Bywater Books

Independent Publishers Awards (IPPY) Bronze Medalist in Mid-Atlantic Best Regional Fiction

Covenant continues the beloved saga of the residents of Jericho, a sleepy town in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where life and love have as many twists and turns as a winding mountain road.

Six weeks have passed since the fateful unfolding of events at the town's Fourth of July celebration. Questions swirl about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the town nemesis, Gerald Watson. Was it an accident, or was Watson murdered? As the scorching summer gives way to an early fall, suspects in the potential homicide abound, and everyone seems to be keeping secrets.

Throughout it all, bonds of love and fealty are stretched and tested as the endearing and quirky residents of this once-idyllic community weigh the covenants they keep against the secrets that threaten to tear them apart.

Join Syd, Maddie, David, Michael, Henry, Celine, and the irrepressible Roma Jean Freemantle as they band together to navigate the minefields of their ever-changing world in this newest Jericho novel.

Blue McCarron has a Ph.D. in social psychology. She teaches and writes while living reclusively in an abandoned motel in the middle of the California desert with her Doberman, Bronte. A minister's kid, she has an imprisoned felon for a twin and a broken heart from grieving over her lost lover, Misha. When a body is found trussed up in a public freezer and widow Muffin Crandall claims she killed an intruder in self-defense and then did some dumb things, including freezing the corpse for five years, Muffin’s brother Dan hires Blue to free his much older sister by analyzing her. It is apparent to Blue and forensic psychiatrist Rox that Muffin's story is a hoax. But who is Muffin protecting? Who wants her dead? And, maybe more important, will Blue ever resolve her love for Misha and love again?

Complete with commentary by a Rastafarian Greek chorus in the form of ex-felon BB the Punk, the witty, suspenseful lesbian-detective thriller is hard to resist.

This is the first Blue McCarron mystery by Agatha Award-winning author, Abigail Padgett.

In rural Virginia in 1960, history professor Gen Rider has secured tenure at Baines College, a private school for white women. A woman in a man’s field, she teaches “Negro” history, which has made her suspect with a powerful male colleague. Even while she’s celebrating her triumph, she’s also mourning the break-up of a long-distance relationship with another woman—a romance she has tightly guarded, even from her straight female mentor.
As the fall semester dawns, a male instructor at the college is arrested for having sex with a man in a park. Homosexual panic envelops the college town, launching a “Know Your Neighbor” reporting campaign. The police investigation directly threatens Gen’s friend Fenton, the gay theater director at Baines. But Gen finds herself vulnerable, too, when someone leaves mysterious “gifts” for her, including a suggestive pulp novel and a romantic card.
As Gen tentatively embarks on a new relationship, a neighbor reports she’s seen Gen kissing a woman, and hearings into her morality catch her in a McCarthy-like web. With her private life under the microscope, Gen faces an agonizing choice: Which does she value more, the career she’s scraped to build against the odds or her right to a private life?

Lambda Literary Award-winner K.M. Soehnlein's Army of Lovers follows a young gay man swept up in the excitement, fury, and poignancy of the AIDS activist group ACT UP.

Arriving in New York City full of idealism, Paul discovers the queer community gathering strength in the face of government inaction and social stigma. As he protests, parties, and makes a new home, he finds himself pulling away from his HIV-negative boyfriend to pursue an intense bond with a passionate, HIV-positive artist. Paul’s awakening parallels ACT UP’s rise, successes, and controversies. And then everything shifts again, as his family is thrust into their own life-and-death struggle that tests him even further.

Born out of the author’s activism inside the vibrant queer community of the ’80s and ’90s, Army of Lovers blends history and fiction into an exploration of memory, community, love, and justice.

Last Chance at the Lost and Found is a story of personal growth, of choices made—good and bad—of how to live and love. It’s also the story of the lesbian and gay community from the 70s through the 90s. A story of friendships and lovers and alcohol and recovery and turmoil and, finally, peace of mind. 

Bunny LaRue was young and beautiful and living in LA in 1972.

Sex, drugs, and fun were plentiful.

