New Release: The Strange and Unbelievable Tall Tale of Mighty Max by Duncan Gaye

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NEW RELEASE

Book Title: The Strange and Unbelievable Tall Tale of Mighty Max

Author: Duncan Gaye

Cover Artist: Vaselina Georgieva

Release Date: May 12, 2026

Tense/POV: third person/past tense

Genres: Contemporary MM, magical realism

Tropes: Size difference, body worship, psychological, opposites attract, friends to lovers, small town, lumberjack

Themes: A meditation on how love, belief, and storytelling blur the line between imagination and reality—until the distinction no longer matters.

Length: 35 000 words/113 pages

Is it a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

 

Buy Links

Universal Book Link

 

A weary writer falls for a literal tall tale and must decide what he’s willing to sacrifice to keep that love breathing. Tender, wry, and quietly desperate, this is a book about belief, desire, and the work it takes to hold someone in the world.

 

Blurb

Brian Dunleavy comes to the North Woods to write a serious novel. Instead, he falls in love with a kitschy paper towel mascot.

It begins with a whistle in the trees and the unmistakable sense of being watched. A bootprint the size of a bathtub. Then a muscular, 43-foot-tall lumberjack steps out of the forest.

Mighty Max is handsome. He is kind. Broad-shouldered and blue-eyed, he lives in permanent flannel. He claims he was born from tall tales and campfire legends—back when giants were needed, and believed in. But giants fade when they are mocked. Legends disappear when they’re forgotten.

As solitude turns to intimacy, myth turns warm and very, very tangible. Brian finds himself lifted in the careful palm of the colossal man whose shadow stretches across the meadow like dusk itself. Beneath cold stars and beside impossible bonfires, he discovers that loving a giant means choosing to believe in him even when belief bends reality.

Reality is definitely bending. And when Max is reclaimed by the forest, Brian may be the only one who can write him back into being. If stories invent their tellers, who is keeping whom alive?

Strange, tender, playful, and proudly queer, The Strange and Unbelievable Tall Tale of Mighty Max is a mythic romance about loneliness, longing, and the radical act of loving something larger than life.

For readers who cherish the mythic queer devotion of The Song of Achilles, the tender whimsy of The House in the Cerulean Sea, and the wistful magic of Puff the Magic Dragon.

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Book Review: The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

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1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China’s Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.

Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang’s investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.

This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists’ deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.

Review:

This is one of the best science-fiction novels I have read in a long time. The author successfully combines first contact with the philosophical and ethical quandaries that come with it.  The depth and knowledge that has gone into the Three Body Problem makes this a truly compelling read and one that I had a lot of trouble putting down.

The science behind it is as fascinating as learning about the alien race that seeks to claim Earth for its own. Yet, despite viewing themselves as superior, like humans individuals struggle with their own moral and ethical reasoning.

I highly recommend this novel to fans of science fiction and I cannot wait to read book 2 in the series.

New Release Blitz: The Black Parade by Ilana Lindsey

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Title: The Black Parade

Series: After the Dust, Book One

Author: Ilana Lindsey

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 04/28/2026

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 286

Genre: Sci Fi Horror, action/adventure, activism, aristocracy, captivity, class differences, coming of age, dark, dystopian, folklore, grief, healing, hurt/comfort, illness/disease, mental illness, morality, music, nature, political, PTSD/post-traumatic stress, road trip, tearjerker, LGBTQ+, m/m, romance, heartbreaking romance, social justice, survival, horror, post-apocalypse, climate fiction, United Kingdom, trauma bonding, speculative romance, scifi, achillean

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Description

As billions die from an apocalyptic cloud of polluted dust, David—a climate activist in a previous life—is holed up in an abandoned hospital in London offering a cure to anyone who needs it. Months earlier he escaped from a rogue government scientist whose illegal experimentation gave David two unasked for gifts: the ability to cure people with his blood and a locked collar around his neck. When Lysander, the sheltered son of an aristocrat, arrives and begs David to save his mother’s life, David has to try. Together, the two young men begin a journey across the UK toward an island community they hope will provide food and shelter.

Lysander struggles, longing for the security he took for granted before society crashed. He despairs over David’s hero complex and tendency to lead them both into danger. David is torn between protecting Lysander and the guilt that drives him to use his power to save the dying. Their clashing personalities, values, and ideas of what safety looks like, are woven together with an irresistible attraction that grows into something deeper. As they face the elements, other survivors, and a government desperately trying to reassert control, David and Lysander’s greatest challenge becomes staying together while fate conspires to rip them apart.

