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Against The Odds (Anna Dawson Book 1)

Mara Jacobs

FREE

Mystery

Anna Dawson is a gambler, and like any gambler will tell you, sometimes that’s good—and sometimes it’s an outright problem. 🎰 She loves Vegas and the life she’s built there, but when one of her friends is murdered and another is shot at, she knows it’s time to take a serious look at herself. And maybe call in the big guns.

Even if that means teaming up with Detective Jack Schiller, a man dealing with his own demons. 🔍 Anna’s juggling a lot: protecting her friends, helping Jack while not letting him get too close, and finding a murderer. Oh, and there’s one more thing—no one can learn about her gambling problem, or this will be the last hand she’s dealt.

Jacobs creates a flawed, compelling protagonist in Anna—a woman whose addiction gives her insight into the city’s darker corners but also makes her vulnerable in ways she can’t always control. 💀 The Vegas setting pulses with neon-lit tension, and the will-they-won’t-they dynamic with Jack adds romantic friction without overwhelming the mystery.

The case is solved and the perpetrator caught, but Jacobs leaves threads dangling for future books, building a series foundation that promises more trouble—and more complicated feelings—ahead. ♠️ Anna’s voice is sharp and self-aware, and her struggle to stay ahead of her own worst impulses gives the mystery real stakes.

Here’s what you’re getting: a Vegas-set mystery with a gambler protagonist whose biggest risk might be trusting the detective who sees too much. 🃏 First in the Anna Dawson series—perfect for readers who like their sleuths complicated and their settings atmospheric.

The Apparition in the Attic (Soul Seeker Book 1)

Courtney McFarlin

FREE

Cozy Mysteries

Professional home stager Brynn Sullivan is known as the person to call when you can’t sell a house. 🏚️ She has an eye for transforming spaces, a talent for making rooms irresistible to buyers, and a secret she keeps from all her clients: she can see ghosts.

When a beautiful Victorian sits on the market too long, the desperate realtor reaches out for help. But this time, Brynn may be in over her head. 👻 A ghostly mystery from the past collides with a present-day murder, and she’ll need to solve both cases to save the sale—and possibly herself.

McFarlin delivers a paranormal cozy with a clever premise. The home staging profession gives Brynn legitimate access to properties with histories, and her supernatural abilities add a layer of investigation that traditional sleuths can’t access. 🔮 The spirits she encounters aren’t just spooky window dressing—they’re witnesses, clues, and sometimes complications.

The Victorian setting provides atmospheric charm, and Brynn’s juggling act between her professional reputation and her secret gift creates ongoing tension. 🏡 The humor comes naturally from the absurdity of her situation: trying to stage a house for sale while also dealing with its spectral occupants.

Here’s what you’re getting: a delightful paranormal cozy featuring an amateur sleuth whose real estate expertise and ghost-whispering abilities make her uniquely qualified to solve mysteries—living and dead. 👁️ First in the Soul Seeker series.

The Duke and the Wallflower (The Unwanted Dukes Book 1)

Jessie Clever

FREE

Regency Historical Romance

Lady Eliza Darby has been shunned by a society that prizes beauty above all else. 🌸 Her wallflower status has kept her from the one thing she wants most: to be a mother. But when her scorned older sister returns home determined to see all her siblings happily wed, it may be Eliza’s only chance to secure a husband and have the children she so desires.

Dax Kane, the Duke of Ashbourne, was jilted in a publicly humiliating display and has sworn off love forever. 💔 When duty demands he marry, he selects the most perfect candidate for a loveless arrangement: Lady Eliza Darby, a wallflower so unattractive he won’t be in danger of falling in love with her. But the Jilted Duke is about to discover that looks have nothing to do with love.

Clever sets up a classic Regency premise—the marriage of convenience between two people who think they’re safe from feelings—and then systematically dismantles their defenses. 💕 Dax’s cruel reasoning for choosing Eliza creates tension that must be overcome, and watching him realize his mistake is deeply satisfying.

Eliza is no passive victim of society’s judgment. She knows her worth, even if the ton doesn’t, and her quiet strength is exactly what the wounded duke needs, whether he knows it or not. 🔥 The steam is present, the humor is warm, and the romance earns its happy ending.

Here’s what you’re getting: a steamy Regency romance about two people deemed unwanted by society who find everything they need in each other. 💜 First in The Unwanted Dukes series—perfect for fans of Tessa Dare and Lisa Kleypas.

