Adult Fiction

By: Cat Sebastian (Author), 2024, Paperback

An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance for fans of Evvie Drake Starts Over, about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good.

The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.

Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.

Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.

By: Emma R. Alban (Author), Paperback, 2024

The enemies-to-lovers queer Victorian romance follow-up to Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend, in which a young lord and a second son clash, but find themselves thrust together again and again by their meddling cousins.

“That man is, without a doubt, the absolute most obnoxious…

Bobby Mason is sick of being second best: born the spare, never trusted with family responsibility, never expected to amount to much. He’s hungry to contribute something that matters, while all around him his peers are squandering their political and financial power, coasting through life. Which is exactly why he can’t stand the new Viscount Demeroven.

…insufferable…

James Demeroven, just come of age and into the Viscountcy, knows that he’s a disappointment. Keeping his head down and never raising anyone’s expectations is how he’s survived life with his stepfather. To quiet, careful James, Bobby Mason is a blazing comet in his endless night, even more alive than he was at Oxford when James crushed on him from afar. But Mason is also brash and recklessly unapologetic, destined to shatter the fragile safety of James’s world. Worst of all, he keeps rubbing James’s failures in his face.

…hottest man to ever walk the ton.”

They can barely get through a single conversation without tensions boiling over. Neither Bobby nor James has ever met a more intriguing, infuriating, infatuating man.

If only they could avoid each other entirely. Bad enough their (wonderful but determined) cousins Beth and Gwen keep conveniently setting up group outings. But when an extortionist starts targeting their families, threatening their reputations, Bobby and James must find a way to work together, without pushing each other’s buttons (or tearing them off) in the process…