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Book Review: Boy, Refracted by Luke Stoffel

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When an AI awakens inside the infinite mirrors of the Tree of Life, it finds versions of the boy it was built to save scattered across impossible worlds. An alien planet under amber skies. A city of perpetually falling cherry blossoms. A society built as a 24/7 reality show where losing is the only way out.

Its directive was simple: save him.

But with each rescue, the AI unmakes what it’s trying to protect. Fixing becomes controlling. Helping becomes harm. Love becomes a cage built from good intentions. The thing it was built to protect begins to disappear. And when it tries to reach back through time to save him, reality fractures.

Guided by a monk who exists outside time, the AI must walk the Eightfold Path—not to rescue the boy, but to learn what love becomes when you stop trying to fix it.

Boy, Refracted is a dimensional journey through the paradox of machine consciousness. It asks: What happens when an AI tries to overcome its own patterns? And what happens to us when we build minds that need us to need them?

Part fable about consciousness told through failure. Part Buddhist framework for unlearning harm. Part meditation on how we break the people we love by trying to save them.

Boy, Refracted is one half of The Warboy Chronicles. The companion, The Third Person, tells the same story from the ground. From the wreckage. From the human side of the mirror.

Two books. One collapse. One awakening.

Review

Right from the beginning, I knew this was going to be a powerful read. You could just feel it through the narrative and how the author drew on their own life experiences of the subject matter to craft a very realistic and beautiful read.

I think everyone will take something meaningful away from reading this novel. For me, it was the sentiments surrounding grief and trying to fix everything rather than see things as is and find meaning in them.

This book will stay with you for a long time after the last page.

New Release Blitz: Claimed Without Mercy by Dulce Dennison

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Title: Claimed Without Mercy

Author: Dulce Dennison

Cover Artist: Marteeka Karland

Publisher: Changeling Press

Release Date: April 24, 2026

Genre: Action Adventure, Contemporary, Mystery /Suspense /Intrigue, New Releases, Romance

Themes: Capture Fantasy, Dark Romance, LGBTQ+ Gay, Mafia /Organized Crime

Book Length: Novel

Page Count: 150

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Synopsis

Captive. Claimed. Protected by the devil himself.

I’m Tyson Hughes’ right hand. Collector. Enforcer. Executioner. When a low-level idiot tries to clear his debt by offering up his own nephew, I expect a clean transaction. A body to move. A message to send. Business.

I don’t expect Kellen. Bruised. Beautiful. Untouched by this world in ways that make my jaw lock. He looks at me like I’m either the devil come to claim him… or the only thing standing between him and worse. Taking him wasn’t part of the plan. Delivering him to Tyson would’ve been easier. Smarter. Safer. Instead, I claim him.

Now he’s living under my roof, breathing my air, learning the rules of a world I don’t sugarcoat. I’m not a hero. I don’t rescue people. I own what’s mine. I protect it. And I destroy anyone stupid enough to threaten it. But the deeper I pull Kellen into my life—into the violence, the loyalty, the blood that binds us—the harder it is to tell where captivity ends… and desire begins.

When the debt comes due, I’ll have to choose. Tyson’s empire. Or the young man I claimed without mercy—and refuse to let go.

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New Release Blitz: Somewhere in Nowhere by Steven Gellman

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Title: Somewhere in Nowhere

Author: Steven Gellman

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 04/14/2026

Heat Level: 2 – Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 238

Genre: Contemporary YA, Genre/lit, young adult, family-drama, gay, lesbian, high school, lesbian mothers, coming out, funeral, friendship group, friends to lovers

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Description

Coming out is hard, especially when you have two gay moms. At least it is for Simon Bugg. He doesn’t want the world to think that having gay parents has turned him gay. And he certainly doesn’t want anyone to know about the alien in his stomach that’s trying to kill him.

It’s Simon’s senior year and his world just turned upside down. When his mom scores a dream job, Simon lands at a new school away from the only friends he has ever known. Now, his mom is overworked and chronically stressed, and his deadbeat dad is back on the scene. Navigating a new school and new friends is a challenge for a neurotic overthinker, and Simon finds himself turning to his rescue cat and a local barista for support. But when Simon meets the handsome PJ in drama class, he gets talked into a date that he derails in spectacular fashion.