The Man With Two Names: A Novel of Ancient Rome (The Sertorius Scrolls Book 1)

Vincent B. Davis II

FREE

Ancient Historical Fiction

Rome, 107 BC. Quintus Sertorius has just lost his father, and he may lose his home. 🏛️ When his rural village is stripped of its political status, the young man must leave his family to secure their food and protection from inside Rome’s cutthroat government. The transition from countryman to politician thrusts him into the middle of a bitter political war.

As Quintus struggles to gain the aid his village desperately needs, he approaches Gaius Marius—the uncle of Julius Caesar himself. ⚔️ But with each passing day in the unforgiving landscape of the Eternal City, he puts his family and his own life in even greater danger.

Davis delivers a gritty, well-researched portrait of Republican Rome at its most ruthless. This isn’t the marble-statue Rome of popular imagination but a city of mud and blood, where political advancement requires moral compromise and a young man’s idealism is ground down by the machinery of power. 🗡️ The historical Sertorius was a real figure—a brilliant general who would later challenge Rome itself—and this novel traces his origins.

The detail is immersive without being overwhelming, and Quintus makes a compelling protagonist: ambitious enough to play the game, principled enough to hate himself for it. 🦅 Fans of Conn Iggulden and Simon Scarrow will find much to admire.

Here’s what you’re getting: a powerful historical epic about sacrifice, corruption, and the price of survival in ancient Rome. 🔥 First in The Sertorius Scrolls—perfect for readers who like their Roman history raw and their heroes complicated.

Envy: A Genetically Modified Hero Romance (The Deadly Seven Book 1)

Lana Pecherczyk

FREE

Genetic Engineering Science Fiction

Deadly sin has consumed Cardinal City. Violence, murder, and mayhem are only the beginning. 🧬 A family of genetically modified heroes is the city’s only hope—if they can resist sin long enough to stand a chance.

Disgraced hero Evan Lazarus punishes himself in the underground cage fighting scene. He blames himself for the tragedy that tore his family apart and left the city without its saviors. 💔 Traveling a dark path toward vengeance, if he’s not careful, he’ll become the evil he was created to fight. And then he meets her—a woman who embodies his sin’s opposing virtue.

Grace Go almost died in the blast that killed her parents and now seeks justice for the survivors. When her investigation crosses paths with a fiercely protective but damaged hero, she’s intrigued. 🔥 The more she sees him, the more he ignites a desire she thought long gone—and the easier it becomes to stay ignorant of the secret that could ruin everything.

Pecherczyk builds a world where the seven deadly sins are literally programmed into her heroes, creating built-in conflict between their nature and their purpose. ⚡ The romance runs hot, the action is intense, and the premise—heroes designed to save humanity who might destroy it instead—provides rich material for a series.

Here’s what you’re getting: a dark, steamy superhero romance with genetically modified heroes, deadly sins, and a city on the edge of destruction. 💚 First in The Deadly Seven series—perfect for fans of paranormal romance with sci-fi edge

Look Before You Jump (The Bartender Babe Chronicles Book 1)

D. A. Bale

FREE

Humorous Southern Mystery Romance

Don’t you dare call Victoria Bohanan a debutante. 🤠 That cozy life is firmly in her rearview mirror after striking out on her own. Nowadays she earns every penny of that twenty-dollar tip by guessing your favorite drink faster than you can belly up to the bar. Sharp wits have gotten her out of more than one disastrous affair.

Until her mouth sinks her right into another. When an old high school flame returns to town with a pastorate position lodged under his belt, life becomes tangled. 💀 Quicker than Vicki can score a shot of Jack, her former boy toy is embroiled in a mystery guaranteed to implode the megachurch his parents built and send the gossiping gaggle into a tailspin faster than a quarterback sack on Sunday.

She’s smart. She’s sexy. With an attitude the size of Texas only a mother could love. 🍺 Bale delivers a Southern mystery with voice to spare—Vicki’s narration crackles with humor, and the Texas setting is rendered with affectionate authenticity. Megachurch politics, small-town scandal, and a murder that threatens to upend everything provide plenty of plot.

But when the cow chips are down, Vicki’s the one to uncover the killer and solve the case of who murdered the preacher’s wife. 🔍 The romance with her former flame adds complication without overwhelming the mystery.

