From bestselling and award-winning author Mason Deaver comes a delightful second-chance romance with trans representation! Trapped on a cruise together, exes Owen and Jacob are forced to confront why their relationship went off course…but in such close quarters, maybe they’ll finally be able to right the ship. A year ago, Owen Henson had a close-knit group of friends who felt like family and a boyfriend who made his heart race just by walking into the room. But now? Everything’s unraveling. His friends seem to be moving forward without him, and his happily-ever-after shattered when his boyfriend Jacob packed up and left for North Carolina to join a research team. The last thing Owen needs is for Jacob to waltz back into the city like nothing happened, showing up at their friends’ annual Christmas party looking just as annoyingly handsome as the day he left. Or for their friends to spring a surprise six-day, seven-night cruise up the West Coast to Alaska as a bonding trip for the group. How is Owen supposed to keep it together around the man who broke his heart, all while pretending he’s fine? Totally fine. But then Jacob tells Owen that he’d like to be something even more complicated than exes. He wants to be friends. Skeptical, Owen agrees to the plan but as they spend time together among the gorgeous Alaskan backdrop and cruise-mandated activities, Owen feels his walls coming down and he might just discover that he can’t help but fall in love again. An emotional second-chance romance set on a breathtaking cruise, where two former flames must decide whether to let go or risk it all for a love that refuses to sink. Tropes Forced proximity Exes Second chance Cruises Dating in secret Meddling friends

You've Reached Sam meets Hadestown in this enchanting, intoxicating romance across the mortal world and the underworld.Eighteen-year-old August is trying to navigate life after the sudden death of his boyfriend left him devastated, aimless, and feeling guilty. Years after the tragic accident, August mistakenly stumbles into a world beyond his own—the Underworld. Unlike his own gray existence, the underworld is a lavish extravagant place, full of mystery and a flurry of charismatic gods, all curious about August's arrival in their world. Realizing right away the opportunity in front of him, August goes searching for his lost love, guided by Cary, the smoldering, broody ferrier of souls. But the more time August spends down below, the more his intentions begin to blur. Is he visiting this realm to reunite with his soulmate? Or is he desperately, inexplicably, intoxicatingly drawn to Cary? With his own world in pieces and a dangerously seductive realm promising him a new existence at a heavy cost, August must a life with grief or a love that might destroy him.

Breakfast TV producer Petey Boy Topham dreams of producing the reality shows he loves to watch. When he finally lands a job on The Love Manor—a Regency-inspired dating show filmed at an actual country house—it’s his golden ticket to his career ambitions. If he can impress his new boss, she might give him his own show.William Winters is infamous in the tabloids as the “Bisexual Baron Buckford”. But this rugby-playing, fantasy-novel-obsessed aristocrat never wanted the title or the media attention. After a family tragedy, he’s inherited not only a crumbling manor house, but millions of pounds of debt. To save his estate, he’s let The Love Manor’s cameras in.Each man would do anything to make the show a success. So when the contestants discover there’s a real-life baron in residence and abandon the dating format to pursue him instead, there’s only one a fake engagement between producer and baron.Living together in Buckford Hall’s romantic folly, confident Londoner Petey Boy might be up for a no-strings fling with the sexy baron—but bookish William is far from the rake the papers make him out to be. Soon, what started as a desperate lie begins to feel dangerously real.When news of their “engagement” leaks to the press and the consequences of their deceit spiral out of control, will their fake relationship survive the chaos long enough to become a reality?Much Obliged is the third book in the Brent Boys series (The Paper Boys, Going Solo) and can be read as standalone novel. It is ideal for fans of Red White and Royal Blue and Boyfriend Material.

The Invisible Man meets Love is Blind in this autumnal Gothic love story.Gerard Wells loves music but hates fame —not ideal when he’s the youngest member of the chart-topping band of brothers, We the Wells. Cracking under the spotlight, Gerard runs away to a small, remote island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. There, he goes by “James” and takes up residence in a crumbling Victorian house on the island’s shrinking shoreline. Little does he know, he’s not the studio apartment’s only inhabitant…Mysterious and moody Emory Griffin never planned to be a test subject for his own groundbreaking invisibility research. He also never planned on sharing a room with a world-famous pop star, but needs must when you’re an unemployed graduate school drop-out who’s wanted by the local police.With nowhere else to turn, the unlikely pair agree to be temporary roommates. Their forced proximity and vulnerability lead to an unexpected romantic spark. As Halloween approaches, their secrets and feelings grow harder to keep hidden, testing the strength of their newfound bond. Could this be a love that neither of them saw coming or an experiment set to go horribly wrong?

