Best-selling mystery writer Sam Torres loves jetting around the world, researching her next plot, and enjoying local culture, cuisine, and women. Her next stop: the Big Easy. Tess Arceneaux is a New Orleans native who likes life simple and uncomplicated. That includes shucking oysters for wealthy tourists and singing at the neighborhood bar—no pretense and no pressure. When Sam saunters in looking for company in addition to dinner, she sets her sights on Tess. Although Tess is hardly inclined to get involved with a woman who’s just passing through, Sam proves very persuasive. But when casual dates hint at something more, strange and sinister things ensue. Someone doesn’t want them together and will go to extreme lengths to make her point. Will looming danger bring them closer or drive them apart for good?

For Mira Lavigne, cider is about tradition, elegance, and class. She has little respect and even less patience for self-anointed mavericks who think their ticket to fame and fortune is throwing the rulebook out the window. Dylan Miller is one of those people. The only thing she loves more than pushing the envelope is finding ways to make cider, perry, and a few things she hasn’t even named yet more delicious and more accessible to everyone. When Mira and Dylan are tapped to co-chair Finger Lakes Cider Week, neither can pass up the publicity and prestige of the role. But professional compromises raise personal stakes, and Dylan and Mira are hard-pressed to keep their businesses—and their hearts—out of harm’s way.

Audrey Adams would do anything for her aunt Ernestine. When Ernestine suffers a stroke, Audrey takes a leave from her fast-track CPA career to care for her. Only Ernestine’s hobby farm needs more tending than the patient herself. Audrey’s bitten off way more than she can chew, or harvest, or plant, or… How does one do hobby farming, anyway? Enter her neighbor Rowan Marshall, the sexy cider maker. Rowan’s only too happy to come to Audrey’s rescue. Which is all well and good until Audrey realizes Rowan’s angling to buy the orchard that makes up more than half of Ernestine’s pride and joy. It’s not long before a reluctant truce gives way to a romantic spark and forces Audrey to make the biggest decision of her life.

Sometimes, a second chance comes when you least expect it. Kate Cormier thought she’d love Sutton Guidry forever. But when one bad decision ended things, she moved on, building a life for herself and her daughter. These days, she hardly thinks about all those dreams. Until Sutton shows up, acting like she never left and looking more gorgeous than ever. Sutton has spent a decade avoiding her hometown, memories of first love, and the girl who broke her heart. She’s built a career, but the life that goes with it leaves her uninspired. When her father needs surgery, she decides coming home to help him recover is a chance to face those ghosts once and for all. But with so many pieces of her life still there—including Kate—it’s hard not to imagine trying again. Can she find a way to put them together without falling apart all over again?

Burned-out chef Sy Travino never expected to wind up on a goat farm in rural Vermont, but that’s exactly where she lands after leaving the restaurant world to become a cheese maker. It’s a great place to flex her muscles and make a name for herself, though. Too bad the house she bought is practically unlivable. Maddie Barrow can’t believe anyone would be dumb enough to buy a house sight unseen, but she’s not about to turn down the job of renovating it, especially since her best friend just hired Sy to turn Grumpy Old Goat into the chèvre everyone is talking about. When the estimate on the house exceeds Sy’s budget, Maddie puts her to work. It doesn’t take long for Sy and Maddie to admit their chemistry is off the charts, but having fun doesn’t always lead to forever. Could it be a foundation for love or nothing but a teardown?

Settle in for an opposites attract, renovation-to-remember from RITA® award finalist Aurora Rey. After years of hustling from one adjunct gig to another, Kathleen Kenney has finally hit the big time. Forget tenure, she’s got a best-selling novel under her belt. That means leaving the campus grind for rural Vermont, fixing up the old farmhouse of her dreams, and writing romance fiction from the comfort and quiet of her new home. She doesn’t believe in the happily-ever-afters they promise, but really, who does? As the youngest member of the Barrow Brothers Construction team, Logan Barrow leaps at the opportunity to take lead on the Kenney job. It’s a chance to prove she can go beyond design and see a project through, from start to finish. Unfortunately, a flirtatious foible puts Kathleen on the defensive and leaves Logan scrambling to be taken seriously. Nothing goes as planned, and their meet-cute is a definite fixer-upper. The renovation gets done because that’s what Barrow Brothers is all about. The hardest job of all, though, will be convincing Kathleen their love is as move-in-ready as her farmhouse.

Kip Kensington owes four hundred hours of community service for a joyride gone wrong. Jordan Rice has no time for younger women with trouble written all over them no matter how sexy they might be, even if she is in desperate need of more hands—and more funds—to keep her community garden project alive. Kip’s past follows her into Jordan’s carefully constructed, and safe, world, disrupting Jordan’s orderly life and threatening to uncover all the secrets she’d locked away: secrets she guarded as closely as her heart. Together they discover the only way to build a future is to make peace with the past.

Can falling in love melt the hearts of the iciest ice queens? All’s fair in love and roller derby. That’s Riley Fauchet’s motto, until a new job lands her at the same company—and on the same team—as her rival Brooke Landry, the frosty jammer for the Big Easy Bruisers.

New York advertising executive Lauren Montgomery loses her job, inherits an inn, and moves to England—all in the span of a week. It’s not how her career, or her life, is supposed to unfold. But necessity is the mother of invention and Lauren has a new plan. She’s going to spruce up the inn, turn the attached pub into a hot spot, sell it for a killing, and start her own advertising agency. Gin distiller Camden Crawley has a soft spot for the Rose & Crown, the pub where her parents and grandparents got engaged. But the opinionated new owner who wants to turn it into some trendy bed and bar? Not so much. The last thing she wants to do is stick her nose in, but that might be her best chance to save a place she holds dear. And boosting her new line of gin wouldn’t hurt either. It’s one thing to give in on the cocktail menu. But the very inconvenient, very mutual, attraction? That’s another matter entirely.

Fifth-generation lobster-woman Mat Pero loves her traditional Portuguese family and living in the lesbian hub of Provincetown, even if they feel like two different worlds. Or two different lives. Since she has no plans for them to collide, it’s not a problem. Graham Connor is a romantic at heart, but she hasn’t had a date in over a year. She vows to let loose and have a little fun, and the charming and confident Mat is more than happy to help. But casual hookups aren’t supposed to include romantic dinners and meeting the family. Can Mat see beyond the heartbreak that led her to keep her worlds so separate, and will Graham be waiting if she does?