Here’s what you’re getting: a sassy, Southern-fried mystery with a bartender sleuth who mixes drinks and solves crimes with equal flair. 🌟 First in The Bartender Babe Chronicles—perfect for fans of Janet Evanovich with a Lone Star twist.

The Dark of Light (Starhawke Rising Book 1)

Audrey Sharpe

FREE

Space Opera Sci-Fi Adventure

For Aurora Hawke, protecting the secret of her half-human heritage has been a lifelong challenge. 🚀 Taking command of her own starship and assembling the best crew in the quadrant has been her dream. Failing at both is her nightmare. But with millions of lives at risk, she may have to sacrifice everything—including her future.

When a planet’s survival hangs in the balance, Aurora must decide how far she’s willing to go. Revealing her unique abilities might save millions of lives—but it could also mean spending the rest of her life on the run. ✨ The choice between duty and self-preservation has never been more stark.

Sharpe delivers Star Trek-style adventure with a compelling protagonist whose mixed heritage makes her both powerful and vulnerable. The starship setting allows for classic space opera elements—alien encounters, interstellar stakes, crew dynamics—while Aurora’s secret adds personal tension. 🌌 The world-building is rich without being overwhelming.

The Starhawke and its crew feel lived-in, and Aurora’s command style reflects someone who’s earned respect rather than demanded it. ⚡ The pacing is brisk, the stakes escalate satisfyingly, and the series potential is clear.

Here’s what you’re getting: pulse-pounding interstellar adventure with a half-human captain, otherworldly starships, and galaxy-spanning stakes. 🛸 First in the Starhawke Rising series—perfect for fans of Lindsay Buroker, Michelle Diener, and classic space opera.

Meredith Potts Eleven-Book Christmas Set

Meredith Potts

FREE

Christian Fiction

Fun-filled parties. Beautiful decorations. Delicious food. Fantastic presents. Joyous family celebration. And murder. 🎄 This is shaping up to be a holiday season that Sabrina Daley will never forget—but if she doesn’t act fast, it will be for all the wrong reasons.

Eleven cozy mysteries in one collection, all centered around the Christmas season and amateur sleuth Sabrina Daley. 🔍 Each book delivers the comfort-food formula readers love: festive settings, quirky characters, puzzle-box mysteries, and just enough danger to raise the stakes without ruining the holiday spirit.

Potts writes clean, Christian-friendly cozies that emphasize community, faith, and the satisfaction of justice served. The Christmas settings provide maximum coziness, from decorated small towns to family gatherings gone wrong. 🎁 Sabrina is a relatable everywoman sleuth who stumbles into trouble and thinks her way out.

At eleven books for free, this collection offers serious value for cozy mystery fans looking to fill the holiday reading season. ☕ The cases are solved, the killers caught, and the Christmas spirit preserved—though not without some close calls along the way.

Here’s what you’re getting: eleven holiday cozy mysteries featuring an amateur sleuth determined to save Christmas from murderers. 🌟 Perfect for binge-reading by the fire.

The Storm House (DI Hogarth Book 17)

Solomon Carter

FREE

Police Procedurals

When campaigner Penny Wharton is found dead in the garden of a notorious house, Detective Inspector Joe Hogarth is dragged into a labyrinth of lies. 🏚️ Someone powerful is twisting the truth—and they’ll do anything to keep their secrets buried.

Wharton fought for justice. She made dangerous enemies. And now Hogarth must untangle a case where every suspect hides a motive—and every revelation could cost him everything. 🔍 But while Hogarth hunts a killer, DS Sue Palmer is being hunted herself. Local gangster Alex Galvan wants revenge—and he won’t stop until blood is spilled.

Carter ratchets up the pressure on both his leads. This isn’t just a murder investigation—it’s a fight for survival as corruption tightens its grip and Hogarth and Palmer are pushed to the edge. ⚡ Their integrity, their careers, their lives—all hang in the balance.

The seventeenth installment in the series shows a writer confident in his characters and willing to put them through hell. 💀 The parallel threats—the official investigation and the personal vendetta—create mounting tension that drives toward a storm of a conclusion.

Here’s what you’re getting: a gripping British police procedural where the detectives are as endangered as the case is complex. 🌩️ Book 17 in the DI Hogarth Mysteries—longtime fans will find the stakes higher than ever.

