Ho, ho, ho, MEEEEERRY CHRISTMAS!
Did you already buy gifts for your loved ones? You should reward yourself! Is the gift shopping a task still ahead of you? Buy yourself some good books to motivate yourself. We have a whole list of what you can throw into your cart this wonderful holiday month!
Early this month, get ready for The Many Casualties of Cruelty by Rebecca Crunden, the newest installment in a wonderful collection of short cosy fantasy stories with gay leads.
When Aris opens a book at his favourite magical marketplace, he doesn’t expect a woman to fall out of the pages eighty years after first being cursed. Needless to say, he takes the matter a little personally.
On the 8th, get cosy Under the Christmas Tree with Jacqueline Ramsden's new lesbian romance!
Katie’s position as an obstetrics doctor has her busy on Christmas Day yet again. Her mother isn’t happy about it—she wants Katie moving home and settling down with someone, but Katie never has time for home or for anyone.
Almost anyone.
Maggie is the one person Katie has time for. The two have been best friends for years, but Maggie’s feelings have long since shifted into something more.
The Christmas season brings friends pushing them to be together and family pulling them in directions they don’t want to go, showing up unexpectedly, and interrupting all of their carefully planned time together, as well as the slow realization that they might both be feeling something more than friendship. Will they get their Christmas wish, or will fate conspire against them and leave them feeling lonely this Christmas?
Under the Christmas Tree is a friends-to-lovers, slow-burn holiday romance, featuring meddling friends, intruding families, and hopeless pining sapphics. Content warning for pushy family dynamics.
Mere Rain's In the Dark Heart of Winter is coming out on December 9th and features a sapphic protagonist and nonbinary secondary character!
Isabeau is having history’s worst honeymoon. Heart-broken when her lover and best friend Margaret married and moved away, she accepted the proposal of a distant cousin, but she regrets this decision even before he insists on taking her to his cold and ruinous ancestral home. Horace does not seem to care about her, either, and soon she begins to wonder about his motives.
Her fears are compounded when strangers arrive seeking refuge from the snow, and her husband's behavior becomes strangely hostile. Vairya and Ranat seem friendly, but why are they in this isolated region at all? It can't be coincidence that they come from Persia, where her husband was until recently stationed as a diplomat.
Eventually one visitor confides in Isabeau, but her claims are so wild they cannot be true. Can they? Should she trust her heart, and perhaps her survival, to this stranger who seems to share her forbidden desires?
Anna Larner releases her sapphic romance Invisible on December 12th.
Violet Unwin is convinced she is invisible. Overlooked by her adoptive family, her only solace is her uncle’s costume shop. By day she’s an assistant no one remembers, but after hours, in the wonder of her imagination, she becomes explorer, warrior, queen. Devastated by news of the shop’s imminent closure, Violet finds comfort in an unlikely companion, the ghostly figure of her namesake, the suffragette Vi Unwin.
Medical school dropout, Phoebe Frink’s life is in disarray. She has no idea who she is anymore, what to do about it, or how to tell her parents. Taken under the wing of the infamous drag king, Mr. Duke, owner of the struggling Banana Bar, fate steps in when Phoebe seeks Violet’s help with costumes for the bar’s fundraising Christmas Ball.
Phoebe is captivated by beautiful, shy Violet, and for the first time in her life, Violet experiences what it is to be truly seen. But for love to be possible, Violet and Phoebe must take a risk on a future they’ve never dared to imagine.
December 12th is very joyous day! It's also the publication day for Just like a Fairytale, a m/m new adult romance by Cameron James.
Luca‘s dreams are finally coming true when he secures a spot as Queen, in the infamous Drag Club The Rose Quartet. After years of perfecting his art, his moment is here but there’s still another first that’s niggling in the back of Luca’s mind: he’s never been in love, but, maybe the beautiful boy who he’s certain would never like him back could change that.
To Jackson, The Rose Quartet is like a second home, having been raised amongst the fabulous Queens of the past, but his confidence has been shook after a disaster breakup that he believes his demisexuality played a part in. With the health of his grandfather deteriorating by the day, Jackson doesn’t have time for the new Queen who’s catching his eye, right?
Both have an undying love for drag, and that is ultimately what brings the two of them together, but will these two Drag Queens ever figure out what’s right in front of them?
