to steal Emma’s spot. And that just can’t happen. It won’t happen. Their epic arguments are the stuff of courtside legend, but the more Lake pushes her to play better, the harder it is for Emma to resist her attraction.

Oh, and maybe Emma’s major makes her want to rip her own hair out as much as being Lake’s teammate does. With her future anything but a slam dunk, coasting is beginning to feel a whole lot like crashing.

Piper James was given a new lease on life when she received a heart transplant. She lives in the apartment above her art supply store, Rainbow Arts, with her cat. She has all she wants, except a woman she can love for the rest of her life. Her biggest problem? The rest of her life is on borrowed time and love isn’t an option.

Gillian Phillips moves into a new neighborhood for a new start after losing her wife in an accident two years ago. After taking advice to be more social, she decides on a pottery class at Rainbow Arts. There’s something about her instructor, Piper, that seems so comfortable and familiar to Gillian, but she can’t quite put her finger on it.

When a tragic coincidence leads to an unexpected connection, revealing secrets neither wants to face, they realize that love never really dies.

Kelsey Brunel knows exactly what the future holds: she’ll one day inherit the Arizona dude ranch that has been in her family for three generations. She tells herself that the business and her good friends are all she’ll ever want or need. Long-term relationships aren’t in the picture, which after witnessing the devastation of her parents’ failed marriage, is just fine with her.

Elizabeth Sutton has grown up proving to her family that she’s as capable and accomplished as they demand her to be, even if that means working for the family business. Her latest assignment, to turn a backwater ranch in Arizona into another link in their international chain of wellness centers, feels like a demotion and she can’t wait to get it done and escape back to civilization.

Two women from different worlds have nothing in common and every reason to wish they’d never met—except for the attraction neither can deny.

Violet Unwin is convinced she is invisible. Overlooked by her adoptive family, her only solace is her uncle’s costume shop. By day, she’s an assistant no one remembers, but after hours, in the wonder of her imagination, she becomes explorer, warrior, queen. Devastated by news of the shop’s imminent closure, Violet finds comfort in an unlikely companion, the ghostly figure of her namesake, the suffragette Vi Unwin.

Medical school dropout Phoebe Frink’s life is in disarray. She has no idea who she is anymore, what to do about it, or how to tell her parents. Taken under the wing of the infamous drag king Mr. Duke, owner of the struggling Banana Bar, fate steps in when Phoebe seeks Violet’s help with costumes for the bar’s fundraising Christmas Ball.

Phoebe is captivated by beautiful, shy Violet, and for the first time in her life, Violet experiences what it is to be truly seen. But for love to be possible, Violet and Phoebe must take a risk on a future they’ve never dared to imagine.

The Dream: rich and famous screenwriter of hilarious sapphic rom coms.

The Reality: pushing out trashy celebrity gossip for cash.

The Grand Plan: advance career by engineering a celebrity takedown. 

Fran Underhill’s adoration for the entertainment industry is in flames, transformed into a loathing of celebrity culture and all those who benefit from it. When a personal assistant gig for one of Hollywood’s most popular actresses falls into her lap, Fran is determined to use the experience to her advantage with a series of tell-all articles. Just enough clickbait to get her next screenplay sold. Now if only she can ignore that ferocious and inconvenient attraction to her new employer.

Chelsea Cartwright—actress, mother, and ex-wife to Hollywood royalty—is struggling. A competent new assistant will do much to ease her burdens, but who could predict the intense and long-buried feelings Fran would awaken. And what will the fallout be when she finds out Fran is a member of the gossip media—with Chelsea’s public destruction in her sights.

Liberty Bell has been on her own for almost a decade after her father and his new family rejected her. With only one thing she cares about, there’s no backup plan. She needs to sing. Her dreams could come true when she makes it onto the latest TV talent show where famous vocalists coach her as she performs a new song each week. Liberty doesn’t trust easily, and she can be all thorns, which she proves when she is on the receiving end of the rude and sarcastic coach Palmer Elliston’s scathing feedback.

Palmer was one of the most sought-after producers and songwriters until she made a mistake that cost her everything. Now she leads a very different life. Jaded and disillusioned, she’s persuaded by an old friend to coach on a new reality talent show in the hope it might rejuvenate her former career. What she doesn’t expect is the prickly Liberty or the unexpected emotions that surge between them whenever Liberty sings. There’s no way Palmer will ever act on her attraction. She’s already made one career-ending mistake and isn’t looking for an encore.

Cori Stratton’s a small-town girl. She loves making candles, and her little gift shop is her pride and joy. But when the shop’s building goes up for sale, she might lose her home and everything that makes her happy. The worst timing of all? Her landlord’s daughter Elizabeth Brennan—popular, smart, and oblivious to Cori’s existence in high school—has breezed back into town.

Life has not gone according to plan for Elizabeth. Laid off from her job in the city, she’s forced back home to help her mom run the family’s B and B during a week-long wedding celebration…for Liz’s ex. Not wanting the groom to know the shambles her life is, she grabs the nearest person—Cori—and tells him how happy they are together.

A chance to live out her high school fantasy of Liz as her girlfriend is unexpected, but it keeps Cori playing along. And helping her one-time crush survive this wedding? Just for the week? She can do that. Besides, there’s no way this fake relationship will turn into the real deal.

Would you want to forget the only woman you’ve ever loved? Marlie Rose does.

Everyone thinks Broadway legend Marlie Rose has it all: a fabulous career spanning over five decades, all the major awards, and a lifetime in the spotlight. Only Marlie knows the heavy weight of her memories. When a new, experimental procedure promises to relieve trauma and heartbreak by erasing unwanted memories, Marlie signs up, desperate to let go of her tumultuous childhood, grief, and broken heart.