Working as a model for a lingerie catalog with a body that got her everything she thought she ever wanted in life, Bunny moved from one party to the next and one photo shoot to the next. The future was not her concern. Then Bunny meets political activist Sunshine Lindstrom, falls in love, and begins to see that life is more than one big party. But when Sunshine leaves her and Bunny loses her job, the world is no longer such a friendly place. As the years slip by, life isn’t easy, and Bunny must find the strength to confront her past and create a new future. Last

Two-time Lambda Literary Award-winning author Ann McMan introduces readers to a spinster postal investigator for the Winston-Salem Dead Letter Office who finds herself enmeshed in the mystery of solving who is sending undeliverable love letters to the town’s 18th-century hortus medicus.

The year is 1960, and Gunsmoke is the most popular show on TV. Elvis Presley tops the Billboard charts, and a charismatic young senator named John F. Kennedy is running for president. And, in North Carolina, four young Black men sit down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and demand service.

Enter Esther Jane (EJ) Cloud, a forty-something spinster who manages the Dead Letter Office at the Winston-Salem post office. EJ leads a quiet life in her Old Salem ancestral home and spends her free time volunteering in the town’s 18th-century medicinal garden.

One sunny Spring morning, EJ’s world is turned upside down when she is handed a stack of handwritten letters that have all been addressed to a nonexistent person at the garden. This simple act sets in motion a chain of events that will lead EJ on a life-altering quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious letter writer—and into a surprising, head-on confrontation with the harsh realities of the racial injustice that is as deeply rooted in the life of her community as the ancient herbs cultivated in the Moravian garden.

When EJ is forced to read the letters to look for clues about the anonymous sender, what she discovers are lyrical tales of a forbidden passion that threaten to unravel the simple contours of her unexamined life. EJ’s official quest soon morphs into a journey of self-discovery. Her surprising accomplice on this quest becomes a savvy, street-smart ten-year-old wielding an eye patch and a limitless supply of aphorisms. Together, the unlikely duo makes pilgrimages to a tiny town called Paradise to try and crack the case—while ultimately learning better ways to navigate the changing world around them.

Short-listed for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Mystery.

Included in Shelf Unbound's 100 Top Notable Indie Titles of 2022.

Included in Autostraddle's list of 92 of the Best Queer Books of 2022.

Included in Out in Print's Favorite Books of 2022.

Shortlisted for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Mystery.

When Charlie Mack is hired by her ex-husband’s new wife Pamela, things get awkward quickly. Her ex, Franklin, has been charged with his brother-in-law’s murder. Charlie and Pamela both believe he didn’t do it, but he’s gone into hiding for some reason neither of them understands. To the police, it adds up to easy guilt, but to Charlie, it indicates that Franklin has stumbled onto something that likely comes with life-threatening complications. Charlie wants proof the case doesn’t involve a double-cross, and when the Mack Investigations team throws all their assets at the case, Charlie's girlfriend, Mandy begins to worry that Charlie’s all-out efforts to find Franklin might be driven by lingering romantic feelings. In the end, everyone involved must figure out which loyalties run deeper than love.

After a fateful hunting accident sends her on the run from the law, Robyn finds herself deep in the heart of Sherwood Forest. All she really wants to do is provide for her family and stay out of trouble, but when the damnable Sheriff of Nottingham levies the largest tax in the history of England, she's forced to take matters into her own hands. Relying on the help of her merry band of misfits and the Sheriff’s intriguing—and off-limits—daughter, Marian, Robyn must find a way to pull off the biggest heist Sherwood has ever seen.

With both heart and freedom at stake, just how much is she willing to risk to ensure the safety of the ones she loves?

Nottingham is a delightful romp rife with bois bearing bows, transmen wielding quarterstaffs, noble ladies loving ladies bawdy bisexual musicians, naughty nonbinary outlaws, and saucy sapphic nuns—in other words, Robyn Hood like you've never seen her before.

Novelist and filmmaker Mari SanGiovanni introduces readers to the irrepressible Liddy-Jean Carpenter, a matchmaker with special talents who will charm readers with her wit, wisdom, and sensibilities in this warm, enchanting love-is-love office romance.

Liddy-Jean Carpenter has learning disabilities. But she also has a surprisingly genius plan.

While she spends her days doing minor office tasks with nobody paying attention, she sees how badly the wand-waving big boss treats the Marketing Department worker bees. So, she takes lots of notes for a business book to teach bosses to be better.

