A cunning king. A devious princess. Best. Week. Ever.

Rapunzel knows nothing about her neighboring kingdom, Astera – and not just because she only left her tower a month ago. The famously reclusive island has limited its contact with outsiders for decades. So when a suspicious invitation arrives welcoming Rapunzel to the Asteran princess’s coming of age ceremony, and offering her a chance to be useful for the first time since she lost her healing powers, Rapunzel accepts – and unwittingly plunges herself and her companion, Eugene, into a tangled knot of political intrigue and magical secrets.

Eugene is just happy to get one last adventure with Rapunzel before his criminal background catches up with him and prevents their happy ending. Yet as they’re drawn further into the country’s problems, they uncover truths about Eugene’s parentage that point to deeper unrest in Astera, and suddenly the fate of their own kingdom, not just their personal dreams, is at stake.

Thrust into a power struggle between Astera’s beloved princess, Verette, its domineering king, Enver, and a mysterious secret society, Rapunzel and Eugene race to protect their home from an unsettlingly familiar threat and discover that the past can either hold them back, or help them blossom.

The post Rootbound first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

When the storm passes, can two guarded hearts believe in love again?

After six years of widowhood, high school biology teacher Clara Lewis has settled into a quiet life in Shady Springs, Arkansas, pouring her heart into her students, her church, and her garden. Romance, she tells herself, belongs to another season.

Sam Sullivan understands the safety of a guarded heart. A painful childhood and a broken engagement have convinced him that love is meant for others, not for him. Yet his long-hidden feelings for Clara become harder to ignore as they work together to encourage a withdrawn teen who needs them both.

Then a devastating tornado tears through Shady Springs, drawing Clara and Sam together in the storm’s aftermath as they help rescue the hurting, shelter the displaced, and rebuild the community they love. Amid the wreckage, Clara begins to wonder whether the steady, compassionate man beside her might be part of the new life God is offering.

But opening their hearts means facing old fears, unexpected competition, and the scrutiny of a small town that notices everything.

Perfect for fans of heartwarming Christian romance, this tender small-town story weaves together friendship, faith, grief, and healing as two guarded hearts must decide whether love is worth trusting again.

Start reading today and return to Shady Springs, where faith grows, hearts heal, and hope blooms in God’s perfect timing.

Read book 2: A Homecoming in Shady Springs

The post New Beginnings in Shady Springs first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

The Big Chill meets Groundhog Day when four estranged friends reunite for a funeral—only to find themselves reliving the same storm-lashed Saturday again and again.

When Babe—the complicated, magnetic matriarch of their teenage summers—dies, four estranged friends return to sleepy Mercy Island, a storm swept stretch of coastal Georgia, summoned by the reading of her will.

Didion arrives at the timeworn pink house to find the friends she never thought she’d see again—along with
the tensions, attractions, and unfinished business that once bound them together and broke them apart.

What should be a brief weekend of small talk quickly unravels when they wake up and discover . . . it’s Saturday. Again. And again. And again.

Trapped in a time loop with no end and no instructions, they’re forced to confront the betrayals, breakups, and buried truths that shattered them all those years ago. Because maybe, just maybe, an endless weekend is exactly what they all need to save their own lives.

The post Destination Funeral first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

I Killed Zoe Spanos meets The Counselors in this YA thriller about the daughter of a killer who must prove her innocence after a night of fun turns deadly.

Dina Soto is used to laying low. Ever since her father confessed to murdering two of his students, Dina’s mom has kept the family on a short leash to avoid drawing any more attention. But when cute, popular, and sweet Kai Thompson invites Dina to spend the weekend with him and his friends at his cabin, Dina thinks maybe being noticed wouldn’t be so bad.

But once at the cabin, Dina realizes one night won’t change her reputation as the daughter of a killer—especially not when people start turning up dead. Told in part through police evidence, the truth of what happened that night unravels alongside long-held secrets. But one thing remains true: Dina is adamant she didn’t do it. Now, she just has to prove it.

The post I Didn’t Do It first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

A group of life-long friends. A secretive MLM cosmetics company. Some opportunities cost more than they’re worth.

Delilah Thomas has a stellar track record of avoiding conflict. Her life mantra? Keep the peace. Born to a family she has never fit in, Delilah learned early that no matter what it costs her, it’s best to keep quiet, nod, and agree. Now in her late thirties, she has mastered the art and employs it daily with the preschoolers she teaches.

Then Peach Pit sets up shop in her small hometown and infiltrates every female relationship, including Delilah’s lifelong best-friend group. A direct sales business, Peach Pit claims its beauty products are organic and all-natural and recruits women to become “Darlings” who host parties to sell products to friends and family. Delilah’s friend Betsy is ecstatic to join, drawn by promises of sisterhood and easy income. But something seems off to Delilah.

When customers, including her pregnant friend Eliza, start reporting rashes, Peach Pit refuses to take responsibility. Then Betsy lets an unsettling secret slip, and Delilah can’t hold her tongue any longer. With the help of her retired neighbor, Mrs. Chopra, and travel journalist Jasper–Delilah’s longtime pen pal and childhood crush, finally in town for a visit–Delilah investigates the company and uncovers the grim truth. She is faced with a choice: Stop pushing and keep the peace, or find her courage and expose Peach Pit’s shady business practices, even if it costs her the unthinkable.

A story about enduring friendship, Pretty as a Peach paints a vivid portrait of choosing bravery in the midst of uncertainty and reminds us that the sweetest things in life are worth fighting for. 

The post Pretty as a Peach first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Romeo and Juliet (yes, that Romeo and Juliet) invite you to join them in celebrating the union of their spinster daughter, Rosie (she’s 20!) to Escalus the younger, prince of Verona, where murder is the unexpected guest at the wedding.

