1 – The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon
A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.
2 – Taken (The Harvest series Book 1) – M.A. Church
We are not alone. In the year 2050 mankind’s never-ending quest for proof life exists in the universe is answered—in the form of massive space ships that appear without warning above the capitals of all major nations. The name of their planet is Tah’Nar—and is dying. The United States sets up a lottery system, and each young man between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-eight is assigned a number. Once a year, for the next five years, numbers will be drawn and a new set of one thousand males will be collected. The media coined the expression ‘The Harvest’ for when the Tah’Narian’s collect these young men.
Captain Keyno Landium Shou is a Tah’Narian starship captain who has been granted the right to take a mate, any mate, he wants during the last harvest on Earth. Dale was seventeen when the aliens first appeared. His parents assumed he’d be safe since the final collection would be done before he turned twenty-three. He didn’t fall within the guidelines established, so they took for granted he had nothing to fear.
They were wrong.
3 – Uncharted – Alli Temple
Treacherous storms. A mysterious pirate king. The prince’s unrelenting pursuit. Georgina and Cinder can only escape by following the uncharted course of their hearts. But just as a future together is within their grasp, Cinder’s past threatens to drag them both to the deep.
4 – Princess of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa Book 1) – Eliza Andrews
Rebellious Princess Natasia has always known that her fate is to marry a man her father can shape into his heir. But everything changes after a would-be assassin nearly takes Tasia’s life. Someone with means and connections is obviously trying to destabilize the Empire, but who? No noble family is above suspicion, so the Emperor takes the extraordinary step of naming his daughter his true heir.
Tasia suddenly finds herself saddled with learning to rule an entire Empire. But there are enemies on every side, threatening to disrupt the Empire’s fragile peace — there’s the long-standing and deeply unpopular war in the East, disagreements amongst her father’s closest advisors, angry lords threatening their defiance, and rumors of a faraway kingdom trying to sow discord.