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This Santa is more of a Scrooge…
SANTA CUTIE
Santa Cutie (Cherryville, Book 1) by Jenny Alexandra
Melody Whitaker doesn’t just love Christmas—she worships it. After fleeing a holiday-hating cult, she’s gone all in: thousands of twinkle lights, a storage unit of trees, and more sparkle than a Hallmark movie marathon.
This year, she’s signed up to play Mrs. Claus at a local nursing home, eager to spread some holiday cheer—until she meets Eben Golding: a brooding, grumpy, Christmas-hating hottie. Maybe it’s the mistletoe, but Melody can’t stop flirting with this surly Santa…
Falling in love with someone who sees your sparkle—even the parts you thought you had to hide—might be the greatest gift of all. But when the nursing home pageant goes ho-ho-horribly, Melody is left wondering if her Christmas spirit can really save the season…and thaw Eben’s frosty heart.
Santa Cutie is a spicy Christmas rom-com from the Cherryville series—bursting with laughter, mischief, and heartfelt healing. HEA guaranteed!
Tropes:
- Grumpy x Sunshine
- Holiday romance
- Forced proximity
- Small town
- Spicy
Purchase Link
Amazon
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One lucky book club will win up to ten copies of both AMBUSH and PROWL, Books 1 & 2 in Colleen Coble’s Sanctuary series!
Prowl, the second book in USA TODAY bestselling author Colleen Coble’s Sanctuary series (following Ambush), delivers exactly what her fans want: the ideal blend of suspense that keeps you on the edge of your seat with just the right amount of romance. Perfect for fans of Laura Dave, Allison Brennan, and Dani Pettrey.
When a worker at the Sanctuary is discovered dead in the tiger enclosure, authorities assume the big cat killed her. But when the autopsy shows she was killed by a lethal dose of anesthetic delivered by a tranquilizer gun, suspicion falls on Blake Lawson, co-owner of the Sanctuary. Blake has his hands full trying to clear his name as well as get the Sanctuary finances back in the black. When a soil test turns up traces of rare earth, he’s even more puzzled. Is someone trying to run them out of business to get to whatever is under the ground?
Meanwhile, wildlife veterinarian Paradise Alden is determined to find the brother she only recently learned even existed. When the results of the DNA test she ran mysteriously disappear from her portal before she can read them, she realizes someone must not want her to know the truth. A break-in at her new apartment is alarming, but she tries to pass it off as someone trying to scare her away. She refuses to turn tail and run when she is desperate for answers.
For Blake, the only solid ground is his relationship with Paradise, and he longs to propose–but how can they even think about starting a life together with so many forces working against them?
Colleen Coble’s Prowl combines gripping suspense with closed-door romance and includes intriguing mysteries from both the past and present, sabotage and danger, second-chance romance, found family, and themes of overcoming pain and how the past doesn’t have to define you.
Purchase Links
TNZFiction | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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Set in the backdrop of New York City and immersed in the academically elite high school culture, “The Art of Overthinking” is a celebration of the ties that bond us and a love letter to mental health.
THE ART OF OVERTHINKING
The Art of Overthinking by Ellen Zheng
Isla Wu is fine.
Or, at least, that’s what she tells herself. She has friends, semi-supportive—albeit judgmental—tiger parents, and good grades, so why wouldn’t she be okay? Besides, anything other than “fine” is not suitable for an American-born Chinese girl with Ivy League dreams.
But still, the numbness claws at her.
Everything goes to crap when she spills coffee on a new guy (how meet-cute, NOT). Yet, as she starts to like him, everything she thought she once knew unravels until the numbness threatens to pull her under. Because when you’re at the top, the only way to go is down, and ignoring her problems or feelings doesn’t help anyone.
Maybe Isla Wu is not fine.
*Fans of “How It Feels to Float” by Helena Fox, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” by Jenny Han, and “Every Last Word,” by Tamara Ireland Stone will enjoy THE ART OF OVERTHINKING.
Purchase Links
Rowan Prose Publishing | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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In Twice Around a Marriage, Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler delivers a tender and incisive portrait of a couple confronting the stories that bind them-and those that threaten to undo them-while locked down in Paris.
TWICE AROUND A MARRIAGE
Twice Around a Marriage by Robert Olen Butler
“She’s like the aging of a first edition of a modernist novel…”
Twice Around a Marriage tells the story of Amanda Duval and Howard Blevins, an early-septuagenarian husband and wife who were once married for twenty-two years, then divorced for ten, and now are in the tenth year of a second-try marriage. They have come to Paris to see if they should attempt to remain together or call it quits. The day after they move into a tiny AirBNB apartment overlooking the park where they first met, Paris shuts down for Covid. The two of them are trapped indefinitely together in this small space, and so, since they are both literary types, they decide to emulate the Decameron and tell each other stories on alternating nights-stories of their lives together and apart-as they try to figure out their future even as a 21st century plague passes by.
“With vivid settings, encounters poignant and hilarious, and a sly look at how and why stories are told and interpreted, this is a provocative and delectable portrait of a volatile remarriage and an insightful anatomy of love.” — Booklist
Purchase Links
TCU Press | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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From the internationally bestselling author of Fair Rosaline comes a captivating historical novel—a powerful retelling of the life of one of the most beguiling and misrepresented female figures in history, Cleopatra.
I AM CLEOPATRA
I Am Cleopatra by Natasha Solomons
The favored daughter of the Pharaoh, Egyptian Princess Cleopatra spent her childhood hiding amid the scrolls in the great library of Alexandria, dreaming of one day writing her own story.
When her father dies, naming both Cleopatra and her selfish brother Ptolemy as his successors to the throne, danger arises. While the young Queen sails the Nile to greet her people, her brother plots to eliminate her and rule the empire alone.
But while Ptolemy has the power of the kingdom behind him, Cleopatra has her cunning wits. When the great Caesar arrives from Rome, she realizes he could be the key to her salvation—though courting this powerful man could cost her everything.
Can Cleopatra save her life, her throne, and her beloved Egypt and finally write her own history?
Told from the dueling perspectives of Cleopatra and Caesar’s mistress Servilia, I Am Cleopatra is a powerful, addictively readable reimagining of the alluring queen’s life. A modern retelling that goes beyond previous caricatures, I Am Cleopatra is a fascinating portrait of the flesh-and blood-woman behind the great legend. Natasha Solomons’ spellbinding story of female power and fragility, love and loss, fierce friendship and terrible betrayal introduces at last the real Cleopatra in all her glory and vulnerability.
Purchase Links
HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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A memoir of a woman’s quest to master the ancient art of egg tempera painting, gain confidence as an artist and find lasting love.
ART & LOVE
It’s 1966 and unaware that a counterculture tsunami is brewing, Lora Arbrador arrives in Berkeley, California where she is introduced to egg tempera, a painting technique that combines colorful pigments with egg yolk. Lora falls in love with this luminous medium but cannot find a teacher to unravel its mysteries. Her love life is similarly marked with many failures.
Art and love converge when she falls for a tender, charismatic artist, but after their eight-month immersion in the great museums of Europe, Lora follows him into a commune that she later realizes has become a cult.
Set against a backdrop of huge cultural changes – from the counterculture of the 1960s and back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, to the AIDS epidemic and sex underground of the 1980s – Art & Love is a journey of creative and emotional fulfillment that captivates, educates and entertains the reader.
Purchase Links
Author’s Website | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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Please fill out our super short registration form (click the “Enter Now” button above) by November 30th for a chance to win a set of up to ten copies of one of these great books for your book club! We will randomly choose a winner at the end of the month. This giveaway is open to clubs in the US only (our apologies to friends in other countries).