James Joyce: The Complete Collection

James Joyce

FREE

Classic Literary Fiction

Enter the world of James Joyce—a universe of memory, language, myth, and inner consciousness that forever changed the course of modern literature. 📚 This complete collection gathers all of his groundbreaking works, offering readers the rare chance to journey through the full evolution of a writer whose influence shaped the 20th century and beyond.

Experience the lyrical brilliance of Dubliners, where everyday life reveals unexpected depths. 🍀 Follow the intimate emotional power of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Tackle the monumental stylistic achievement of Ulysses, often hailed as the greatest novel of the modern age. And explore the dazzling, dreamlike experiment of Finnegans Wake, Joyce’s ultimate exploration of myth, language, and the subconscious.

Also included are Joyce’s poems, critical essays, and lesser-known writings that illuminate the complexity of his craft. ✨ Through shifting perspectives, rhythmic prose, stream-of-consciousness techniques, and vivid portraits of Irish life, Joyce captures the struggle for identity, the search for meaning, and the beauty hidden in the ordinary.

This is challenging literature that rewards patience and rereading. Joyce demands more from readers than almost any other novelist—and gives more in return. 📖 For those willing to do the work, there’s nothing else quite like it.

Here’s what you’re getting: the complete works of one of literature’s most important and influential writers—Dubliners, Portrait, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, and more. 🌟 Essential for serious readers.

Water Signs: The Jeri Howard Mystery Series Book 12

Janet Dawson

FREE

Private Investigator Mysteries

Oakland PI Jeri Howard worked at a private investigator firm before striking out on her own. Her former colleague Cal Brady had a history with the bottle that cost him his license. 🥃 But Cal reclaimed his life through AA and found work as a security guard at a construction site on Oakland’s gritty waterfront. Then his body washes up in the estuary.

Did Cal fall off the wagon and into the water? His daughter Madison isn’t buying that story. She thinks Cal was murdered, and she wants Jeri to find out what really happened. 🔍 The waterfront is changing at breathtaking pace—long-abandoned industrial sites transforming into apartments, condos, and retail spaces. Money to be made, hand over fist.

And unscrupulous people doing business their way, ready to push aside anyone who gets in their way. 💀 Dawson delivers a mystery steeped in Oakland’s geography and politics, where gentrification creates winners, losers, and motives for murder. Jeri’s investigation takes her through the waterfront’s transformation, from ship and rail yards to construction sites to corporate offices.

The personal connection—Cal was a friend, a colleague, a cautionary tale—gives the case emotional weight beyond the procedural. 🌊 Jeri becomes convinced Cal was murdered, but proving it means going up against people with resources and ruthlessness she can barely imagine.

Here’s what you’re getting: a gritty Oakland mystery where waterfront development and murder intersect, and a PI must find justice for a friend who couldn’t save himself. 🖤 Book 12 in the Jeri Howard series.

Puzzle Me a Murder (An Alice Pepper Lonely Hearts and Puzzle Club Mystery Book 1)

Roz Noonan

Regularly $22.95, Today $3.99

Cozy Crafts & Hobbies Mystery

Librarian Alice Pepper always had a natural talent for figuring out people and puzzles in the small Oregon town of West Hazel. 🧩 At sixty-five, she’d hoped to be settling into a comfortable retirement, not scrambling to keep her cozy home and dependable job after a divorce upended her golden years. But even when life falls apart, the pieces come together with a little help from her friends—a fun-loving crew who thrive on jigsaws over coffee, cocktails, and gossip.

When close confidant Ruby Milliner is accused of murdering her cheating husband George, Alice springs into action. 💀 Ruby never actually wanted to kill George, although anger can make a person say questionable—and incriminating—things. And scheming, deceitful George made a lot of people angry. The suspect list is massive, and Alice is fiercely committed to cracking the case.

Noonan delivers a cozy mystery with a protagonist who’s refreshingly past the ingenue stage—Alice has lived enough life to be wise, weary, and utterly unwilling to let her friend go down for a murder she didn’t commit. 🔍 The puzzle club setting adds charm, and the Pacific Northwest small-town atmosphere provides the perfect backdrop for secrets and gossip to simmer.

But slimming down that suspect list and restoring peace to West Hazel is a real gamble. If Alice is successful, she’ll meet a vengeful killer whose game she doesn’t yet know how to play. ☕ The stakes are personal, the friendships are warm, and the mystery keeps you guessing.

