Gnarled Hollow


Charlotte Greene - 2018
    She doesn’t believe in the supernatural, but by the end of her first day, she knows something is wrong. The house has a disturbing habit of changing dimensions—and not just physical ones. Rooms go missing, doors close on their own, and time has a strange tendency to disappear. Emily is joined by other scholars, among them the beautiful art historian, Juniper Friend. Together they begin to research the history of the house, refusing to abandon their work despite the appearance of a mysterious, frightening presence. Spurred on by their desire to uncover the mysteries of Gnarled Hollow and its ghostly inhabitant, they’re determined to uncover the truth, even if it means risking their own lives.Cover Artist: Sheri HalalGenres: Crime & Mystery / Paranormal & Urban Fantasy / Romance

Skylarks


Karen Gregory - 2018
    And I feel it - that life can be beautiful. That there are possibilities.Keep your head down and don't borrow trouble is the motto Joni lives by, and so far it's seen her family through some tough times. It's not as if she has the power to change anything important anyway. Like Dad's bad back, or the threat of losing their house.So when Annabel breezes into her life, Joni's sure they're destined to clash. Pretty, poised, privileged - the daughter of the richest family in town must have it easy.But sometimes you find a matching spirit where you least expect it. Sometimes love can defy difference. And sometimes life asks you to be bigger and braver …

How to Repair a Mechanical Heart


J.C. Lillis - 2012
    As co-runners of the Internet’s third most popular Castaway Planet vlog, they love to spar with the “Cadsim” fangirls who think Cadmus will melt Sim’s mechanical heart by the Season 5 finale. This summer, Brandon and Abel have a mission: hit the road in an RV to follow the traveling Castaway Planet convention, interview the actors and showrunner, and uncover proof that a legit Cadsim romance will NEVER, EVER HAPPEN.A Brandon and Abel romance: also not happening. Brandon’s sick of his struggle to make “gay and Catholic” compute, so it’s safer to love a TV android. Plus Abel’s got a hot new boyfriend with a phoenix tattoo, and how can Brandon compete with that? But when mysterious messages about them start popping up in the fan community, they make a shocking discovery that slowly forces their real feelings to the surface. Before they get to the last Castaway Planet convention, Brandon’s going to find out the truth: can a mechanical heart be reprogrammed, or will his first shot at love be a full system failure?

All Eyes on Us


Kit Frick - 2019
    He’s kind, ambitious, the town golden boy—but he’s far from perfect. Because behind Amanda’s back, Carter is also dating Rosalie.PRIVATE NUMBER: I’m watching you, Sweetheart. ROSALIE: Who IS this?Rosalie Bell is fighting to remain true to herself and her girlfriend—while concealing her identity from her Christian fundamentalist parents. After years spent in and out of conversion “therapy,” her own safety is her top priority. But maintaining a fake, straight relationship is killing her from the inside.When an anonymous texter ropes Amanda and Rosalie into a bid to take Carter down, the girls become collateral damage—and unlikely allies in a fight to unmask their stalker before Private uproots their lives.PRIVATE NUMBER: You shouldn’t have ignored me. Now look what you made me do…

The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea


Maggie Tokuda-Hall - 2020
    For Flora, former starving urchin, the brutal life of a pirate is about survival: don’t trust, don’t stick out, and don’t feel. But on this voyage, as the pirates prepare to sell their unsuspecting passengers into slavery, Flora is drawn to the Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, who is en route to a dreaded arranged marriage with her own casket in tow. Flora doesn’t expect to be taken under Evelyn’s wing, and Evelyn doesn’t expect to find such a deep bond with the pirate Florian. Soon the unlikely pair set in motion a wild escape that will free a captured mermaid (coveted for her blood, which causes men to have visions and lose memories) and involve the mysterious Pirate Supreme, an opportunistic witch, and the all-encompassing Sea itself.

Tell It to the Bees


Fiona Shaw - 2009
    and a small boy very worried.Lydia Weekes is distraught at the break-up of her marriage. When her young son, Charlie, makes friends with the local doctor, Jean Markham, her life is turned upside down.Charlie tells his secrets to no one but the bees, but even he can't keep his mother's friendship to himself. The locals don't like things done differently. As Lydia and the doctor become closer, the rumours start to fly and threaten to shatter Charlie's world.

Rock and Riot


Chelsey Furedi - 2015
    Rock and Riot follows the tales of teenage delinquents learning about gender and sexual orientations while still maintaining their fabulous hair.

The Bookseller's Boyfriend


Heidi Cullinan - 2021
    For many, the chance to meet the playboy novelist would be a dream come true, but Jacob dreads it. You should never meet your heroes.You definitely shouldn’t pretend to be their boyfriend.Rasul came to this backwater town for an academic residency—a necessary evil, since he’s burned through his advance without finishing the book that goes with it. But he’s also getting distance from a toxic relationship. Quiet, reserved Jacob isn’t his type, but their charade gives Rasul a respite from the social media circus surrounding his breakup, and Jacob’s charming apartment proves the perfect setting to write.Of course, prolonged exposure reveals that Jacob’s reserved exterior hides a thoughtful, intelligent man who sets Rasul’s imagination—and heart—alight.Every day Rasul reveals himself to be more than Jacob ever dreamed he could. Jacob tries to be content with friendship and the professional overlap between author and bookseller, knowing a shooting star like Rasul could never make a home with Jacob in a small town like Copper Point.

