Spotlight: The Magical Library by Aimee O’Brian

(Charmed Love, #4)

Publication date: April 16th 2026

Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

In the small town of Hazard, the past never stays buried—and love may be the most powerful magic of all.

Whitney Hopewell, Hazard’s newly elected mayor and former librarian, is determined to protect the town she loves. When a smooth Boston developer offers a sleek solution to Hazard’s affordable housing crisis, she’s cautiously hopeful. Derrick Cross is charming, intelligent, and undeniably intriguing. Convincing the local innkeeper to rent him a room feels practical. Helping him with his historical research feels personal.

But Derrick hasn’t come to Hazard to help. He’s returned to settle a centuries-old score. His family’s downfall is tied to the town’s founding, and transforming Hazard’s quaint charm into soulless urban sprawl is his long-planned revenge. Falling for the woman fighting to save it threatens everything.

As Whitney and Derrick grow closer, sensing a deep connection neither can explain, secrets surface. A hidden tunnel, a looming hurricane, and a magical heritage quilt that reveals dreams of true love force them to confront history, heartbreak, and desire.

This enchanting small-town, enemies-to-lovers romance weaves family feuds, magical realism, and heartfelt emotion into a story about forgiveness, fate, and choosing love over vengeance.

Excerpt

Whitney looked up and up at the tall, dark-eyed man before her, and her heartbeat just a tad faster…well, galloped actually, even as she sought to rein in her reaction. What was it about this man? 

The man of her dreams. 

She shook her head at the thought. Ridiculous! Obviously, she needed more sleep. She drew in a sharp breath and gripped her desk to pull herself together. 

“Good afternoon, Mayor Whit.” The quick flash in his dark eyes told her he was mocking her. But to be fair, she had mixed feelings about the moniker she’d been gifted by the town. She gave a small headshake. “Stop.” She motioned at the guest chair. “Have a seat, Mr.  Cross.” 

His eyes took in the vinyl-upholstered, armless chair. It wasn’t the most inviting, looking as if it was there by design to discourage lengthy visitations. 

With a glance at her, he sat, leaned back, and steepled his fingers. 

Aware of his penetrating gaze, Whitney looked down and arranged the papers scattered over her desk into neat little piles. “I haven’t finished studying the bids yet. Your visit is premature.” She swallowed, hard. 

He raised a brow. 

Whitney cleared her throat. “What I mean…” 

“I know exactly what you mean.” He directed his attention on her now neat stacks of documentation. “Do you have any questions? Concerns I might…alleviate?”

Whitney caught her breath and stopped herself from leaning forward. He was being persuasive, cajoling, and for an instant, it had worked. 

And that just irked her. 

Oh, not that he’d employ tried-and-true sales techniques on her, but that such behavior was beneath him. She recognized in him a strength and a clarity of thought that rivalled her own.  The man exuded decisiveness. This conciliatory manner didn’t suit, not at all, and worse, it chafed at her. 

Fine…he wanted to play? She would take charge of the meeting. “Tell me why you believe H.A.S. Homes is our best option for the housing mandate?” 

He raised a brow and launched, running down the superiority of the company over all others. This was better; biased, certainly, but a presentation of definitive ideas on what H.A.S. would bring to the community of Hazard. 

And yet, even when he was outlining all the reasons, she should choose his bid over all the others, something tickled the back of her mind until, in a flash, it became clear why it wasn’t quite right. Everything he said only highlighted what Mackenna had called his designs—cookie cutter. “Your designs are unimaginative.” The words popped out at his pause before she could edit her thoughts. With the words flung out there, his pause lengthened, and Whitney held her breath. Would he fill the silence? 

Or should she? 

Before she could come up with something to say to lessen the impact of her last comment, he spoke. “Is that what you need? Imagination?” She heard the subtle teasing, as if she had missed entirely what she should have been focused on. “How about, instead,” and now his tone grew serious, “how about homes people can afford?” He had a point, and Whitney was willing to concede him that, but she missed the enthusiasm he had exhibited before, and his next words dampened his entire presentation, as recrimination hovered within them. “This town has imagination to spare. What you need is the practical.” 