While compiling pages of bad behavior notes, she finds she likes office-mate Rose and Rose’s new friend Jenny. But she doesn’t like Rose’s creepy boyfriend. So how can she save Rose?

Liddy-Jean knows with certainty that love is love, and she concludes that Rose should be with Jenny, bosses should do better, and everybody needs the services of Liddy-Jean, Marketing Queen.

Years after a fractured teenage romance, an up-and-coming musician and a youth counselor team up on a project that rocks everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other.

Spencer Adams was never expected to be anything more than a high school dropout. She’d been a troubled teen, spending more time at the skate park than in school, at least until her music teacher introduced her to the guitar, and music class became her lifeline. Ten years later, she is the guitarist in a band that has become a breakout success, and she wants to use that success to help other teens who have had the same rough start as her. She takes on a volunteer project with local youth as a way of honoring her past, not knowing that it will force her to revisit the one part of her past that she’d hoped to forget.

Faith Siebert has always had high expectations to live up to, and she has tried her best to fulfill those expectations, to be a good daughter, a good student, and a good friend. When she fell for Spencer in high school, she knew her family and friends would never approve. Scared of their reactions, Faith ended things with Spencer, following the path her parents wanted for her, even at the immense personal cost. Of course, it had only been a high school romance, destined for brevity anyway. At least, that’s what she told herself. But when Spencer shows up in her life once again, partnered with Faith on a youth music project, her world is rocked and she is forced to re-examine everything she knows about relationships and herself.

Live It Out is a second-chance romance about forgiveness and finding one’s authentic self.

Virginia Black's No Shelter But The Stars is the space opera you've been waiting for—packed with warring worlds, romantic adventure, and larger-than-life characters.

Kyran Loyal is the last heir to the lost throne of a forgotten planet, the figurehead of a nomadic people fleeing the galactic tyranny of a brutal regime. Davia Sifane is the unrecognized daughter of an imperial despot. When happenstance pits them against each other in battle, neither expects the outcome: they are the only two people to survive. Marooned on a barren moon, their only hope of survival is to rely on each other, but what they learn will either kill them or change the galaxy forever.

Throughout her long career, professional tennis player Jay Pierce has been burned by both players and the press. She’s learned the hard way that she can trust no one and nothing, especially her own judgment. So, when she undertakes one last career comeback, she knows the only hope she has to redeem her legacy is to go it alone.

Sadie Larsen knows virtually nothing about the world of professional tennis when her daughter, Destiny, breaks onto the women’s tour at the age of 17. Sadie learned everything she needed to know about single parenting on her own, and she knows she can do the same now that the stakes are higher than ever. All she has to do is stay laser-focused on protecting her family of two.

Neither Jay nor Sadie expects the path ahead to be easy. The only thing neither woman had prepared for is each other. As Jay and Destiny fight their battles on the court, Sadie and Jay fight their attraction off it.

The California desert hasn't changed, but everything else in Blue McCarron's life is about to. After the inevitable break-up with partner Roxie in Philadelphia, Blue drags herself home—to the tumbleweeds, sidewinders, and emptiness.

A part-time job teaching Social Psychology at a private university in nearby San Diego provides at least the appearance of a life. But when Lupe, an unfriendly colleague invites her to a Mexican rock concert, everything in Blue's life begins to shift. And when the gorgeous rock star is kidnapped and the campus is blanketed with flyers calling for the death of a young, gay Spanish professor, Blue finds herself in the middle of a brand new mystery—who is behind the paper threats?

Fighting a growing and inappropriate attraction to the just-divorced Lupe, Blue searches for the culprit amid oddball board members, rancorous academics, and obscure Latin American politics. And when the threat lands at Lupe's doorstep, Blue is left with only her instinct to stop it.

A novice fifth-grade teacher embarks on a clandestine love affair with another teacher, which sets her on the tumultuous path of self-discovery.

It is 1963, one of the most turbulent years in American history. The escalating tensions and conflicts in society at large are playing out in classrooms, principals’ offices, and school boards across the country, along with the first stirrings of social transformation, though the past still holds its suffocating grip. And behind the closed door of the teachers’ room in one small Midwest town, two teachers set eyes on each other and find it hard to look away.