Joining us will be the royal and decorous kin of the groom, the Leonardis, as well as the famously rival families, the upstart Montagues and the snooty Capulets. All will be armed with swords and knives; at least one is skilled with poison. At this joyous event, who could foresee what direful occurrences might befall?

If I, the aforesaid Rosie, blushing bride, noted cynic and sleuth, were asked to identify when the pre-wedding events spiraled out of control, I’d point to that moment when elderly Princess Ursula observed the display of gleaming swords and bared teeth and announced that she would hold a public séance to determine the future of the marriage . . .

With the aid of Yorick’s skull and her own considerable dramatic nature, Princess Ursula prophesied three things: the marriage would be joyous and fertile (the guests yawn,) a long-lost treasure would be found . . . and foul and most unnatural murder would disrupt the fragile peace of Verona.

Before the day was done, two prophesies had been fulfilled. Hint: not the fun fertility one. As one death follows another and it’s clear a skilled poisoner lurks among us, coming ever closer to striking down those I love, I use all my wit and skill to discern the reason for the vendetta and uncover the killer’s identity . . . for I would have the holy church bells that now ring a sad lament peel instead for the wedding ceremony and the joyous and fertile future foretold. . .

Story Locale: Verona, fourteenth century Renaissance

Read book 1: A Daughter of Fair Verona

Read book 2: Thus With a Kiss I Die

The post Teach the Torches to Burn first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Set in a single sweltering summer, the story of two traumatized teenagers picking up the pieces of their lives in the wreckage of a bizarre gothic mansion.

Seventeen-year-old Leo Arceneaux has been raised by his mother and uncle, having lost his father in a shockingly random murder when he was two. Connor Rigby is the teenage daughter of a wealthy lifestyle influencer. She has no idea who her father is. As summer begins, Leo and Connor both find themselves in a small town in rural Minnesota, living in the rundown grandiosity of Connor’s mother’s family’s estate. Rigby Mansion is a secluded gothic monstrosity that Connor’s mother is slowly renovating without ever actually being present. Leo is there as a summer landscaping laborer, working to pay off a debt to his mother and uncle, and Connor arrives shortly after, having left behind wreckage of her own and looking for a place to lie low away from her mother.

Connor and Leo soon find themselves in an unfamiliar but intense relationship—not simply a summer romance but something that feels important and somehow tied to the combination of this particular blazing-hot summer and this weird house in the middle of nowhere.

When an accident on the estate’s grounds reveals the bones of two long dead people, Leo and Connor become obsessed with the couple buried beneath the fountain. Neither of them can say exactly why, but they’re sure that somehow these two corpses are tied to the to whatever comes next in their lives.

The post Summerwork first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

They threw it away, and now they’ll kill to get it back.

Garbage collector Cassie Willis is used to hauling away other people’s messes. She’s not used to finding coded documents in a dumpster, being chased by a sinister biker, or stumbling into a murder investigation with a killer who refuses to play fair.

When Cassie brings home a packet of strange papers from her route, she hopes someone at a local gamer café can help identify a mysterious symbol. Instead, her search for answers pulls her into a mystery where online challenges, hidden clues, and dangerous assignments point to something far more sinister.

Soon Cassie is working with police to uncover a deadly scheme, but when the investigation reaches someone close to her boyfriend, the case becomes painfully personal. The closer Cassie gets to the truth, the more danger shows up on her doorstep.

With an evasive killer making threats and the stakes rising fast, Cassie must scavenge the clues before this game reaches its final, deadly level.

The post Dumpsters and Dragons first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

By turns tender and irreverent, the 11 genre-bending stories in Please Don’t Touch the Body are thrillingly concerned with the devastation—and power—of being alive today.

In the collection’s first story, a Japanese woman finds healing in a secret life as a sex advice columnist after being fetishized by her white husband for decades. In the fourth story, Ronald Reagan is reincarnated as a puppy and must cope with being squeezed, dropped, and controlled by his young, queer owner. And in “Thank You No Thank You,” a young woman grapples with the rules she learned in her religious childhood, the freedoms of her new and more liberal life, and her actual desires as she vacations with her long-term boyfriend.

The post Please Don’t Touch the Body first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

On the eve of her fortieth birthday, a woman wakes up from a pickleball accident with the unexpected chance to relive her twenties in this sparkling novel from a fresh, new voice.

Sutton Layne is almost-forty and fabulous, with a happy marriage, three beautiful children, and a successful interior design business. But there’s plenty of chaos behind the scenes of early midlife. Her preteen son is going off the rails, her husband is bailing on the party he was supposed to throw her, and that thriving business? If she can’t land her next big client, it might all come crashing down. Then a surprise DM from someone in her past sends her spiraling into what-ifs. What if she settled down too young? Walked away from her big break? Never had her great adventure?

Despite her simmering mini-crisis, Sutton can’t wait for the birthday luncheon and pickleball tournament her friends have planned in her honor. But when an accident on the court knocks her out cold, she wakes up somewhere else . . . and is offered the chance to do it all over again. She can revisit her twenties—out of order and on her own terms. And this time around, anything goes: cities, careers, friendships. Even love.

From star-studded Hollywood nights to the jungles of Nicaragua, from the heat of Coachella to the snowy summit of the Matterhorn, Sutton chases the life she fears she might have missed, with unexpected results.

With a wink to the classic It’s a Wonderful Life, Twenty Something Else is a witty, wistful journey through the dreams we outgrow, the life choices that shape us, and the surprising detours that can lead us home.

The post Twenty Something Else first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.