Did she? Because Whitney felt like she lived her life in the practical and what she craved was creativity. She released a slow sigh. She couldn’t help it. She tried to keep the disappointment off her face. Ah, well, balance then, she thought. What she said was, “Is that right?” 

Silence stretched between them. 

Whitney felt unbalanced suddenly, talking to him alone in her office. What had been businesslike before now felt intimate, just the two of them intent on each other. She found herself hyperaware of his masculinity, seated as he was, a mere three feet from her on the other side of her teakwood desk. She gave a tiny cough. “Well, I need more time, and the council hasn’t met to discuss the bids yet. We will vote.” 

“At the next city council meeting.” His gaze on her was unwavering. 

“Of course.” 

“In a month.” 

She nodded. 

“So…” 

He was watching her, waiting. She shifted in her chair. Suddenly, despite the air conditioning blasting out of the vents, the room was too warm, the heat of summer overwhelming. She had no idea now what she could give him. It wasn’t her place to make promises on how the council would vote. She…needed a moment. “I’m going to walk too the library and let everything you shared with me settle in. I’ll consider your points and study the bids again tonight.” 

“Over dinner?” 

Her eyes jerked back up to his, even as they both stood. She placed a hand on her desk to maintain her balance. “Dinner?”

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About the Author

Having lived in both California and Texas, award-winning author Aimee O’Brian now resides in the beautiful wine country where she writes dark, sexy, funny romance. With her three children grown and experiencing their own adventures, she and her husband are free to explore the world. When she’s not reading, writing, or planting even more flowers in her garden, she can be found stomping through ancient ruins and getting lost in museums.

Connect:

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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19231335.Aimee_O_Brian

The Magical Library Blitz

Spotlight: Don't Stop by Bonnie Friedman

A daring, erotically charged novel about ambition, desire, and the dangerous pursuit of self-knowledge. 

Ina is a 41-year-old literary scholar on the cusp of professional success. With a coveted university job, a kind husband, and a book on Eugene O’Neill due in months, her life appears enviably stable. But when an impulsive kiss with a stranger shatters her self-control, Ina finds herself plunged into an erotic and emotional freefall. 

She tells herself it’s research—a brief detour before returning to real life. But what begins as a flirtation becomes a reckoning with everything Ina thought she wanted: marriage, intellect, control. As she navigates the ecstatic confusion of newfound desire, she risks upending her work, her relationship, and her understanding of who she is. 

Set in Brooklyn and Manhattan at the turn of the millennium, Don’t Stop is a bold, immersive debut that explores what happens when a woman dares to want more—of the world, of her body, of herself. Bonnie Friedman delivers a novel of transgression, transformation, and unapologetic longing. 

Excerpt

When Ina discovered sex at the age of forty-one, her whole life turned upside down. She found that she liked things that she didn’t know she could like. Or, to be more precise, she found that she craved to do certain things, and to have certain things done to her, that before this time she would have regarded with mirth and incredulity.

Her entire personality had apparently come spring-loaded with a secret compartment in which all sorts of desires lay hidden. Most people didn’t know their whole character, she now believed. She certainly hadn’t, and she was highly educated and with a wide circle of friends, married at the age of twenty-eight and with a normal dating life before that. Now events that had once struck her as cartoonish or pathetic—a politician caught with a prostitute sucking on his toe, women who wanted to be handcuffed naked to their boyfriend’s bed—didn’t seem so strange. Now she withheld judgment. And it worried Ina to think that she could quite easily have lived her entire life without discovering this hot, disorienting aspect of herself, as if she’d occupied a dim apartment without ever realizing there was a light switch.

