Category Archives: 2024 Releases

The Housemaid Is Watching by Freida McFadden

I used to clean other people’s houses—now, I can’t believe this home is actually mine. The charming kitchen, the quiet cul-de-sac, the huge yard where my kids can play. My husband and I saved for years to give our children the life they deserve. Even though I’m wary of our new neighbour Mrs. Lowell, when she invites us over for dinner it’s our chance to make friends. Her maid opens the door wearing a white apron, her hair in a tight bun. I know exactly what it’s like to be in her shoes. But her cold stare gives me chill. the Lowells’ maid isn’t the only strange thing on our… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia
  • Physical child abuse & domestic violence
  • Death of a child
  • Murder

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again.Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Forced arranged marriage
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Death of a parent (off-page)
  • Attempted murder by poisoning
  • Attempted kidnapping of a child
  • War themes

Funny Story by Emily Henry

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra. Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity recounted*
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Emotional & verbal child abuse recounted
  • Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use
  • Emesis mentioned

Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Evie Sage has never been happier to be the assistant to The Villain. Who would have thought that working for an outrageously handsome (shhh, bad for his brand) evil overlord would be so rewarding? Still, the business of being bad is demanding, the forces of good are annoyingly persistent, and said forbidding boss is somewhat… er, out-of-evil-office. But Rennedawn is in grave trouble, and all signs—Kingsley’s included—point to catastrophe. Something peculiar is happening with the kingdom’s magic, and it’s made The Villain’s manor vulnerable to their enemies… including… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Nightmares
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including emesis, decapitation & severed body parts
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Physcial assault
  • Kidnapping & imprisonment
  • Incarceration of an abusive parent
  • Disappearance & presumed death of a mother
  • Animal harm

Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Araşti Ministry of Intelligence, has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world―and the only place to flee with a secret that big is the open sea. To find a buyer with deep enough pockets, Avra must ask for help from his on-again, off-again ex, the pirate Captain Teveri az-Ḥaffār. They are far from happy to see him, but together, they hatch a plan: take the information to the isolated pirate republic of the Isles of Lost Souls, fence it, profit. The only things in their way? A calculating new Araşti ambassador to the Isles of Lost… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual harassment & sex work
  • Animal death

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other’s lives once and for all. Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption (on-page)

I’ll Have What He’s Having by Adib Khorram

When it comes to love, Farzan Alavi is a disaster. After his most recent heartbreak, he’s drowning his sorrows at Kansas City’s newest wine bar. Only instead of being crowded between strangers, he’s escorted to a VIP table for one. There, the hot sommelier does more than treat him to the meal of his life. The way he flirts with Farzan ignites instant sparks. There’s just one problem: David Curtis thinks Farzan is Frank Allen, Kansas City’s most influential food critic. The truth only comes out after the two spend an unforgettably hot night together. Good news—both think the mix-up is… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian

Nick Russo has worked his way from a rough Brooklyn neighbourhood to a reporting job at one of the city’s biggest newspapers. But the late 1950s are a hostile time for gay men, and Nick knows that he can’t let anyone into his life. He just never counted on meeting someone as impossible to say no to as Andy. Andy Fleming’s newspaper-tycoon father wants him to take over the family business. Andy, though, has no intention of running the paper. He’s barely able to run his life–he’s never paid a bill on time, routinely gets lost on the way to work, and would rather gouge out his own eyes than deal with office politics. Andy… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical homophobia & threats of outing
  • Infidelity recounted (protagonist’s ex-fiancée)
  • Parental divorce recounted
  • Physical sibling abuse recounted
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of smoking and drug use
  • Death of a mother in a bombing recounted
  • Police violence & corruption
  • Blackmail
  • Bullying (recounted & off-page)

Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore

Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which made growing up in a funeral home a bit complicated. It might have been easier if his grandfather’s ghost didn’t give him such scathing looks of disapproval as he went through a second, HRT-induced puberty, or if he didn’t have the pressure of all those relatives—living and dead—judging every choice he makes. It’s no wonder that Ezra runs as far away from the family business as humanly possible. But when the floor of his dream job drops out from under him and his mother uses the family Passover seder to tell everyone that she’s running away with the rabbi’s wife, Ezra finds himself back in the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misgendering mentioned
  • Infidelity mentioned (secondary charactes)
  • Hospitalisation for injury & depiction of a dead body
  • Childbirth (on-page)
  • House fire

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series. She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she’s not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor’s tale. So bet it. The wicked are better dressed, with… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Cancer (protagonist)
  • Murder, torture & flogging