Swords and Spaceships for February 12

The first book of Alyssa Cole’s Off the Grid series, which takes palce in a post-apocalyptic world where all technology has failed and people need to band together to survive–and find romance while they’re searching for supplies.

Also check out Alyssa’s cute near-future AI romance, The AI Who Loved Me.

Holley Trent writes paranormal romance that is funny, and sharp, and snarky, and with characters who are delightful trash not-literal-goblins. This one’s an F/F romance about a coyote shifter and the girlfriend she ghosted hashing out their problems.

This is a space opera with noble houses, runaway daughters, political machinations, secret science experiments, incipient wars, the whole nine yards. And of course, romances between strong-willed daughters of a noble house with a particularly douchey dad and an array of dangerous men who are very good at shooting things.

Nalini Singh writes a ton of paranormal romance–she’s got shifters, she’s got changelings, she’s got vampires, she’s got angels. It’s hard to think where to even start! Nalini herself points to this book as a good entry point to her Psy-Changeling series, which pairs emotionally distant Psy characters with Changeling shifters.

Lyre got sent by her people to betray Empress Sabine, and then fell in lover with her instead. Now they’re on their way back to Lyre’s home, a floating city that runs on biotech, and the city would like its revenge on both of them.

Like Nalini Singh, Kit Rocha writes a lot of great SFF romance in all sorts of subgenres. In all honesty, the reason I grabbed this book as the one to highlight is because I will never be over the concept of “mercenary librarians”–people who help those in need with knowledge and pay the bills by raiding data vaults. It’s delightful stuff.

Kotahi Bay is a place where magic is real, mortals and gods cross paths, and witches and necromancers have to protect their home and their families–while maybe finding someone to share their lonely lives. This series has a bit of a dark undertone to it. JC Hart also writes fantasy/romance fairytale retellings as Nova Blake; check out Ebony Slumbers.

KJ Charles writes mostly queer historical romance, but this one’s a historical romance with magic in it, including animated tattoos and a supernatural threat to a new earl’s life, thanks to the enemies he inherited to go with the title. He hires a magician to protect him, and things get steamy from there. Honestly, I love everything this author writes.