Karen Murphy, fresh from college, has taken on her first teaching job. Despite her best efforts, she can’t seem to stick to the subjects in her fifth-grade school books, helped along by the antics of a girl who upends all her lesson plans. She has a lot to learn, and her women colleagues are there to offer their advice, especially the enigmatic fourth-grade teacher, Esther Jonas. As Karen quickly discovers, the devoted spinster teacher with no life beyond the classroom is a myth—the school is teeming with passion and secrets, her own perilous desire for Esther Jonas included.

The Teachers' Room offers both a panoramic view of a changing America and an intimate portrait of the hidden lives of teachers.

When a vile, hate-spewing thug attacks the people she loves, trans woman Nikki Finch knows what she must do to protect them.

Nikki Finch is a successful transgender woman with a thriving Beatnik cafe and a comfortable life until the first summer of the Trump presidency sets off a wave of violence against minorities. Nikki's carefully curated world is shattered when a neo-Nazi thug attacks her business partner. She comes to his rescue, but her efforts launch a chain of events that imperil her and everyone she loves, especially her angst-ridden daughter, Morgan. Nikki will do everything she can to keep her loved ones safe, but as her civilized options begin to evaporate, she is left with no choice but to go places she's never gone before.

Kill or be killed. It should be a simple choice. But it's not that simple for Nikki Finch—it would have to be a cold-blooded murder and she'd have to get away with it. It could work, but what kind of example would she set for her daughter?

BeatNikki's Café was named a finalist for Killer Nashville's 2024 Silver Falchion Award for Best Mystery.

When oral historian Ellen Margolis and her girlfriend decide to get married, Ellen realizes that she can't go through with a wedding until she tells her grandmother. There's only one problem: her grandmother is dead.

As the two young women beat their own early path toward marriage equality, Ellen's longing to plumb that voluminous silence draws her into a clandestine entanglement with a wily Holocaust survivor—a woman with more to hide than tell—and a secret search for buried history. If there is to be a wedding Ellen must decide: How much do you need to share to be true to the one you love?

Set in ebullient, 1990s Dot-com era San Francisco, Paper is White is a novel about the gravitational pull of the past and the words we must find to make ourselves whole.

Hilary Zaid is an alumna of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and the Tin House Writer's Workshop. Her short story "For Non-Speakers of the Mother Tongue" (Tahoma Literary Review, Winter 2017) has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and "The Dark Between the Stars" won the 2014 BLOOM Fiction Chapbook Prize. Hilary works as a freelance editor in Oakland, California.

Jada Baker is a millennial, but she was born to worry—about her mom, her job, abused animals, and about the growing discord she sees playing out in the news every day. But she also believes that good will triumph over evil, and that she will find a true and deep love. And when Amie Luca, a veterinarian whose compassion for helping mistreated animals captures her heart, Jada believes that she has finally found the woman she’s been searching for.

But, when the happiness that Jada and Amie are building is suddenly threatened by a surge of hate and homophobia, they turn to a friend who has learned the hard way that kicking rocks can be painful. Dusty Logan logged long hours fighting for women’s rights, watching friends suffer and die through the AIDS crisis, and battling for the right to openly love a woman, and she’s bone tired. Yet when she sees Jada and Amie—a new generation of women—facing a new but familiar wave of discrimination, her spirit to fight the good fight is rekindled. And Dusty will do everything she can to make sure that Jada and Amie get that shot at real happiness after all.

Lisa Gitlin's Postcards from the Canyon is a quirky snapshot of one woman's rapidly changing world, where control is an illusion and chaos offers shelter from an unrelenting storm.

Faced with the sudden and unexpected death of her mother, disillusioned novelist Joanna Jacobs begins chronicling her unruly childhood in 1960's Cleveland, Ohio. But the writing exercise that starts as a means to reflect and refocus becomes a journal of Joanna’s rebellious existence. Jewish and gay, yet unwilling to expose herself to the accompanying scrutiny and rejection, Joanna spends much of her youth fostering chaos and embracing self-denial, even while celebrating an affirming commitment to the psychiatric ward.

