TBR Rouge 10/25

Rouge is an act of exposure. Like the color it’s named for, this collection reveals rather than conceals—turning its light on what is usually left unsaid: the quiet pulse of desire, the guilt folded into tenderness, and the moments when longing rewrites a life.

Built around one idea—that passion is not a genre but a temperature—TBR Rouge gathers ten striking works of contemporary fiction that explore love, loss, and transformation across continents and states of being. These are stories that refuse comfort; they burn with human truth.

Featuring:

• Michele Issel, After the Rain — Grief reshaped into strength.

• Karen Regen-Tuero, Learning to Cook — Appetite and control in the theatre of love.

• Denis McFadden, Invisible Lady — A posthumous masterpiece of intimacy and mortality.

• Megan Nicholson, Let’s Go Back — Desire rekindled through wit and nostalgia.

• Feyisayo Anjorin, A Night at Galaxy — Temptation and consequence under Lagos lights.

• Vikky Puligundla, Beyond the Boundaries — Love tested by exile and belonging.

• Ray Tilma, Lost Time — Time travel and philosophical yearning intertwined.

• Annie De Benedictis, Three Summers at the Villa — Elegance, memory, and erosion.

• Matt Graham, High Desert — Redemption in the barren and the beautiful.

• Sui Wang, Boxes — The architecture of distance and intimacy.

Together these writers make Rouge not a color but a condition—a point where the personal and the universal ignite.
Literature still burns.