Calla Quick has no future. At least, that’s how it feels. Her parents disowned her via text message, and now she can’t afford to go to an all-women’s college with her girlfriend Ramona like they planned. But Calla wonders if maybe that’s for the best—because even though Calla told Ramona her parents disowned her because they found out she’s gay, the truth is, Calla has been questioning whether she’s a girl at all. Calla wishes she had more time to figure everything out, and one night, her wish is seemingly granted. When Calla and Ramona stumble upon a mysterious farmhouse the woods, they meet five teens who claim they’ve lived there for decades. The land, which they call Amaranth, acts as a safe haven for queer kids throughout history—a place free of hate, free of violence, free of time itself. Here, Calla can be Cal, and they feel instantly accepted. They don’t have to worry about the future because at Amaranth, it will never come—until one night when the clock strikes twelve. Now under a literal ticking clock, the housemates must find a way to stop time again or face going back to their harsh realities, but as Cal learns everyone’s story, they begin to wonder what queer people lose when their history is lost to time.

For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis: He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will gradually turn into a great white shark. As Lewis develops the features and impulses of one of the most predatory creatures in the ocean, his complicated artist’s heart struggles to make peace with his unfulfilled dreams. At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with her college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds.

The “riotously entertaining” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and gruesome final installment in master of modern horror Stephen Graham Jones’s acclaimed Indian Lake trilogy—the most lauded series in the history of horror novels—picks up four years after Don’t Fear the Reaper as Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to build a life after the years of sacrifice, only to find the Lake Witch is waiting for her. It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront…until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand. New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma from the Indigenous to the townies rooted in the mountains of Idaho. It is the story of the American west written in blood.

A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great aunt’s secrets in this sweeping debut, a family saga confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage. In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns a vibrant, permanent cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of all Rummani lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love. Decades later, Betty returns to her Aunt Nuha’s gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she’s every known or should she follow her heart for the woman she loves, perpetuating her family’s cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt’s complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family emigrate to the U.S. But as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that. The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us—and even wield the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller.

A smoldering, soul-splitting debut that tracks three friends through the celestial chaos of adulthood, love, and queer identity. Jordan Caleb is a freshman at McCallen College when she meets Trace. From the moment the confident, tattooed Trace compliments Jordan’s Alanis Morissette T-shirt, their friendship feels fated and electrically charged. When the two friends meet mercurial transfer student Silvia, she catches Trace’s eye. Their instant attraction eclipses the nascent pull between Jordan and Trace, forming a messy constellation among the three women. Over the course of a decade, their orbits send them to opposite Jordan builds a life in New York City, while Trace and Silvia get engaged in Seattle, yet the three remain linked by the gravitational pull of the past. As they approach thirty and the apogee of their Saturn return, their bond splinters when Trace calls Jordan with a shocking revelation, exposing a web of heartache, secrets, and unspoken desires. Saturn Returning charts the complex paths of human connection and queer friendship, questioning how we define ourselves against the relationships that have shaped our lives.

Sorcha is over the hook-ups and gay haunts of her twenties. At thirty-one what she wants, more than anything, is to have a baby. Then she meets Chris― with her buttoned-up plaid, 90s heartthrob hair, and grand romantic gestures― and things get serious. Fast. Though Sorcha's friends find her new partner problematic, Sorcha has an explanation for everything. As Chris's moods turn volatile and Sorcha becomes increasingly isolated, Chris paints an idyllic picture of domestic bliss in Cape Breton. Sorcha is all in: if her conservative religious upbringing taught her anything, it's how to save. Plus, Chris promises Sorcha the thing she wants most― a baby. But when Sorcha becomes pregnant and Chris's abuse escalates, Sorcha realizes she must escape the life they've built together, just as she escaped her own stifling family years before. When Sorcha's estranged Aunt Agnes, a retired midwife, messages Sorcha out of the blue, her bothy in the Scottish Highlands seems the perfect place to hide. As the bundle of cells in Sorcha's belly diligently divides, she daydreams that Agnes will deliver the baby and they'll stay in Scotland, where Chris can't find them. And where, just maybe, Sorcha could build the sort of family she's always ached for. Exploring the clandestinity of queer abuse, the fierceness of friendship, and the magic of found family, milktooth is a bold, inventive, lyrical and darkly funny story about finding the strength to cut away what's harmed you and create something entirely new.

Run shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children—all his children—safe.