The Scent of Rome


Lise Gold - 2020
    Just as she’s about to pitch her life’s work, she meets the charming and captivating Nadine; a high-end escort who shocks Rome by flirting with her. Rome is straight, but Nadine sparks up a fire in her so strong that it seems impossible to extinguish.Nadine Costa is pleased with the way her life is going. She lives in a fantastic apartment in the city she loves, and her lucrative job provides the funds she needs to support her expensive passion: perfume making. When Rome crosses her path, she knows she’s never smelled anything quite so exquisite in her life.Rome is a loner and doesn’t let people in, but when an incident occurs and Nadine steps in to save her, she realizes her feelings go deeper than just lust. Neither of them was looking for something more than physical, but when the stars are aligned, it’s hard to escape destiny…103,000 words

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

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.

Gillette Park


Gerri Hill - 2020
    Three days later her body was found lodged beneath the footbridge over Gillette Creek. The murder shook the town but they soon found it was only the beginning. A serial killer hides among them—a serial killer who strikes twice, sometimes three times a year.Mason Cooper couldn’t wait to leave Gillette Park. At eighteen, she headed off to college and the bright lights of Los Angeles, thinking she’d never return home to the broken family and forgotten friendships she’d left behind. But being a cop in L.A. lost its charm and—after a breakup—Mason heads back to her hometown. The serial killer still haunts Gillette Park, and she becomes consumed with catching him.Dr. Grace Jennings has what some call a gift. She “sees” things. She “hears” things. Running from that gift was useless so she’s learned to embrace it instead. Now the FBI has solicited her help in catching the serial killer.Not everyone in this mountain town likes the idea of bringing in a psychic, including Mason’s uncle and boss, Sheriff Cooper. Mason is tasked with being the go-between, and she soon finds herself with a front row seat as Dr. Jennings discovers the dark—and well hidden—secrets of Gillette Park.As Mason and Grace’s friendship grows, so does their attraction. But safety lies only with each other, as they battle the evil that lives in Gillette Park.

Winter Jacket


Eliza Lentzski - 2013
    It all started with a broken classroom heater…Graduate school prepares you for many things – the rigor of academic life, how to pull consecutive all-nighters, and living off a meager stipend without having to be roommates with cockroaches.Elle Graft might have made it through six years of graduate school, but she's not convinced she'll survive her first position as an Assistant Professor.Because for all she learned, graduate school never prepared her for dealing with a student crush.

Life Mask


Emma Donoghue - 2004
    When the working-class actress begins a deep friendship with the aristocratic widow Anne Damer, a sculptor and rumoured Sapphist, the consequent scandal threatens to topple Eliza from her precarious position and destroy the lives of all three.In an England overshadowed by the French Revolution, shaken by terrorism and a repressive government, Emma Donoghue leads her characters in an intricate minuet of public ambition and private passion.In the Houses of Parliament, on the stage, in the bedroom, at the race track and in the intimate salons of the Beau Monde, Life Mask brings to life a world where political liaisons prove just as dangerous as erotic ones.

The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics


Olivia Waite - 2019
    It isn’t until she finds a letter from the Countess of Moth, looking for someone to translate a groundbreaking French astronomy text, that she knows where to go. Showing up at the Countess’ London home, she hoped to find a challenge, not a woman who takes her breath away.Catherine St Day looks forward to a quiet widowhood once her late husband’s scientific legacy is fulfilled. She expected to hand off the translation and wash her hands of the project—instead, she is intrigued by the young woman who turns up at her door, begging to be allowed to do the work, and she agrees to let Lucy stay. But as Catherine finds herself longing for Lucy, everything she believes about herself and her life is tested.While Lucy spends her days interpreting the complicated French text, she spends her nights falling in love with the alluring Catherine. But sabotage and old wounds threaten to sever the threads that bind them. Can Lucy and Catherine find the strength to stay together or are they doomed to be star-crossed lovers?

Temporary Girl


Robin Alexander - 2018
    And she’s a master flirt. She has no problem meeting women or getting dates. She just can’t hold on to any of the women she goes out with. It’s not because she’s unlikeable, she simply can’t handle commitment. Val Mason is hoping to find the right woman to build a life with. At her best friend’s weeklong pre-wedding party, she meets one who appears to have potential, and she’s hooked. The only problem is, she’s unknowingly hanging her hopes on the Temporary Girl. Robin Alexander has mixed up a summertime cocktail. The ingredients are friendship, secrets, family, friends, love, and a double shot of humor.

