June 2026 list by Donalee Jacobs |
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Abundance
by Hafeez Lakhani
Two generations of a Muslim Indian family grapple with what parts of life we control and what we must humbly accept. In suburban Miami, Sakeena - co-owner of a Dunkin' franchise with her husband - has nine months to live unless she consents to an organ transplant, but she is adamant she should live as intended - without medical intervention. As her health deteriorates, Ramzan seeks to reunite their children, but Fareen is consumed by a business deal and Adnan is unable to return. To save their mother’s life, the siblings must wrestle with their choices, revealing the tension between ambition and fate.
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The Anniversary
by Alex Finlay
Every May 1st, a serial killer stalks a small town. On May 1, 1992, Jules Delaney survives a brutal attack by the May Day Killer, while Quinn Riley is arrested the same night. By morning, their lives are forever connected. A year later, Jules is haunted by trauma and guilt, and Quinn returns home to the unsolved murder of his mother. Over the next decade, their lives are revisited on May 1st, as secrets surface, lies unravel, and two mysteries edge toward the truth - all while the May Day Killer is still out there and the clock is racing toward another anniversary.
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Both Can Be True
by Jessica Guerrieri
Two sisters reconnect on a long-overdue girls' trip to Mexico---just as a woman from their small town back home goes missing, setting off a chain of revelations that forces them to confront old traumas, fractured marriages, and the fragile threads holding their lives together.
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By the Bootstraps
by Alexa Martin
A cowboy romance enthusiast discovers that everything's bigger in Texas - even love - in this swoony novel from Alexa Martin. Luna Starr, fueled by a love of romance novels, decides to turn her cowboy fantasies into reality and purchases a tiny farm in Celestial, Texas. Tate Jacobs hates cowboys, though his family owns the largest ranch in town. As Tate helps Luna with her DIY home renovations, they spend more time together, and unexpected feelings and undeniable chemistry bubble to the surface. Beneath the vast Texas skies, Luna discovers that love in the real world can be far better than she imagined.
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A Chance for Kallie Mae
by Ann H. Gabhart
Kallie Bertram has two dreams: to learn to read and to one day marry Quinn Spencer. But her mother's death steals her chance to attend school, and family feuds tear Kallie and Quinn apart. When a school for adults offers them a chance to learn and rekindle their love, will family bitterness and disaster separate them forever?
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The Chowder House Murder
by Lee Hollis
The first in a multi-generational cozy mystery series introduces three generations of women who head the Holbrook family seafood dynasty in Downeast Maine—and a murder the matriarch and her granddaughter must solve amid small-town secrets and a chowder rivalry.
In Halibut Cove, The Chowder House serves Maggie Holbrook’s famous clam chowder, cooked by her granddaughter Audrey, with regular customer Chips Hogan—until one Sunday night, when Chips is found dead and his chowder poisoned. A local cook becomes a suspect when a feud over a stolen recipe emerges, but Maggie can’t believe he would murder anyone. To keep an innocent man out of jail and ease Audrey’s guilt, grandmother and granddaughter team up, immersed in rivalries, feuds, and looming threats beneath the surface of their small town
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Coyoteland
by Vanessa Hua
From the bestselling author of A River of Stars comes a funny, heartfelt novel set in an affluent Bay Area suburb where a Chinese American family moves in and sets off a series of scandals. In El Nido, Jin Chang moves in with his family, hoping it will be the end of his bad luck, while bending the rules for one final scheme in real estate. Next door, Blair Belle begins to suspect Jin’s plans may interfere with her own luxury development. As Jin’s daughter Jane and Tasha Washington bond after a coyote attack, they hatch a plot to expose the town’s hypocrisies. As fire season escalates and the coyote unleashes chaos, scandals will change El Nido—and their fates—forever.
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Death of the Soccer God
by Dimitry Elias Léger
A global soccer star’s ride to the 1950 World Cup places him in shooting distance of his dreams and his own death. Gilbert Chevalier’s life is a mid-century miracle—wealthy, handsome, beloved, and blessed with incomparable talents on the soccer field. When he leaves Port-au-Prince for Harlem to attend Columbia University, he breaks a promise to swear off the sport, is spotted in Central Park, and recruited to play for the U.S. National Team in Brazil. Gil’s unraveling is a wild tale of lovers, secret messages, and journeys between our world and the afterlife.
