We've always done everything together--including opening a queer-friendly coffee shop in the trendy St. Louis neighborhood of Maplewood. The shop was struggling as rents rose, but when a customer's random selfie caught me giving Ryan the kiss of the century, the whole internet tuned in. (And collectively lost their minds, as far as I can tell.)I didn't mean anything by it, but now the world can't get enough of the Coffee Boyfriends, and business has never been better. No craze lasts forever--all we have to do is keep up the act until the internet gets distracted by something else. Then we can go back to being best friends.Piece of cake, right? So why can't I stop thinking about that kiss?Ryan: Yeah, I've had a crush on James since college--who can blame me? But someone as hot as him would never waste their time with too-skinny, too-short me. I'd made peace with that...right up until the internet started having a whole lot of feelings about him sticking his tongue down my throat.I'm having a lot of feelings about that, too. Very explicit feelings.I've been dreaming of James kissing me for years, but not like this--not when it's all just a publicity stunt. How pathetic am I, that I'd go along with this scheme just to get a taste of what it'd be like to be James's boyfriend? I just hope that between our obsessive fans, malfunctioning equipment, and bizarre new employees, I have a chance to enjoy it before he finds me out and puts a stop to it. Ingredients: each 66,000 word serving of Early Morning Mocha contains a stand-alone gay romance, two clueless best friends kissing, thousands of sex-crazed internet fans, frequent detailed accounts of man-on-man loving, a few dozen tacky t-shirts, and one very, very naughty dog.

    Brad Torrence is next on the chopping block at the newspaper where he works. Hungry for any source he can find, he runs across an ad in the classifieds: For Sale: Nursery Items, Never Used. It’s the lead he’s been looking for. Thinking a piece about the loss of a child will give him the edge he needs to keep his job, Brad follows up. He doesn’t expect a single man to answer. Rather than being offended, Cory Wolfe finds sharing the story of his grief and pain liberating. He’s even surprised by the spark that strikes, and one story leads to another. Brad digs into his stories and Cory’s life, eager to know everything about the man who’s caught his attention. But when a lead points him to the hospital where Cory works, he unearths a mystery that might have been safer left buried. Brad’s search for a story could prove deadly….

    Three years later, Aaron’s still there ...It could be because he loves the creative challenge. It could be because he’s a huge Leeches fanboy. It’s definitely not because of Lewis Hunter, his extremely demanding, staggeringly rude ... and breathtakingly gorgeous boss.Is it?Lewis Hunter grew up the hard way and fought for everything he’s got. His priority is the show, and personal relationships come a distant second. Besides, who needs romance when you have a steady stream of hot men hopping in and out of your bed?His only meaningful relationship is with Aaron, his chief confidante and indispensable assistant. And no matter how appealing he finds Aaron’s cute boy-next-door charms, Lewis would never risk their professional partnership just to scratch an itch.But when Lewis finds himself trapped at a hilariously awful corporate retreat, Aaron is his only friend and ally. As the professional lines between them begin to blur, their simmering attraction starts to sizzle… And they’re both about to get burned.

    So why does he feel so empty? As the only single man in his friend group, Jack submits to his friends’ matchmaking efforts with good humor. But he can’t tell them that the reason he’s been so lackluster is because he’s got a crush on a straight man. When Craig finds out that his ex-girlfriend hid their child from him, his perfect life comes tumbling down. With his ex in rehab and his fiancée bowing out before they even make it to the ceremony, Craig is left with a baby to take care of and an offer from a new friend to crash in his spare room while he wraps his head around everything. Only, the more Craig gets to know Jack, the more he wants something more than friendship from him. And in a world that’s spinning out of control, questioning his sexuality could be a lifeline – or an added weight to sink him down.

    An avowed geek, Tommy comes in daily to flirt, usually under the guise of Trekkie talk. Tavio hesitates; now that he's out of the army, he’s not sure how out he should be, or whether to take his chances on a geek devoted to sci-fi and comic books. But when Tommy compares him to an unemotional Vulcan, Tavio finally considers dating an out-and-proud nerd. Then Tommy surprises him again and introduces him to his daughter, whom Tommy loves even more than Star Trek or Tavio. Now Tavio has a whole new decision to make: Is he ready to romance a family man?

    All he has left is his mother to help him heal and regain his confidence before he's ready to get back out and re-conquer the world.But being big-city gay in a small southern town has its own challenges. In addition to coming to grips with what happened in New York, his hometown of Lawder throws its own curveballs at him. James is confronted with a bitter enemy from his school days, and frustratingly can't seem to avoid the guy. His mother suddenly wants to expand the family. The one guy James takes a liking to and starts dating has a lot of hang-ups about being gay. And he watches almost helplessly as a new young bully starts to repeat the kind of abuse he suffered during his own school days.Here where he grew up, the one place he should feel safe, James feels maddeningly off-balance. He starts to think that maybe going home was a bad idea after all. Maybe he'd be better off moving on and really starting over, completely from scratch. Maybe he should walk away from Lawder, just like he walked away from his life in New York.But maybe, if he'd give it a chance, he'd re-think everything he ever thought he wanted out of life. And maybe what he thought was important, isn't so important after all. Maybe he could have everything he never realized he wanted, if he just looked around himself for a moment.

    A failed writer on food stamps, Wiley works a minimum wage job and barely manages to keep himself and his deaf son, Noah, more than a stone’s throw away from Dumpster-diving.Noah was a meth baby and has the birth defects to prove it. He sees how lonely his father is and tries to help him find a boyfriend while Wiley struggles to help Noah have a relationship with his incarcerated mother, who believes the best way to feed a child is with a slingshot. No wonder Noah becomes Wiley’s biggest supporter when Boston nurse Jackson Ledbetter walks past Wiley’s cash register and sets his sugar tree on fire.Jackson falls like a wet mule wearing concrete boots for Wiley’s sense of humor. And while Wiley represents much of the best of the South, Jackson is hiding a secret that could threaten this new family in the making.When North meets South, the cultural misunderstandings are many, but so are the laughs, and the tears, but, as they say down in Dixie, it’s all good.