Unicorns and Spaceships (01/13/2026): Escape Velocity

December 11, 2025 Unicorns and Spaceships

Space Habitat Altaire is the premier luxury resort in low Earth orbit, playground of the privileged and the perfect location to host reunions for the Rochford Institute. Rochford boasts only the best: the wealthiest, most promising students with the most impressive pedigrees. Complete with space walks, these lavish reunions are a prime opportunity for alumni to jockey for power with old friends and rivals—and crucially, to advance their applications to live in an exclusive Mars settlement. Earth is dying, and only the best deserve to save themselves.

Aboard the Altaire for a 25th reunion, finance magnate Ava pursues the truth about her brother’s murder during their senior year. Laz, ambassador and political scion, hopes to finally win Ava’s heart. Sloane, collecting secrets to conceal his family’s decline, angles for a key client. And Henry, heir to a healthcare empire, creates an unorthodox opportunity to get to Mars in a last-ditch effort to outrun a childhood secret.

While these erstwhile friends settle scores and rack up points, they fail to notice the other agendas developing at the Space Habitat Altaire. Their own futures aren’t the only ones at stake—“the best” will soon regret underestimating those they would leave behind on Earth. […]

Friends of Fiction (01/14/2026): The Island of Sea Women

December 11, 2025 Friends of Fiction

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger.

Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook find it impossible to ignore their differences. The Island of Sea Women takes place over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point. […]

Spinecrackers (01/02/2026): The Stolen Queen

December 10, 2025 Spinecrackers

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same.

New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.” Though Annie soon realizes she’ll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana’s capricious demands and exacting standards.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, wants little to do with the upcoming gala. She’s consumed with her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant. That is, until the night of the gala. When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing . . . and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening.

As Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they’re to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger. […]

The Next Chapter (12/19/2025): Winter Street

November 22, 2025 The Next Chapter

Kelley Quinn is the owner of Nantucket’s Winter Street Inn and the proud father of four, all of them grown and living in varying states of disarray. Patrick, the eldest, is a hedge fund manager with a guilty conscience. Kevin, a bartender, is secretly sleeping with a French housekeeper named Isabelle. Ava, a school teacher, is finally dating the perfect guy but can’t get him to commit. And Bart, the youngest and only child of Kelley’s second marriage to Mitzi, has recently shocked everyone by joining the Marines.

As Christmas approaches, Kelley is looking forward to getting the family together for some quality time at the inn. But when he walks in on Mitzi kissing Santa Claus (or the guy who’s playing Santa at the inn’s annual party), utter chaos descends. With the three older children each reeling in their own dramas and Bart unreachable in Afghanistan, it might be up to Kelley’s ex-wife, nightly news anchor Margaret Quinn, to save Christmas at the Winter Street Inn.

Before the mulled cider is gone, the delightfully dysfunctional Quinn family will survive a love triangle, an unplanned pregnancy, a federal crime, a small house fire, many shots of whiskey, and endless rounds of Christmas caroling, in this heart-warming novel about coming home for the holidays. […]

Happily Ever After (12/15/2025): Bright Lights, Big Christmas

November 18, 2025 Happily Ever After

When fall rolls around, it’s time for Kerry Tolliver to leave her family’s Christmas tree farm in the mountains of North Carolina for the wilds of New York City to help her gruff older brother & his dog, Queenie, sell the trees at the family stand on a corner in Greenwich Village. Sharing a tiny vintage camper and experiencing Manhattan for the first time, Kerry’s ready to try to carve out a new corner for herself.

In the weeks leading into Christmas, Kerry quickly becomes close with the charming neighbors who live near their stand. When an elderly neighbor goes missing, Kerry will need to combine her country know-how with her newly acquired New York knowledge to protect the new friends she’s come to think of as family,

And complicating everything is Patrick, a single dad raising his adorable, dragon-loving son Austin on this quirky block. Kerry and Patrick’s chemistry is undeniable, but what chance does this holiday romance really have? […]

Friends of Fiction (12/10/2025): A Quiet Life

November 13, 2025 Friends of Fiction

Chuck Ayers used to look forward to nothing so much as his annual trip to Hilton Head with his wife, Cat—that yearly taste of relaxation they’d become accustomed to after a lifetime of working and raising two children. Now, just months after Cat’s death, Chuck finds that he can’t let go of her belongings—her favorite towel, the sketchbooks in her desk drawer—as he struggles to pack for a trip he can’t imagine taking without her.

Ella Burke delivers morning newspapers and works at a bridal shop to fill her days while she anxiously awaits news—any piece of information—about her missing daughter. Ella adjusts to life in a new apartment and answers every call on her phone, hoping her daughter will reach out.

After the sudden death of her father, Kirsten Bonato set aside her veterinary school aspirations, finding comfort in the steady routine of working at an animal shelter. But as time passes, old dreams and new romantic interests begin to surface—and Kirsten finds herself at another crossroads. […]

Forever Young (12/08/2025): The Sunbearer Trials

November 11, 2025 Forever Young

As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the evil Obsidian gods at bay. Ten semidioses between the ages of thirteen and eighteen are selected by Sol himself as the most worthy to compete in The Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all—they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body used to fuel the Sun Stones that will protect the people of Reino del Sol for the next ten years.

Teo, a 17-year-old Jade semidiós and the trans son of Quetzal, goddess of birds, has never worried about the Trials…or rather, he’s only worried for others. His best friend Niya—daughter of Tierra, the god of earth—is one of the strongest heroes of their generation and is much too likely to be chosen this year. He also can’t help but worry (reluctantly, and under protest) for Aurelio, a powerful Gold semidiós and Teo’s friend-turned-rival who is a shoo-in for the Trials. Teo wouldn’t mind taking Aurelio down a notch or two, but a one-in-ten chance of death is a bit too close for Teo’s taste.

But then, for the first time in over a century, Sol chooses a semidiós who isn’t a Gold. In fact, he chooses two: Xio, the 13-year-old child of Mala Suerte, god of bad luck, and…Teo. Now they must compete in five mysterious trials, against opponents who are both more powerful and better trained, for fame, glory, and their own survival. […]

Spinecrackers (12/05/2025): The Briar Club

November 8, 2025 Spinecrackers

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst? […]

Unicorns and Spaceships (11/11/2025): The Left Hand of Darkness

November 6, 2025 Unicorns and Spaceships

A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters…

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction. […]

Stranger than Fiction (12/02/2025): The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity

November 6, 2025 Stranger Than Fiction

When Axton Betz-Hamilton was 11 years old, her parents both had their identities stolen. This was before the age of the Internet—authorities and banks were clueless and reluctant to help Axton’s parents.

Convinced that the thief had to be someone they knew, Axton and her parents completely cut off the outside world. As a result, Axton spent her formative years crippled by anxiety, quarantined behind the closed curtains in her childhood home. Years later, Axton discovered that she, too, had fallen prey to the identity thief.

The Less People Know About Us is a cautionary tale, but not one without hope as Axton looks back on the dysfunctional childhood that led to her desire to help this from happening to others. […]

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