BP Note: Wow! August already… the year is past the halfway point and it seems both moving too quickly and too slowly. We have a nice line up with some authors who haven’t appeared in our lists before. As always, make sure your loved ones know how much they matter, take care of yourselves and each other. We can’t change things for the better without each other!
Happy reading!
~E
- Contemporary Romance
- Fantasy
- Fantasy Romance
- Historical Fantasy
- Historical Fiction
- Historical Mystery
- Mystery
- Paranormal Romance
- Romantasy
- Science Fiction
- Urban Fantasy
Contemporary Romance
Millie (Love Sequence #5) by Daphne Leigh – 4 Aug (Self)
Sometimes the best love stories don’t follow the manual.Millie Montgomery can rebuild a transmission blindfolded, but she can’t figure out the two infuriating men who’ve invaded her family’s garage.
Keiran Taylor—the hot brooding American with a cruel tongue and hands that know their way around an engine. He treats her like a distraction in heels, all toxic masculinity and dismissive glares. Clearly straight. Clearly damaged. Clearly someone she should hate.
Archie Sinclair—the gorgeous posh Englishman with a soft smile and romance novels in his pockets. He fixes her earrings, shares his books, and watches Keiran with the quiet longing of unrequited love. Obviously gay. Obviously sweet. Obviously safe.
The problem? Millie’s completely wrong about both of them.
When a game of truth or dare explodes every assumption she’s made, Millie discovers that the grumpy mechanic and the gentle bookworm aren’t only pining for each other—they’re pining for her. Together. And they’ve been circling each other for months, waiting for the missing piece that makes them whole.
Now she’s caught between wanting to run and wanting to stay. Between the safety of assumptions and the terrifying possibility that sometimes love doesn’t choose—it multiplies.
Marriage & Mockery (Betray Me Once #5) by Wren Shaw – 4 Aug (Self)
He turned his wife’s quirks into the punchline of America’s favorite sitcom.
Laina Parker thought she had the perfect marriage. Until her husband thanked her on stage for inspiring the chaotic, ridiculed main character of his hit show.
His speech went viral, making headlines and sparking memes. Even worse, their daughter thought he was right.
Devastated, Laina walks out. But Bennett refuses to lose the woman he adores. He’ll grovel and prove that every “flaw” he turned into jokes was actually what he loves most about his wife.
Fantasy
A Trade of Blood (Shadow of the Leviathan #3) by Robert Jackson Bennett – 4 Aug (Del Rey)
In the canton of Sapirdad, two of the Empire’s most powerful families are moments away from going to war with each other, their hundreds of retainers gathered with swords drawn. If blood is spilt, the whole of the empire may be plunged into starvation and chaos.
To de-escalate matters, someone must do the impossible: prove that one family’s eldest son is innocent of a gruesome and unforgivable murder, despite the incontrovertible evidence against him.
It is with this undertaking that the great detective Ana Dolabra is tasked, her assistant Din at her side—and the two find themselves racing with great speed and little dignity to the scene.
As ever, the impossible proves little obstacle for the deadly combination of Ana’s intellect and Din’s keen eye, and mere hours after riding into the dusty town, Ana glimpses the greater pattern behind the crime. A deeper, subtler web of death is being woven in plain sight, by a mastermind with an ancient magical technology at his disposal.
But even Ana’s uncanny insight is of little use when each new suspect she uncovers ends up dead–with each new killing calculated to bring tensions between the two rival clans past the boiling point. And as Din pursues their adversary through the canton’s wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses, he finds his loyalties divided in unexpected ways.
The Silver Hand (Tides of Magic #2) by Shawn Carpenter – 11 Aug (S&S/Saga Press)
Captain Rue Nath is sailing towards what he hopes isn’t his certain doom. As he guides the Redemption into port, the people cheer him and his crew as a hero. But a court martial awaits that could leave him ashore for years, or worse, strip him of his naval rank for good.
But Magister Enid d’Tancreville will do anything in her power to keep that from happening. After escaping the Theocratic Revolution and discarding her dream of fighting against the ‘Rats in the army, she’s not too keen to give up her new position as Captain Nath’s right hand and sorcerer. As Enid tries to drum up support for her beloved captain, Rue must decide whether to take the hand his enemies have dealt him or prove them wrong once again. Even if that means commanding a ship whose captains have only ever met perilous ends.
