22 December Releases for Your TBR
Twenty-two verified sapphic releases land in December 2026, which makes it a much bigger month than December usually is. The first of the month does most of the work: four Bold Strokes novels and five books from big publishers all arrive on 1 December, including a new dark romantasy from A.K. Mulford and sequels from Rebecca Thorne, Lucy Lehane and Juliet Brooks. Then the Christmas books take over — seven of them, five of which are spicy novellas published on the same day and set in the same snowed-in town.
Every date below was checked on 10 October 2026 against the publisher, a retailer, or both. Bold Strokes and Bella books carry two real dates — an early publisher-direct date and a later retail date — and we show both rather than picking one. Our hub listed eleven December titles; this guide confirms all eleven, adds eleven more, and explains the books we left off.
Jump to the calendarThe December Christmas booksSee our December picks
Last updated: 11 October 2026 · dates last verified 10 October 2026. Part of the Sapphic Release Radar, our running guide to upcoming sapphic books. Previous month: November 2026. Looking for holiday reads specifically? See Sapphic Christmas & New Year books 2026.
Find Your December Read
Twenty-two books is a lot for one month, and they pull in very different directions — a cursed-dream romantasy, a unicorn roommate, a bookmobile murder case and a stack of Christmas novellas. Pick the reading experience you want and jump straight to it.
| If you’re looking for… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Dark romantasy from a bestselling name | Dreamslayer — A.K. Mulford |
| Funny workplace fantasy, low angst | A Mermaid in Marketing — Juliet Brooks |
| Exes stranded at the bottom of the ocean | This Crimson Ruin — Rebecca Thorne |
| High-heat paranormal rom-com | Horny — Lucy Lehane |
| A sapphic Hades and Persephone | Wither and Bloom — E.K. O’Connor |
| A gothic thriller rather than a romance | Possession Island — Sarah McCarry |
| Crime with a slow-building romance | Murder on the Back Roads — Karis Walsh |
| A true-crime podcaster falling for the victim’s aunt | Two Truths and a Crime — Carsen Taite |
| An age gap over one summer | Under the Stars — Ursula Klein |
| An inheritance, an English manor and a solicitor | Before You & Me — Jaime Clevenger & S.V. Dalton |
| A rock star versus a talk-show host | Refrain from the Heart — Justice Woods |
| A hometown rom-com with a movie star | In Your Starlight — Marina Baker |
| A spicy Christmas novella you can finish in one sitting | The Hers for the Holidays five — 4 December |
| A full-length small-town Christmas | Jingle Bell Hops — Kat Paige |
| A December book about a hard year | 12 Months of Christmas — Kim Pritekel |
| Young adult, in graphic-novel form | Love Light — Mela Rogers |
Romance or Sapphic Fiction?
We label this on every book, because it is the distinction release lists most often blur.
Sapphic romance means the relationship between women is central to how the book is built. Remove it and the plot collapses. The genre convention of an earned romantic resolution applies.
Sapphic fiction means sapphic characters and relationships matter, but the book is not structured as a genre romance. There may be no romantic payoff, or the relationship may run underneath a different engine.
December is overwhelmingly a romance month: twenty of the twenty-two are genre romances with a central F/F couple. Two need a note. Possession Island is marketed as a queer gothic thriller, and early readers say the romance takes a back seat to the murder. Love Light is a young adult graphic novel whose first love is between two girls, but the publisher copy does not say who the heroine ends up with, so we file it as sapphic fiction until we can confirm it.
December 2026 Sapphic Release Calendar
Grouped by the earliest date we could verify. Where a publisher and its retailers disagree, both dates appear on the book and it is marked Date Watch — buying direct from Bold Strokes or Bella genuinely gets you the book earlier.
December 1 · Direct from Bold Strokes
All four Bold Strokes December novels carry a publisher date of 1 December. Two already show a 15 December retail date; the other two have no retail listing yet, which is normal for this publisher two months out.
Murder on the Back Roads
Karis Walsh
🟠 Date watch
Why It’s on Our Radar
Willa McCourt runs library services for the rural communities near Washington’s coast, and her quiet routine ends when rookie State Patrol officer Steph Douglas arrives working a missing-person case. The case turns into a possible homicide, and Willa’s bookmobile becomes their base of operations as they drive the back roads asking questions. A librarian lead is a small pleasure the genre does not indulge often enough, and putting her in charge of a vehicle that goes everywhere and knows everyone is a smart way to give an amateur a real role in an investigation. Walsh has a long Bold Strokes backlist in both romance and mystery.