Here’s what you’re getting: a cozy debut featuring a smart, sixty-something amateur sleuth who proves that the best detectives are the ones who’ve been paying attention to people their whole lives. 📚 First in the Alice Pepper series—perfect for fans of jigsaws, justice, and friendship at any age.

Greygallows

Barbara Michaels

Regularly $14.99, Today $3.99

Gothic Romance

Lucy Cartwright placed her life and future into the hands of the dashing Baron Clare, despite the rumors of his dark, unsavory past. 🏰 Trusting his kind words and gentle manner, she agreed to be his wife and followed the enigmatic lord to Greygallows, his sprawling country estate in Victorian England. What she found was not the haven she’d hoped for.

Mystery, deception, betrayal, and danger surround the magnificent manor. A ghostly secret charges the atmosphere, and terror reigns in its shadowed hallways. 👻 Lucy entered Greygallows willingly—and now she may never leave. Michaels, a New York Times bestselling author and master of the gothic romance, crafts a tale that echoes the great Victorian sensation novels while delivering genuine chills.

The gothic tradition lives in every element: the isolated estate, the brooding husband with secrets, the bride who begins to question everything she thought she knew. 🕯️ Michaels builds dread slowly and expertly, letting Lucy’s growing unease mirror the reader’s own suspicions. Is the Baron what he seems? What happened to those who came before her? And what walks the halls of Greygallows after dark?

This is classic gothic romance at its finest—atmospheric, suspenseful, and deeply satisfying for readers who love their heroines resourceful and their mysteries steeped in shadow. 🌙 Michaels (a pen name for the legendary Barbara Mertz, who also wrote as Elizabeth Peters) knows exactly how to keep you turning pages late into the night.

Here’s what you’re getting: Victorian gothic atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife, a heroine trapped in a beautiful nightmare, and secrets that refuse to stay buried. 🖤 Essential reading for fans of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt.

Every Other Weekend

Abigail Johnson

Regularly $17.99, Today $2.99

Young Adult Fiction about Friendship

When Adam Moynihan’s oldest brother died, his life fell apart around him. 💔 Now his mom cries constantly, he and his remaining brother can’t talk without fighting, and the father he always admired moved out when they needed him most. Adam is drowning in grief and rage, convinced that forgiveness is weakness.

Jolene Timber is used to being a pawn in her divorced parents’ war—weaponized, manipulated, exhausted by their endless battle. 🏢 But when she develops an unlikely friendship with a boy who spends every other weekend in the same apartment building she does, suddenly the future seems less bleak. Two broken kids, same custody schedule, same rundown complex where divorced parents warehouse their children.

Johnson crafts a “heart-wrenching and hopeful” (Kirkus Reviews) story about finding connection in the wreckage of family. Adam and Jolene are both damaged in different ways—he’s consumed by anger, she’s armored herself against hope—and watching them slowly learn to trust each other is the book’s quiet triumph. 🌱 The romance unfolds naturally, built on shared understanding rather than grand gestures.

The every-other-weekend structure gives the narrative a distinctive rhythm, with time jumps that mirror the disjointed experience of split custody. Each visit brings these two closer together, and each departure makes the waiting harder. 💜 Johnson doesn’t offer easy answers about divorce, grief, or forgiveness—just honest ones.

Here’s what you’re getting: a tender YA romance about two teenagers learning that love and forgiveness aren’t weaknesses—they’re the only way forward. 🌟 Perfect for readers who want their contemporary romance with emotional depth and genuine stakes.

Varg Veum collection

Gunnar Staalesen

Regularly $25.99, Today $0.99

Crime Thrillers

Four installments of the Varg Veum series from the international bestselling father of Nordic Noir, translated by Don Bartlett. 🇳🇴 PI Varg Veum returns to solve a series of dark, dangerous cases in his hometown of Bergen, Norway, in perfectly plotted and thought-provoking thrillers that helped define the Scandinavian crime genre.

The collection opens with We Shall Inherit the Wind, set in 1998. Veum sits by the hospital bedside of his long-term girlfriend Karin, whose life-threatening injuries provide a deeply painful reminder of the mistakes he’s made. 💔 Investigating the seemingly innocent disappearance of a wind-farm inspector, he’s thrust into one of the most challenging cases of his career—riddled with conflicts, environmental terrorism, religious fanaticism, unsolved mysteries, and dubious business ethics. Then, in one of the most heart-stopping scenes in crime fiction, the first body appears.

