Contemporary

Happy Ending by Chloe Liese follows Thea, a Pittsburgh bookseller, and Alex, a celebrity chef, who fake an old friendship in front of their newly paired exes and accidentally build a real one. Two years later, a forced beach vacation makes them face what they have been hiding. A grown-up rom-com about healing after divorce.

Last One Out by Jane Harper is a quiet, atmospheric mystery set in a half-abandoned mining town where Ro Crowley returns on the fifth anniversary of her son's disappearance. Harper's landscape writing and restrained grief carry the book through a slightly baggy middle, delivering a sad, satisfying read that sits just behind her best work.

In Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth hands the microphone to Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick: eighty-one, six feet tall, and once the youngest murderer in Australian history. When a nosy seven-year-old and a true-crime podcast drag her secrets into the open, the past she has buried for sixty-six years finally wants its turn to speak.

The Auction by Sadie Kincaid is a slow-burn gothic dark romance with a masked hero, a resilient heroine, and Brotherhood secrets that go deeper than anyone knows.

Release Me by Tahereh Mafi is the Book 2 of the Shatter Me: The New Republic series. Three fierce POVs, a devastating slow burn, and a surveillance state that shows exactly what freedom costs.