Category Archives: 2024 Releases

The Partner Plot by Kristina Forest

To Violet Greene, fashion is everything. As a successful celebrity stylist, she travels all over the world, living out her dreams. Professionally, she’s thriving, but her personal life is in shambles. After surviving a very public breakup with her ex-fiancé six months ago, Violet is now determined to focus on her career. But life hands her something—or rather, someone—that might derail everything… Xavier Wright did not expect to run into his high school girlfriend Violet—the girl he once thought he’d marry—on a birthday trip to Vegas. As a high school teacher and basketball coach, he rarely leaves his New Jersey hometown, so… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis

Kindling by Traci Chee

Once, the war was fought with kindlings—elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives. Now, the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift—their magic outlawed, their skills outdated, their formidable balar weapons prized only as relics and souvenirs. Violence still plagues the countryside, and memories haunt those who remain. When a village comes under threat of siege, it offers an opportunity for seven kindlings to fight one last time. But war changed these warriors. And to reclaim who they once were, they will have to battle their pasts, their trauma, and their… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Murder

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed

At the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near—once someone goes in, they never come back out. No one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe. If Veris fails, the Tyrant will kill her; if she remains in the forest for longer than a day, she will be trapped forevermore. So Veris will… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood, gore & illness depiction including emesis
  • Death of children & parents recounted
  • Disappearance of a children
  • Animal abuse (off-page)

A Friend in the Dark by Samantha M. Bailey

Eden Miller’s world is crumbling. Her husband blindsided her with divorce, and her daughter barely speaks to her. In an impulsive decision to escape her present and revisit the past, she sends a friend request to her college crush, Justin Ward. One night twenty-three years ago changed the course of her life. It closed the door on Justin and opened the door to her husband, Dave. But what if Eden could have a do-over? .Eden begins an online relationship with Justin that awakens her in ways she never thought possible, and his voice and words make her take bold risks. But something’s off. He knows too much about her and… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Domestic abuse
  • Divorce
  • Catfishing

Bye, Baby by Carola Lovering

On a brisk fall night in a New York apartment, 35-year-old Billie West hears terrified screams. It’s her lifelong best friend Cassie Barnwell, one floor above, and she’s just realized her infant daughter has gone missing. Billie is shaken as she looks down into her own arms to see the baby, remembering—with a jolt of fear—that she is responsible for the kidnapping that has instantly shattered Cassie’s world. So begins the story of Billie and Cassie’s friendship–both in recent weeks, and since they met twenty-three years ago, in their small Hudson Valley hometown the summer before seventh grade. Once fiercely bonded by their…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism
  • Paedophilia & sexual assault, on-page
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Toxic friendship
  • Alzheimer’s Disease

Six Truths and a Lie by Ream Shukairy

As fireworks pop off at a rowdy Fourth of July bonfire party, an explosion off the California coast levels an oil rig—resulting in chaos and worse, murder. At the center are six Muslim teens – six patriots, six strangers, and six suspects. An old soul caught in the wrong place. An aspiring doctor. An influencer with a reputation to protect. A perfect daughter with secrets to hide. A soccer star headed for Stanford. An immigrant in love. Each with something to hide and everything to lose. Faced with accusations of terrorism, The Six are caught in a political game that will pit them against each other in exchange for exoneration…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & Islamophobia (theme)

Happily Never After by Lynn Painter

When Sophie Steinbeck finds out just before her nuptials that her fiancé has cheated yet again, she desperately wants to call it off. But because her future father-in-law is her dad’s cutthroat boss, she doesn’t want to be the one to do it. Her saviour comes in the form of a professional objector, whose purpose is to show up at weddings and proclaim the words no couple (usually) wants to hear at their ceremony: “I object!” During anti-wedding festivities that night, Sophie learns more about Max the Objector’s job. It makes perfect sense to her: he saves people from wast… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating discussed (secondary characters)

The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu

Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers about her family’s past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success―until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened. For the next twenty years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone―why did the most perfect… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a mother during cosmetic surgery

James by Percival Everett

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Enslavement & human trafficking (protagonist)
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Child abuse
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Murder
  • Animal death & attack (snake)

Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash

Lacey Bond is a thirteen-year-old girl in New Hampshire growing up in the tranquility of her hippie parents’ rural daycare center. Then the Satanic Panic hits. It’s the summer of 1990 when Lacey’s parents are handcuffed, flung into the county jail, and faced with a torrent of jaw-dropping accusations as part of a mass hysteria sweeping the nation. When a horrific murder brings Lacey to the breaking point, she makes a ruthless choice that will haunt her for decades.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & slurs
  • Sexual assault & paedophilia discussed