10 New Releases for Your TBR List!

Happy Pub Day, 7.8.25

Love Spells Trouble by Nia Davenport

Witches and humans have always had issues. Cayden is well aware of that: Her witch mom was shunned by her high-society family when she fell in love with a Cayden’s human dad, and now her family bakery is in trouble due to wealthy witches gentrifying their neighborhood. So when Cayden realizes she unknowingly went on a date with witch it-boy Khy Carter, it feels like things can’t get any worse. But then her father’s bakery has an influx of new customers hoping to get a glimpse of Khy’s new girl, and a solution to her family’s problems appears: Cayden absolutely cannot be with a Coven boy, but that doesn’t mean she can’t pretend to. The two start fake dating to save her family’s business, but even though she’s doing this for her family, Cayden knows she’s also betraying them. Her parents may have put love before everything else, but is Cayden willing to do the same?

Lore of the Tides by Analeigh Sbrana

Lore Alemeyu wakes up to discover she’s on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Held prisoner and with no way to escape, she’s faced with a dire set of circumstances…

A crew that’s distrustful of Lore’s magic capabilities…

Her betrayal by a Fae she thought she could trust…

A dangerous quest for the sun book, which, if placed in the wrong hands, will make the Alytherian Fae even more powerful.

Lore must navigate threats on the ship and beyond, into the ocean’s magical and mysterious depths, in order to find the sun book herself and help free the humans. All the while, Lore can’t help but feel the intense pull of one Fae male who has been helping her all along. But is she willing to risk her human heart for creatures that have burned her in the past, and jeopardize her people’s future?

The Bloodless Queen by Joshua Phillip Johnson

On the autumnal equinox of 1987, after fencing off half of the Earth’s land for huge nature reserves called Harbors, the leaders of the world called on their peoples to celebrate. Then began the horror and the magic.

Everyone who died that day—all 132,329 of them—instead of going cold and still, turned odd and fae. They became mischievous and murderous, before disappearing into their nearest Harbor, never seen again. And each year after that on the autumnal equinox, the same terrible transformations would occur: the wretched dead not dying, but instead riddling and whispering of a faerie queen—bloodless and powerful—while fleeing into the wild confines of the Harbors.

In the present day, Evangeline and Calidore are working as fencers, government-employed protectors whose magical powers come from mysterious tattoos of prime numbers. When they aren’t fixing the fences of the Midwest Harbor that separates the human world from Faerie or patrolling on the equinox, they are parents of an almost-seven-year-old daughter named Winnie.

But as the new year’s autumnal equinox approaches, Evangeline and Calidore find themselves thrust into a vast conspiracy that stretches across governments, religions, and fencers worldwide. As they race to untangle this web of power and intrigue, they will need to confront the questions that have haunted the world since the fences were built:

What lies at the heart of the Harbors? Who waits there?

The Great Misfortune of Stella Sedgwick by S. Isabelle

Stella Sedgwick is a lost cause.

Banished from etiquette lessons and unsure of her future, Stella dreams of a writing career and independence, but 1860s England offers little opportunity beyond marriage or servitude for a sharp-tongued, dark-skinned girl.

When her late mother’s former employer summons Stella to London, he tells her of his intention to bequeath one of the family’s great estates to her. It’s a life-changing inheritance, but one that will precipitate a legal battle that would be easier if Stella were married. With her cousin Olivia by her side, Stella is thrust into London society and must navigate fashion and balls, insults and stares, and a rekindled connection to Nathaniel, her childhood best friend with a rakish reputation.
Beyond the marriage market, living in London presents intriguing opportunities to Stella, like picking up her mother’s anonymous advice column to guide readers through upper-class perils. As new acquaintances are made and old secrets are uncovered, Stella must decide when to play by the rules, when to break them, and when to let herself follow her heart.

The Rebel Girls of Rome by Jordyn Taylor

NOW:

Grieving the loss of her mother, college student Lilah is hoping to reconnect with her ever-distant grandfather who refuses to talk about his past. When a fellow student in Italy brings a long-lost family heirloom to her attention, Lilah travels to Rome with her grandfather in the hopes of unlocking his history as a survivor of the Holocaust once and for all.

But as they get closer to the truth—and the possibility of healing through new connections—she begins to realize that some secrets may be too painful to unbury . . .

THEN:

It’s 1943, and nineteen-year-old Bruna and her family are doing their best to survive in Rome’s Jewish quarter under Nazi occupation. When the dreaded knock comes early one morning, and Bruna realizes her youngest brother, Raffa, is missing, her desperate search to find him separates her from the rest of her family irrevocably.

Overcome with guilt at escaping her family’s fate in the camps, Bruna joins the partisan efforts against the Nazis and Italian Fascists. When her missions bring her back to her childhood crush, Elsa, she must decide what it really means to live and love—and if fully embracing herself might be her greatest act of resistance of all. But just as she starts to find light in the darkness, an attack that ends in unspeakable tragedy leaves Bruna questioning her fortitude to survive more than ever before.