Add it to your TBR if… you like romantic suspense where the case and the romance carry equal weight, a small-town setting where everybody is hiding something, and a heroine whose job is books.
Preorder direct from Bold Strokes →
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Two Truths and a Crime
Carsen Taite
🟠 Date watch
Why It’s on Our Radar
Raleigh Drake walked away from the courtroom when justice failed her, and now hosts a hit true-crime podcast that shares its name with the book. Her latest case takes her to a small Texas town to look into the death of Lily Collins, and the person she gets closest to is Lily’s aunt, Quinn. That is a conflict of interest with teeth: the more Raleigh feels for Quinn, the harder it is to trust her own judgement about the case. Taite is one of the most reliable names in lesbian romantic suspense, and a podcast framing is a good fit for her courtroom background.
Add it to your TBR if… you like your romance with a body in it, an investigator who might be compromised, and an author who knows legal procedure from the inside.
Late Bloomer
Lisa Moreau
🔵 Preorder live · publisher only
Why It’s on Our Radar
Morgan Wellington is wealthy, well travelled and used to her emotionally distant father being exactly that. After his death she inherits an obligation she never expected: restore the Healing Hearts Sanctuary, a place she had never heard of. Its owner, Allie Bennett, wants to bring back the retreat’s famous rose garden, and their differences turn into attraction as they work. The publisher copy adds the element that makes it more than a makeover romance — a secret about Morgan’s father ties the two women’s pasts together — and then threatens the sanctuary itself, so Morgan has to choose between the life she had and the one she is building.
Add it to your TBR if… you like a restoration plot, a heroine who has to rethink a parent she thought she understood, and a gentle opposites-attract romance with a garden at the centre of it.
Under the Stars
Ursula Klein
🔵 Preorder live · publisher only
Why It’s on Our Radar
Ellie Mack is supposed to be applying to doctoral programmes and following the science career her parents chose for her. Then she meets Cade, fifteen years older, with an ex-wife and a child who comes first, and goes straight from instant attraction to automatic denial. When Ellie’s parents’ marriage implodes, Cade becomes the one steady thing in her summer. The publisher frames it explicitly as an age-gap romance, and the interesting tension is less the years than the timing: a summer is a finite thing, and both women know it. A summer book released in December is a little out of season, which is not a bad thing for anyone tired of snow.
Add it to your TBR if… you want an age gap where the older heroine is a parent with real responsibilities, a younger heroine working out what she actually wants, and a romance with a built-in deadline.
December 1 · Everyone else
A big day for big-publisher sapphic fiction: five books from HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan and their imprints, plus a small-press urban fantasy. Three of the six are sequels or series openers, so check the series line before you buy.
Dreamslayer
A.K. Mulford
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Praer Dundariff is a year away from ascending to the dream world when a friend dies with a warning, and she retreats into dreams of Reverie, a warrior she has only seen as a temple statue. Then Praer loses control of the dream, and discovers she is not asleep at all — she is in Hell, and Reverie is a nightmare. The publisher’s tagline does the job neatly: she was meant to become a dream, and fell in love with a nightmare instead. Mulford built a large readership with the Five Crowns of Okrith books, and this is the most commercially significant sapphic romantasy launch of the month.
Add it to your TBR if… you want dark romantasy with a devout heroine questioning everything she was taught, a love interest who is literally a monster, and a new series to follow from the start.
A Mermaid in Marketing
Juliet Brooks
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Half-mermaid Coral Waters has wanted a career in marketing ever since she was hit by a stray billboard during a storm at sea, and six months into her job on land she is only mildly in love with her boss, Ali. Then the two of them are put in charge of a new supernatural marketing team whose first clients are a pair of faeries opening a cat café, and they need the launch to work — and their feelings to stay hidden — or both of them may be out of a job after the holidays. Office comedy with magical clients is a genuinely fresh corner of fantasy romance, and the holiday deadline gives it a light seasonal flavour without making it a Christmas book.