It all began late one October afternoon when her friend Janie invited her to a networking event for writers, an open-invitation party for literary types. “You’re home too much. You’re missing all the fun,” said Janie, gesturing toward the city which, from where the two friends sat on the Brooklyn Promenade, resembled a jagged steel honeycomb, the cells of which were brimming with a clear sweetness. The brake lights on the FDR were just starting to show raspberry in the gathering dusk.

Ina smiled. Naturally she didn’t think going to a networking meeting sounded fun. “If only I didn’t have a deadline.”

“Life too has a deadline.”

Ina laughed. “You sound so macabre!” 

Janie merely raised her eyebrows in response. “I think working too much has narrowed your vision,” she said, speaking far more slowly than she used to. “I think that’s part of your problem.” Janie was just back from three months in Nepal. Subtle things about her had changed. The spring before she left she’d dashed about—playing bass guitar, an instrument she was still mastering, with new friends in a weekly gig off Avenue C; dancing many nights in a row at clubs that closed just as the cobblestones of Gansevoort Street caught the first light. It was as if she’d hoped to exhaust the city before her pilgrimage. Ina was relieved that now, back home, Janie hadn’t surrendered her old joys, although she sensed that they meant something different. Janie had an ascetic, otherworldly appearance—whether from hours in meditation halls or her prolonged bout of malaria, it was hard to say. She had also acquired a new way of listening; she seemed to be hearing echoes inside echoes. It was disorienting. 

“I don’t have a problem,” replied Ina, touched however that her friend wanted to diagnose her.

“You seem a bit dogged. A bit too sequestered.”

“It’s called focus.” Ina winked affectionately at her old friend, wondering if Janie would change back soon. 

“Sweetie, you are starting to say odd things.” 

“I’ve always said odd things.” Nevertheless, Ina tapped the Post-it pad in her pocket for reassurance. If she didn’t have good judgment, her project would come out wrong. The instincts she relied on would mislead her. She had to be able to identify the shifting emotional valences of the Eugene O’Neill plays she was studying—and to do that she must progress into the indeterminate, the not-yet-named, without losing her grounding, the common sense that every literary critic needs. She lowered her gaze. Through the bottom of the cast-iron grillwork before them, someone had woven the grimy felt stalk of a yellow cloth tulip. The scent of a cigar reached her, expansive and deliciously acrid, as if offering the whole elliptical promise of the metropolis. She was conscious, too, of an almost audible giddiness emanating from across the river, from Wall Street, whose shadowy length she could practically see, and from which came incessant reports these days about Masters of the Universe and new IPOs whose values leapfrogged by fifty percent week after week, inducing crazed states of greed and joy, as if the very rules of reality had been suspended, as some people believed they had. Some very credible economists were saying that not every market that goes up must come down. She and Simon had just moved back to New York last year. “Okay, tell me,” she said with a sigh. “What have I said that’s odd?” 

“If you don’t talk to your sister before eight in the morning you get tense.”

“I can’t have Violet calling later. I’ve got to be able to immerse.”

“Yet a small interruption—”

“Not odd,” she affirmed with relief. Her friend hadn’t discerned a secret something that was amiss, if indeed anything was.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Paperback | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Bonnie Friedman is the author of the bestselling Writing Past Dark, named one of the Essential Books for Writers by the Center for Fiction and Poets & Writers. She is also the author of The Thief of Happiness and Surrendering Oz, a finalist for the PEN Award in the Art of the Essay. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares and numerous other literary journals, and she has been named a notable essayist four times in The Best American Essays. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, Dartmouth, NYU, and the University of North Texas. Don’t Stop is her first novel.

Spotlight: The Pretenders by Agatha Zaza

Secrets. Lies. Consequences.

Three couples. Two exes. One day of reckoning.

Jasper’s brother Edmund has never been exciting, but he is reliable and always there for his little brother, no matter what. It’s only natural that the day after their engagement, Jasper and bride-to-be Holly decide to surprise Edmund with a celebratory visit.

