Hi Reader,

June is one of those months when the publishing calendar feels like a shelf with all the best doors unlocked at once.

At JL Collins Publishing, we have two new releases already out in the world and two more arriving on June 15. That means this week belongs to second chances, dangerous bargains, dragon bonds, and one very suspicious crow.

Here is what is happening across our author worlds.

Clara Langford returns to Cedar Falls with a romance about the kind of change that arrives quietly, then refuses to leave.

Olivia Bennett has spent years as the steady hand at Mercy General, the head nurse who knows where everything is, who everyone calls when something breaks, and who has forgotten what it feels like to want something just for herself. Then she takes twelve days in Italy, comes home with a sourdough starter named Beatrice, and realizes the life waiting for her in Cedar Falls may not fit her the same way anymore.

Mark Sullivan arrives with spreadsheets, hospital strategy, and history Olivia would rather not reopen. He has been sent to evaluate Mercy General's future. She has spent her life holding that hospital together.

This is over-40, closed-door contemporary romance for readers who love small towns, competent grown-ups, hospital-family warmth, second chances, and a love story that does not rush the healing.

Jennie Wren Foster opens a new romantasy series with a world where the impossible can be weighed, catalogued, and sold.

The Midnight Auction is not the kind of evil that announces itself. It has chandeliers, polished wood, courteous attendants, and ledgers neat enough to make cruelty look respectable. In that world, grief, memories, names, obedience, and power can all become lots on the block.

Lira Vess knows the Auction too well. Nox knows what it means to have the center of himself stolen. Their story begins in the dark, with a stolen name and a dangerous act of witnessing, then becomes something warmer and more defiant: a slow-burn romantasy about trust, agency, and the price of bringing a person all the way home.

This one is Book One in a new series, so readers can start here.

Kira Deveraux's next Ashpeak Alphas book arrives June 15, and this one is for readers who like their paranormal romance dark, high-heat, and emotionally hard-won.

Sable is a mercenary tracker who trusts exits, weapons, and her own instincts. Raith is the rogue dragon she has been hired to capture. But after three weeks on his trail, Sable begins to understand the shape of the trap: she was never only the hunter.

Raith has known Sable was his mate for two years. He has loved her from a distance, punished himself for wanting her, and let her chase him straight into the truth neither of them can afford to ignore.

Expect fated mates, a fiercely capable heroine, a wounded alpha, dragon clans, clan politics, old war, and a guaranteed happily ever after. This one is intended for 18+ readers.

Jessie Clark brings us back to Pelican Cove for Book Two of The Winifred Baxter Mysteries.

Winifred Baxter runs Baxter's Botanicals and Curiosities, keeps a bowl for things she cannot explain yet, and lives with Copernicus, a crow who has never once behaved as though he is only a bird. When Copernicus puts the three of clubs back where Winifred cannot ignore it, the old case she wanted to stop thinking about becomes the beginning of something new.

Then a stranger asks careful questions about the Wexford house. A historian is found dead at the historical society's back stairs. Crows gather on the roof. A town preparing to be charming for Harbor Days starts showing the older, colder things it has agreed not to look at.

A Murder of Crows is small-town mystery with coastal Maine atmosphere, fair-play clues, old water, hidden history, and a sleuth who is very good at arguing for the dull explanation until the dull explanation finally fails.

If you had to choose your June door, which one would you open first?

Would you go back to Cedar Falls for a second chance, step into the Auction as a witness, follow a rogue dragon into the mountains, or count the crows on a Pelican Cove roof?

Hit reply and tell me which world is calling you.

Compelling stories. Unforgettable worlds.

Lori Collins, Publisher

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