Fantasy Romance
Demons and Diplomacy (Ministry of Supernatural Affairs #1) by Megan Frampton – 25 Aug (Berkley)
A tantalizing pact between an ordinary woman and the silver-tongued son of the Devil is all that stands between Britain—and all hell breaking loose.
1851, London. All supernatural species have emerged from hiding, a result of The Great Revelation, led by Her Majesty, the vampiric Queen Victoria, and her dhamphir consort, Prince Albert.
Cora Hastings is the British government’s Species Ombudsman, a human tasked with keeping the peace between supernatural creatures. It’s run-of-the-mill work: enforcing the newly created shifting parameters, negotiating contracts between species, and generally making certain all Londoners are treated equally.
That is, until the Devil himself decides he wants to leave his hellish home and see the results of Prince Albert’s greatest accomplishment, the Great Exhibition. His arrival could upset the uneasy peace between creatures, and worse—he’s brought his son.
The Marquis of Hell is diabolically good-looking, unnaturally perceptive, and, well, a demon. Cora navigates her sinfully seductive diplomatic assignment as best she can, until she catches wind of a secret conspiracy set to come to fruition at the opening of the Great Exhibition. This leaves her with an impossible choice: Either Cora enters an unholy alliance with the Devil’s son, or she watches as her world is torn asunder….
Historical Fantasy
The Whitechapel Full Moon Society by Elizabeth DeLozier – 25 Aug (Dutton)
When Caroline Foster arrives at the Whitechapel Full Moon Society in search of her missing brother, she finds a dilapidated façade belying an interior as opulent as any exclusive gentlemen’s club. In exchange for room and board, Caroline is hired as the Full Moon’s maid, where she is given three orders: don’t ask personal questions, stay out of the iron-barred room on the second floor, and remain in her bedroom from sunup to sundown on the full moon.
But when it is revealed that the previous maid was murdered—an early victim of Jack the Ripper—and her brother has left behind no answers, only more questions, Caroline begins to suspect her hosts might be hiding something. As more bodies turn up with a connection to the Society, Caroline fears she may have unwittingly stumbled into a bedtime story, the kind with monsters and curses, family secrets and ancient lore.
Historical Fiction
The House of Boleyn by Tracy Borman – 4 Aug (Atlantic Monthly Press)
HEVER CASTLE HOLDS ALL THE BOLEYN SECRETS…
When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to the newly-anointed eighteen-year-old king, Henry VIII, Thomas’s young daughter, Anne, implores him not to leave. “Well, make sure the prize you bring me is worth it, Father,” Anne demands of him. “I will try,” he responds. “But I’ll wager even a crown wouldn’t satisfy you.” Such premonitions resonate convincingly throughout Tracy Borman’s rich and compelling novel. Blending the history she knows so well with the creativity of her imagination, Borman brings the Boleyn family’s three-decade rise and precipitous fall to vivid life.
Borman surrounds the main dramatic events of the Boleyn saga with a colourful tableau in which servants play key roles, familial and inter-familial rivalries threaten, and true love often loses out to keen ambition. Anne’s ever-loyal attendant Agnes Frideswide, and Thomas Boleyn’s perfidious steward Robert Cranwell, are as memorable as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, or anyone in the increasingly dangerous orbit of Henry VIII’s court, as he pursues Anne relentlessly, only to abandon her when she can’t give him the son and heir he desperately seeks.
A Thousand Painted Hours by Barbara O’Neal – 11 Aug (Lake Union)
In the shadow of the London Blitz, artist Elsie Turner clings fiercely to her canvases, refusing to let war dim the colors that define her. The bombs test her nerve, but the struggle also stirs memories of her golden youth in India and of the long-lost love of her life.
The daughter of a British civil servant in the Himalayan station of Nainital, Elsie crosses cultural divides to forge an unlikely bond with Tanveer Singh, a Sikh prince with hopes, dreams, and far-reaching ideas. What begins as shared sketchbooks and stargazing becomes first love and a secret correspondence. When Elsie’s father is summoned to England, Elsie is severed from the world she knows—and is determined to preserve it through both her art and a connection with Tanveer that endures through the most tumultuous years of their lives.