John, Jasper’s fun loving and devoted best friend, comes along. Of course he wouldn’t think of missing such an occasion. Anne joins them, because she’s John’s wife and Jasper is a huge part of her life.

Edmund and Ovidia aren’t expecting visitors, but they can’t exactly say no when Jasper and the others walk into their London mansion one Saturday morning in spring.

Ovidia is not supposed to be there.

Perhaps Edmund is not as reliable as Jasper believed.

Maybe John doesn’t know everything about his best friend.

Today they will all have to face the consequences of the lies they’ve told themselves.

Excerpt

Holly, Anne, and John followed Jasper through the doors and out of the kitchen. Jasper caught Holly furtively looking back and side to side, most likely, Jasper guessed, like he was, repressing questions that were begging for answers. The distance to the seating in the extension couldn’t have taken a third of a minute to cover, but that twenty seconds had seemed interminable. Though he marched quickly and determinedly towards where his brother was meant to be, Jasper felt time and distance slow and lengthen, and his stomach began to churn painfully.

Upon seeing Edmund in the glass extension, Jasper was relieved to finally confirm he was at the right house. So relieved, that he briefly ignored the incongruity of his surroundings with what he knew of brother’s life. But this disbelief returned and was intensified when he looked down and fully took in his older brother. 

What Jasper saw was a man who hadn’t moved since he’d first sat down two hours earlier. His newspaper was still turned to the undone crossword, his pen still beside it. The glass still held the alcohol he had yet to drink. He was immobile in pyjamas and a dressing gown that appeared smudged with dirt, and his guests’ arrival seemed to have had had no effect on him despite the clattering of Anne’s and Holly’s heels.

This picture of a man staring into space, unmoving, was how Jasper introduced Holly to her future brother-in-law. He could see her confusion: she pinched the fabric of her culottes and twisted it, like a little girl brought in front of the class. Jasper had promised her a man of almost regal demeanour, with poise and finesse. Their mother constantly lauded the quality of his clothes and the wonders of his posture and personal hygiene.

Yet, today, Jasper’s brother was slumped in his seat. Though his pyjamas and slippers were, as with most of his clothes, new and high-end, Edmund himself looked worn down, older than his forty-seven years, his skin pale and the lines around his eyes deeper than they’d ever appeared before. He and Jasper shared their father’s nose and a long-dead grandfather’s lean silhouette that today looked gangly. Even Edmund’s hair lay limp and unkempt, and his fingernails were dirty.

‘A bit early for whiskey?’ Jasper pretended it was a lighthearted greeting, but he knew something was wrong. He knew that his brother did not sit outdoors in his pyjamas with a glass of whiskey and an undone crossword on a Saturday morning. Jasper tried to fit Ovidia into this scenario but couldn’t. Everything was wrong.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Paperback | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Agatha Zaza is a Zambian-born writer based in Helsinki, Finland. She works in international development communications, specialising in institutional giving and human rights, and has lived in countries including New Zealand and the former Soviet Union. She earned a Master’s in Equality Studies at University College Dublin and completed her debut novel, The Pretenders, in Singapore. Her writing appears in the Johannesburg Review of Books, as well as magazines and websites focused on development cooperation and human rights.

Spotlight: Falling for Real by Carly Phillips

Release Date: April 16

AVAILABLE IN KINDLE UNLIMITED

Fake Date • Wedding Weekend • Forced Proximity • One Bed • Miami Heat • A Dare Family Series Story

One canceled date. One overbooked hotel. One fake boyfriend who feels way too real.

I fly into a destination wedding expecting maid-of-honor chaos—not to share a room with Tristan Hayes, the devastatingly charming nightclub owner I’ve crushed on for too long.

When the hotel runs out of rooms, Tristan gives his to an elderly couple without hesitation. I see the kind of man he is… and offer to share my king bed. Just for the weekend. Totally innocent.

Until my ex shows up.
With a date.

Suddenly Tristan’s hand is on my waist, his smile lethal, and he’s my fake boyfriend. Temporary. Perfect.