Add it to your TBR if… you want a funny, low-stakes fantasy romance, a workplace crush with a deadline attached, or something cosy to read between heavier December books.
This Crimson Ruin
Rebecca Thorne
🟠 Date watch
Why It’s on Our Radar
Sergeant Nix Marr signed on as her ex’s bodyguard for a trip to the domed city of Fall, and doubted she would come back alive. Neither of them expected a disaster that would strand them both beneath the ocean, in an abandoned city that is flooding around them and still home to infected citizens. Meanwhile something is working its way into Nix’s mind. Exes forced to rely on each other in a sealed environment is second-chance romance at its most claustrophobic, and Thorne’s publisher markets the series plainly as a lesbian adventure.
Add it to your TBR if… you read This Gilded Abyss, you like exes who still have unfinished business, or you want an action-heavy book with a romance running through it rather than sitting beside it.
Horny
Lucy Lehane
🟠 Date watch
Why It’s on Our Radar
Rachel’s death is going about as well as her life did: she shares her body with a poltergeist, but she has good friends, a great room in a gorgeous apartment and a career she is clawing back. What she does not need is a new roommate who is a unicorn in human form, full of questions about the human world and able to see every one of Rachel’s secrets. Isolde, for her part, finds the human world more complicated than expected — especially the possessed, argumentative roommate. The title tells you most of what you need to know about the tone, and the publisher is upfront that this is a steamy book rather than a cosy one.
Add it to your TBR if… you want a funny, explicit paranormal rom-com, you liked Thirsty, or you have always wanted a unicorn love interest and did not know it.
Possession Island
Sarah McCarry
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Angela Bell grew up on Possession Island in the Pacific Northwest, the setting of her late mother’s hugely popular vampire novel. When she comes home from college and her estranged best friend Mo is murdered, she ends up in the crosshairs of a botched investigation. Sally Raleigh, Angie’s high-school nemesis, is stuck on the island caring for her father and devoted to her twin brother, and she is grieving Mo too — so the two of them form an uneasy alliance to find the killer. The publisher pitches it at fans of Interview with the Vampire and Plain Bad Heroines, and it is the most reviewed December title already: 193 Goodreads ratings before publication.
Add it to your TBR if… you want atmosphere and suspense first, you like rivals forced to work together, and you are happy for any romance to sit underneath the mystery rather than drive it.
Waxing and Waning
J.N. Howell
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Delilah Ali is a Magical Medical Practitioner who fully intends to fail her incompetent summer intern, Micah. Then her vampire ex-something, Darcy, crashes back into her life with a desperate request: untether the magic of her newborn son, Noah, before his late father’s werewolf pack hunts him down. The odd team goes on the run, old feelings resurface, and Delilah’s own long-dormant magic starts to wake up. At under two hundred pages it is the shortest full novel this month, and a doctor-for-monsters premise is a fun way into urban fantasy for readers who usually stick to contemporary.
Add it to your TBR if… you like urban fantasy with a medical twist, a second chance with an ex who arrives carrying a baby and a problem, and a book you can finish in an evening or two.
December 2–8
A myth retelling on 5 December and, on 4 December, the month’s strangest and most useful release: five spicy sapphic Christmas novellas by five authors, all published the same day.
Hers for the Holidays: five Christmas novellas, one snowy town
On 4 December five self-published authors release linked sapphic holiday novellas under the Hers for the Holidays banner, with a shared collection page on Amazon. Three of the five blurbs name the same snowy resort town, Winterbrook, so expect shared scenery and the odd cameo. Every one is billed as a spicy or steamy romance, and all five are novellas — the format the sapphic Christmas shelf is otherwise shortest of. We list them together because they work best as a set: one a night for the week before Christmas is a very reasonable plan.
These are self-published, so the retailer listing is our primary source for each, checked on 10 October 2026. None has reader ratings yet.
How the Critic Stole Christmas
Bryce Oakley
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Andie Pine has one winter to prove she can run The Grand Alpine, her family’s historic resort, while her parents try out retirement — and everything is falling apart. The lobby sleigh collapses, the giant Christmas star will not light, and praying mantises are hatching by the hundred out of the garland above the front desk. Then Morgan Sharpe checks in: a travel critic with the power to sink the place. Oakley has a long sapphic backlist, including one of the best-loved New Year’s Eve romances in the genre, and the disaster-comedy premise here is the funniest of the five.
