Before we get to today’s new releases, including gems by Jamey Moody, Georgia Beers, Barbara Winkes, Sheri Lewis Wohl, and many others, we have some announcements.
IHS SAPPHIC READING CHALLENGE
It’s week 32 of IHS’s Sapphic Reading Challenge. You can click here for reading suggestions for One Night to Forever romances. 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.
SAPPHIC ROMANCE GIVEAWAY
Win a $50 Amazon Gift Card and Signed Copy of Another Stupid Love Song
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. IHS will not include books unless they receive an email from either the author or publisher.
Happy reading and listening,
TB, Em, Faith, & Miranda
ROMANCE
by Georgia Beers
Cherry Davis is turning her part-time influencer gig into a full-time venture. As Cherry on Top, she’s the happy, loved, lesbian lifestyle guide with an enviable relationship, friends, and wardrobe. Reputation is crucial for her business, and if she uses some smoke and mirrors to spice it up? She doesn’t hurt anybody. Everyone else does it too. Trolls might try to tell her she isn’t being authentic, but she’s tougher than they are. Her childhood gave her a thick skin.
Ellis Conrad dreams of becoming a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. You know what she doesn’t dream of? Debunking politicians, local celebrities, and online influencers for the less-than-reputable site, 11th Commandment. But the truth is important, especially to Ellis, and besides, she really needs the money.
A chance meeting leaves Cherry and Ellis reeling from the unexpected intensity, and they both start to long for a different life, perhaps even one that includes each other. But when Ellis’s search for truth crashes into Cherry’s insta-filter world, do they have any hope at all of a happily ever after?
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Enemies to Lovers; Celebrity
The Woman at the Top of the Stairs
Second Chance Series: Book 1
by Jamey Moody
Available in Kindle Unlimited
What would you do for the woman you love?
Dru Rae gave up everything to get away from her mafioso family. She disappeared with hopes they’d never find her. All she wanted was a quiet life with a few friends and the woman she knew in her heart was out there.
Marina Summit was an uber successful realtor in a thriving housing market. She gave someone two dates, if there wasn’t a spark then she moved on. Besides, she was too busy for love.
As a house stager on the first day of her new job, Dru was waiting to meet the realtor for a final walk through.
Marina was set to approve a new listing when she went to check on the house staging. She wasn’t prepared for what happened to her heart when she saw the woman at the top of the stairs.
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Age Gap; Hot & Steamy; One Night to Forever
by Helena Harte
Available in Kindle Unlimited
Lauren Gray escaped her small town so she could do big things. Changing the world has always been her dream, and she’s been busy making that dream come true. But when tragedy strikes, she’s forced to return home, where memories and grief threaten to pull her to pieces.
Jamie Nelson knows Lauren is back in town, but when she sees her in the cemetery where Jamie is the groundskeeper, her heart nearly bursts from her chest. Beautiful, intelligent, and witty, Lauren is everything Jamie has ever wanted. In fact, she’s had a crush on Lauren throughout the years at school. But Lauren was always way outside Jamie’s league.
Jamie is more than willing to be Lauren’s shoulder to cry on, and their connection is what she always hoped it would be. When Lauren discovers Jamie’s hidden talent, she doesn’t understand her lack of ambition. Jamie wishes Lauren could comprehend what it’s like to be happy where you are. When it comes to second chances, there’s an art to figuring out what really matters.
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Loss / Grieving; Friends to Lovers; Return to Hometown
by DDale
Available in Kindle Unlimited
When a lonely rideshare driver picks up a mysterious older woman, it turns their lives inside out.
Andie Fitz is down on her luck and struggling to reclaim the life she had before a debilitating work accident robbed her of everything she loved.
Kate Mayer is raging against her powerlessness and grief while the ravages of dementia lay waste to her wife of 38 years.
As the two form an unlikely bond, they’re forced to confront their notions about love, desire, and the age gap that separates them.
Will they take a chance on each other or let their differences keep them apart?
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Age Gap; Slow Burn; Love After 50
by Lisa Elliot
Available in Kindle Unlimited
Strong and kind, Kelly MacGregor is the CEO of an internationally renowned whisky distillery in her hometown in the Scottish Highlands. But she’s unsettled and has let her adventurous side take a back seat. When she meets a younger woman at a gig, she can’t help but be drawn to her, and when this young woman turns out to be the new owner of her whisky distillery, Kelly is put in a compromising situation.
