Hide Your Wallet: October 20th Release Week

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Happy Tuesday!

Some interesting picks this week, include a new Lisa Kleypas and a forced proximity, second chance romance.

Which new releases are you excited for? Let us know in the comments!

No Love is an Island

No Love is an Island by Katta Kis

Author: Katta Kis
Released: October 20, 2026 by Katta Kis Books
Genre: , ,
Series: Pagans & Pop Stars #4

A drag queen, a fading superstar
Secret exs… stuck on a dating show together
What else could go wrong?

Former boy band idol and (mostly) reformed hot mess Leo Starr needed a break. His drinking was finally under control, but that wasn’t enough to get his drag bar out of the red. Worse, his secret ex Martin was back. Leo had one last ace up his glittery sleeve: he’s off to “find love” on a reality dating show.

A few bad albums dimmed Martin Mejia’s star power. The plan: a bombshell documentary to get him back into the public eye. The director wanted to cover his boy band days, but after he left the Beatboyz and Leo, his former bandmates won’t talk to him. If he could just get Leo to agree, the others would fall in line—but Leo’s about to be unreachable, filming on an island. The solution: join the cast.

Stuck together on a tiny island surrounded by cameras forced Leo and Martin to be more honest with each other than ever. When the show became a disaster not even the producers expected, they had to rely on each other to get out alive.

Their relationship might heal under pressure but can it last once the cameras stop rolling? Or would it end in yet another break-up?

Shana’s pick!

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Now That We Don’t Talk

Now That We Don’t Talk by Rachel Pologe

Author: Rachel Pologe
Released: October 20, 2026 by Berkley
Genre: ,

A commitment-phobe finds herself stuck spending Hanukkah with her childhood best friend turned nemesis, only for holiday chaos to ensue and complicated feelings to resurface, in this emotionally resonant debut romance.

Norah Gold is a bolter. She avoids emotional situations at all costs, doesn’t do meaningful relationships, and when things get a little too real, she runs. She hasn’t let herself fall in love in nearly a decade, not since her whole world fell apart when her dad suddenly passed away. Desperate to escape a friends-with-benefits situation gone clingy, she returns home to Chicago for the holidays. Her one goal? Avoid Henry Cole, the boy who blew up her life and broke her heart back in high school. Easier said than done when she discovers that their mothers are dating and insist on celebrating the holidays together.

A decade later, Henry Cole is all custom suits and condescension. He is order to her chaos and absolutely insufferable about it. When Norah and Henry get snowed in together and learn just how serious their moms’ relationship is, they call a truce to make it through all eight nights of Hanukkah without setting each other on fire. As they begin to rediscover the foundation that made them so close growing up, Norah is desperate to keep her distance—the last thing she can handle is reopening decade-old emotional wounds. But even though they’ve tried to escape the past, Norah and Henry have unfinished business too pressing to ignore. Can Norah shake off her deep-seated impulse to bolt, or are they destined to flame out just like they did as teenagers?

Dahlia: Nothing thrills me more than a new Jewish Romance author entering the arena, especially if they provide me a delightful Hanukkah read, and Pologe does just that with this rom-com that’s equal parts heat and healing. (Also, the Sapphic parent rep is cute as hell.)

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Our Dark Incantations

Our Dark Incantations by Wanda Hellmund

Author: Wanda Hellmund
Released: October 20, 2026 by Ace
Genre: , ,

In this achingly romantic dark academia fantasy a young woman must embrace Dark Magic and an alliance with a deadly Wielder to fight a powerful threat cloaked in shadow.

After the war, ex-healer Mira Winters swore she’d never touch magic again. And yet here she is attending the newly reopened Ivercrest University, enrolled in the wrong magic department, paired up with the absolute wrong partner—the infuriating Aidric Dawson.

Instead of learning how to make a potion strong enough to heal her incurable scar, Mira attends demonology lessons, casts deadly spells…and is accidentally dragged into a murder investigation on campus—one with devastating ripples that bleed into the magical world far beyond the university.

Even more devastating? Aidric Dawson. Rumored to have been a high-ranking soldier during the war, the lethal Wielder is arrogant, aristocratic, and shrouded in secrets…but with his own wounds from the war, he may also be the only one who truly understands Mira.

A labyrinth of clues pulls Mira and Aidric deep into a sinister plot hiding in the shadows of magical society, threatening war once more. Can the two enemies work together without losing their hearts—or their lives—in the process?

Amanda: What did I say just last week about dark academia releases!

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Queen of Lombard Street

Queen of Lombard Street by Lisa Kleypas

Author: Lisa Kleypas
Released: October 20, 2026 by Avon
Genre: , ,

From New York Times bestselling author Lisa Kleypas—a sweeping, richly layered Victorian novel about a trailblazing female economist who’s determined to build Britain’s first women’s bank, but she must fight both financial corruption and a system intent on destroying the newly found family she’s created.

