From Jane Green, the New York Times bestselling author of such beloved novels as Jemima J, The Beach House, Another Piece of My Heart, comes an enthralling and emotional story about how much we really understand the temptations that can threaten even the most idyllic of relationships…. Gabby and Elliott have been happily married for eighteen years. They have two teenaged daughters. They have built a life together. Forty-three year old Gabby is the last person to have an affair. She can't relate to the way her friends desperately try to cling to the beauty and allure of their younger years…And yet, she too knows her youth is quickly slipping away. She could never imagine how good it would feel to have a handsome younger man show interest in her--until the night it happens. Matt makes Gabby feel sparkling, fascinating, alive--something she hasn't felt in years. What begins as a long-distance friendship soon develops into an emotional affair as Gabby discovers her limits and boundaries are not where she expects them to be. Intoxicated, Gabby has no choice but to step ever deeper into the allure of attraction and attention, never foreseeing the life-changing consequences that lie ahead. If she makes one wrong move she could lose everything--and find out what really matters most. A heartfelt and complex story, Tempting Fate will have readers gripped until they reach the very last page, and thinking about the characters long after they put the book down.

Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids in the Pacific Northwest. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy. With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart. Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.

After saving themselves and their fellow students from a life pitched against one another, Sophie and Agatha are back home again, living happily ever after. But life isn't exactly a fairytale. When Agatha secretly wishes she'd chosen a different happy ending with Prince Tedros, the gates to the School for Good and Evil open once again. But Good and Evil are no longer enemies and Princes and Princesses may not be what they seem, as new bonds form and old ones shatter.

Nick Jayzon is now a Savage, a part of Asmodeus’s army. Kayla has been threatened, cornered and tempted to run and hide, leaving her true love to fight on his own and be forever under the control of the greed hungry devil. However, she meets a mysterious ally that she never knew she had until she needed her the most and that ally encourages Kayla, to stay and to fight. Will Kayla fight for the husband she loves? Will she stand toe to toe with the devil and fearlessly threaten his final annihilation? Will Kayla find her husband again and be able to inflict her own kind of devil’s Remedy and be able to bring Nick back to the life he once knew? Without Nick, Kayla and all her allies will be outnumbered and their power will be no contest against Savage and his manipulated grandson’s own power. Will they need to kill Nick to survive or will a younger Nick step forward and show his extraordinary power to save them all? Kayla and all her allies will accept their fates and enter into the ultimate battle at The Devil’s Masquerade.

The beautiful, iron-willed Wild Ginger is only in elementary school when we first meet her, but already she has been singled out by the Red Guards for her "foreign-colored eyes." Her classmate Maple is also a target of persecution. It is through the quieter, more skeptical Maple, a less than ardent Maoist whose father is languishing in prison for a minor crime, that we see this story to its tragic end. The Red Guards have branded Wild Ginger's deceased father a traitor and eventually drive her mother to a gruesome suicide, but she fervently embraces Maoism to save her spirit. She rises quickly through the ranks and is held up as a national model for Maoism. Wild Ginger now has everything, even a young man who vies for her heart. But Mao's prohibition on romantic love places her in an untenable position. Into this sexually charged situation steps Maple, creating an uneasy triangle that Min has portrayed with keen psychological insight and her characteristic gift for lyrical eroticism.

Finding your one true love can be a Grimm experience! After her boyfriend dumps her for her older sister, sophomore Savannah Delano wishes she could find a true prince to take her to the prom. Enter Chrissy (Chrysanthemum) Everstar: Savannah’s gum-chewing, cell phone–carrying, high heel-wearing Fair Godmother. Showing why she’s only Fair—because she’s not a very good fairy student—Chrissy mistakenly sends Savannah back in time to the Middle Ages, first as Cinderella, then as Snow White. Finally she sends Tristan, a boy in Savannah’s class, back instead to turn him into her prom-worthy prince. When Savannah returns to the Middle Ages to save Tristan, they must team up to defeat a troll, a dragon, and the mysterious and undeniably sexy Black Knight. Laughs abound in this clever fairy tale twist from a master of romantic comedy.

Two sisters—as different as the sun and the rain. For one, getting into the Blood Cover is to die for, but it seems destiny has something else in mind... Rayne McDonald had it all figured out. Get turned into a vampire, become the mate of the Blood Coven leader, and live the high-life for all eternity. Too bad the head vamp took a bite out of her twin sister by mistake. Now, not only is Rayne still not a vampire, but she learns she's a slayer instead—destined to destroy vamps gone bad. After being recruited by a secret organization, Rayne is given her first mission: infiltrate a seedy bar downtown and expose its vampire owner, Maverick, for purposely spreading a nasty blood virus. Luckily the Blood Coven sends some help—in the form of sexy vampire Jareth. Will vampire and slayer be able to settle their differences and work together to bring down the evil Maverick? Or will they find their own hearts on the line?