Across four decades and two continents, Elsie navigates a journey from lush colonial India to war-torn London, amid landscapes of beauty, protest, and peril. As past and present collide, the most impossible choices and sacrifices are yet to be made in the name of love, war, and survival.
Historical Mystery
For Services Rendered (Barker & Llewelyn #17) by Will Thomas – 18 Aug (Minotaur Books)
In 1896, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, would be reformer and revolutionary, turns up in London, running away from China’s Imperial Qing Secret Service, who has placed a substantial bounty on his head for his political activities. Captured by those agents, he’s imprisoned in the Chinese Embassy until he can be smuggled back to China to face execution.
In the meantime, private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn receive the unbelievable news that Sebastian Nightwine is both alive and in London. Not just that, it seems he’s taking action against Barker and his close associates. At the same time, they’ve been hired to find this missing Sun Yat-Sen. With elements of the Chinese secret service, elements of the British government, and Nightwine himself all working against them, Barker & Llewelyn are at risk of being cornered by the deadliest set enemies they’ve yet faced.
Mystery
Brimstone Hollow (Annie Gore #2) by Archer Sullivan – 11 Aug (Minotaur Books)
There isn’t much that happens in the Appalachian Mountains that Private Investigator Annie Gore hasn’t seen. Before she joined the Air Force, she was born and raised in those rolling hills, and lately Annie’s cases have called her away from her Louisville office and closer to the small towns of her youth than she ever anticipated. But when her newest client asks if she’s ever been to a snake-handling church, Annie knows she’s about to enter unknown territory.
Katie May has been estranged from her father―one of Appalachia’s last infamous snake handling preachers―for twenty years. But when Katie finds out he’s been fatally bitten, and a funeral was held within twenty-four hours, she questions whether someone deliberately rushed the process. Despite Annie’s doubts, she takes the case. After all, when she looks at Katie, she sees a version of herself: a girl who needs to understand her father in order to understand herself.
As she navigates the hidden hollers and dangerous secrets of this insular Eastern Kentucky town, Annie works fast, hoping to find the truth in record time for her client―and before too many memories from her own childhood surface. But it soon becomes apparent that someone wants Annie’s investigation to stop―by any means necessary.
The Tailor (DS Cross #8) by Tim Sullivan – 11 Aug (Atlantic Crime)
THE KILLING
A bespoke tailor boards the 9:26 train from Bristol to London. Before it even reaches Bath, his body is found slumped lifeless in the toilet. The police initially assume it’s a robbery.
THE CRIME
But the truth is more complicated than that. Why was the man found with a plastic bag over his head? Why was his throat cut in such a savage way? DS George Cross realises that this was no mugging – it was an organised hit.
THE END
This realisation forces George into a merciless, unfamiliar world – and is it his imagination or is he being followed?Everyone knows that DS George Cross is tenacious, that he always gets to the truth. It seems, this time, someone will do anything to stop that from happening…
Paranormal Romance
The Researcher’s Guide to Unexpected Mates (Spellbound #1) by Amy Padilla – 4 Aug (Self)
Volunteering for Spellbound Corp’s new Residential Pilot Program was supposed to make Mateo’s life easier.
Instead, between a demanding cyber security job, chaotic roommates, and sleepless nights, he’s more stressed than ever.
Then he meets Dax.Sweet, earnest, and always showing up when Mateo needs him most, the kraken researcher quickly becomes Mateo’s favorite part of the day. Mateo never intended to rely on anyone, but it’s hard to resist someone offering support, massages, fried chicken, and a safe place to land when life gets overwhelming.
For Dax, falling for Mateo is easy.
The problem is that Dax already knows something Mateo doesn’t.
Krakens recognize their mates at first touch, and the moment Dax met the exhausted human, he knew they’d found each other.
Now he just has to figure out when to tell Mateo the truth.
After all, when is the right time to tell someone they’re your mate?
Stubborn as a Shadow (Willow Lake Pack #2) by Lori Ames – 6 Aug (Self)
Rainbows and darkness don’t belong together, but fate has other ideas.
People use the word “unicorn” to describe the rarest of the rare. The thing that is more myth than reality. The thing that makes you question if it even existed.Yeah.