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Dolly All the Time
by Annabel Monaghan
A hardworking single mom returns to her seaside hometown and stumbles into a fake dating situationship with a wealthy, workaholic scion. Dolly Brick has never met a problem she couldn’t solve, not when her mom left and not at thirty-nine, when she moves with her son back to Whitfield, Rhode Island, to keep her family from losing their home. When she meets Stewart Whitfield during a public, humiliating breakup, she helps—but his proposed arrangement becomes more than either bargained for. As public dinners turn into sunset boat rides and kisses, Dolly starts to feel something more and wonders if something real can grow from pretending.
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The Duke's Bargain
by Megan Walker
Ruined by scandal, Georgiana bargains with a duke to regain her place in Society, but their pretend friendship sparks real love. Eight months after a stolen kiss ruined her reputation, Miss Georgiana Wood is cast out of Society without hope of a suitable match. When the Duke of Marlow, left without a promised wife and heir, needs a priceless family heirloom in her possession, she agrees to return it if he takes her on three outings to restore her reputation. As they navigate expectations and gossip, Marlow begins to see Georgiana as an ally and a friend, and soon, he’d do almost anything to secure her happiness. As duty and desire collide and secrets are revealed, they must decide if love is worth the risk.
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Good Joy, Bad Joy
by Mikki Brammer
From the bestselling author of The Collected Regrets of Clover comes a vibrant, heartfelt novel about friendship, self-discovery, and what it means to have a life well-lived.
For over eighty years, Joy Bridport has played by the rules, but her quiet existence is jolted when she learns her best friend, Hazel, only has months left to live. Determined to live boldly, Joy steps outside her comfort zone and into trouble, but as rule-breaking escalates into petty crime, she must consider what kind of legacy she wants to leave and whether she can embrace liberation without losing all she holds dear.
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Have a Great Summer
by Francesca Cocchi
Set against a Jersey Shore backdrop with summertime romance, hometown nostalgia, humor, friendship, and angst, this dual-timeline debut follows Lina Mariano, stuck in her hometown and the past. After years of writing up local weddings, she faces her old crush, Sebastian Nikolaou, whose wedding is next on her list. Teenage summers at his mother’s beach restaurant once changed everything, and now, as Lina revisits her younger self with help from her best friend, she must decide if making her dreams come true still includes Sebastian.
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I'll Watch Your Baby
by Neena Viel
A suffocating and sharp narrative horror novel from addictive horror author Neena Viel, I'll Watch Your Baby is a haunting reimagining of Linda Taylor, known as the original Welfare Queen, and the impact her image has had for generations. 1974 - Lottie Turner is already infamous. Running a wheel of schemes and scams, no business is more lucrative than desperate families looking to adopt a child—and there's only one way to procure children quickly. 1994 - Bless has finally found the family she deserved. As they make their way across the country, one smash and grab at a time, someone is playing a long game. Soon Bless is trapped in a web of horrors past and present, where the only escape hatch is a path only she can walk, if she finds the courage to take it.
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Ignore All Previous Instructions
by Ada Hoffmann
From the creator of the Outside trilogy, a heartfelt interplanetary epic of identity, longing, and a space pirate who smuggles inappropriate stories. Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories, but on Callisto, the generative AI company Inspiration owns everything and determines which stories can be told. When her ex-boyfriend Rowan needs her help with something illegal, Kelli must decide: Will she risk the safe, tidy story of her life now for the world she once wished for? Passionate, dangerous, and tender, Ignore All Previous Instructions is a sweeping, poignant novel about censorship, forbidden love, and growing up.
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The Inklings Detective Agency
by John R. Kelly
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie, and other literary legends join forces to unravel a deadly conspiracy in this gripping mystery that sweeps from Oxford to London and the shores of Loch Ness. In 1936 Oxford, members of a secret society keep turning up dead. When J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and their fellow literary masterminds, known as the Inklings, are called upon to catch a killer, they get a helping hand from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to unravel a sinister web of secrets. Packed with historical details, intrigue, and a thrilling whodunit, this novel is a masterful blend of high-stakes drama as these literary giants confront a real-life menace in a race against the clock.
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June Baby
by Shannon Garvey
In this moving debut novel, set over the course of one transformative summer in the lush, beachy enclave of Block Island, a young woman reckons with love, loss, and the choices she must make to move forward.
At seventeen, Ruth lost her mother to cancer and found refuge on Block Island, where she fell in love for the first time—with Charlie. Now, at twenty-seven, tragedy upends her world again. When a box left to Ruth by Diana raises questions about the two women who raised her, Ruth is torn between what to believe about her past and what her future might hold. Both a heartfelt coming-of-age story and a tender exploration of love and grief, June Baby shows us what it might look like to embrace a life shaped not by loss, but by possibility.