Add it to your TBR if… you want slapstick holiday chaos, a heroine trying to impress the one guest who can ruin her, and a short, spicy read.
The Ex-Mas Effect
Lily X
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Juno Gold runs an antique jewellery shop in a snowy resort town, which sounds like the premise of a television Christmas film until her ex, Maisie “Army” Armitage, opens a rival antique store directly across the street four weeks before Christmas. Juno swore she would never let herself near Army again; she has learned to regulate her emotions, mostly. Exes running competing shops gives the second chance a daily point of friction, which is more than most holiday novellas manage at this length.
Add it to your TBR if… you like an ex who is also the competition, small-business rivalry at Christmas, and a second chance that has to be fought for.
The Fox Around the Corner
Kat Blackthorne
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Zuzu Pennyworth owns Winterbrook’s much-loved holiday bookshop and has bid on a bigger building despite losing her own Christmas cheer. A text from a wrong number one December night starts an anonymous conversation that brings the spark back — except the stranger is Fox Gladstone, her bookshop rival from two towns over, who has put in a competing offer on the same building. The title is a clear nod to The Shop Around the Corner, and anonymous messaging between rivals is a classic for a reason.
Add it to your TBR if… you love the You’ve Got Mail setup, bookshop romances, or a reveal you can see coming a mile away and still enjoy.
A Second Shot at Christmas
J.J. Arias
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Emilia Ayala is an accidental pub owner with an ancient, malevolent furnace, bar regulars she loves like family and every outrageous winter tradition that makes Winterbrook a holiday hotspot. Her ex-girlfriend was not one of her problems until Meghan Knox walked into the pub — on purpose, after years apart since graduation, hoping it is not too late. The author’s own framing is that the scariest part of love is letting it back in, and the pub-full-of-meddling-regulars setting gives the second chance a community to play against.
Add it to your TBR if… you want a cosy, steamy second-chance romance with a found-family pub at its heart.
Catching Strays
Chaos Davie
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Sawyer runs a veterinary clinic and considers herself a solitary creature, with her cat Salem for company. Carmen is a travelling house-sitter passing through for the winter rush, who turns up at the clinic with a wounded stray and then keeps turning up. Carmen is everything Sawyer avoids — bubbly, outgoing and far too comfortable disrupting her quiet life — and was never meant to stay. Grumpy/sunshine with a hard end date is the shape here, and the listing calls it a short story, so it is likely the briefest of the five.
Add it to your TBR if… you want grumpy/sunshine with animals in it, a temporary arrangement that stops feeling temporary, and something you can read in one go.
Wither and Bloom
E.K. O’Connor
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
The author’s pitch is that Persephone was not taken — that version is a lie of omission. Here she refuses the king of the gods and is cast into the Underworld as punishment, where she does not wither but blooms, coming into her own power in a realm that strips away every illusion she arrived with. Hades is written as a woman who has long shut out anything that might disrupt her rule. Retold from Persephone’s point of view and promised a happy ever after, it already has 40 Goodreads ratings at a 4.22 average two months out, which is strong for a small press.
Add it to your TBR if… you love Greek myth retellings, a heroine who grows into her power rather than being rescued, and a slow burn with a guaranteed happy ending.
December 9–15
The busiest week for contemporary romance: a full-length Christmas book, two Bella titles on the same day, a hometown rom-com and the month’s least festive Christmas novel.
Jingle Bell Hops
Kat Paige
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Six months after losing her job, Samantha Bright is broke and facing the holidays on her older sister’s futon in Frosty Pines, Montana — until brewery owner Audrey Malten offers her the empty unit next door and a temporary job at Mistletoe & Malt. Audrey is ready to find her person and knows better than to fall for her best friend’s little sister; Sam, on a self-imposed dating ban, decides to set Audrey up with someone else and regrets it almost immediately. Matchmaking that backfires is a reliable engine, and a brewery called Mistletoe & Malt tells you exactly what kind of Christmas book this is.
Add it to your TBR if… you want a full-length small-town Christmas romance rather than a novella, a heroine who meddles herself into feelings, and a cosy setting with real heat.
