Before we get to today’s new releases, including gems by TJ Dallas, Elle Spencer, Ali Vali, Liz Rain, and many others, we have some announcements.
IHL SAPPHIC READING CHALLENGE
It’s week 19 of IHL’s Sapphic Reading Challenge. You can click here for reading suggestions for Romantic Suspense novels. 10 of the books featured on the page are on sale.
Remember, you can join the I Heart SapphFic Facebook reader group. Every Monday we will announce the category for the week, and every Wednesday you will have the opportunity to post what book you are reading and be entered into the monthly drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card. (For those who are not on Facebook and still want to enter, remember you can email your reading selection to tbm@iheartlesfic.com).
Second, we have created a Goodreads group where readers can discuss books, swap recommendations, and generally have a good time.
VOTE FOR FAVORITE FANTASY ROMANCE
We asked readers on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Instagram to nominate their all-time favorite fantasy romance. Find out who made the cut and cast your vote. Voting is open until June 4 and then we’ll announce the top three on June 9.
INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST HOMOPHOBIA, BIPHOBIA, AND TRANSPHOBIA
Since 2004, International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia falls on May 17. As of 2016, commemorations have taken place in over 130 countries. Why does it fall on this particular day in May? On May 17, 1990 the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization removed homosexuality as a mental disorder.
To honor International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia we asked authors to submit books that feature bi/pan/sapphic trans characters and/or deals with homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. Click here to find reading suggestions.
FREE BOOK
Collide
by Stephanie Shea
Mia Stone isn’t looking for romance, but when she collides with Lauryn—a beautiful, notorious popstar—on New Year’s Eve, fireworks go off. When Lauryn turns out to be Mia’s newest client, can they put aside their differences long enough to acknowledge the undercurrent of romance between them, or will an unspoken grudge forever keep them at odds?
Deal ends May 17.
NEW RELEASES
Here are this week’s new ebook and audio releases and announcements.
Please click on this link for how to submit books (ebook and audio) for the newsletter. IHL will not include books unless they receive an email from either the author or publisher.
Happy reading and listening,
TB & Miranda
ROMANCE
Rainbow Roses
by Melinda Sequeira
Lenora owned a bar and had a great family and friends. But two things were missing.
One she was working on and the other just walked into her bedroom.
Jess was new in town and just started at the South Bend Indiana Police station in homicide. Her partner Sam had to make a quick stop one morning and she followed her in not knowing this one innocent move could very well change their lives forever.
If you are looking for an honest look at what really goes on in a relationship with a good laugh or two, not to mention hot sex that curls your toes be ready to enjoy,
Rainbow Roses.
2022 Reading Challenge Category: Return to Hometown
Perks of Office
by Liz Rain
Available in Kindle Unlimited
After high-powered politician Bridget O’Keefe sweeps into the uninspiring life of Australian electorate officer Emma Ives, nothing is the same again.
Hapless, hopeless Emma is smacked with an instant crush on the polished woman who’s her new boss… her hot, untouchable, straight boss. Yes, she knows she’s an idiot because unrequited lust at work is a terrible idea. Even so, she can dream.
One long night changes everything. A political scandal leads to a fall from grace and Emma suddenly finds herself the one Bridget turns to for comfort. There’s a lot for Emma to wrap her mind around, even as her body loves wrapping itself around Bridget’s curves.
Is it just a meaningless night of passion, nothing more? Because there’s absolutely no way ambitious, beautiful Bridget wants anything more from Emma. Is there?
2022 Reading Challenge Category: Age Gap
Shay’s Gamble
A Worlds Apart Romance
by Amber Perez
Available in Kindle Unlimited
They say what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. But when those happenings make you question everything, all bets are off!
In Sin City to celebrate her best friend’s upcoming nuptials, Shay, dealing with her failed marriage, is not in a party mood. But when she locks eyes with a mysterious woman across a crowded room, her strict, traditional upbringing wars against her long-hidden desires. She aches to embrace her true self, go all-in and hit the jackpot.
Allie, a student struggling to provide for her younger sister, heads to Vegas to celebrate her engagement. She thought she hit the big time when she landed the ridiculously wealthy and handsome Jackson Pemberton IV, but as his true colors are shown, it leaves her questioning everything. Maybe financial stability comes at too high a price. Perhaps it’s all or nothing in life. Responsibility battles against following her heart’s desires.