Fools For Love: Stories by Helen Schulman

The wide-ranging and inventive stories that make up Helen Schulman’s Fools for Love are funny, sexy, sometimes sad, and always surprising. A young single American mother and an Orthodox rabbi fall in love over poetry, as she helps to dismantle a shuttered bookstore in Paris. A rebellious young woman marries a series of men who are all wrong for her and proceeds to cheat on each of them in a series of stories; her widowed mother finds her deceased husband's sex diaries and decides she needs to make up for lost time. And in the title story, a young East Village playwright realizes that her marriage to a brilliant young actor is doomed, after watching his performance in an alternative production of the Sam Shepard play.

Characters wander in and out of one another's lives in these hilarious tales of lust and attachment—a rollicking feast of love that is not unlike the experience of life itself.

No Sense in Wishing by Lawrence Burney

There are moments throughout our lives when we discover an artist, an album, a film, or a cultural artifact that leaves a lasting impression, helping inform how we understand the world, and ourselves, moving forward. In No Sense in Wishing, Lawrence Burney explores these profound interactions with incisive and energizing prose, offering us a personal and critical perspective on the people, places, music, and art that transformed him.

In a time when music is spearheading Black Americans’ connection with Africans on The Continent, Burney takes trips to cover the bubbling creative scenes in Lagos and Johannesburg that inspire teary-eyed reflections of self and belonging. Seeing his mother perform as the opening act at a Gil Scott-Heron show as a child inspires an essay about parent-child relationships and how personal taste is often inherited. And a Maryland crab feast with family facilitates an assessment of how the Black people in his home state have historically improvised paths for their liberation.

Taking us on a journey from the streets of Baltimore to the concert halls of Lagos, No Sense in Wishing is a kaleidoscopic exploration of Burney’s search for self. With its gutsy and uncompromising criticism alongside intimate personal storytelling, it’s like an album that hits all the right notes, from a promising writer on the rise.

Predatory Natures by Amy Goldsmith

Lara Williams is desperate to get away. When she gets a job working aboard the luxury train The Banebury for her gap year, she this is her chance to reinvent herself, after the incident that wrecked her relationships and her college prospects several months ago.

At first, the train is everything Lara expected—a five-star escape from her past, demanding customers and all. Even after she learns that her ex-friend, Rhys, who she definitely did not have feelings for before their relationship imploded, is one of her new coworkers, she's determined to make things work.

But on the first night of their journey, the trip takes a strange turn when two mysterious carriages, filled with an array of beautiful and rare plants, are attached to the end of the train in the middle of the night. With them come a pair of siblings. Gwen and Gwydion are wealthy, Welsh, and alluring as they are odd--not to mention, incredibly protective of their botanical cargo.

The siblings claim the plants they're transporting are for research, yet Lara can't shake the feeling that there's something...otherworldly about them. Something that calls to her, night after night, whispering in her dreams.

Soon, Lara will you can't outrun your troubles. You have to grab them by their roots. And if she can't dig up the secrets of the Banebury, they might just consume her whole...

Slanting Towards the Sea by Lidija Hilje

Ivona divorced the love of her life, Vlaho, a decade ago. They met as students at the turn of the new millennium, when democratic Croatia was alive with hope and promise. But the challenges of living in a burgeoning country extinguished Ivona’s dreams one after another—and a devastating secret forced her to set him free.

Now Vlaho is remarried and a proud father of two, while Ivona’s life has taken a downward turn. In her thirties, she has returned to her childhood home to care for her ailing father. Bewildered by life’s disappointments, she finds solace in reconnecting with Vlaho and is welcomed into his family by his spirited new wife, Marina. But when a new man enters Ivona’s life, the carefully cultivated dynamic between the three is disrupted, forcing a reckoning for all involved.

Sounds Like Trouble by Pamela S Young & Dwayne A Smith

Jackson Jones and Mackenzie “Mac” Cunningham can’t agree on anything. After coming close to death on their last case, the two have decided to team up but they can’t even decide on how to furnish their new office. Jackson wants to make a big splash. Mackenzie just wants a desk and some filing cabinets to clean up the mess. Before they can reach a truce on the decor, the two PIs get an offer they have no choice but to infamous gangster Big Ced and two of his mafia dons want them to track down a package. Or else.

Things heat up in more ways than one as Jackson and Mac track down the sensitive information for the mobsters, while a police investigator is on their tail. When sparks fly between Mackenzie and Lieutenant Good Looking, Jackson’s jealousy and fiery back-and-forth with his partner has them flirting with danger in more ways than one. As they race through LA’s fanciest neighborhoods in a race against time, Jackson and Mac must stick closer to each other than ever as they dodge bullets, bad guys, and their feelings for each other.