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The Library of Flowers
by L. C. Chu
For centuries, the Hua women have held sway with their magical perfumes. In every fifth generation, an eldest daughter is born with the rarest gift of all: the ability to summon true love. As a long-awaited fifth daughter, Lucy was supposed to be the miracle her mother had been waiting for. But when her magic failed, Lucy fled her legacy and the expectations that had nearly broken her. Now, a death in the family brings her home—and saddles her with an unwelcome inheritance: the centuries-old Hua family register, brimming with secrets, formulas, and forgotten truths. As Lucy unravels the stories of the women who came before her, she must confront love, power, and identity—and ask herself whether her magic was ever truly gone.
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Make Me Better
by Sarah Gailey
Sarah Gailey's Make Me Better is an eerily seductive look at the desire for community connection and self-improvement—and the darkest places inside us all.
An exclusive invitation. A remote island infamous for its miraculous ecology. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to fix everything that's broken. Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family—to belong to someone. That's why she's going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. She's ready to be healed. She's ready to be transformed. She's ready to believe.
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The May House
by Jillian Cantor
Three adult sisters inherit a beach house on the condition they spend one week together every May, leading to the discovery of family secrets, unexpected romance, and a new understanding of each other. No matter what's going on in the May sisters' lives, the one thing they can rely upon is seeing each other for one week in May at their grandmother's beachside home in Coronado. Until one May when Julia, the oldest and most dependable sister, doesn't show. Suddenly Nora and Emily start to question how much they truly know about their sister's life.
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Night Objects
by Eli Raphael
Lenny Winter is fifteen years old when a sudden tragedy shatters her world and catapults her to Blanchard, a renowned boarding school for the Pacific Northwest's elite, where wealth and tradition rule. At its heart lurks the Pascalianum Club, a secret society known to shape the school's greatest and most notorious students. Hungry to belong, Lenny is drawn into its orbit. As privilege collides with grief and loyalty warps into obsession, her choices will lead to an unforgettable reckoning—and a murder investigation that will test every story she tells herself about guilt, power, hope, and who she is becoming.
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Palaces of the Crow
by Ray Nayler
As the German blitzkrieg crashes across the border in June 1941, Neriya, Czeslaw, Kezia, and Innokentiy are driven into the primeval forest, where they survive by forming an unbreakable bond with one another—and with Neriya's intelligent crows. As the war goes on, the crows warn the children of danger and help them hide from the human threats of the forest. Palaces of the Crow blends history and haunting speculative wonder into a story of survival, loyalty, and the fragile beauty of life in the darkest of times.
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The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos
by Kendra Langford Shaw
In the far reaches of the Arctic, the Spahr family lives on a fjord in Jubilation House, a converted fisherman's shack, barely scraping by, selling pickled octopus and sea crops, as glaciers melt and sea levels rise. Then one of their few neighbors dredges up a centuries-old piano, and a new economic boom seizes the territory—piano hunting. The Spahrs throw themselves into the quest with full-throated aplomb, but the costs of their possible salvation soon begin to mount. The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos travels through generations of eccentrics and optimists, an inventive ode to family and the pull of home, even as the home we love becomes ever more challenging to inhabit.
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The Redemption Center Is Closed on Sundays
by Andrea Hairston
In the Heart of Mystery Lies Redemption...Every Sunday, Oona the St. Berdoodle and her current owner, Zsuzsu, make their way through the winding paths of the State Park to the enigmatic Redemption Center--a place often mistaken for a haunted mansion. When a local celebrity is found murdered, the unexpected brings Oona together with a rag-tag group of local misfits. Together they venture into the depths of the Center's mystery to untangle the threads of murder and deception. But Oona holds two secrets: she's a citizen of the multiverse, able to travel between dimensions at will, and more importantly, she knows the killer's identity. Unfortunately, the killer knows she knows, and he's determined to find her and silence her for good.
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Returns and Exchanges
by Kayla Rae Whitaker
It's December 24, 1979, at Baker-Taylor's discount department store, and Fran (née Baker) and Fred are the picture of the American Dream—rags to riches—with a successful chain of family-owned stores built on years of hard work and long hours. Underneath the surface, however, the business is changing at a breakneck pace, and each member of the family is struggling to keep up. Josiah wants nothing to do with the family business; Sam is seeing things that might not really be there; and Fran is falling for Wendy, a cashier at Baker-Taylor's, risking everything along the way. While trying to maintain the facade of a perfect success story, Fred and Fran learn that in matters of love and money, once it's gone, it's gone—no returns, no exchanges.