Myla Murray wanted to be a musician but has settled for working in a café. Life is fine. Expressive and introverted, she longs for something more but doesn’t believe she will ever get it. She’s on her own and has no family, so when she inherits a Scottish estate and whisky distillery from a great-aunt she knew nothing about, her world is turned upside down.
When Myla travels to the Highlands to explore her roots and come to terms with her past, she meets the hot older woman from the gig who set her pulse racing. Myla wants to continue what they started. But Kelly is more concerned about the future of the distillery and Myla’s role in it and just wants to be friends.
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Age Gap; Slow Burn; Loss / Grieving; Friends to Lovers; Hot & Steamy; Forced Proximity; Musician
by Terri Cutshall
Available in Kindle Unlimited
3 Best Friends. 2 Strangers. 1 Unforgettable Night.
Audrey Maddox is fed up with her love life. After discovering her now ex-fiancé had been cheating on her throughout their engagement, vacation with her two best friends cannot come soon enough. She needs a break in a serious way.
Liv Sutton works at a popular Colorado mountain resort providing skiing lessons during the day and bartending at night. Since her divorce, casual relationships have worked just fine for her. She’s not up for getting her heart stomped on again. Once was enough.
Two women in the right place at the right time. Will a casual fling be the tonic that soothes Audrey’s broken heart and keeps Liv going? Or will a one-night stand become more than either of them bargained for?
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Medical Character; One Night to Forever; Hot & Steamy; Holiday Romance
HISTORICAL ROMANCE
The Spinsters of Inverley: Book 1
by Jane Walsh
In the quiet seaside town of Inverley, nothing exciting ever happens to gently bred spinsters like Miss Arabella Seton. Content with her watercolor paintings and her cats, she is confident that no one suspects her forbidden and unrequited passion for her best friend, Caroline.
The eldest in a family of six children, Miss Caroline Reeve has the unenviable task of shepherding her siblings into adulthood with little coin and even less patience. The only benefit to being an eternal chaperone is that no one ever expects her to marry.
When the Reeve family inherits an unexpected fortune, Caroline must take her rightful place in high society. Fortune hunters abound, and it is up to Arabella to save her from their snares and convince her that love has been in front of her all along.
Can the heiress and the spinster discover an unconventional love outside of the Marriage Mart?
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Historical Romance; Historical Fiction; Friends to Lovers
by Linda M. Ford
Miranda first kissed a girl in her last year of high school. She received a slap and a sneer which left her with fear and mistrust. For years she has lived quietly with her mother on their farm in Napa Valley not seeking love. Then sexy, self-assured Odile arrives in her life in 1981.
The Frenchwoman is on a business trip from her family’s vineyard and winery in Burgundy, France. Odile is not above mixing pleasure with business and invites Miranda to dinner hoping for a rather delicious dessert.
Shy virgin, Miranda’s life and emotions are turned upside-down by her brief affair with the beautiful but scarred Odile. She dreams of a future together with the woman she has fallen for so hard. It feels impossible. There are so many obstacles.
Life in the early 1980s has challenges. Communication is slow and the world has become even more homophobic with a new pandemic which has become known as the gay plague.
Can love rise above these, defying distance and borders?
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Historical Fiction; Historical Romance
EROTIC ROMANCE
Anthology
Available in Kindle Unlimited
Ten sizzling stories of sapphic romance and more, brought to you in the scorching dog days of summer!
Take a break with these bestselling indie authors. They promise to turn up the heat!
Before Dana ~ Anne Hagan
In Your Hands ~ Johana Gavez
My Edinburgh Awakening ~ Kitty McIntosh
Return of the Brat ~ Kim Hartfield
Silly Girl ~ Adrian J. Smith
Strawberry Squash ~ Elle Armstrong
Three-Hour Delay ~ LL Shelton
Under Her Spell ~ Raven J. Spencer
Work Week ~ KC Luck
Desire and Brimstone ~ Alyson Tong
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Hot & Steamy; Erotic Romance
MYSTERY / THRILLER
by K’Anne Meinel
She was angry. She was fed up. It was time to take justice to the justices and other politicians who weren’t doing their jobs, especially the ones who had lied to obtain their positions in our political system. They’d forgotten that they were public officials and answerable to the American people.
She wasn’t the only one who had thought to vote them out, but that wasn’t working anymore. It was time to instill fear in those going into politics who had used their position of power in order to line their own pockets.