Except the chemistry isn’t fake.
And wedding weekends don’t last.

Or do they?

A fun, flirty wedding-weekend romance featuring fake dating, forced proximity, one bed, and a hero who always shows up—with a guaranteed HEA.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Paperback

Meet Carly Phillips

Carly Phillips is the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of over eighty sexy contemporary romances featuring hot men, strong women, and emotionally compelling stories her readers have come to expect and love. She is happily married to her college sweetheart and lives in Westchester County, NY. She is the mother of two adult daughters and three crazy dogs who star on her Facebook and Instagram pages. She loves social media and is always around to interact with her readers. Way back in 2002, Carly’s book, The Bachelor, was chosen by Kelly Ripa and was the first romance on a nationally televised book club. Carly loves social media and interacting with her readers. For more information on upcoming releases, sign up for her newsletter (below) and receive two free books!

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To learn more about Carly Phillips & her books, visit here!

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Spotlight: Fracture by Basar Gorur

(Shadow Sovereign Series, #1)

Publication date: April 17th 2026

Genres: Adult, Techno Thriller

A murdered diplomat. A dying man’s cryptic message. A conspiracy that could shatter NATO.

When U.S. geopolitical strategist Roger ‘Simms’ Osbourne receives word that his colleague and friend Aslı Green has been killed, he inherits more than grief. He inherits her secret: evidence of a sophisticated Russian operation that sank a Ukrainian tanker and made it look like an accident.

Sent to London to sell a critical NATO surveillance system, Simms quickly discovers his official mission is compromised. A powerful British political faction, backed by shadowy money and royal connections, is determined to see him fail. The deeper he digs into Aslı’s murder, the more he realizes the two threats are connected.

Forced to abandon the rulebook, Simms assembles an unlikely alliance: his embattled team, a mysterious operative named Katya who knows too much, and assets on both sides of the law. Together, they uncover a sprawling network funneling Russian profits through international shell companies to fuel a political war against the West.

But Russian Admiral Sidorov isn’t waiting for the dust to settle. His devastating military demonstration exposes NATO’s vulnerabilities and humiliates the alliance on the world stage. And lurking beneath it all is an even darker secret: Chinese technology at the heart of Russia’s most advanced weapons.

Now Simms must wage war on three fronts: political, financial, and military. Because if he fails, his friend died for nothing. And the next strike won’t be disguised as an accident.

For fans of Tom Clancy, Mark Greaney, and Brad Thor.

Excerpt

Ankara. Surveillance van outside Mikhail’s apartment. Evening.

Jack adjusted the lens for the hundredth time. Jones was sorting sunflower seeds by some private system known only to God and possibly his therapist.

“Stilettos,” Jones said.

“We’re not doing this.”

“We’re absolutely doing this. We’ve been here four hours. I’ve counted the bricks on that building. There are 2,847. I’ve earned a conversation.”

“You counted wrong. There are 2,846.”

“You counted them too?”

“Shut up.” Jack refused to look at him. “What about stilettos?”

“Women wear them voluntarily. On purpose. They pay extra for the privilege of balancing on pencil erasers.”

“Groundbreaking analysis. Call the sociology department.”

“I’m serious. Men’s fashion evolution went: uncomfortable, less uncomfortable, sweatpants. Enlightenment achieved. Women’s fashion went: uncomfortable, more uncomfortable, here’s a torture device from the Spanish Inquisition, but we made it beige.”

Jack checked the window. Nothing.

“Maybe they like being tall.”

“Platform sneakers exist. Wedges exist. Sensible block heels exist. Those chunky things that look like orthopedic equipment for fashionable astronauts.” Jones cracked a seed with surgical precision. “The stiletto isn’t about height. It’s about violence.”

“Violence.”

“Think about it. Historically, women couldn’t carry weapons. Swords, daggers, frowned upon. Very unlady-like. But shoes?” Jones gestured broadly, scattering shells. “Nobody regulates footwear. So some genius says, what if we put a three-inch steel spike on a pump and call it couture?”

