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Between Here and Gone

Barbara Ferrer (Diversion)

Ferrer’s brilliant, vivid, heartbreaking novel follows a young woman’s pursuit of safety and what little joy she can afford after her aristocratic family narrowly escapes Cuba on the eve of Castro’s ascendance. While she’s working menial jobs in Manhattan, a ghostwriting gig connects her with a man who helps her remember what it’s like to feel alive, not just survive. Readers are advised to have a whole box of tissues handy.

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Duke of My Heart

Kelly Bowen (Forever)

Bowen's splendidly original Regency romance pairs up two rebels against society's strictures: a woman who's a fixer for the upper classes, charging high prices to make scandals disappear, and a duke who's a ship's captain with a shocking reputation. Bowen's eloquent prose elevates the gritty, steamy story of debauched nobles, blackmail, and the tension between romantic coupling and pursuit of one's individual happiness.

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Luchador

Erin Finnegan (Interlude)

A young gay man in Mexico City is enthralled by a cross-dressing exótico wrestler on the lucha libre circuit and begins to pursue his own wrestling career in this very modern story of love and passionate vocation. Finnegan works in rich threads of Mexican history, queer culture and community, and questions of being out or closeted in a time and place poised on the brink of acceptance.

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Magnate

Joanna Shupe (Zebra)

Shupe puts an urban spin on several favorite romance tropes—the poor but titled woman pursuing the wealthy but commerce-tainted man, an intelligent heroine with professional goals that society forbids, even snowbound lovemaking—in this magnificent romance between a steel magnate and an heiress with a head for figures in Gilded Age New York City.

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The Obsession

Nora Roberts (Berkley)

Roberts, at the top of her formidable game, devastates the reader with this contemporary story of a woman who refuses to be defined by her father being a serial rapist and killer, even as journalists, filmmakers, and another killer pursue her. Her insistence on building her own life and learning to believe in love again will have readers on their feet, weeping and cheering.

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Sunrise Crossing

Jodi Thomas (Harlequin)

In pithy short chapters and language as simple, comfortable, and welcoming as a handmade rocking chair, Thomas draws readers into a small Texas town where people in need find healing, second chances, acceptance, and love. The multiple romantic threads are woven into a cozy blanket of love that will warm any reader's heart.

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