Before You & Me
Jaime Clevenger & S.V. Dalton
🟠 Date watch
Why It’s on Our Radar
Olivia Drake is a solicitor in Bath who expects to take over her father’s firm, and she has an estate to settle with no obvious heir. Morgan Loftry, an American, is told she has inherited a Georgian manor and assumes it is a scam — and to keep it she has to move to England for a year. As Morgan adjusts to British life, the two women uncover a mystery and an old romance tied to the house. Despite the manor’s wintry name, this is not a Christmas book. Clevenger is one of Bella’s most dependable names, and the co-writing credit is the interesting variable.
Add it to your TBR if… you like inheritance plots, a transatlantic culture clash, and a romance with a historical secret folded into it.
Refrain from the Heart
Justice Woods
🟠 Date watch
Why It’s on Our Radar
Eva Jerome is a celebrated rock singer-songwriter stuck in a creative slump, pushed into a guest spot on the Hayley Winters Show. Eva thinks Hayley is an undeserving rising star; Hayley, a musician turned daytime host, is rebuilding after a hard divorce and raising a teenage son. The chemistry is there on stage and off, and their run-ins keep pulling them back together despite the rivalry. Celebrity romance where both women are established and grown-up, rather than one star and one ordinary person, is less common than it should be.
Add it to your TBR if… you like rivals to lovers between two women who are both good at their jobs, a music-industry setting, and a single-mom heroine.
In Your Starlight
Marina Baker
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Regan Marshall was engaged and starring in a major film until her fiancé’s cheating scandal turned his fans on her, and she crash-lands back in Chester Ridge, the hometown she has avoided for years. When her childhood best friend asks her to be his best man, there is one condition: she has to make peace with Maia Fischer, their former best friend, who now runs her grandfather’s bakery and who Regan has been running from since graduation night. Then Hollywood calls again. LGBTQ Reads revealed the cover in June, and it is the most straightforwardly charming premise of the month.
Add it to your TBR if… you like a celebrity heading home with her tail between her legs, friends to estranged to lovers, and a wedding party forcing two people together.
12 Months of Christmas
Kim Pritekel
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
Maggie Boseman is forty-two, the mother of a teenage son, and at the end of an unhappy eighteen-year marriage to a husband she spent years trying to save from his drinking. Briar Geddes was the wild preacher’s kid until one night at twenty-five changed everything; after ten years in state prison she is up for parole. Their worlds collide in a story the publisher frames around forgiveness and starting again. It is the least tinsel-heavy Christmas book of the season, and probably the most substantial: the holiday is the frame for a year, not the subject.
Add it to your TBR if… you find relentless holiday cheer hard going and want a December book about a hard year ending, with two women who both have something to forgive.
December 16–31
One book after mid-month, and it is the only young adult title in December.
Love Light
Mela Rogers
🔵 Preorder live
Why It’s on Our Radar
In Meredith’s world, a light shining from each person’s chest leads them to their one true soulmate, and her devout parents have raised her to trust it completely. Then sixteen-year-old Meredith falls hard for Casey, who is not her match, and has to keep the relationship secret — until meeting her real soulmate forces her to choose between faith, fate and her first love. A soulmate system built to be questioned is a strong frame for a queer coming-of-age story. The book was first announced for 2025, so this date has already moved once; we will recheck it before the month.
Add it to your TBR if… you buy graphic novels for a teenage reader, you like speculative romance that questions the idea of a destined match, or you want a story about first love against a family’s faith.
Our December Watchlist
Five editorial picks. These are our selections, not a ranking and not a measure of reader attention — we have not read any of these books yet, so none of this is a verdict on quality. It is a note on which concepts we find most worth watching.
Dreamslayer — a devout acolyte, a love interest who is a literal nightmare, and the first book of a new series from one of the biggest names in romantasy.
Two Truths and a Crime — a podcaster investigating a death and falling for the victim’s aunt, from the most experienced romantic-suspense writer publishing this month.
Hers for the Holidays — five linked spicy novellas on one day is a genuinely new way to publish holiday romance, and it fills the novella gap the sapphic Christmas shelf has every year.
A Mermaid in Marketing — a half-mermaid launching a faerie cat café while hiding a crush on her boss. Low angst, high charm.
Wither and Bloom — a sapphic Hades and Persephone from a small press, already rated well by early readers two months before release.