“That’s actually not terrible.”

“I’m occasionally not terrible. Mark the calendar.”

The radio crackled. Static. The universe’s way of saying nothing was happening, and nothing would happen.

“You know they were daggers first,” Jones said. “Fifteenth century. Little needle-point shivs for punching through armor gaps.”

Jack checked the monitor. Still dark. “We are not talking about fashion history.”

“It’s tactical history. ‘Stiletto’ comes from stilus. The little metal spike Romans used for writing.” Jones pointed a shell at Jack. “It literally means ‘angry pen.’ The shoe is just a knife you can walk in.”

“You made that up.”

“Look it up. CIA even tried to weaponize them in the fifties. Program called Stiletto Rose. Pop-out blades in the heel.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God. Total failure. Mechanics didn’t work. But someone tried.” Jones grinned. “Boredom is the mother of weapons development.”

Jack massaged his temples.

“Your ex-wife had stilettos, didn’t she?”

“Louboutins. Red soles. Cost more than my first car.” Jones found a seed worthy of consumption. “She never wore them. Kept them in the box. I asked why. She said they weren’t for wearing, they were for knowing she could wear them.”

“That explains the divorce.”

“Many things explain the divorce. Most of them are my fault. Some of them footwear-adjacent.”

The window remained dark. Jack was developing a personal vendetta against it.

The radio crackled.

“All teams, target vehicle approaching.”

Jack grabbed the camera. Jones swept the sunflower seeds aside.

“Finally,” Jones said. “I had a whole bit about platform shoes being siege equipment.”

“Save it.”

“Battering rams for the fashion-forward.”

“I will leave you here.”

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Hardcover | Paperback

About the Author

Writes geopolitical techno-thrillers grounded in institutions, leverage, and the real mechanics behind modern power. He has a BA degree in International Relations. 

During his military service, he served on the personal staff of the Commander of the War Academies, working directly for a four-star air force general as an aide and translator. That experience informs how he writes briefings, decision cycles, and pressure under uncertainty. 

He later held senior executive roles at PwC and at 3M Corporation headquarters, operating in multinational environments where cross-border incentives and capital flows shape outcomes. He now leads a private asset-management business.

Outside of work, he is a licensed captain and avid scuba diver who spends several months each year at sea and has traveled extensively. These experiences shape the Shadow Sovereign series.

Connect:

https://www.instagram.com/basargorur/

Fracture Blitz

Spotlight: Between the Chords by Heather Young-Nichols

A steamy, FRIENDS TO LOVERS, coming home, rock star, STANDALONE romance.

He’s always been the one I never let myself have.
And the one I never truly let go.

Luke Wilder has been part of my life since high school—one of my closest friends, full of late-night laughter and almost moments that felt like something more until he left town and became a rock star.

But I learned early that men leave.

So I leave first.

No relationships. No hope. No staying long enough to get hurt. Those were the rules that kept my heart safe… until Luke came home to Hawthorne Hills.

Now he’s back with that easy smile, a new house that feels dangerously close to forever, and a way of seeing straight through every wall I’ve built.

One weekend at the lake house puts us in the same bed—too close, too familiar—and suddenly the line between friendship and something more disappears.

Luke says I’m safe with him.
That he’s not going anywhere.

But love has always been the one thing capable of breaking me.

And if I fall for him now… there’s no walking away.

Between the Chords is the second standalone in the Reckless Saints series featuring a rock star who never stopped loving the girl who ran from him, a heroine terrified to risk her heart, slow-burn friends-to-lovers tension, one bed at the lake house, and all the it’s always been you angst you crave.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Paperback

About the Author

Heather Young-Nichols is a USA Today Bestselling author of contemporary and paranormal romances. She writes swoony heroes and snarky heroines with a heap of romance.

When she's not writing, she's binging a show with her kids, watching baseball, or snuggling with her cuddly animals.

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