When the two bridal parties repeatedly collide, sparks fly, and they team up to make the most out of their Vegas experience. That decision tosses a wild card at Shay and Allie, forcing them to face feelings they never expected.
Can they find happiness betting on the unknown? Or will Shay’s Gamble leave her heartbroken and begging to fold?
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: Age Gap; Toaster Oven; Loss / Grieving; Hot & Steamy; One Night to Forever; Coming Out
A Long Way to Fall
by Elle Spencer
Bridget Berg grew up on the slopes of Elk Mountain, Utah. The daughter of a famous downhill skier, she was chasing her own Olympic dreams when her father’s unexpected death forced her to take over his ski lodge. It’s her home and she’ll protect it at all costs—especially from her insufferable neighbors.
Kennedy Fleming is only in Utah to put her dad’s vacation home on the market. She has no interest in living there. That is, until she meets her sexy redheaded neighbor. Sure, she’s rude and unwelcoming, but Kennedy isn’t one to shy away from a challenge.
When Kennedy makes a discovery that could cause Bridget to lose everything, she’s forced to choose between her family and her heart. There’s a mountain of history between their families, but as tempers rage and sparks fly, they’re about to discover that a love worth fighting for is right in front of them.
2022 Reading Challenge Category: Sports
Relapse
Coach Z Series: Book 3
by Q. Kelly
Andi Zappa is in uncharted waters as head coach of a men’s college basketball team. That said, her greatest challenge may be her former player and lover, Melissa MacKenzie. They’re no longer in a relationship and know they’re not good for each other. Yet, love and attraction keep them colliding.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: Second Chance; Age Gap
Writer’s Block
by Ali Vali
Author Wyatt Whitlock is one of the biggest names in action thrillers and writes for the largest publisher in the business. She’s extremely private and writes prolifically—well, until recently. Writer’s block may spell the end of her career if she can’t figure a way around it. A drastic change in scenery and a really old house in New Orleans could get her creativity going again, but renovating the house she bought on a whim might just kill her.
Hayley Fox has put in her time as an assistant to an assistant in publishing, and it’s finally paid off. She’s been hired by a firm in New Orleans and she’s planning to use that as a springboard to the big leagues in New York, if only her sexy new neighbor—whose bare windows face Hayley’s—didn’t make staying put an oh-so-tempting option.
Wyatt and Hayley might be made for each other if only they can get through nosy neighbors, the historical society, at-odds future plans, and all the secrets hidden in Wyatt’s walls.
2022 Reading Challenge Category: Celebrity
Her Reluctant Wife
Arranged to Love: Book 2
by Alexa Woods
Available in Kindle Unlimited
Coralyn Anderson’s dying father has one wish – that the necklace that he crafted for his late wife should be kept in the family. Unfortunately, the one-of-a-kind piece had been sold to pay for his mounting medical bills.
Determined to get the necklace back, even if just for an afternoon, Coralyn goes to confront the buyer, a filthy-rich real estate mogul, Giana Thompson.
Coralyn is prepared to do anything. Beg. Cry. Sell a kidney. What she isn’t expecting is being rejected in the most heartless way and then leaving the office engaged to the drop-dead gorgeous ice queen herself.
Money. Power. An eccentric collection of rarities worthy of inspiring envy. Giana Thompson has it all. She doesn’t have time for fools – or scam artists after her collection. Nobody walks away with one of Giana’s pieces. Certainly not some sad-eyed beauty with a sob story.
Giana sets out to kick Coralyn out of her office when a sudden fall changes everything. When she comes to, she finds out that she’s happily engaged to a beautiful stranger she can’t remember a thing about.
Unexpectedly, their fake affair grows into the real deal – the women fall for each other and actually tie the knot. But when Giana regains her memory, will she ever forgive Coralyn, or risk her heart for real? And will Coralyn still love the real version of Giana?
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: Age Gap; Enemies to Lovers; Ice Queen; Forced Proximity / Stranded Together
Ice on Wheels
by Aurora Rey
Can falling in love melt the hearts of the iciest ice queens?