After an inadvertent bomb threat to a conservative talk show host brings the FBI knocking on her door, Joanna finds herself navigating an unexpected immigrant invasion, a crew of juvenile delinquents in her living room, and a never-ending low pressure system. When the going finally gets too tough to wrangle alone, Joanna turns to her lifelong friends for emotional support—but this comfort is tempered by a confusing cocktail of lingering hurts, unresolved anger, and resurgent disappointment, making it even more difficult for Joanna to put her life to paper.

In the years before the Mexican Revolution, Mexico is ruled by a tiny elite that apes European culture, grows rich from foreign investment, and prizes racial purity. The vast majority of Mexicans, who are native or of mixed native and Spanish blood, are politically powerless and slowly starving to death. Presiding over this corrupt system is Don Porfirio Diaz, the ruthless and inscrutable president of the Republic.

Against this backdrop, The City of Palaces opens in a Mexico City jail with the meeting of Miguel Sarmiento and Alicia Gavilan. Miguel is a principled young doctor, only recently returned from Europe but wracked by guilt for a crime he committed as a medical student ten years earlier. Alicia is the spinster daughter of an aristocratic family. Disfigured by smallpox, she has devoted herself to working with the city’s destitute. This unlikely pair—he a scientist and atheist and she a committed Christian—will marry. Through their eyes and the eyes of their young son, José, readers follow the collapse of the old order and its bloody aftermath.

The City of Palaces is a sweeping novel of interwoven lives: Miguel and Alicia; José, a boy as beautiful and lonely as a child in a fairy tale; the idealistic Francisco Madero, who overthrows Diaz but is nevertheless destroyed by the tyrant’s political system; and Miguel’s cousin Luis, shunned as a “sodomite.” A glittering mosaic of the colonial past and the wealth of the modern age, The City of Palaces is a story of faith and reason, cathedrals and hovels, barefoot street vendors and frock-coated businessmen, grand opera and silent film, presidents and peasants, the living and the dead.

Grace Carter, a "source" of magic, has spent the last nine months searching for Maggie Mulvaney, her "catalyst." The joy of reuniting with her partner—and her lover—is thwarted by her worst fear: Maggie remembers neither Grace nor their life together in the Order of Saint Teresa, the centuries-old organization that trained them to be the strongest demon-hunting duo in generations.

When Maggie and Grace unexpectedly come face-to-face with the demon Horde, they are forced to team up once again. As they begin to piece their lives back together, they discover that their memories have been masked by someone within the Order. Should the Horde succeed in their plan, those who have committed their lives to slay worldly demons will be relegated to little more than minions as humans are completely enslaved.

Now, Grace and Maggie must sacrifice everything, possibly even their love, and their lives, in an all-out battle to save humanity.

Reconnect with your favorite characters from Rachel Spangler’s best-selling romances, Full English and Modern English.

When Claire Bailey left London to open her own art gallery in the tiny village of Amberwick, she’d hoped the slower pace and lower cost of living might allow her to focus on her own painting, away from all the drama and distractions that had plagued her in the city.  She fully intended to make an honest go at simple living right up until the moment a shockingly attractive aristocrat rocketed off the road and knocked her world off its axis.

Pip has learned to play the part of a ne’er-do-well upper elite: charismatic, enigmatic, and a little bit erratic. Luckily, women tend to like those characteristics. After leading such a charmed existence, where even motorcycles wrecks come with the added bonus of meeting beautiful women, Pip finds that Claire’s complete lack of interest in money or status sparks both curiosity and attraction.

Surrendering to both boredom and sheer chemistry, the two agree to an unconventional, no-strings, romantic adventure designed to provide them both a bit of freedom and entertainment. However, once released from the pressure to project perfect images of themselves, the walls they depended on for protection begin to crumble. Worlds blend and identities blur as their whirlwind romance quickly becomes more than they bargained for. Will their almost elemental attraction be enough to overcome the complexities rushing in from all sides?  Or will the pressures they’ve both sought to escape force them to forge a new path neither of them had dared to dream of?

It's 1982, and China has just barely begun to open to the West.

When Lu McLean sells all her possessions and leaves Los Angeles to study Mandarin Chinese at the Beijing Language Institute, she imagines a life of serious scholarship and an eventual job as a translator at the United Nations. On the night of her arrival, Lu meets the captivating, Ming, a Chinese teacher at the institute. Still recovering from a failed ten-year relationship, Lu has vowed never to give her heart away again.