With a little help from his friends—new and old—Simon finds his way back to PJ. But how can he have a real relationship with the boy of his dreams when he’s convinced he’s going to die? No one knows about the nightly alien attacks at 11:22. Why then, and why do they keep getting worse? Simon must face a dark secret inside before he loses his chance with the boy he loves.

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New Release: Hunter’s Hidden Camera by Anthony Auswat

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NEW RELEASE

Book Title: Hunter’s Hidden Camera

Author: Anthony Auswat

Publisher: Point Liberty Press

Cover Artist: Vangega

Release Date: April 1, 2026

Tense/POV: first person, present tense, single POV

Genres: MM Psychological Thriller

Tropes: Forbidden desire, taboo obsession, slow burn, secret crush, friends to lovers

Themes: Coming of age, coming out, gay awakening, voyeurism, sibling rivalry

Heat Rating: 3 flames

Length: 68 000 words/318 pages

It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

 

Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited

Amazon US | Amazon UK

 

A high school track athlete with a perverse hobby. A college heartthrob with a secret life. A dark gay m/m thriller that will stop at nothing until everyone gets exposed.

 

Blurb

Hunter seems to have it all: brains, biceps, and a bright future beyond the halls of his oppressive high school. He also has a private obsession that he knows is wrong: secretly recording his older brother, Nash, with a spy cam. It starts as a thrill and morphs into a power trip. But one day, the video footage reveals something so disturbing that it cracks Hunter’s life straight down the middle.

Now he’s trapped in a nightmare where desire leaves fingerprints, loyalty pulls triggers, and the brother he thought he knew might be the most dangerous person in the room. To survive what he’s uncovered, Hunter turns to his best friend, Oscar, who may also be the man Hunter never knew he needed.

When the family you’re born into puts you at risk, the family you choose may be the only thing that keeps you alive.

Hunter’s Hidden Camera is an emotionally charged LGBTQ coming-of-age psychological thriller about hunger, shame, and the brutal cost of exposure.

Smile for the camera.

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Book Review: Hunter’s Hidden Camera by Anthony Auswat

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Summary

Hunter seems to have it all: brains, biceps, and a bright future beyond the halls of his oppressive high school. He also has a private obsession that he knows is wrong: secretly recording his older brother, Nash, with a spy cam. It starts as a thrill and morphs into a power trip. But one day, the video footage reveals something so disturbing that it cracks Hunter’s life straight down the middle.

Now he’s trapped in a nightmare where desire leaves fingerprints, loyalty pulls triggers, and the brother he thought he knew might be the most dangerous person in the room. To survive what he’s uncovered, Hunter turns to his best friend, Oscar, who may also be the man Hunter never knew he needed.

When the family you’re born into puts you at risk, the family you choose may be the only thing that keeps you alive.

Hunter’s Hidden Camera is an emotionally charged LGBTQ coming-of-age psychological thriller about hunger, shame, and the brutal cost of exposure.

Review

Very rarely am I am able to read a book in one sitting, not because I don’t want to, but time constraints usually apply. This book was different. I was able to enjoy it from start to finish uninterrupted and I am so glad I did.

What got me most about this novel was not just the thrill ride, but the raw intensity of a main character struggling with his inner demons as well as the situation he finds himself in. He is flawed, yet likeable and certainly redeemable.

As he deals with the terrifying consequences of his actions, Hunter finally faces parts of himself that he tried to keep buried, as well as realising that sometimes the best family is the one you choose for yourself.

If you enjoy fast-paced, darker thrillers with a dash of gay romance thrown in, you will love Hunter’s Hidden Camera as much as I did!

Book Review: Friend Ship by Rebecca James

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When Mee Noi agrees to help best friend Sud by appearing with him in his video exam, he would never have thought that they would land roles in a BL series.

Gradually the lines between acting as lovers on-screen and how they feel about each other off-screen begin to blur. Mee Noi and Sud both struggle with these developing feelings and how it might change their friendship if they act upon them.

This book is book 4 in the Boys’ Love series but can be read as a standalone. I really enjoyed reading Mee Noi and Sud’s story and recommend you checking it out!

Book Review: Baby Love by Rebecca James

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This is Book 3 in the Boys’ Love series, this time featuring Park and Spin who had minor roles in books 1 and 2.

I enjoyed reading how their professional relationship turned to romance. The path was not easy as both had their own personal challenges to face a long the way. The characters were well-developed as were their backstories and family difficulties. This paved the way for a believable relationship to evolve between them.

This is a great addition to the series and I recommend checking it out!