As The World Burns by Aaron Ryan is a fast, heartfelt Christian sci-fi novel about a teenage boy whose heartbeat is overheating the planet and the president father who must decide what love demands. Told in alternating voices, it pairs catastrophe-scale stakes with prayer, humor, first love, and a moving portrait of fatherhood.

Blackcastle's goalkeeper hires the one woman he swore he wouldn't, then writes a no-romance clause into her contract. The third Gods of the Game novel is the series' warmest, built on a single dad, a sharp eleven-year-old and a penguin-mad nanny, though its third-act scandal is louder than it is convincing.

Some novels announce themselves on the first page. Others behave like a serious red, closed and a little reserved at first, then opening slowly...

An orphaned cellist moves into her guardian's spotless Chiswick house and finds the back bedroom already occupied by a boy only she can see. E L James's first young adult novel is at its best on grief and at its weakest on repetition, possessiveness and a heat level that strains the YA label.

Three linked holiday novellas from Abby Jimenez: exes forced to fake a reunion, a man stuck in a diner in a zombie Santa costume, and two best friends who team up against a three-day engagement. Funny and generous, with endings that come a little too easily.

Six months after Nyx's birth, the Night Court is negotiating with kingdoms that want the human lands back, an ancient death-lord is stirring, and Azriel is coming apart. The sixth ACOTAR book is a sharp, dark first movement with a superb mid-book set piece, though it resolves very little and its love triangle brings out the worst in everyone.