But as Lu struggles to balance Beijing's simple beauty with the confounding rigidity of ageless custom, her feelings for Ming deepen. She soon finds herself vacillating between letting herself love Ming and her escalating fears about the certain barriers that would prevent them from ever navigating a life together. Against the backdrop of China's Spiritual Pollution and a tightening cultural climate, it becomes clear that Ming cannot leave—and Lu cannot stay indefinitely. Events soon force Lu—and Ming—to balance the love that binds them against the social and political forces that threaten to tear them apart.

The Language of Light seamlessly interweaves the expressive and timeless beauty of the Chinese language with the poignant tale of a profound love, inveighing against the oppressive climate of cultural and political change.

MENAFTER10 is a geosocial online dating application for gay "urban men looking for urban men." Among its users is Chauncey Lee, who is always online, always looking. What exactly he's looking for is a mystery even to him, but he does his best trying to find it by dating in bedrooms across an unnamed city. Brontae Williams is just the opposite. He's lonely and desperately wants to settle down into a long-term relationship. His biggest problem is that the only thing anyone wants these days is quick and casual sex. LeMilion Meeks, however, is used to the fast life. With his big personality, he might come off as content with snorting coke in club bathrooms, but he's learning that knowing his HIV status is entirely different than knowing what to do with it.

Despite the differences between them, their reasons for using the app are the same. The stories of these men and the men they meet online intersect and converge in this brilliant and sexy debut novel.

In 1850s Manhattan, 18-year-old Georgiana Cartwright witnesses the downfall of her father, a renowned actor who disgraces himself performing under the influence. When he deserts the family, Georgie is expected to save the day by marrying well. But she aspires to the stage, hoping to earn an independent living like her idol, the great actress Charlotte Cushman.

Hired as a supporting actress for a prominent theater company, Georgie launches her career with the help of a trio of young friends, including Clementine, a budding scribe determined to make her mark on the literary landscape—and to win Georgie's heart. Early reviews garner Georgie the promise of a bright future, but then unwanted sexual advances from within the company threaten to derail her career.

Following Cushman's lead, Georgie regains her footing in “breeches roles” parts written for men but performed by women. A thrilling gender-bending turn in a Shakespearean role boosts her confidence—until her harasser renews his efforts. Will she be able to vanquish him and find success and love on her own terms?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE UK POLARI BOOK PRIZE 2024

Kirkus Reviews "BEST OF 2023" SELECTION.

International Latino Book Awards 2024—Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book (Honorable Mention)

Award-winning author and immigration attorney Orlando Ortega-Medina returns to 1990s San Francisco in The Fitful Sleep of Immigrants, a powerful family drama that plays out within a captivating legal thriller.

Attorney Marc Mendes, the estranged son of a prominent rabbi and a burned-out lawyer with addiction issues, plots his exit from the big city to a more peaceful life in idyllic Napa Valley. But before he can realize his dream, the US government summons his Salvadoran life-partner Isaac Perez to immigration court, threatening him with deportation.

As Marc battles to save Isaac, his world is further upended by a dark and alluring client, who aims to tempt him away from his messy life. Torn between his commitment to Isaac and the pain-numbing escapism offered by his client, Marc is forced to choose between the lesser of two evils while confronting his twin demons of past addiction and guilt over the death of his first lover.

The Fitful Sleep of Immigrants is an extraordinary and timely tale about the value of family and friendship, loyalty and love, in the face of adversity.

A hate group operating in Oakland County, Michigan has claimed responsibility for a six-month-long string of arson fires and robberies at mosques, temples, and black churches around Detroit, eluding police and federal agencies. The most recent fire, at a mosque in Dearborn, kills a respected imam. His children—suspicious of law enforcement’s treatment of Muslims and afraid of reprisal—hire Charlie Mack and her team of investigators to find their father’s murderers. The Mack team begins to hunt down the clues in this local hate crime, but they aren’t prepared when they realize that those clues are pointing to a widespread conspiracy that runs through elected state officials and up to the highest levels of national leadership. FBI agent, James Saleh, returns to help the Mack Agency infiltrate and take down a homegrown militia hell-bent on starting a race war in America.