All’s fair in love and roller derby. That’s Riley Fauchet’s motto, until a new job lands her at the same company—and on the same team—as her rival Brooke Landry, the frosty jammer for the Big Easy Bruisers.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: Ice Queen; Forced Proximity; Enemies to Lovers
EROTICA
Volleyball Vixens
by Riley Rose
Available in Kindle Unlimited
Alena Araya and Casey Chen are professional beach volleyball players, rising through the ranks of their bikini-clad brethren.
When they win their first tournament, their super-sexy Brazilian rivals challenge them to a unique match: one where their clothes and naughty assets are on the line!
Will Alena and Casey be able to ignore the gorgeous bodies across the net and win? Or will they wind up the sex toys of two beautiful Brazilians?
Find out if our bikini warriors can survive the ultimate volleyball sex battle!
2022 Reading Categories: Sports; Hot & Steamy; BDSM; Erotic Romance; POC Character
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
For the Love of Life
The Botshelo Series: Book 1
by Sue Graham
Available in Kindle Unlimited
A story of passion and purpose, cherishing life and finding love, set in the African Wilderness.
Danielle Van Rijk has the life she has always dreamed of and is content in the belief that she has everything she wants. Using her hi-tech skills to study wildlife in a private game reserve, she is drawn into the war against poaching. Obsessed and driven, she is on the brink of achieving success when a deadly escalation in poaching and heart-wrenching losses bring about a crisis in confidence. Danny has no idea how her hi-tech protective system development is about to jeopardize her life.
Carmen Franks is at a loss, standing at a crossroads in her life. Until recently, she was a highly successful businesswoman at the helm of the business she built from nothing. Having lost her passion and purpose, Carmen seeks a retreat to give herself time to gather her energy and find a path forward.
Africa seems about as far away from her aimless life as Carmen can get, and Botshelo Lodge attracts her with the promise of providing what she needs to set a new course for herself. She finds more than she bargains for in this fascinating yet contradictory place. As she becomes embroiled in the danger that lurks beneath the idyllic surface, she’s falling in love, but is it with the glorious beauty of the African bush or with the elusive, enigmatic woman at the centre of a vicious conflict?
The African bush, a tapestry of life so bountiful and rich, is disappearing before our eyes. As the threat begins to spiral out of control, the protection of this vestige of Eden falls to these two brave women as they fight for life and learn to love.
Trigger Warning: descriptions of poaching incidents that may make you cry.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: Age Gap; Slow Burn; Love After 50; Romantic Suspense; Thriller; Wild Animal; Mystery; Ladies in Uniform
FANTASY
The Wicked and the Willing
by Lianyu Tan
A destitute maidservant must choose whom to love: her vampire mistress or the woman trying to save her life. In the Dream House meets The Ghost Bride in a provocative tale of seduction, violence, and despair from lesbian dark fantasy author Lianyu Tan.
1927, colonial Singapore
Monsters don’t scare Gean Choo. And there are monsters aplenty among the Europeans on sultry Singapore island, all of them running away from something—or someone.
When she starts her new job as a lady’s companion, she can’t imagine falling for the impassioned, demanding mistress of Ambrosia Hall, nor the gruff, brooding woman who serves as her lady’s majordomo.
The latter holds her heart; the former, her body, blood, and loyalty.
Both want her.
Both need her.
And one of them will die for her.
Trigger Warnings: rape, torture, suicide, self-harm, an abusive romantic relationship between two women, and adult characters who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: POC Character; Fantasy; Rich Girl/Poor Girl; Historical Fiction; Hot & Steamy; Forced Proximity; Vampire
Phoenix Ascendant
Soul Bound: Book 2
by Benjamin Medrano
Available in Kindle Unlimited
Danger lurks in Nocturne’s shadows.
Xandra has reached Nocturne, the realm of the fey who’ve invaded Loth, yet it is only the first step. She’s accompanied by Jasmine, a high priestess who inspires feelings she wishes she could ignore. Now they have to find those responsible, and determine why Loth was attacked.
