A tortured playboy. His librarian surrogate. A slow-burn romance that will leave you breathless. When librarian Renae Foster meets Lord Caspar, heir to the title of Wintervale, the connection between them is instantly electric. But while charismatic Caspar sets Renae's heart on fire, she soon realizes his intentions aren't romantic. Amid desperate circumstances, Renae reluctantly agrees to his shocking proposition—to act as his surrogate. As their staged relationship becomes headline news, Renae is swept away into a life of glamour and wealth. But no amount of luxury can erase the stipulations of their strictly business arrangement... or the growing desire that threatens to complicate everything. A steamy, tortured romance full of secrets, sacrifice, glitz, and yearning, Royal Surrogate is the first of three books and the latest in the Royal Heartbreakers series.

Freedom: A Mixtape is a soulful artistic response to recent and historical violence on Black bodies, presented through a collection of original songs, stories, poems, anecdotes, spoken-word pieces, and musical instrumentation from folks living in Ontario's Niagara Region. A community conversation about our complicated relationship with emancipation and the human right to be free, Freedom: A Mixtape is a compilation album that is part protest and part celebration. It is history and the present moment all at once, a reminder that this moment is part of a larger, ongoing movement. Familiar pains are felt deeply in moments both bygone and bitingly present, setting the tone—and stage—for action.Analog field recordings and soothing talk-radio energy give voice to the residue of intergenerational trauma, the depths of colonialism, resilience amidst oppressive conditions, and a clarion call that joy is a birthright for everyone. With emotional precision...

This gripping, high-stakes debut thriller about the lengths mothers will go to protect their children is perfect for fans of Wanda M. Morris and Jess Lourey. Boots Marez is a Latina single mother raising a headstrong and sly eighteen-year-old boy she adopted six years ago. She also runs a school that helps the undocumented people in her politically divided town in Northern California. When her son Jaral is jailed for the murder of one of her former students, her world is turned upside down. Struggling to protect her son, Boots has to spotlight a community used to living in the shadows, putting her hard work over the years in doubt. Meanwhile, a vicious parents’ board wants to trash her ideals and oust her from the school she helped build. As she faces increasing danger to clear her son’s name, she must decide how far she is willing to go to bring her son home. But nothing is as it seems—Jaral has been keeping secrets from her...

While the boys get to sail off with the new Great Fleet to chase pirates across the Sunrim Ocean, Amy and Airdella are stuck in Chalef for an unusually boring summer. Until an early morning walk down to the docks takes an unexpected turn...Walter and Aaron are forced to play politics as they work with the representatives of the other nations to track down and eliminate the pirates plaguing their ocean. The pirates lead them on a merry chase from island to island, danger to danger...The deeper they sail into this sea of thieves, the harder it becomes to know who to trust. Or where the greater danger lies - on board the ships or below them.

The discovery of long-lost mail delivers a marriage proposal, a missing person, and a magical mystery. A road trip with Gabe and her friends leads Sylvia to discover more about her mother's veiled past yet throws up several questions, too. The stack of unopened letters addressed to her family will hopefully provide answers. As she delves into the contents, a startling revelation emerges: the letters allude to a clandestine union between two magician families, hinting at the elusive identity of Sylvia's father. Full of hope, she embarks on a quest to find the author of the letters, only to discover an artless youth who vanished decades ago, a dead man with the wrong name, and a hospital for former soldiers that connects them. The further Sylvia and Gabe delve into these mysteries, the more lies they expose, including long-buried secrets that certain individuals will stop at nothing to protect. When danger strikes, Sylvia wonders if finding...

Eliza or Till Death Do Us Part, a first-person confession, is partly a love story, partly a mystery novel and partly a comic novel. Its protagonist, Gary Jenkins, is in prison for murder, but he claims his innocence, explaining that he is just guilty of the "murder of himself." He undertakes to write his story to recount what has happened and to justify himself.