Hide Your Wallet
Happy Tuesday!
June is looking up to a pretty beefy month. Lots of sci-fi on our radar this month, plus a contemporary retelling, historical romance, and some mysteries.
Which releases are on your radar this week? Let us know in the comments!
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Bald-Faced Liar
Author: Victoria Helen Stone
Released:
June 1, 2025 by
Lake Union Publishing
Genre:
Mystery/ThrillerLiving a lie becomes a matter of life and death for a woman hiding from her past in a novel of mounting psychological suspense by the bestselling author of Jane Doe and The Hook.
Traveling nurse Elizabeth May has a promising new home in Santa Cruz. And another new identity. It’s a pattern of reinvention for a woman escaping her traumatic childhood—and hiding from the decades of notoriety and destruction that followed. Invisibility has kept Elizabeth safe. Until now. After all these years, someone sees her for who she is.
Threat by threat, a vengeful stalker is dismantling Elizabeth’s carefully constructed lifetime of lies. And no one in her temporary circle can be trusted—not her fleeting new love interest, not the supportive friend she knows only from online forums, and certainly not the police. They’ve never been there for her.
As fear sharpens to terror, Elizabeth soon discovers something about her past that even she didn’t know. The revelation could finally set her on a path of healing and redemption. Or, now alone in the dark, it could be Elizabeth’s worst nightmare.
Victoria Helen Stone’s latest thriller!
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Homemaker
Author: Ruthie Knox
Released:
June 1, 2025 by
Thomas & Mercer
Genre:
Mystery/Thriller
Series: Prairie Nightingale #1When a former friend and devoted mother vanishes, a confident homemaker turned amateur sleuth follows an unexpected trail of scandals and secrets to find her.Prairie Nightingale is both the midlife mother of two teenage girls and a canny entrepreneur who has turned homemaking into a salaried profession. She’s also fascinated with the gritty details of other people’s lives. So when seemingly perfect Lisa Radcliffe, a member of her former mom-friends circle, suddenly disappears, it’s in Prairie’s nature to find out why.
Given her innate talent for vital pattern recognition, Prairie is out to catch a few clues by taking a long, hard look at everyone in Lisa’s life—and uncovering their secrets. Including Lisa’s. Prairie’s dogged curiosity is especially irritating to FBI agent Foster Rosemare, the first interesting man Prairie has met since her divorce. His square jaw and sharp suits don’t hurt.
But even as the investigation begins to wreak havoc on Prairie’s carefully tended homelife, she’s resolved to use her multivalent homemaking skills to solve the mystery of a missing mom—and along the way discover the thrill of her new sleuthing ambitions.
Sarah: Ruthie Knox has written some romances I’ve loved, and now she’s writing a mystery with Annie Mare. Prairie Nightingale is a homemaker, and when one of the moms in her friend group disappears, she investigates.
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Cosmic Love at the Multiverse Hair Salon
A multiverse novel about two women who fall in love despite living in worlds that are five months apart, as they try to find a timeline that doesn’t end in disaster, in this debut novel by Annie Mare.
Tressa Fay Robeson has never been shy, which is how she’s made a name for herself as an in-demand hairstylist and social media star. So she can admit that spending her days at her hair salon and her nights with her tight-knit group of friends (and one grumpy cat) is not the kind of exciting life she’d hoped for.
When a misdirected text from a stranger leads to a flirty exchange, she surprises herself by suggesting an impulsive meetup. But the woman, Meryl, never shows. Tressa Fay brushes it off—until Meryl’s sister and friend show up at the salon demanding to know what’s going on. Because, you see, there’s no way Meryl could have texted her. Meryl has been missing for a month.
Tressa Fay and her tight-knit group of friends soon discover they aren’t dealing with a catfish, but a temporal paradox. As they come to terms with the idea of parallel universes, they realize how many times their paths have crossed like this before. But even as they understand the multiverse more and more, nothing keeps Meryl from vanishing.
As it draws closer to the moment of Meryl’s disappearance, there’s only one question Have they done enough to change the outcome, or have they done so much that none of them will make it past that fateful day in September?
Tara: I’ve enjoyed some other multiverse stories, so I’m looking forward to checking out this take.
Elyse: The premise of this book sounds trippy and reminds me vaguely of Griffin and Sabine.
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I’ll Pretend You’re Mine
Summer Ali has been making a name for herself in the music industry for years, slowly but surely climbing the charts—but the world doesn’t know her stage parents are the ones who molded her entire public persona. Finally eighteen, Summer breaks free of their control and focuses on creating her own path.
Upon running into writer’s block, Summer grows eager to take any opportunity to shake things up—even if it means agreeing to a PR stunt with child-actor-turned-playboy, Jules Moradi, famous for his tabloid escapades.