As Marlie recalls her memories and decides which ones to keep and which to erase, she unexpectedly reunites with Eleanor Olson, the woman she’s been in love with for forty-seven years. As her heartbreak fades and her heart races anew for Eleanor, Marlie discovers their love isn’t as dead as she thought it was, and she starts regretting the procedure.

Eleanor might be the only person who can help her restore her memories, but remembering might break her heart all over again.

Ellie Efron is heartbroken when her best friend suddenly passes away. How can she possibly refuse her friend’s last request to take care of her rescue dog, Atlas, so he doesn’t end up back at the shelter? Ellie reluctantly agrees but ends up in over her head with the 100-pound, reactive Atlas. Desperate not to let her friend down, she seeks help from an animal behaviorist. 

For Hayden Brandt, impermanence is the only constant in life. She’s already lost everyone important to her. Instead of dwelling on her losses, she focuses on helping animals overcome traumas so they can live their best lives. Content, she spends her evenings with simple pleasures such as a glass of wine, a good book, and the occasional no-strings hook-up.

Ellie and Hayden’s chemistry is instant, though neither is ready to make any promises. But Atlas knows a thing or two about grief, and he just might find a way to give this busy, hopeless romantic and commitment-phobic vet a roadmap to forever.

Returning home after years of living as far from her wealthy family as she can, Lucy wants her great American road trip before she settles down. The vintage VW bus her arrogant older brother Jordan is selling off seems like the perfect vehicle for it.

But the bus in question is fiercely beloved by its real owner, Emma, Jordan’s wife. She’s not ready to let the bus go, but she is ready to get out of her marriage—and isn’t above hijacking her own bus to make that happen.

When Lucy’s vacation to find herself becomes Emma’s chance to remember herself, they realize that everything they’re looking for might already be sitting right next to them—if they’re willing to reach for it.

Brooks Boseman, born into privilege in an old New Orleans plantation home, could have opted for an easy life just like her siblings, but after a broken heart, she escapes to New York where no one knows her name.

A call from the family matriarch changes everything. Her brother Curtis is getting married, and Brooks needs to be at the engagement party. Only she can’t possibly go, not with Curtis set to marry the secret love of her youth, Fallon Goodwin. Unable to find a way to refuse, Brooks returns to discover the family business is in jeopardy. In the face of her father’s struggles with Alzheimer’s and her brother’s well-intentioned blunders, she’s forced to step in to save the family fortune.

As far as Brooks and Fallon are concerned, romance is for storybooks, but as hard as they try to resist, neither can deny their feelings still linger. Family ties have never been more binding as they fight for the business, and maybe even for each other.

Lace Reynolds has a three-month rule for a reason. Long-term romantic relationships get complicated. And Lace doesn’t do complicated. She’s had enough of that in her life. Besides, she’s too busy running Frisky Business, just voted Best Sex Toy Shop in Arizona, and she’s got big expansion plans in the works. If she’s helping others find pleasure and connection, she’s happy. Right? 

Tessa Williams has moved from California to Arizona wine country to escape a cheating ex and launch her own vineyard. When she’s not battling wine snobs and fighting water wars, she’s wrangling a sulky teenage daughter and an Australian Shepard named Bleu. She doesn’t have time to go looking for love. Not that she could hold on to it, even if love found her. 

Lace and Tessa have been friends almost from the moment they met. But when Tessa opens a tasting room right next to Frisky Business, it gets harder to ignore the heat between them. The last thing they need is romance messing up a good thing. Maybe with a little help from their friends and the town’s friskiest ghost, they’ll be able to discover if love is a risk worth taking.

Nicki Russell has never been smooth. More like a bumbling, awkward mess always falling short of her dreams. Good college? She never had the money. Post-grad? She’ll get around to it someday. Happy ever after with the perfect woman? One major heartbreak is enough to have her swearing off love forever. Current life plan? Avoid all unnecessary human contact. That goes double for Carter, the hot new butch in town.

Unfortunately, Carter works at the town’s pick-your-own pumpkin patch and Nicki's niece is obsessed with Halloween. So obsessed she ropes her favorite aunt into organizing the school Halloween festival, hosted by Carter Farms. Volunteer weekends are scary enough, but Carter seems to be everywhere Nicki goes, and it’s just a matter of time before she discovers Nicki's more likely to trip over a chair than successfully flirt.

But Carter can’t seem to get enough of her company, and as their accidental encounters slowly simmer into romance, Nicki begins to believe she’s not a complete disaster after all. The date of the festival is fast approaching, and this pumpkin spice season is turning out sweeter than expected.

Burned-out chef Sy Travino never expected to wind up on a goat farm in rural Vermont, but that’s exactly where she lands after leaving the restaurant world to become a cheese maker. It’s a great place to flex her muscles and make a name for herself, though. Too bad the house she bought is practically unlivable.

Maddie Barrow can’t believe anyone would be dumb enough to buy a house sight unseen, but she’s not about to turn down the job of renovating it, especially since her best friend just hired Sy to turn Grumpy Old Goat into the chèvre everyone is talking about. When the estimate on the house exceeds Sy’s budget, Maddie puts her to work. 

It doesn’t take long for Sy and Maddie to admit their chemistry is off the charts, but having fun doesn’t always lead to forever. Could it be a foundation for love or nothing but a teardown?

Praise from Publishers Weekly: Rey stresses the importance of building something to last in this torrid home renovation romance....Rey makes the chemistry between Maddie and Sy obvious and immediate, leading naturally to plenty of creative and exciting sex scenes, but tempers the hot-and-heavy goings-on with emotional intelligence that makes the relationship feel as sturdy as a load-bearing wall. Readers will never doubt that a happy ending is on its way, but they’ll love watching it come together.