The Best Bad Things


Katrina Carrasco - 2018
    I was riveted. Painstakingly researched and pulsing with adrenaline, Carrasco’s debut will leave you thirsty for more.” —Lyndsay Faye, author of The Gods of GothamA vivid, sexy barn burner of a historical crime novel, The Best Bad Things introduces readers to the fiery Alma Rosales—detective, smuggler, spyIt is 1887, and Alma Rosales is on the hunt for stolen opium. Trained in espionage by the Pinkerton Detective Agency—but dismissed for bad behavior and a penchant for going undercover as a man—Alma now works for Delphine Beaumond, the seductive mastermind of a West Coast smuggling ring.When product goes missing at their Washington Territory outpost, Alma is tasked with tracking the thief and recovering the drugs. In disguise as the scrappy dockworker Jack Camp, this should be easy—once she muscles her way into the local organization, wins the trust of the magnetic local boss and his boys, discovers the turncoat, and keeps them all from uncovering her secrets. All this, while sending coded dispatches to the circling Pinkerton agents to keep them from closing in.Alma’s enjoying her dangerous game of shifting identities and double crosses as she fights for a promotion and an invitation back into Delphine’s bed. But it’s getting harder and harder to keep her cover stories straight and to know whom to trust. One wrong move and she could be unmasked: as a woman, as a traitor, or as a spy.A propulsive, sensual tour de force, The Best Bad Things introduces Katrina Carrasco, a bold new voice in crime fiction.

Plain Bad Heroines


Emily M. Danforth - 2020
    Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, The Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way. Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins. A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations.

The Good Girl


Madeleine Taylor - 2019
    I work hard, look like your average girl, do everything in moderation, and I certainly don’t make a habit of going into strangers' hotel rooms dressed in sexy lingerie and killer heels. That is, until I meet her. When a mysterious woman buys me a drink at a hotel bar in New York, I never expect her to impact my life the way she does. From the moment she lays eyes on me there’s little point fighting my desires because she seems to know them better than I do... The Good Girl is the naughty debut novella by Madeleine Taylor, author of lesbian erotica.

Aurora's Angel


Emily Noon - 2019
    Alone since her father’s murder, Aurora has spent years hunting his killers. Battle-weary she’s ready to start over where no one knows who or what she is – she just has one last mission. Everything is going to plan until she discovers the beautiful winged girl caged underground. Her decision to rescue Evie and to help her get home safely, despite avians being infamous for selling out shifters like Aurora to trophy hunters and black-market flesh dealers, will put her on a perilous path. As the women travel together their attraction grows but Aurora is guarding her lonely heart almost as much as her dangerous secrets and Evie is struggling to accept how important Aurora has become to her. When their enemies conspire to kill them, they may be each other’s only hope. Aurora is powerful but she’s also emotionally scarred and it will be up to Evie to save her from herself and fight for them. If she doesn't innocent people will die along with the guilty ones and Aurora will disappear from Evie’s life forever.228,000 words

A Pirate's Heart


Catherine Friend - 2008
    She’s aided in her search by investigator Randi Marx, who proves to be as frustrating as she is beautiful. The treasure map Emma and Randi seek belonged to Thomasina Farris, a pirate who disappeared from the Caribbean in 1715. Did Captain Tommy steal an entire treasure from a Spanish galleon and escape? Was she convicted of piracy and hanged by her neck? Did she die of a broken heart when she lost the woman she loved?In her race to find the map, Emma learns that pirates not only steal treasure, but they also steal hearts. When Emma discovers Captain Tommy’s fate, she must decide her own as well, choosing between romance...or revenge.

My Lady's Lover


Nicola Davidson - 2017
    Even more forbidden, she is Amelia, Countess of Garrick—intelligent, beautiful, and very much married—and an affair that would cause the society scandal to end all scandals. It seems Beatrice is destined to remain alone, her only joy the deliciously wicked monthly meetings of the Surrey Sexual Freedom Society.Amelia Garrick is desperate. Trapped in a bad marriage to a man she doesn’t love and unable to give him an heir, her one solace is her companion, Beatrice. Until the night friendship becomes something more, and Amelia is introduced to an intoxicating new world. Together they risk all. Yet now she’s had a heady taste of scorching hot pleasure, Amelia can’t resist…

Sprinkled in the Stars


Violet Morley - 2021
    As a paramedic, AJ puts others’ needs above her own; in her personal life, she keeps everyone an arm’s length away. That distance disappears when a chance run-in with actor Melanie Cooper leaves her sticky, angry, and fed up.Melanie Cooper has just signed her last movie. The media keeps portraying her as cold and hard to work with, and Mel has absolutely nothing more to give. As she begins to imagine a new life, a challenging part of her past comes back on the scene, determined to cause problems for Mel.After a series of coincidental meetings, AJ battles her desire for control while Mel struggles with trust. Despite the challenges and complications, Mel finds herself drawn to the Beckett ladies, and AJ can’t deny their connection, either.Falling in love has never been so sweet.Genre: RomanceCover: Cath Grace DesignsEditor: Kat JacksonWords: 86,000