Staalesen has been writing Varg Veum since 1977, making this one of the longest-running detective series in European crime fiction. 🔍 The Bergen setting is as essential as the detective himself—a rain-soaked port city with layers of history and secrets. Veum is a classic flawed investigator: principled but damaged, persistent but self-destructive.

These are not cozy mysteries. They’re dark, morally complex explorations of Norwegian society, touching on environmental politics, religious extremism, and the corruption that festers in small communities. ⚡ Staalesen writes with the confidence of a master who’s spent decades perfecting his craft.

Here’s what you’re getting: four novels from a legendary Nordic Noir pioneer at an extraordinary price—less than twenty-five cents per book. 🖤 Essential reading for fans of Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, and the Scandinavian crime tradition.

A Ghostwriter’s Guide to Murder: A Novel

Melinda Mullet

Regularly $14.99, Today $1.99

International Mystery & Crime

Maeve Gardner kills people for a living. A dodgy occupation perhaps, but as ghostwriter for the long-running Simon Hills mysteries, she’s planned the perfect murder time and again—and she enjoys it. 🖊️ She dreams of writing something under her own name someday rather than babysitting her adopted character Simon, but at least she’s writing. And as one of the burnt-out souls who’ve run away to live on London’s waterways, she has the joy of working from home: a colorful houseboat.

Life on the canals is grand, until her cheating ex-boyfriend turns up floating facedown in the water outside her boat. Murdered. And the police arrest her. 💀 Suddenly, Maeve is thrust into one of her own crime dramas, complete with missing money, violent thugs, extortion, and conspiracy. Only this time, there is no real-life Simon Hill to come to her aid.

Mullet delivers a charming, wickedly imaginative mystery perfect for fans of Anthony Horowitz and Richard Osman. 🚤 The London canal boat community provides a delightful setting—a floating world of eccentrics, dreamers, and people reinventing themselves. Maeve’s helpers include India, owner of a popular floating bookshop; Paul, the exceedingly attractive landlord of the local pub; and Ash, her quiet, nerdy neighbor who’s keeping some secrets of his own.

The meta element—a mystery writer trapped in a real mystery—gives the book its playful edge. Maeve knows all the tropes, all the red herrings, all the ways a plot can twist. 📚 But knowing how murder mysteries work on the page doesn’t mean she knows how to survive one in real life.

Here’s what you’re getting: a witty, twisty mystery with a heroine who writes death for a living and now has to outsmart it. 🎭 Fans of bookish cozies and London settings will be charmed.

10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help

Benjamin Wiker

Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99

Books & Reading Literary Criticism

You’ve heard of the “Great Books”? These are their evil opposites. 📚 From Machiavelli’s The Prince to Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, from Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto to Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, Professor Benjamin Wiker argues that these influential books have led to war, genocide, totalitarian oppression, the breakdown of the family, and disastrous social experiments.

Wiker’s thesis is provocative: the toxic ideas peddled in these books are more popular and pervasive than ever—and they might influence your own thinking without your realizing it. 🎯 He sets out to expose the beguiling errors in each, providing intellectual ammunition against arguments readers may have encountered without knowing their source.

The book is unabashedly polemical. Wiker writes from a conservative philosophical perspective, and readers who share that worldview will find his takedowns satisfying; those who don’t may find themselves arguing with the pages. 🔥 Either way, the book succeeds in forcing engagement with ideas that have genuinely shaped the modern world, for better or worse.

Witty, learned, and deliberately provocative, this is intellectual history with a sharp edge. Wiker doesn’t pretend to neutrality—he thinks these books did real damage, and he wants readers to understand exactly how and why. 💡 Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, the tour through these influential texts is illuminating.

Here’s what you’re getting: a quick, opinionated education in some of the most controversial ideas in human history, written by a professor who believes ideas have consequences. ⚖️ Perfect for readers who like their intellectual history with a point of view.

Emergency: Stories

Kathleen Alcott

Regularly $25.99, Today $3.99

Literary Short Stories

A professor finds a photograph of her deceased mother in a compromising position on the wall of a museum. A twenty-something’s lucrative remote work sparks paranoia and bigotry. A transplant to a new city must choose who she trusts when her partner reveals a violent history. 📸 The summer after her divorce from an older man, an exiled painter’s former friends grapple with rumors that she attempted to pass as a teenager.

