Book picks similar to
Secrets in a Small Town by Nicole Stiling
ice-queen
romance
lgbt
lesfic
Who'd Have Thought
G. Benson - 2017
And with over $200,000 on offer to tie the knot, no questions asked, cash-strapped ER nurse Hayden Pérez isn’t about to demand answers.The deal is only for a year of marriage, but Hayden’s going into it knowing it will be a nightmare. Sam is complicated, rude, kind of cold, and someone Hayden barely tolerates at work, let alone wants to marry. The hardest part is that Hayden has to convince everyone around them that they’re madly in love and that racing down the aisle together is all they’ve ever wanted. What could possibly go wrong?Words: 122,000
Officer Down
Erin Dutton - 2015
Now she spends every shift dreading what could happen and doubting whether she’ll be able to handle another tragedy.Olivia Dennis joined the sheriff’s department for the action and to fulfill the family legacy. But she could lose both when she’s caught up in an internal investigation and assigned to a security desk at the communications center.
The Price of Fame
Lynn Ames - 2004
Jamison "Jay" Parker is an intensely career-driven Time magazine reporter; she has experienced love once, from afar, and given up on finding it again...That is, until circumstance and an assignment bring her into contact with her past. Kate and Jay's lives intertwine, leading them on a journey to love and happiness, until fate and fame threaten to tear them apart. What is the price of fame? For Kate the cost just might be everything. For Jay, the price could be the other half of her soul.
The Duchess and the Dreamer
Jenny Frame - 2020
After her grandmother, and famous social reformer, blew the family fortune on her dream of creating a new kind of community, the family land was sold off and their coffers drained. Clementine grew up watching her mother struggle and now lives in the small gate house behind her former family home. Evan Fox has a dream that could change the world and save the planet. As CEO of her family toy company, she creates fuel for the imagination. When the Rosebrook estate comes up for sale, Evan jumps at the chance to make her vision of a utopian eco community come to life. Clementine is wary of the good-looking newcomer, but Evan is determined to win over the beautiful duchess and prove that sometimes dreams really do come true.Cover Artist: SheriGenres: Contemporary / RomanceTags: Small Town Romances, Financial gap/Class disparity78,000 words
The Girls I've Been
Tess Sharpe - 2021
As the daughter of a con-artist who targets criminal men, she grew up as her mother’s protégé. But when mom fell for the mark instead of conning him, Nora pulled the ultimate con: escape.For five years Nora’s been playing at normal. But she needs to dust off the skills she ditched because she has three problems:#1: Her ex walked in on her with her girlfriend. Even though they’re all friends, Wes didn’t know about her and Iris.#2: The morning after Wes finds them kissing, they all have to meet to deposit the fundraiser money they raised at the bank. It’s a nightmare that goes from awkward to deadly, because:#3: Right after they enter bank, two guys start robbing it.The bank robbers may be trouble, but Nora’s something else entirely. They have no idea who they’re really holding hostage…
Cam Girl
Leah Raeder - 2015
Ellis and Vada have a friendship so consuming it’s hard to tell where one girl ends and the other begins. It’s intense. It’s a little codependent. And nothing can tear them apart.Until an accident on an icy winter road changes everything.Vada is left deeply scarred, both emotionally and physically. Her once-promising art career is cut short. And Ellis pulls away, unwilling to talk about that night. Everything Vada loved is gone.She’s got nothing left to lose.So when she meets some smooth-talking entrepreneurs who offer to set her up as a cam girl, she can’t say no. All Vada has to do is spend a couple hours each night stripping on webcam, and the “tips” come pouring in.It’s just a kinky escape from reality until a client gets serious. “Blue” is mysterious, alluring, and more interested in Vada’s life than her body. Online, they chat intimately. Blue helps her heal. And he pays well, but he wants her all to himself. No more cam shows. It’s an easy decision: she’s starting to fall for him. But the steamier it gets, the more she craves the real man behind the keyboard. So Vada pops the question:Can we meet IRL?Blue agrees, on one condition. A condition that brings back a ghost from her past. Now Vada must confront the devastating secrets she's been running from—those of others, and those she's been keeping from herself...
Wild
Meghan O'Brien - 2011
Managing her condition means living by a strict routine, and more importantly, abstaining from intimate relationships with human beings. Selene is convinced that love and friendship can only bring her pain.Forensic pathologist Eve Thomas is well-acquainted with the pain of romantic love. Swearing off relationships after having her heart broken by a cheating ex, Eve throws herself into her work: catching murderers. When Selene comes to her aid after an attack by a masked man in Golden Gate Park, Eve is shocked by how powerfully she is drawn to her mysterious savior.Shaken by her own feelings for Eve, Selene is even more terrified to realize she isn’t even close to being the scariest monster stalking San Francisco. There is someone out in the city who is killing for pleasure, and his next target is the one woman he thinks might be able to stop him: Eve
She's Too Pretty to Burn
Wendy Heard - 2021
For fans of E. Lockhart, Lauren Oliver and Kara Thomas.The summer is winding down in San Diego. Veronica is bored, caustically charismatic, and uninspired in her photography. Nico is insatiable, subversive, and obsessed with chaotic performance art. They’re artists first, best friends second. But that was before Mick. Delicate, lonely, magnetic Mick: the perfect subject, and Veronica’s dream girl. The days are long and hot―full of adventure―and soon they are falling in love. Falling so hard, they never imagine what comes next. One fire. Two murders. Three drowning bodies. One suspect . . . one stalker. This is a summer they won’t survive.Inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, this sexy psychological thriller explores the intersections of love, art, danger, and power.