Letters Never Sent


Sandra Moran - 2013
    It’s a spectacular offering of love gained, lost, and struggled with over a lifetime—a poignant tale with a marvelous reveal at the end."—Anna Furtado, Lambda Literary ReviewThree women, united by love and kinship, struggle to conform to the social norms of the times in which they lived.In 1931, Katherine Henderson leaves behind her small town in Kansas and the marriage proposal of a local boy to live on her own and work at the Sears & Roebuck glove counter in Chicago. There she meets Annie—a bold, outspoken feminist who challenges Katherine’s idea of who she thinks she is and what she thinks she wants in life.In 1997, Katherine’s daughter, Joan, travels to Lawrence, Kansas, to clean out her estranged mother’s house. Hidden away in an old suitcase, she finds a wooden box containing trinkets and a packet of sealed letters to a person identified only by a first initial. Joan reads the unsent letters and discovers a woman completely different from the aloof and unyielding mother of her youth–a woman who had loved deeply and lost that love to circumstances beyond her control. Now she just has to find the strength to use the healing power of empathy and forgiveness to live the life she’s always wanted to live.

Smoketown


Tenea D. Johnson - 2011
    Within its boundaries, birds are outlawed and what was once a crater in Appalachia is now a tropical, glittering metropolis where Anna Armour is waiting. An artist by passion and a factory worker by trade, Anna is a woman of special gifts. She has chosen this beautiful, traumatized city to wait for the woman she's lost, the one she believes can save her from her troubled past and uncertain future. When one night Anna creates life out of thin air and desperation, no one is prepared for what comes next-not Lucine, a smooth talking soothsayer with plans for the city; Lucine's brother Eugenio who has designs of his own; Seife, a star performer in the Leiodaran cosmos; or Rory, a forefather of the city who's lived through outbreak, heartbreak, and scandal. Told through their interlocking stories, Smoketown delves into the invisible connections that rival magic, and the cost of redemption.

The Antidote For Everything


Kimmery Martin - 2020
     Georgia Brown’s profession as a urologist requires her to interact with plenty of naked men, but her romantic prospects have fizzled. The most important person in her life is her friend Jonah Tsukada, a funny, empathetic family medicine doctor who works at the same hospital in Charleston, South Carolina and who has become as close as family to her.Just after Georgia leaves the country for a medical conference, Jonah shares startling news. The hospital is instructing doctors to stop providing medical care for transgender patients. Jonah, a gay man, is the first to be fired when he refuses to abandon his patients. Stunned by the predicament of her closest friend, Georgia’s natural instinct is to fight alongside him. But when her attempts to address the situation result in incalculable harm, both Georgia and Jonah find themselves facing the loss of much more than their careers.

Borage


Gill McKnight - 2019
     Her mission takes her to Black and Blacker Finances, a gloomy office where everyone has something to hide, especially Abby Black, the brooding, enigmatic CEO, who weaves a magic all her own that Astral finds all too alluring. But storm clouds are gathering, and betrayal is in the air. As Astral digs deeper into the strange occurrences at Black and Blacker, she uncovers secrets, lies, and tantalizing clues about her own past. With the help of her coven sisters Dulcie and Keeva, a few surprise allies she collects along the way, and even her ill-tempered familiar, Borage, Astral will have to find a way to save the coven from being engulfed by the dark side. And maybe she’ll find her heart’s desire along the way.

When Tara Met Farah (Bollywood Drama & Dance Society, #1)


Tara Pammi - 2021
    But her bone-deep aversion to math + a soul-deep desire to please her mother = her failing math grade + exploding food vlog ‘this masala life’.Enter her mother’s research intern and resident math genius Farah Ahmed. Tara makes a deal with Farah - help her pass the math course and she’ll welcome Farah into the local Bollywood Drama & Dance Society.Grumpy girl gets life lessons…After losing her mom to a heart attack, dumping her small-minded boyfriend (she’sbisexual, not confused) and reluctantly moving to the US to be near her dad - all in the span of eighteen months, twenty-three-year-old Farah has hit the full quota on LIFE. Two things keep her going - her internship with a brilliant statistics professor and the possibility of meeting her dancing idol through the Bollywood Drama & Dance Society. That is, if her new hot-mess housemate will let her.Soon Tara and Farah are bonding over chicken biryani, dancing to Bollywood Beats at midnight and kissing... against all the odds. And maybe beginning to realize that while life’s even more complicated than math, love is the one variable that changes everything!Will they realize that together they have the recipe for a Happily Ever After?

Ana on the Edge


A.J. Sass - 2020
    So, when Ana learns that next season's program will be princess themed, doubt forms fast. Still, Ana tries to focus on training and putting together a stellar routine worthy of national success.Once Ana meets Hayden, a transgender boy new to the rink, thoughts about the princess program and gender identity begin to take center stage. And when Hayden mistakes Ana for a boy, Ana doesn't correct him and finds comfort in this boyish identity when he's around. As their friendship develops, Ana realizes that it's tricky juggling two different identities on one slippery sheet of ice. And with a major competition approaching, Ana must decide whether telling everyone the truth is worth risking years of hard work and sacrifice.

Wild Beauty


Anna-Marie McLemore - 2017
    They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.