Warn Me When It's Time is a finalist for the 2022 Anthony Award Nominee for Best Paperback Original/E-Book/Audiobook Original Novel and was awarded an Independent Publishers (IPPY) Silver Medal for Great Lakes Regional Fiction.

Sergeant Major Scratch Keyes of the King’s Guard is having a bad day.

On what should be the biggest night of her life, everything suddenly goes horribly wrong. First, her king denies her the promotion she rightfully earned, as well as the knighthood that goes along with it. And then, when Scratch is wallowing somewhere near the fetid rock bottom, she and her best friend, the flamboyant and carefree Sergeant James Ursus, are arrested for orchestrating the abduction of Princess Frances and sentenced to death. On the whole, things could be better.

Luckily, help comes in the form of the mysterious Shae siblings—Vel and Umbrella—who inform the doomed pair that the issue of the missing Princess is far more complicated than it appears. After a daring escape, the four embark on an ill-advised rescue mission through a forest filled with beasts, bandits, and mysterious fair folk, bringing nothing with them but a kitchen knife and the vague outline of a plan. Their destination is the Between, a sacred and shadowy fae-guarded place that promises to deliver Scratch and James to the princess—if they manage to survive.

But Scratch didn’t rise above her humble childhood in the Royal City slums by accepting things at face value. It’s clear that the enigmatic Shaes are hiding something, but what do they know? Who are they working with? And why, in the name of all the divine constellations in the scrambled sky, can't Scratch stop staring at Brella?

Samara Breger’s debut novel, Walk Between Worlds is a romantic queer fantasy adventure that will make you laugh even as it keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Tea Leaves is an astonishing collection of fables for our time by a young writer of tremendous power and promise.

Tea Leaves presents 16 speculative short stories that place queer characters in larger-than-life situations to emphasize the surreal experience of marginalization. A queer romance spans multiple incarnations, but only in doomed cities. A gay medieval scholar must testify for his life to the otherworldly octopus who traps him in a cafe bathroom. Ignoring their better judgment, a witch brings their mortal partner on a hunt for a dangerous sorcerer and must cope with the dire consequences.

Each of the stories within Tea Leaves explores the urgency of modern queer life in encounters between the otherworldly and the queer other. In juxtaposing queer narratives with new, larger-than-life myths, Tea Leaves both exalts and lampoons the queer experience while examining the sometimes surreal obstacles of marginalization.

Rowan Barnes never planned on living in Texas, and she’s not sure she likes it. She tells herself that her dream job as grill chef at a new up-and-coming restaurant was worth the relocation from her Portland home, but she feels out of place and alone in the Lone Star State.

Kate Landreth, on the other hand, is Texas through-and-through. Rowan meets Kate while picking up beef from a local cattle ranch, and is immediately drawn to the woman whose heart is as big as the state she loves. As the two women become closer, Rowan begins to see Texas through Kate’s eyes, but Kate is hesitant to fall too deeply for someone who makes it clear that Texas will never be her home.

When Rowan finds herself at an unexpected crossroads, she must decide whether she stays in Texas or returns to the safe confines of Portland.

It all comes down to one question: is home is where she grew up, or is home where the heart is?

After a lifetime spent steeped in death L.A. Franco has retired from the LAPD and has plunged head first into living—but separating her two worlds isn’t as easy as she hoped.

Following the death of “Sal” Saladino, a recluse and mentor with uncanny healing abilities, Frank is busy sloughing off her old identity as a cop and reluctantly growing into the new skin of a healer. She doesn’t understand her newfound abilities, but the patients she sees believe in them.

When a ranch hand brings her an old journal of Sal’s, Frank’s world begins to shift uncomfortably. The pages of the journal describe an injustice Sal was too cowardly to confront. And as Frank begins to work her way through the pages, her cop instincts kick in—but she’s done with that phase of her life and isn’t willing to return. However, when one of her new patients comes to her with mysterious neck pain, she begins to suspect the ailment might be related to the murder Sal has alluded to.

As Frank slowly learns to trust her newfound abilities—and her new lover—she begins to unravel the murder in the journal. When she suspects who the murderer is, Frank must choose whether she will confront them and the injustice in her old role as a cop or let bygones be bygones and continue on her new path as a healer.