In this long-awaited debut collection, Kathleen Alcott turns her considerable skills as a stylist on the unfreedoms of American life—as well as the guilt that stalks those who survive them. ✨ These stories roam from European cities to scorched California towns, drug-smeared motel rooms to polished dinner parties, taking taut, surprising portraits of addiction, love, misogyny, and sexual power.

Alcott confronts the hidden perils of class ascension. The women in these stories try to pay down the psychic debts of their old lives as they search for a new happiness they can afford. 💔 There’s a specificity to her observations—about money, about bodies, about the compromises women make—that cuts deep.

The prose is precise and unsettling, the kind of writing that makes you pause mid-sentence to absorb what just happened. 🌙 These aren’t comfortable stories, but they’re memorable ones, lingering in the mind long after the book is closed.

Here’s what you’re getting: literary short fiction at its sharpest—dark, beautiful, and unsparing in its examination of American womanhood. 🖤 For readers who want their stories to leave marks.

Play of Shadows (The Court of Shadows Book 1)

Sebastien de Castell

Regularly $9.99, Today $0.99

Action & Adventure Fantasy

Welcome to the Operato Belleza—it might save his life, or it just might be the end of him. 🎭 Damelas Chademantaigne picked a poor night to flee a judicial duel. He has precious little hope of escaping the wrath of the Vixen, the most feared duellist in the entire city, until he stumbles through the stage doors of the magnificent opera house and tricks his way into the company of actors.

An archaic law provides temporary respite from his troubles—until one night a ghostly voice in his head causes Damelas to fumble his lines, inadvertently blurting out a dreadful truth: the city’s most legendary hero may actually be a traitor and a brutal murderer. ⚔️ Now he’s made powerful enemies who want him silenced permanently.

De Castell, author of the beloved Greatcoats series, delivers swashbuckling adventure with theatrical flair. Damelas must somehow find courage he’s never shown before, aided only by his boisterous friend Bereto, a beautiful assassin whose target may well be Damelas himself, and a company of misfit actors who’d just as soon see him dead. 🗡️ Oh, and there’s still the matter of the Vixen waiting to duel him.

The setting—a world where theater and politics intertwine, where actors have legal protections and ancient secrets hide in plain sight—is irresistible. 🎪 De Castell writes action sequences with cinematic precision and dialogue that crackles with wit.

Here’s what you’re getting: swashbuckling fantasy adventure with a theatrical twist, from an author who knows how to balance humor, heart, and sword fights. 🌟 First in The Court of Shadows series—perfect for fans of Scott Lynch and the author’s own Greatcoats.

Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death

Laura Cumming

Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99

Biographies of Artists, Architects & Photographers

In 1654, the Thunderclap—an enormous explosion at a gunpowder store—devastated the city of Delft, killing hundreds of people and injuring thousands more. 💥 Among the dead was Carel Fabritius, an extraordinary painter whose brief career had already produced works of startling originality. He was thirty-two years old.

Art critic Laura Cumming uses this catastrophic moment as the lens for something more expansive: a meditation on art, loss, and how paintings enter our lives and change how we see. 🎨 She writes about Fabritius and the Dutch Golden Age with scholarly authority, but she also writes about her own father, a painter, and the ways art shaped her understanding of the world.

“Cumming has fashioned a book that combines memoir, art criticism, and history to illuminating effect” (The New York Times Book Review). 📖 Like Dutch art itself, the story gradually links country, city, town, street, house, interior—all the way to the bird on its perch, the blue and white tile, the smallest seed in a loaf of bread.

This is a book about attention—what it means to really look at something, whether a painting or a person or a memory. 🕊️ Cumming’s prose is luminous, and her ability to move between centuries, between the personal and the historical, gives the book an unusual emotional resonance.

Here’s what you’re getting: a beautiful hybrid of art history, biography, and memoir from one of the finest art critics writing today. 🖼️ For readers who believe that how we see shapes who we become.

NEW RELEASES

Matched With My Christmas Crush (Letters to Mrs. Claus)

Francesca Spencer

NEW RELEASE

Holiday Humor

James Hadley’s son Alfie is playing Santa’s helper in this year’s community Christmas show, which means James will be spending rehearsals in close proximity to Alfie’s teacher, Miss Flo Simmons. 🎄 When she’s around, he lights up like a Christmas tree. It could just be the effects of tinsel and glitter, but he’s feeling something he thought was lost after his wife’s death.