Ice
Lyn Gardner - 2012
This time...it's worse.Ice begins when a boy is kidnapped from a London park and Detective Inspectors Alex Blake and Maggie Campbell are brought together to work on the case. While their goal is the same, their work ethics are not. Intelligent, perceptive and at times disobedient, Alex Blake does what she believes it takes to do her job. Maggie Campbell has a slightly different approach. She believes that rule books were written for a reason. Unexpectedly, their dynamics mesh, but when her feelings for Alex become stronger than she wants to admit, Maggie provokes the worst in Alex to ensure that they will never be partners again. Three years later, fate brings them together again. Their assignment is simple, but a plane crash gets in their way. Now, in the middle of a blizzard, they have to try to survive...and fight the feelings that refuse to die.
Trouble Girls
Julia Lynn Rubin - 2021
The girls are packing light: a supply of Diet Coke for Lux and her ‘89 Canon to help her frame the world in a sunnier light; half a pack of cigarettes for Trixie that she doesn’t really smoke, and a knife—one she’s just hanging on to for a friend—that she’s never used before.But a single night of violence derails their trip and will forever change the course of the girls’ lives, as they go from ordinary high schoolers to wanted fugitives. Trying to stay ahead of the cops and a hellscape of media attention, the girls grapple with an unforgiving landscape, rapidly diminishing supplies, and disastrous decisions at every turn. As they are transformed by the media into the face of a #MeToo movement they didn’t ask to lead and the road before them begins to run out, Trixie and Lux realize that they can only rely on each other, and that the love they find together is the one thing that truly makes them free.In rushing, powerful prose Julia Lynn Rubin takes readers on “a blistering, unapologetic thrill ride” (Emma Berquis) that will leave them haunted and reeling. Trouble Girls is “a powerful, beautifully-written gut punch” (Sophie Gonzales).
Taking a Shot at Love
K.C. Richardson - 2020
She’ll never get there if she stays where she is, coaching for a small-town college. She wants to move on and move up, so a relationship is the last thing on her mind.English professor Celeste Bouchard is exactly where she wants to be teaching at Glassell University. Popular and on a first-name basis with her students, Celeste loves her job. She doesn’t love the gossip and rumors that followed her disastrous romance with a fellow professor, but she’s never getting involved with a coworker again.When Lisa’s star player has trouble in Celeste’s class, they have to work together to find a solution. The attraction is off the charts, but Lisa and Celeste are determined to block another shot at love.Cover Artist: Tammy SeidickGenres: Contemporary / Romance Tags: Sports, Workplace Romance, College Life
Serenity
Jesse J. Thoma - 2020
Serenity is in the acceptance.Kit Marsden is proud that she’s put her heroin use in the past. She’d really just prefer if no one made a big deal about it so she can move on with her life. After all, people hear the word “heroin,” smile politely, and run for the hills. Kit would have more success ignoring her past if her NA meetings weren’t at the library where she nearly died. Plus, she can’t stop thinking about the librarian, Thea Harris.Thea’s desperate to protect her library and keep it a safe place for the community. She’s used to keeping her life orderly and predictable, working hard, and preparing for every possibility at work and at home. But nothing prepares her for Kit Marsden.Will Kit and Thea be able to embrace who they are, what they want, and what they can create together, or will the library and their chance at love falter?Cover Artist: Tammy SedickGenres: Contemporary / RomanceWords: 78,000
Gray Matters
Dolores Arden - 2020
At work, she’s embroiled in a months-long murder investigation that has yet to show any signs of breaking. At home, she’s on the skids with her soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, while nightmares of the gruesome murder scene keep her up at night.On the other side of the country, Giana Falco has just made the biggest change in her life. She’s ended her engagement and now she’s moving to the west coast to take a job as a forensic scientist in a town where she knows practically no one. It’s either the bravest or the stupidest thing she’s ever done.Sparks begin to fly the moment Remy and Giana meet. Remy has never seen a woman more intelligent or more beautiful than her new colleague, but she knows that allowing herself to fall for a straight woman would be a uniquely masochistic kind of folly. For her part, Giana is intrigued by the tall and reticent detective. She sees no reason why the two of them shouldn’t become the best of friends.The stakes couldn’t be higher as the two women put their heads together to work the case, drawing ever closer to finding the killer—and ever closer to finding each other. Try as they might to ignore it, the attraction they feel becomes something neither one of them can deny.
Heart's Surrender
Emma Weimann - 2014
But soon simple attraction turns into something more. What happens when the worlds of a handywoman and a pampered housewife collide? Can nights of hot, erotic fun lead to love, or will these two very different women go their separate ways?
They Never Learn
Layne Fargo - 2020
But she’s even better at getting away with murder.Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan… until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay... and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.