Reader Anticipation in December
We report pre-release reader attention only where public evidence exists, and we keep it separate from the release facts and from our own picks. Unknown is not low: most December titles have no Goodreads ratings yet, which is normal two months out and says nothing about quality. All figures were read on Goodreads on 10 October 2026.
- Possession Island — Building. 193 advance ratings at 3.79, the most of any December title, helped by a Goodreads giveaway.
- Dreamslayer — Building. 59 advance ratings at 4.15.
- Wither and Bloom — Building. 40 advance ratings at 4.22, unusually strong for a small press.
- Horny — Early. 27 advance ratings at 3.07, the lowest average of the month on a small sample.
- Love Light — Early. 10 ratings at 4.10.
- A Mermaid in Marketing and This Crimson Ruin — Early. 8 ratings each, at 3.88 and 4.50. Too few to read much into.
- The other fifteen — no public signal yet, apart from a single rating on Waxing and Waning. Bold Strokes, Bella and self-published titles usually build visible reader activity in the fortnight around release.
How We Verified December’s Releases
Every date on this page was checked on 10 October 2026 against the publisher’s product page, a retailer listing, or both. Where dates disagree, both appear on the book and it is marked Date Watch — six of the twenty-two are in that position, either because a small press sells direct before general retail or because the US and UK editions publish on different days.
Six of December’s books are self-published. For those, the retailer listing is the primary source, and their descriptions and heat notes come from the authors’ own listings. Two Bold Strokes titles, Late Bloomer and Under the Stars, have no retail listing yet and are verified from the publisher only.
Classification as sapphic romance or sapphic fiction follows what the publisher states, not what a cover implies. On Kindle Unlimited: no December title shows confirmed Kindle Unlimited enrolment, so no book on this page carries a KU claim. We will check the self-published titles again on release day.
What changed since our hub listing, and what we left off
- All eleven hub titles are confirmed for December. Under the Stars now has a Bold Strokes product page with a 1 December date, and the Bella paperbacks of Before You & Me and Refrain from the Heart are listed on Amazon for 15 December.
- Eleven additions: Dreamslayer, This Crimson Ruin, Horny, Wither and Bloom, Jingle Bell Hops, 12 Months of Christmas, How the Critic Stole Christmas and the four other Hers for the Holidays novellas.
- Possession Island moves from our hub’s romance listing to sapphic fiction, because early readers consistently describe the romance as secondary to the thriller.
- Left off — not sapphic: Til Quest Do Us Part by Ivelisse Housman (M/F); If These Walls Could Talk by Alexandria Bellefleur, Lightning & Thunder by Sara Raasch and Red, White & Royal Blue: The Private Correspondence (all M/M); Triple Threat by Katie Chandler (MMF).
- Left off — wrong month or not new: Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent appears on December lists but was first published in New Zealand in October 2025. Away Match by Maria D’Angeles is dated 30 November.
The full methodology, including how books get onto the Radar and how we treat paid promotion, lives on the Sapphic Release Radar hub. If you have verified information that contradicts anything here — a moved date, a changed title, a cover reveal, a book we have miscategorised — tell us and we will correct it.
December 2026 Sapphic Books: FAQ
What sapphic books are coming out in December 2026?
Twenty-two sapphic titles are verified for December 2026. On 1 December: Murder on the Back Roads by Karis Walsh, Two Truths and a Crime by Carsen Taite, Late Bloomer by Lisa Moreau and Under the Stars by Ursula Klein (all Bold Strokes, direct from the publisher), plus Dreamslayer by A.K. Mulford, A Mermaid in Marketing by Juliet Brooks, This Crimson Ruin by Rebecca Thorne, Horny by Lucy Lehane, Possession Island by Sarah McCarry and Waxing and Waning by J.N. Howell. On 4 December come five Hers for the Holidays Christmas novellas, then Wither and Bloom by E.K. O’Connor (5 December), Jingle Bell Hops by Kat Paige (9 December), Before You & Me by Jaime Clevenger and S.V. Dalton and Refrain from the Heart by Justice Woods (10 December from Bella, 15 December at retail), In Your Starlight by Marina Baker and 12 Months of Christmas by Kim Pritekel (15 December), and Love Light by Mela Rogers (29 December).
Are there sapphic Christmas books coming out in December 2026?