Flo knows romance is a no-no—James is a student’s parent, and she has rules about these things. 🎅 But the holly-jolly time of year is turning her insides to Jello. When they get stuck behind a plywood snowman during rehearsal, close together in the dark, her pulse races at an almost-kiss.

Spencer delivers a sweet, clean holiday romance with all the festive trimmings. The single-dad-falls-for-teacher trope gets a Christmas Spectacular staging, complete with children’s pageant chaos, meaningful glances across crowded auditoriums, and the question of whether either of them is brave enough to take a chance. ✨

This is comfort reading at its coziest—no angst, no drama, just two good people who deserve happiness finding their way to each other with a little help from the season. 🎁 The community theater setting adds warmth, and Alfie’s enthusiasm for his theatrical debut provides gentle comic relief.

Here’s what you’re getting: a feel-good holiday romance about opening your heart when you thought it was closed for good. 💕 Sweet, clean, and full of Christmas spirit.

Jingle Belle

Laura Ashley Gallagher

NEW RELEASE

Humorous Christmas Holiday Romance

Belle Brooks doesn’t believe in holiday magic or blind dates. 🎄 But when her best friends sign her up for the Twelve Dates of Christmas challenge on the Skeptically In Love podcast, she’s pushed into the worst date of her life—at a restaurant that happens to belong to Miles Bennett. Her first love. The boy she left behind when she chased her career to New York.

What starts as an awkward reunion quickly spirals into something far more complicated. Between flour fights in the kitchen, Christmas Twister, and feelings they never really buried, Belle and Miles are forced to face the past and the possibility of a future. 💕 She swore she was over him. He swore he had moved on. But Christmas has a way of making even the most skeptical hearts believe in second chances.

Gallagher delivers a rom-com with both holiday sparkle and emotional depth. The podcast challenge provides a fun structural hook, but the real story is two people who hurt each other years ago learning whether they’ve grown enough to try again. 🎁 The banter is sharp, the chemistry is undeniable, and the Christmas setting provides maximum cozy atmosphere.

Belle’s skepticism about love makes her a refreshing heroine—she’s not waiting for a fairy tale, which makes it all the more satisfying when one finds her anyway. ❄️ Miles gets his own arc too, dealing with what it meant to be left behind and whether he can risk that kind of hurt again.

Here’s what you’re getting: a charming second-chance holiday romance for readers who love their Christmas stories with wit, warmth, and just enough emotional stakes to make the happy ending feel earned. 🌟 Perfect for fans of Talia Hibbert and holiday rom-coms.

Date Yourself a Grinch (Have Yourself a Merry Little Romance Book 3)

Savannah Scott

NEW RELEASE

Holiday Men, Women & Relationships Humor

Gage Lockett isn’t the actual Grinch, but if someone in town woke up tomorrow to find all the candy canes missing, the smart money’s on him. 🎄 The man glares at twinkle lights like they personally insulted his mother. He’s Waterford’s grumpiest bachelor, and he seems determined to keep that title.

So when he accidentally reads her Holiday Bucket List—complete with “Kiss under the mistletoe” and “Make snow angels”—she hatches a plan. She expected him to toss it in the trash where joy goes to die. Instead, he decides to tag along. ❄️ Now she and her friends are dragging him to every holly-jolly event from ugly-sweater tree lighting to the sleigh race, and she swears she catches him almost smiling once.

Scott delivers a cozy, closed-door, laugh-out-loud small-town holiday rom-com. The grumpy-sunshine dynamic is pitch-perfect: she’s made of tinsel and enthusiasm, he’s allergic to Christmas and feelings. 😏 Watching his defenses crumble one festive activity at a time is pure romantic comedy gold.

When Gage volunteers for the town’s Secret Santa fundraiser, she starts seeing the man beneath the scowl. Maybe the one thing missing from her holiday list is him. 💚 The Waterford setting is full of quirky townspeople, and the community’s investment in getting these two together adds comic momentum.

Here’s what you’re getting: a heartwarming holiday rom-com that proves even a Grinch can believe in love with the right person and enough mistletoe. 🎁 Third in the Have Yourself a Merry Little Romance trilogy—sweet, funny, and full of Christmas spirit.

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