Nelson knows firsthand how apt that metaphor is, because finding an abducted unicorn is about as easy as tracking down rocking-horse crap. After months of searching, all he’s found is failure. Every time he closes his eyes, he imagines the poor man—Morgan—fading away somewhere, unable to escape. And that’s better than magically enhanced caffeine at keeping him awake at night.
So when Nelson agrees to do a side job for someone at the Supernatural Council, the last person he expects to find is Morgan. But here he is at a black magic market, dressed up like a stand-in for a B movie about evil witches, and Nelson knows he has to get him back to the safety of Willow Lake.If only Morgan would listen to him.
Morgan’s dedicated his life to finding out what happened to his parents. Although that hunt has gotten people killed in the past, he can’t stop. But he is open to help. And who could help better than a deliciously hot shadow jumper? Particularly when Nelson is all heroic and stuff…
Hurrah for heroes. Hmm… Maybe Morgan should try to seduce him. Because Nelson really should be rewarded for his services and more importantly, Morgan is dying—hopefully not literally—to see a smile on the grumpy grump’s cute face.
Brave Truth (Liminal Mysteries #4) by Celia Lake – 7 Aug (Celia Lake)
Claudio understands expectations.
He has met and exceeded every demand his family has made. Every expectation but one. Claudio excelled in his magical training, made a good marriage, had the desired two children, and now moves among Albion’s elite with grace and courtesy. But his work during the Second World War changed him and opened the doors to a new line of work. One his mother does not approve of.
Matty cares about the consequences.
At the beginning of 1950, he has returned to Albion after five years working behind the scenes at the Nuremberg trials, trying to eke out whatever shards of justice and documentation might be possible. It’s broken his spirit in dozens of ways. Matty is determined to build a new life, throwing himself into administrative work in Albion’s Ministry.
When Matty takes over a key administrative meeting that includes Claudio, the two of them find they share not only several goals but a delight and commitment to doing things better. But when Claudio finds out that Alexander, the most senior member of the Council, is finally retiring, his world is turned upside down again. The question is how to go forward, what choices Claudio and Matty are brave enough to make, and what it will mean for everyone around them.
Brave Truth is a M/M romance about deciding who you want to be as an adult, reaching for the impossible, and solving problems in new ways. It is the fourth book in the Liminal Mysteries series, exploring the impact of the Second World War on the magical community of Britain. Brave Truth can be read in any order, though many of the characters here appear in other books earlier in their lives (especially Illusion of a Boar).
Merciless Heir (Merciless Alphas #2) by Ines Johnson – 11 Aug (Those Johnson Girls)
A kidnapping. A fated knot. And an heir who will burn down his inheritance to keep her.
Nell Odhiambo knows how powerful men work — they take what they want and ask the women at the table to fetch them a coffee. Though she is the most competent person in every room she enters, she’s the last one to get credit for it. After witnessing a murder, not with guns but with claws and fangs, she’s shoved not into a corner, but into a cabin in the woods and blackmailed into corporate espionage by the most dangerous man she’s ever met. Because Magnus Blackwood is a wolf in a tailored suit.
Magnus Blackwood has had one job his entire become the Alpha his father built him to be. That means securing the pack, honoring the arranged marriage his parents negotiated, and never — under any circumstances — letting desire become a liability. Keeping Nell close after she witnesses a pack execution is a calculated decision. Wanting her is a cost he didn’t calculate. And discovering she’s his fated mate three weeks before his arranged wedding is the kind of variable that turns a calculated decision into the most consequential choice of his life.
The pack needs the alliance. His wolf needs her. And Nell — brilliant, furious, entirely unwilling to be managed — is busy dismantling his enemies, unchaining his heart, and trying to decide if wanting to stay is the same as being willing to be kept.
Romantasy
Daggerbound (Swordheart #2) by T. Kingfisher – 25 Aug (Bramble)
Learned Edmund, a disillusioned scholar, is transporting yet another precious relic from one stuffy temple to a different stuffy temple. Another great adventure for the ages…
But when Edmund is set upon by bandits, in desperation, he breaks the cardinal rule and grabs for the relic, an ancient sword. To his surprise, instead of unsheathing a rusty, ancient weapon, an alarmingly handsome man appears, wielding daggers of blue steel and cutting the thieves down.