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The River Muse
by Laura Resau
At the brink of summer, Callie arrives in a secluded village in the South of France after barely escaping her menacing ex-partner. Desperate to hide, she rents a cottage on the grounds of the Chateau of the Lost, an otherworldly nook of hidden magic. Slowly but surely, her new friends help her discover herself again, and as she reclaims her voice, everyone finds that her songs open hearts and heal old wounds. When her ex tracks her down, the stakes grow deadly, and she must tap into her most powerful self to protect her newfound family. Whimsical and atmospheric, The River Muse shows how we can find friendship, love, and our truest selves in the most unexpected places.
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Safari Murder Party
by Rachel Moore
In this darkly funny, slightly unhinged, heart-pounding thriller, two office rivals must team up to escape wild animals and even wilder coworkers on a corporate retreat gone wrong. Fletcher Spence is dying for a promotion, and after her boss’s dramatic death on a private island retreat, his will reveals: whoever survives the week will inherit the company. Now she’s surrounded by wild animals and coworkers who’ve swapped briefcases for hunting rifles. Her only ally might be Waylon Cartwright as they fight to escape. While Fletcher battles ambition and attraction, her power-hungry colleagues will do anything to stop them from escaping with their lives.
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Stakeouts and Strollers
by Rob Phillips
Amateur private investigator and new dad Charlie Shaw gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to track down a young girl's missing father in Rob Phillips' 2024 Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Mystery Novel award-winning debut. Charlie Shaw is low on sleep and cash, but otherwise life is going pretty well for the ex-crime reporter, now a rookie PI and first-time dad. But when he meets Friday Finley, a frightened sixteen-year-old runaway, she’s looking for her estranged father Shawn. At first, Charlie believes the man is simply hiding out, but the more he investigates, the more unsettling—and dangerous—Shawn's disappearance becomes. When his own family is threatened, Charlie realizes he's in over his head.
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Treat Them as Buffalo
by Blair Palmer Yoxall
In 1885, Nikosis Niko Eriksen spends his days playing buffalo hunter, but when beloved Cousin goes missing, things start to fall apart. With law enforcement failing—indeed refusing—to investigate, the community members take matters into their own hands, rallying around a sawn-off shotgun-slinging rancher named Kate McCannon. As violence continues to haunt Niko and boys continue to disappear, his investigation points to a harrowing revelation about his own heritage. Treat Them as Buffalo delivers a gripping portrait of a young man coming of age before his time.
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The Tuxedo Society
by Paul Rudnick
They are fierce patriots. They are licensed to kill. They are the Tuxedo Society. When Andrew Birnbaum, a struggling actor working in a candle shop, gets invited to dinner with the exclusive Tuxedo Society, his life takes an unexpected turn. What seems like wealthy socialites quickly spirals into a world of espionage, danger, and hilarity. Andrew is recruited to join the society's covert mission to protect national security, tackling spies, thwarting assassinations, and facing threats from the White House to the Vatican. The stakes escalate as he uncovers a plot involving oligarchs, crooked senators, and a smarmy televangelist with sinister plans for world domination.
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We Dance Upon Demons
by Vaishnavi Patel
As a reproductive health care worker in Chicago, Nisha is barely staying afloat in the ocean of abortion bans, screaming protestors, and her own all-consuming depression. When she visits an Indian art exhibit, she suddenly finds herself bleeding, disoriented, and collapsed on the ground after touching a statue. In the days that follow, Nisha feels a strange power coursing within her, one that attracts dangerous and enigmatic characters who covet it for themselves. Facing threats both otherworldly and human, Nisha must navigate uncertain alliances as danger closes in on her loved ones, community, and the clinic she's determined to protect. Nisha must make a choice about the life she wants—and fight all the demons standing in her way to get it.
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Verity Guild
by Mai Corland
High Priestess Kerasea Vestal is hiding a deadly secret: she's the last heir of a bloodline the republic tried to erase. If anyone discovers the truth, she'll lose her life.
Praetorian Torren Morvane has made a career of dragging liars into the light, and Kerasea is the one person he's sworn to destroy. When a murder points straight to her, he finally gets his chance. Until they're trapped together with nowhere to run—and no one else to trust. Forced to rely on each other to survive, both are faced with an impossible choice: destroy the other...or protect them. The closer they get, the harder it is to remember why they were supposed to be enemies.
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