There had been a time where being a public official, going into politics, had been an honorable thing. That time was past and there was no integrity in politics. She was about to do what she felt was the honorable thing by removing these sycophants from the system.
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Category: Mystery
by Mia Kazi
Available in Kindle Unlimited
The second of the Jo Brigg’s novels, The Faberge Egg follows Jo and Izzy’s relationships after “An Unusual Year”, as they try to learn to live together, they get drawn into a world of Russian money laundering involving a lost Faberge Egg and a Russian teacher with a lot of secrets and surprises. Will Jo and Izzy manage to survive their next adventure and end up together?
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Slow Burn; Fake Relationship; Suspense; Girl Next Door; Toaster Oven; Second Chance; Thriller
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
Crossing Lines: Book 3
by Barbara Winkes
Available in Kindle Unlimited
ROBYN
She never ceases to amaze me. I never imagined this is where we would end up, but it makes sense.
I get to keep her close.
If we can solve the last puzzle, I can make peace with the fact I love a woman who won’t always play by the rules…
KENDALL
She is all mine now, and I couldn’t be happier. One day she might even understand everything I had to do to.
Meanwhile, I do my best to keep her happy, to give her the life she deserves.
It turns out we make a great team when tackling a common enemy.
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Romantic Suspense; Suspense; Enemies to Lovers
PARANORMAL ROMANCE
by Sheri Lewis Wohl
Tula Crane has spent twenty years hiding in plain sight. No one knows she used to be one of the most talented artists of her generation, and she wants to keep it that way. Except the very talent that made her a child prodigy won’t let her free, and it’s taken a deadly turn. She’s painting the faces of murdered women.
Casey Wilson earned her place as the first woman detective in the Moses Lake Police Department and carved out a solid reputation for getting cases solved. The last thing she needs is a crazy artist sticking her nose into a murder investigation that’s quickly turning into the biggest case in Central Washington. She’ll solve the murders without the help of a psychic painter, thank you very much. But as the body count rises, Casey and Tula are drawn together in a web of passion, intrigue, and art that might just hold the key to stopping a killer.
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Categories: Paranormal Romance; Mystery
NEW AUDIOBOOKS
by Angela Greenman
narrated by Xe Sands
Despite the angry scars she carries from her childhood training, Zoe Lorel has reached a good place in her life. She has her dream job as an elite operative in an international spy agency and found her true love. Her world is mostly perfect—until she is sent to abduct a nine-year-old girl. The girl is the only one who knows the riddle that holds the code to unleash the most lethal weapon on earth—the first ever “invisibility” nanoweapon, a cloaking spider bot.
Zoe’s agency is not the only one after the child. China developed the cloaking bot and will stop at nothing to keep its code secret. While China rapidly hones in on Zoe, her threats grow. Enemies in Austria and Bulgaria reveal the invisibility weapon’s existence to underground arms dealers—now every government and terrorist organization in the world want the nanobot.
From Malta to the Italian Alps to England, Zoe races to save not only the child she has grown to care about, but also herself. Her drug addiction is threatening her engagement to the one person who brings her happiness, yet she needs the agency prescribed pills. They transform her into the icy killer she must be to survive. Can she still be ruthless without the chemicals that suppress her emotions?
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Category: Thriller
by M. Ullrich
narrated by Keira Grace
Lauren Daly is fed up with her dead-end job, frustrating roommates, and unhealthy love life. She escapes to The Dollhouse, New Jersey’s hottest lesbian bar, where disappearing in a crowd of gorgeous women is exactly what she needs at the end of the day. But when the owner, Berit Matthews, approaches her for a casual hookup, Lauren pushes her away, knowing better than to put her heart on the line for a playgirl.
Berit loves her bar, her life, and the casual connections she has with the women around her. She can’t help her simmering attraction for Lauren, though, and Lauren’s rejection challenges her to prove she’s capable of friendship, kindness, and even matchmaking. Berit’s efforts draw them closer than either expected, but when The Dollhouse is threatened, they’re forced to fight for their sanctuary and their newfound love.
2022 IHS Reading Challenge Category: Friends to Lovers
SAPPHFIC BOOK CLUB
JAE’S SAPPHIC BOOK BINGO
BUY US A COFFEE
Running IHS takes the four 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!
TB, Em, Faith, & Miranda
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