This man is the Dervish, an immortal warrior who’s been trapped for centuries in a sword of enchanted steel, and is angry as hell about it. He hates the curse that put him there, and he wants to hate Edmund, just as he has hated every wielder before him.
But the damned scholar is just so sweet and clever and kind. And while the Dervish may be able to protect Edmund from bandits, cultists, dragons, and strange inhuman diplomats, he may find it much harder to protect his own heart.
Science Fiction
Time Travel for Beginners by Jaclyn Moriarty – 4 Aug(Berkley)
Anna, Teddy, and Jade are on a collision course. The Agency is the cause. It is also the solution.
On a quiet road nestled within the bustle of Sydney lies a nondescript storefront known simply as the Time Travel Agency. At once a confounding mystery and a beacon of hope, the Agency seems to attract those who need it most. Single mother Anna is in desperate need of change, and the Agency gives her the chance to begin her career—and life—anew. Teddy is a genius at salvaging businesses but needs saving himself, and he’s drawn to the Agency hoping to travel back in time to untangle his troubled childhood and his recently imploded marriage. Jade has no interest in the Agency at all, because there’s no way people are literally time traveling, right? Jade’s present is challenging enough, with her spirited, increasingly bad-tempered daughter and a deeply buried secret too painful for words.
As Anna, Teddy, and Jade’s paths converge, the question of just how legitimate the Agency’s ventures into the past are becomes a mysterious, provocative, tantalising, and even heart-wrenching one to parse—but there is no denying that the ripple effects through all three of their lives are very, very real …
Urban Fantasy
(Mostly) Human Resources (Entity Case Files #1) by Grace Viall – 4 Aug (Alcove Press)
Amongst mountains as old as time, the jackalopes and ghouls are the least of your worries.
Working in Human Resources was not what Alexys had in mind when she joined Entity, the company who categorise and manage the monsters and cryptids of the world. But after her dad was killed as a Warden in the Appalachian Mountains, she was filled with noble ideas of carrying on his legacy… from behind the safety of a desk.
But when one of her new Wardens, Elliot, goes missing, her chances of promotion go missing too. Determined to find him safe and sound, she marches off into the mountains to find him herself.
Because Elliot had been talking about sightings of a highly dangerous and never-recorded monster, The Hollow Walker, and she’s promised herself that no Warden will ever die on her watch.
Meanwhile Nic, Director of Research and Cataloging, is not one to ignore the words ‘never-recorded’. With Alexys, his work nemesis, leading the charge into the mountains, he’s not going to let her have all the fun. If he can be the youngest Entity employee to discover a new monster, his name will go down in the annals of cryptozoology… and if it means spending some extra time with Alexys then he’s not one to argue.
But Alexys and Nic are about to discover why the Appalachian Mountains are the last place you want to find yourself after dark.
Ink Witch (Arcane Magic #1) by Brogan Thomas – 27 Aug (Self)
Branded a failure. Buried in shame. Then they steal her dog.
Once, Elenora “Elmo” Morris was the pride of Ink District. Chosen as Champion for the Immortality Trials, she carried a city’s hopes on her shoulders — until it all went wrong and she crawled home in disgrace.
Now Elmo works as a bounty hunter in a city ruled by immortals. Her only friend is Mina, her beloved dog. When enforcers snatch Mina and drag her to the immortal commander’s compound, Elmo has only hours before her dog disappears for good.
Breaking in should be a death sentence. Instead, ink power flares back to life, and Elmo discovers the Trials weren’t just rigged — they were a lie.
To save her dog and face the family who cast her out, this ink witch must stop running from the past and become the spark that burns the lies down.
Ink Witch is the spellbinding first standalone in the Arcane Magic urban fantasy series. If you love fierce middle-aged heroines, slow-burn romance, loyal dogs, and magic-soaked suspense, you’ll adore this magical rollercoaster ride.
The monthly Must Have list is a compilation of the upcoming release titles that we, The Book Pushers, just can’t wait to get our hands on. Don’t see a title you’re excited about listed here? Add it to the comments section below. Let us know what you’re looking forward to!