In Victorian England, no woman—not even a brilliant economist like Reina Martin—is allowed to open her own bank account. Men will take care of everything, women are told. But Reina knows better. As the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish immigrant mother, she’s haunted by the memory of living with unpaid grocer’s bills and no coal for the hearth.

So together with her mentor, the powerful banker William Farlow, Reina will build the first all-women’s bank, where women can manage their own financial security.

At home, Reina’s domestic staff of recently paroled prisoners are building new lives and becoming a found family. But soon Reina is shocked to discover that her enigmatic butler, John Pembroke, is an undercover police detective. He’s been assigned to investigate Farlow, who’s suspected of financial crime on a scale so massive, it could destabilize the British economy. Pembroke needs Reina’s expertise for a high-stakes nighttime heist to obtain incriminating evidence.

Now Reina faces the agonizing choice of betraying her mentor or turning her back on thousands of working-class families who stand to lose everything. Either way, her dream of the women’s bank may be over.

But courage and sacrifice aren’t limited to the battlefield—they also occur at the kitchen table, where women who believe in compassion and community are working to remake the future. And when the stakes are highest, Reina knows to trust her heart as well as her intellect.

Based on real-life trailblazers such as Mary Paley Marshall, Britain’s first female economist, and financial titan Hetty Green, Queen of Lombard Street brings to light the hidden history of extraordinary women whose achievements should be celebrated. How can we know who we are, if we don’t know who we were?

New Lisa Kleypas, though I think this skews more toward historical fiction.

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Royal Witch

Royal Witch by Philippa Gregory

Author: Philippa Gregory
Released: October 20, 2026 by William Morrow
Genre: ,
Series: The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels #1

Ambition. Sorcery. Treason. How far will one woman dare to go?

1420. Eleanor Cobham arrives at the court of Henry V. Pretty but not highborn, she hopes for nothing more than to marry well.

It is a golden age for England, its royal family’s dynasty stretching across Europe. But chaos waits in the shadows. Betrayals and shifts of power change the flourishing world Eleanor has stepped into.

Working in the household of a Countess who commands her own army, Eleanor begins to see for the first time what a woman is capable of…what men’s promises are truly worth.

As the safe, comfortable future she’d envisioned begins to shift, Eleanor changes with it. Now she must use her wits to survive – and to rise. Her newfound ambition will to carry her further than any woman before has dared. But if she is to rule England itself, she will need to turn to darker arts..

Elyse: I’ve read all of Gregory’s novels and I really enjoy them.

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Succubus

Succubus by Kate Fox

Author: Kate Fox
Released: October 20, 2026 by St. Martin's Griffin
Genre: ,

Her touch kills, his saves the dying.
Are they fated, or forbidden?

Tempest Dunlap loves romance novels, but she knows she’ll never have her own happily-ever-after. She is a sweatpants-wearing doula who homeschools her seven-year-old niece in suburban New Jersey. Unfortunately, she’s also a succubus: Every man she’s ever kissed has died. But Tempest is a good person who never intended to be a murderer, so she’s sworn off love forever.

Then she meets Joel Tav, a gorgeous, gentle doctor who makes celibacy feel impossible. Tempest knows she can’t touch him—or tell him his brother was the last man she dated and accidentally killed.

Meanwhile, a vigilante is hunting people with dark powers, and Tempest is next. Should she keep hiding in her safe, lonely life, or should she embrace the darkness she fears and risk the ultimate forbidden love?

Maybe Tempest will get her love story after all . . . or maybe she’ll become its villain.

Dahlia: This is a fascinatingly twisty debut that took me on a serious ride from “Wait, is this really paranormal or a metaphor starring paranoid people?” to… well, I won’t spoil it, but needless to say it is definitely a PNR! It’s a bit of a wild ride (complimentary) from instalust (a personal fave) to enemies to lovers to ???, but underpinning it all is an aching poignancy about what it means to want to love but be unable to physically express it without harming the object of your affection. Definitely one of my most unique romance reads this year.

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The Tarot Trials

The Tarot Trials by Katee Robert

Author: Katee Robert
Released: October 20, 2026 by Tor Books
Genre: ,
Series: The Tarot Trials #1

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Dark Olympus series, this high-octane, fast-paced epic fantasy of tarot magic and deadly competition launches an explosive new series perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab and Carissa Broadbent.

The deck has always been stacked against her.

Kestrel has trained her whole life to compete in the Tarot Trials. Her mother won once, earning a place among the five ruling Cinque—then paid for it with her life, executed for alleged treason against the Minor Court.

But fortune favors the bold.

Now it falls to Kestrel to take up her mother’s mantle as Champion of the Moon, enter the Trials, and face her fate. If she can master her new powers of shadow and illusion, navigate the poisonous game of alliances and lies, and corner the fellow Champion who dealt the killing blow to her mother years ago, she may uncover the truth she’s seeking without losing her head… or her heart. But in the Trials, betrayal is a question of when, not if. And winning the game isn’t about what she must do to win, but who she needs to survive.

I think I saw Robert mention this is more fantasy with romantic subplots. 

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