Seven. Five spicy novellas publish together on 4 December under the Hers for the Holidays banner: How the Critic Stole Christmas (Bryce Oakley), The Ex-Mas Effect (Lily X), The Fox Around the Corner (Kat Blackthorne), A Second Shot at Christmas (J.J. Arias) and Catching Strays (Chaos Davie). Jingle Bell Hops by Kat Paige is a full-length small-town Christmas romance (9 December), and 12 Months of Christmas by Kim Pritekel uses the year between two Christmases as its frame (15 December). For every sapphic holiday book of the year, see our sapphic Christmas & New Year books guide.
What sapphic fantasy and romantasy books come out in December 2026?
Five. Dreamslayer by A.K. Mulford opens a new dark romantasy series, This Crimson Ruin by Rebecca Thorne continues the steampunk Titan’s Wrath trilogy, A Mermaid in Marketing by Juliet Brooks is a comic workplace fantasy, Wither and Bloom by E.K. O’Connor retells Hades and Persephone, and Waxing and Waning by J.N. Howell is an urban fantasy with vampires and werewolves. Horny by Lucy Lehane is a paranormal rom-com. For what is already out, see our best sapphic romantasy books guide.
Are there young adult sapphic books in December 2026?
One: Love Light by Mela Rogers, a graphic novel from Henry Holt on 29 December about a girl who falls in love with someone who is not her destined soulmate. A Mermaid in Marketing is published for adults but is sweet in heat level.
Why do some December books have two release dates?
Because they genuinely have two. Bold Strokes Books sells direct from its own site on 1 December while retail editions follow on 15 December, Bella Books publishes ebooks direct on 10 December with paperbacks at retail on the 15th, and two Macmillan titles publish in the US on 1 December and the UK on 3 December. Buying direct from the publisher really does get you the book earlier.
Are any December 2026 sapphic books on Kindle Unlimited?
Not that we can confirm. None of the self-published December titles showed confirmed Kindle Unlimited enrolment when we checked on 10 October 2026. Enrolment is often switched on at release, so we will recheck on release day.
What comes after December?
January 2027 is already filling up, led by The Death of a Coven by Annie Summerlee, The Flower Court by Kate Elliott and Pulling the Goalie by Kate Cochrane. Our Sapphic Release Radar hub tracks 2027 month by month.
Keep Exploring
December is one month. The rest of the shelf is already here:
- Sapphic Christmas & New Year books 2026 — every sapphic Christmas, winter and New Year book first published this year.
- Upcoming Sapphic Books 2026 & 2027 — the full Sapphic Release Radar.
- New sapphic books coming in November 2026 — the month immediately before this one.
- New sapphic books coming in October 2026.
- Best sapphic romantasy books — if Dreamslayer is your speed.
- New sapphic romance books — what has already published and is available today.
- The Library — every review and guide on the site.
Publishing a Sapphic Book?
Lesbian Romance Reads is building structured release discovery for sapphic books from independent authors, small presses and traditional publishers alike. Sixteen of December’s twenty-two titles come from outside the Big Five, and six have no publisher behind them at all — finding those is the point of the exercise.
Author & Publisher Submissions — Coming Soon. We are developing a structured submission system that will let eligible authors and publishers provide verified release information for consideration on the Sapphic Release Radar. It is not open yet. Paid promotion, if offered, will never determine editorial ratings, reviews, rankings or Reader Buzz assessments, and Lesbian Romance Reads will continue to discover books independently through editorial research.
Submission news goes to the newsletter first, and the contact page is open in the meantime.
Last updated 11 October 2026; dates last verified 10 October 2026. Sources for this guide: publisher pages at Bold Strokes Books, Bella Books, Hachette (Orbit) and Pan Macmillan; retailer listings at Amazon and Barnes & Noble for every title with one; publisher copy from HarperCollins, Macmillan, Sapphire Books, Mythic Roads Press, Contrarian Publishing and AQH Publications as carried on those listings; I Heart SapphFic and LGBTQ Reads for heat and cover-reveal details; and Goodreads for pre-release reader activity. Part of the Sapphic Release Radar. This page contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
This page contains affiliate links to Amazon (including Audible editions). As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. Affiliate relationships do not decide which books appear here or where. See our full affiliate disclosure.