Yet Nocturne is a dangerous place, and it will take everything Xandra has to protect Jasmine. Xandra hasn’t come this far to lay down and die, and anyone wanting to kill Jasmine will learn how she destroyed four armies in her youth.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: Slow Burn; Fantasy Romance; Fantasy; Ice Queen; Speculative Fiction
NEW AUDIOBOOKS
A London Love Story
Season One
by Miranda MacLeod & TB Markinson
narrated by Lori Prince & Marisa Calin
Four young American women form an unlikely bond as they search for sapphic love and the meaning of life in London.
Taylor Elliott, an aspiring writer with few practical life skills, is on her last chance when she moves to London to work for the father she barely knows. Her world is turned topsy-turvy by a woman who’s so wrong for her she might actually be right.
Emma Garfield is a talented but stubborn chef from the American South who dreams of running her own Michelin-starred restaurant, but her temper gets her into hot water. She gives relationships a hard pass, but could her latest fling be different?
Jasmine Singh is a perpetual graduate student who was born and raised in Ohio. She has every step of her life planned to perfection, including marrying her very nice boyfriend, Dave, until a curious spark throws it all off course.
Lexi Channing is the biracial adopted daughter of a prominent Wall Street family in New York City. When she isn’t dealing with the world’s most demanding client, she’s pining for her straight best friend.
If you enjoy shows like The L Word and Sex and the City, don’t miss the latest collaboration of Miranda MacLeod and TB Markinson.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: POC Character; Ice Queen; BDSM; Forced Proximity; Return to Hometown; Toaster Oven
Gold Fever
by Lyn Denison
narrated by Jenny Walters
Kate Ballantyne’s life was cruising along very nicely. No highs. No lows. Just the way she liked it. She had a good job and a casual relationship. Then Patsy Maclean had a 60th birthday and Kate learned her entire family would be attending the party, including her younger daughter, Ashley.
As an orphaned 10-year-old, Kate’s young life had been turned upside down when she was sent to live with her aunt in the historic gold mining city of Charters Towers. For the quiet and lonely Kate, the extroverted Ashley Maclean had been her salvation. They were inseparable and their childhood friendship developed into love, a love Kate had thought would last forever. But Ashley had succumbed to family pressures and broken Kate’s vulnerable heart.
It had taken Kate years to even begin to get over that betrayal and now, 10 years later, that same Ashley Maclean was coming home. Kate told herself she was well over her, that Ashley had ceased to be a part of her life, that she’d moved on and made a life without her. She kept telling herself that. Yet her reaction to just the mention of Ashley’s name had her wondering if her hard-won indifference was a battle she only thought she’d won.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: Second Chance; Single Parent; Friends to Lovers; Return to Hometown
Pride’s Humility
The Pride Trilogy: Book 3
by TJ Dallas
narrated by Scarlett Rose
Fifteen years later, Harry is still coming to terms with the loss of Rue. Althea has waited patiently, but can’t hold off wanting a child of her own any longer.
Lara is 43 years old now and isn’t as young as she used to be. With more gray hairs and the prospect of Zoe’s parents moving away, the time has come for Lara and Zoe to leave the Cardinal behind. When Lara realizes that Harry is more than her boss—she’s been her best friend for 18 years—Lara needs to find the strength to create distance. Her impending mortality ignites her desire to protect Harry from a death she can’t avoid.
While Harry deals with Lara’s departure, the Cardinal is brought to a grinding halt when a young boy screams for help. A voice that Harry has only heard once, yet the only voice that can make her forget who she is.
Don’t threaten the cub if you can’t defeat the lioness.
2022 Reading Challenge Categories: Magical Realism; Fantasy Romance; Suspense; Hot and Steamy; Paranormal Romance; Erotic Romance
JAE’S SAPPHIC BOOK BINGO
SAPPHFIC BOOK CLUB
BUY US A COFFEE
Running IHL takes the three of us many hours every single week. Also, the costs add up. Last year we setup a Buy Us a Coffee page, which allows people to help cover the expenses. When we first announced the page, we were blown away by the response. Not only were people willing to pitch in, but all of the kind notes and encouragement brought more than a few tears to TB’s eyes. If you’d like to support us, click here. Every cup helps immensely! If you’d like to learn more about TB’s initial response to the outpouring of support, click here.
Have a wonderful day!
Miranda, Em, & TB
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