Too Close To Love by M A Innes

Kevin and Jeremy are brothers. When Kevin is 14 a man attempts to grab him on the way home from school. Jeremy ( his older brother) hears his screams and saves him. From then on they are closer than they were before. By the time Kevin is 17 they are sexually attracted to each other but neither is willing to say anything thinking the other one would disgusted. Eventually Kevin starts flirting and letting Jeremy know he is interested. 

Their mother is very controlling and doesn't like that Kevin is wanting to go away to another city for college unlike Jeremy who stayed in the same city. He stayed so he could still live at home with Kevin. 

Kevin and Jeremy decide to go a college in another city where no one knows them. They live together as a couple.

This is the first book in a, so far, 5 book series about their developing relationship.  I can see it getting into some D/s and maybe age-play.

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Open Secrets by Alice Munro

In these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia. And Munro shows us how one woman's romantic tale of capture and escape in the high Balkans may end up inspiring another woman who is fleeing a husband and lover in present-day Canada."

Beautifully written, multi-layered stories.  Some of them were bit too literary fo me.

Reapers property by Joanna Wylde

Marie doesn’t need a complication like Horse. The massive, tattooed badass biker who shows up at her brother’s house one afternoon doesn’t agree. He wants Marie on his bike and in his bed. Now.

But Marie just left her abusive jerk of an ex-husband and she’s not looking for a new man. Especially one like Horse. She doesn’t know his real name or where he lives. She’s ninety percent certain he’s a criminal and that the “business” he talked with her brother wasn’t website design. She needs him out of her life, which would be a snap if he wasn’t so damned sexy. 

Horse is part of the Reapers Motorcycle Club, and when he wants something, he takes it. What is he wants is Marie, but she’s not interested in becoming some biker’s property. 

Then her brother steals from the club. Now Marie can save him by giving Horse what he wants—at home, in public, on his bike… and if she’s a very, very good girl, he’ll let her brother live. 

I like the romance and action and the bad boy biker who is so tough with everyone else buts is loving and sweet with his girl.

The Lilac Bus by Maeve Binchy

Each Friday, Tom Fitzgerald drives the same people home from Dublin to spend the weekend in Rathdoon. Nancy, Dee, Kev and Celia - each has their own secret story, unknown to their fellow passengers. And of course Tom himself has his own reasons for returning home so regularly...

A little different, not a full story and not a collection of stories but each chapter is about one of the occupants of the Lilac Bus which takes them from their home village of Rathodoon on on a Sunday evening to Dublin (where they all work in different jobs), then home again on a Friday evening.

Set around 1 weekend, their lives are changed from the Friday evening when they travel home, to when they go back on Sunday evening.

A nice light feel good read. Some surprises. Sort of about how nobody really knows everything about another person, even family.

Mama and the Alien Warrior by Honey Phillips

Abby Wentworth never regretted abandoning her corporate career to adopt her orphaned niece and run a maternity home. But she certainly never expected to find herself and her girls abducted by aliens who intend to sell them as breeders. 

When they are rescued by a massive alien and his crew, desires she has long suppressed start to surface. She finds herself unexpectedly drawn to the captain who treats both her and her daughter with unwavering devotion.

Until his ship intercepts an illegal Vedeckian trader, Captain Hrebec is resigned to spending his life alone. The Cires lost their females to a plague many years ago. Now for the first time, this luscious human female has him longing for a mate and a family.

I like the alpha male looking after and protecting the woman storyline.

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A Keeper by Graham Norton

Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland after her mother's death, intent only on wrapping up that dismal part of her life. There is nothing here for her; she wonders if there ever was. The house of her childhood is stuffed full of useless things, her mother's presence already fading. And perhaps, had she not found the small stash of letters, the truth would never have come to light.

40 years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet but for the tireless wind that circles her as she hurries further into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea. She has no sense of where she is going, only that she must keep on.

It was told in alternating chapters of then and now.  It was easy to tell the 2 stories apart..  At first I enjoyed the now storyline more, but gradually the then storyline became fascinating.

A sad story with that was beautifully told and with a very satisfying ending.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later does Johannes appear and present her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in unexpected ways . . .

Nella is at first mystified by the closed world of the Brandt household, but as she uncovers its secrets she realizes the escalating dangers that await them all. Does the miniaturist hold their fate in her hands? And will she be the key to their salvation or the architect of their downfall?

Weird, twisty mystery about a house of secrets. The miniaturist of the title was an unnecessary, strange addition to the story that didn't add anything to the book.