We're still not moving away from December 12th! Between Mischief & Magic is a cosy sapphic fantasy by Marissa Serrao.
A drunken demon, a princess who lost her magic, and a deal to save them both…
Rei Deimos is a magic-sensing, chaos-wielding mess. After her brother decides she needs to get her life together, he kicks her out of their house. With nowhere else to go, Rei finds herself at the tavern of a rundown inn. It’s there that the grumpy demon runs into a mysterious, cloaked figure that she soon discovers is a runaway princess. Amora, the dryad with a sunny disposition, has one goal in mind: find her missing magic.
With Rei desperately in need of a job and a place to live and Amora equally as desperate to find her magic, the two of them strike up a deal. Rei will help Amora find her magic, and in turn, secure a job as the princess’s royal advisor.
As the two women embark on their magic-seeking quest, they encounter various fae, sip warm beverages, and devour delicious pastries, all while realizing they need each other more than they initially thought. And their deal has nothing to do with it.
When love finds Rei and Amora, the secrets keeping them up at night do too. As their haunting pasts come back to bite them, will Rei be able to save the princess and her magic, or will everything come crashing down?
Our favourite ever, Merlina Garance, is releasing Mending Bones, her third and last book in Leicester Trilogy, on December 15th. Read our interview with Merlina here.
Claire, a Detective Inspector in her late forties, has known and worked with Estelle for many years. Ever since they met, it felt like there could have been something more there: Estelle's gentle flirting and compliments have been a constant in Claire's life, but her self confidence never allowed her to truly believe the other woman meant anything by it.
Until one day, Claire breaks her leg and finds out soon after that Estelle has decided to retire from the police, at only 56. Something doesn't feel right there, but before Claire can begin to ask more questions, Estelle offers to take her away to her seaside cottage for a week. After all, with Claire on sick leave and Estelle retired, they both have the time.
Surely a week of lazy mornings, too much food and wine, and walks through the countryside aren't enough to make Claire fall when she’s resisted for so long?
On the 19th, check out Level or Live by Miya Kressin, a fantasy adventure with F/F romance.
When her wife is uploaded into an eternal artificial reality as her body fails from a nervous system disorder, Violet finds herself blocked from the game, from being able to even contact Jessica, thanks to her in-laws, the creators of ESTAR. Violet must find an alternate way into the MMORPG to find her wife's new avatar and then discover ways to be reunited once her presence is discovered. There's only one problem, she can only get in this way once, so she has one option: level up her character and find Jessica or be forced to live out her mortal, mundane life—without her wife.
Because You Asked is A Serrulata Saga Sci-fi/Fantasy Regency-esque spicy romance novel by A. E. Bennett and it's coming out on December 20th. Read our interview with Bennett here!
A bitter lady with a dark past. A grieving widow striving to help those in need. Two women will discover it’s not too late for a second chance at romance…
Lady Isolda Upshur has never known love. Married to the sovereign of the Realm at the young age of twenty, she is cast aside by her husband after giving birth to a suitable heir. Two decades later, the sovereign dies and she believes herself free, only to discover that her son has arranged for her to remarry. After this lord dies an untimely death, Isolda flees to the south of the Realm, vowing to lock herself away from society forever.
Lady Eustace Durham was happily married to the love of her life until the dreaded red fever swept through the Realm, snatching her husband from her. In the wake of his death, Eustace volunteered to help others ailing from the deadly disease, only to discover that many women in the Realm lack basic healthcare. Using the coin her husband left her in her will, Eustace opens a clandestine clinic in her cellar to provide services forbidden by the edicts. All is well until Isolda moves into the townhouse next door.
Fearful that Isolda will betray her to the local authorities, Eustace concocts a plan to befriend her. A suspicious Isolda accepts Eustace’s invitation to discern what her neighbor could want. Each intends to outwit the other, but both are surprised when sparks fly instead. The two realize that they can help each other and those in need. The work is dangerous however, and when a nefarious lord threatens all they hold dear, Eustace and Isolda have to put their romantic feelings aside to fight for the greater good.
This high-heat romance with a guaranteed happily-ever-after is part of The Serrulata Saga but can be read as a standalone.
Britney Jackson's FF pirate romance, Goddess of the Sea, also releases this month and promises lesbian pirates, healing from trauma, dragon-riding, ship cats getting much-deserved treats, a certain admiral and her many secrets, and a sapphic sea goddess.
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