A dedicated single mother and a librarian with a secret write their own sweet and sexy love story in this small-town rom-com about family, friendships and embracing the next chapter. Nothing cures a lonely heart quite like a good book and an unexpected crush… For Dani, life is a juggling act. As a single mom devoted to her son and family, she barely has a moment to herself. But when her sister announces she’s moving out of the house, the ache of loneliness creeps in, and Dani can’t help but wonder if there’s something else she’s been missing in her life… Zoey came to Peach Blossom eager to start her new job as the town’s librarian and do a little research for her next book. Yet she never expected to find inspiration in fellow book club member Dani, whose captivating brown eyes tell a story of their own. Before they know it, lingering glances over their favorite fiction turn into first dates and sizzling nights. As their connection deepens, the two women must decide if they should turn the page on what their lives used to look like or if this thrilling plot twist is the happily-ever-after they’ve been chasing all along. From showing up to glowing up, the characters in Afterglow Books are on the path to leading their best lives and finding sizzling romance along the way. Don’t miss any of these other fun titles…

One last summer.  For Manuela del Carmen Caceres Galvan, the invitation to show her paintings at the 1889 Exposition Universelle came at the perfect time. Soon to be trapped in a loveless marriage, Manuela has given herself one last summer of freedom—in Paris, with her two best friends.  One scandalous encounter. Cora Kempf Bristol, Duchess of Sundridge, is known for her ruthlessness in business. It's not money she chases, but power. When she sees the opportunity to secure her position among her rivals, she does not hesitate. How difficult could it be to convince the mercurial Miss Caceres Galvan to part with a parcel of land she’s sworn never to sell? One life-changing bargain. Tempted by Cora’s offer, Manuela proposes a her beloved land for a summer with the duchess in her corner of Paris. A taste of the wild, carefree world that will soon be out of her reach. What follows thrills and terrifies Cora, igniting desires the duchess long thought dead. As they fill their days indulging in a shared passion for the arts and their nights with dark and delicious deeds, the happiness that seemed impossible moves within reach…though claiming it would cause the greatest scandal Paris has seen in decades.

Three women form an unbreakable bond in a sexy, suspenseful, and adventurous novel about empowerment and sisterhood through thick and thin. Venus McGee, Draya Carter, and Jackie Benson are coworkers with a lot in common. They’re smart, independent, driven, and deserving of recognition—certainly more than they’ve been handed by a demoralizing boss. He’s the topic of conversation at their impromptu get-together after the company holiday party, where the threesome fantasizes about a life without him. There has to be an alternative to taking a deep breath and sucking it up. There is. It’s just not the one they expected. When morning comes, Venus, Draya, and Jackie are blindsided by murder—a twist of fate that brings a startling new challenge to the table and forces them to navigate a hair-raising detour they never saw coming. For better and (unless they can help it) for worse, it’s going to turn their world upside down. What starts as a necessary bond of mutual trust soon morphs into an empowering and galvanizing friendship that Venus, Draya, and Jackie need now more than ever.

A wytch prone to chaos. A grieving, murderous vampyre. When hate turns to heat, can they work together to bring a loved one back from the dead? - A wytch and a vampyre walk into a bar—except they don’t. It’s a cafe. And they almost kill each other first. But snap judgments never last. If only Jinn didn’t desperately need a wytch to cast a retraction spell, and Aisla Laxmi wasn’t the only one available for miles. The hate is still there, but so is something else. Something that’s way more complicated. As their forced partnership begins to feel a little less forced, the two start to believe they might actually have a chance at bringing a loved one back from the other side… Or do they? Four nights. Two powerful beings. One goal.

Say It Hurts grapples with queerness, love, grief, masculinity, coming of age, and coming out in the context of cultural violence rooted in misogyny and familial violence rooted in catholicism. In these poems joy and loss hold hands—at sleepovers and haircuts, at symphonies and haunted mazes, among fathers, on dating apps, during car sex, in matching tattoos, on Pinterest boards, at funerals. Lisa Summe’s debut collection queers the love poem by demanding that the whole story be told—what it means to love, to grieve, and to heal by saying it out loud. Alive with moats of pink catfish, and gardens of boomerangs, Lisa Summe’s debut collection, Say It Hurts, draws us what we need most: new shapes of loss, new contours of love. And because we need it, Summe paints a vibrant queerness onto buzz cuts, backseats, and sleepovers. Forthright and declarative, Summe writes, in the book’s opening poem, “When a lesbian / writes a poem / it’s a lesbian poem.” What a queer wonder, to play light as a feather, stiff as a board. What a queer wonder to be both alive and capable of love, in a world that prefers we be neither. Summe writes, “see how I tried not to write a love poem but here it comes,”and it does come, and we love it. —Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Water I Won’t Touch In Say It Hurts, Summe shows us what it can feel like to come home and come out again and again in the Midwest, home where a father can be “both nest & hawk,” home where a ten-year- old girl draws her dream wedding to a girl on a sheet of graph paper in math class, home where her body stands “steady like a home,” home where she misses the girl she loved and where she swims in the Allegheny River, home where the poem is the place and the girl she loved is there, too. —Julia Koets, Pine