At first, Jules keeps his distance, maintaining professional boundaries. But as time passes, his walls come down, and Summer uncovers who he is beyond his reputation, and it’s someone more like her than she ever realized. As the lines blur between fake and real, Summer begins questioning who she is and what she wants—and if her dreams are worth sacrificing her heart.
Elyse: I love a celebrity romance.
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Of Monsters and Mainframes
Spaceships aren’t programmed to seek revenge—but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.
Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.
To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team: A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.
The queer love child of pulp horror and classic sci-fi, Of Monsters and Mainframes is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters—and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.
Amanda: A sentient ship out to kill Dracula. What amazing fever dream is this?!
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The Unmapping
Intimate and spellbinding, The Unmapping is a character-driven, literary speculative exploration of a city’s descent into chaos and confusion, perfect for fans of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid.4 a.m., New York City. A silent disaster.
There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island—for now. The next night, it happens again.
Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the City of New York’s Emergency Management team and are tasked with disaster response for the Unmapping. As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, she’s distracted by the ongoing search for her missing fiancé. Meanwhile, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers, hoping to become the hero the city needs.
While scientists scramble to find a solution—or at least a means to cope—and mysterious “red cloak” cults crop up in the disaster’s wake, New York begins to reckon with a new reality no one recognizes. For Esme and Arjun, the fight to hold the city together will mean tackling questions about themselves that they were too afraid to ask—and facing answers they never expected. With themes of climate change, political unrest, and life in a state of emergency, The Unmapping is a timely and captivating debut.
Amanda: This sounds trippy and really interesting.
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Worth Fighting For
Laugh and swoon with the next book in Disney’s Meant to Be collection by bestselling and award-winning author Jesse Q. Sutanto, whose novel Dial A For Aunties Emily Henry called “Utterly clever, deeply funny, and altogether charming.”
Mulan is reimagined as a contemporary romance about family expectations, mistaken identity, and high stakes mergers—of both business and the heart.
As the right hand of her father’s hedge fund company, Fa Mulan knows what it takes to succeed as a woman in a man’s work twice as hard, be twice as smart, and burp twice as loud as any of the other finance bros she works with. So when her father unexpectedly falls ill in the middle of a critical acquisition, she is determined to see it through. There’s just one the family company in question is known for its ultra masculine whiskey brand, and the brood of old-fashioned aunts, uncles, and cousins who run it—lead by the dedicated but overworked Shang—will only trust Mulan’s father, Fa Zhou, with the future of their business.
Rather than fail the deal and her father, Mulan pretends she’s Fa Zhou. Since they’ve only corresponded over email, how hard could it be to keep things moving in his absence?
But the email leads to a face-to-face meeting, which leads to an invitation to a week long retreat at Shang’s family ranch. One meeting she can handle, but a whole week of cattle wrangling, axe-throwing, and learning proper butchering techniques, all while trying to convince Shang’s dubious family that this young woman is the powerful hedge fund CEO they’ve been negotiating with? Not so much—especially as she finds it harder and harder to ignore the undeniable spark between her and Shang.
Can she keep her head in the game and make her father proud, all while trying not to fall into a trough, or in love with Shang?
Amanda: Mulan is my favorite Disney princess, so I’m stoked for this.
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A Most Unlikely Lady
Author: Darcy McGuire
Released:
June 6, 2025 by
Boldwood Books
Genre:
Historical: European, Romance
Series: The Queen’s Deadly Damsels #4Preorder the BRAND NEW instalment in Darcy McGuire’s gorgeously funny, spicy romance series, featuring Queen Victoria’s Deadly Damsels! She may be innocent…but she’s also deadly!
When seemingly fragile Miss Ivy Cavendale takes the headmistress position in an orphanage, it is her chance to stay anonymous in society. But not all is what it seems with Miss Ivy. When an intruder breaks in one night, she’s quick to draw her weapon, and while fear – her constant companion – has mysteriously disappeared, one thing is very she and her charges are the next target of The Devil’s Sons.
Commissioner Edward Worthington owes the head of The Queen’s Deadly Damsels a debt. So, he must keep an eye on the Duchess’s new protégé. How much trouble can the shy Miss Cavendale be? Rather a lot, actually. The diminutive wallflower has been overlooked and forgotten by society’s elite, but Edward sees a woman full of fascinating contradictions he’s compelled to unravel.
Burdened by secrets and childhood trauma, Ivy is stunned as Edward ignites a breathless curiosity within her. And when he asks her to join forces to identify the dangerous intruder at The Widow’s Ball, she cannot refuse. She may not trust many, but something tells her she should trust Edward… with more than just this mission.
Lara: I’m intrigued…
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