In the too-quiet town of Oakwood, only the lucky die of boredom…and new homeowner Zack Walker isn’t feeling lucky. Whoever said the burbs were boring will think twice after reading Linwood Barclay’s hilarious debut mystery, in which Dad learns the hard way that he doesn’t always know best. Zack wouldn’t blame you for thinking he’s safety-obsessed. True, he masterminded a plot to trade his family’s exciting city lifestyle for one of suburban tranquillity. True, even after this strategic move, Zack still has issues with family members who forget their keys in the front door, leave their cars unlocked, or park their backpacks at the top of the stairs—where you could kill yourself tripping over them. Just ask his wife, Sarah, or his teenage kids, Paul and Angie, who endure their share of lectures. Zack knows that he needs to chill out and assume the best for once—but we know what happens to those who assume. When Zack realizes their two-faced developer sent a petty thief to fix their leaky shower, he starts fighting hard to ignore the fact that Oakwood isn’t the crime-free paradise he was hoping for. But his brief state of denial comes to an abrupt end when, during a walk by the creek, he stumbles across a dead body. Even more shocking, Zack actually knows who the victim is—and who might want him dead. With a killer roaming around their neighborhood and Zack’s overactive imagination in overdrive, he’s sure things can’t get any worse. But then another local is murdered—and Zack’s paranoid tendencies get him implicated in the crime. While his wife is trying to remember why she married him in the first place, and his kids are considering whether it’s time to have him committed, Zack decides there’s only one thing he can do. To protect his family—and avoid being busted for a crime he didn’t commit—he’s going to have to override his safety-first instincts, tap into his delusions of machismo, and track down the killer himself. From the Hardcover edition.

Librarian Note: Alternate Cover Edition for ASIN: B00EZ5R78O. NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR, ELLE CASEY, brings readers the romantic suspense novel DON’T MAKE ME BEAUTIFUL. This story was inspired by true events. If you liked the movie "Sleeping With the Enemy", then you might like this story too.  No one knew a woman lived there or that she even existed. A monster, living in darkness... At twenty-two, Nicole doesn't even look human anymore. The beast made sure of that. So she hides. A monster, consigned to a life of fear and solitude. This is all she deserves, she is quite sure of that.  And then one day out of the blue, the autographed baseball caught by Brian Jensen at the latest Marlins game enters her prison and manages to turn her world completely upside down. Temptation comes in the form of pity at first, and then perhaps something more. Does she dare to believe the things she's told, that this is not the life she was meant to live? That being a monster is not her forever-fate? And will she be willing to risk everything, to reach out and accept the helping hands around her and share her deepest, darkest secrets? She knows only too well that hands can hurt. Finding out whether they can also heal is a risky proposition, especially when the beast is still out there. Looking for her. Content warning: Violence, foul language, and adult situations. Not meant for younger readers.  A note from Elle about this book: A really long time ago, I read an article in a newspaper or a magazine (I haven’t been able to locate the original) about a woman who was so badly beaten over a long period of time, she couldn’t leave her house. I thought about that woman a lot over the years and about what her thoughts might have been, her fears, her reality … and this book was my attempt to both exorcise those thoughts from my brain and also shed some light on a subject —domestic violence— that I feel should never be left in darkness.

2000 B.C. A beautiful, ambitious angel stands on a mountaintop, surveying the world and its little inhabitants below. He smiles because soon, the last of humanity who survived the great flood will meet its end, too. And he should know. He’s going to play a big part in it. Our angel usually doesn’t get to do field work, and if he does well, he’s certain he’ll be get a big promotion. And now it’s time . . . The angel reaches into his pocket for the instrument of humanity’s doom. Must be in the other pocket. Then he frantically begins to pat himself down. Dejected, he realizes he has lost the object. Looking over the Earth at all that could have been, the majestic angel utters a single word. “Crap.” 2015 A thief named Coop-a specialist in purloining magic objects-steals and delivers a small box to the mysterious client who engaged his services. Coop doesn’t know that his latest job could be the end of him-and the rest of the world. Suddenly he finds himself in the company of the Department of Peculiar Science, a fearsome enforcement agency that polices the odd and strange. The box isn’t just a supernatural heirloom with quaint powers, they tell him. It’s a doomsday device. They think. . . And suddenly, everyone is out to get it.

A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq, The Yellow Birds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stay alive. ****"The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have imagined. With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, The Yellow Birds is a groundbreaking novel that is destined to become a classic.

Cast adrift during the War Between the States, Shannon Conner grew to womanhood in a lonely cabin high in the Colorado Rockies. Though stubborn and courageous, Shannon is ill-prepared to deal with the predatory Culpepper brothers—and the intoxicating ardour of the man who defends her honour, Rafael 'Whip' Moran.A loner and a wanderer, a man tied to no place or promise, Whip aids the wary young 'widow' who has a walk like honey and a determined grip on her shotgun. But neither the Culpeppers nor grizzlies are as dangerous to Whip as the passion Shannon offers him—a passion that could cost Whip the freedom that is as much a part of him as his soul.

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This story tells of brave Dickie Harding, the engaging little lame boy who lived at New Cross and spent a year with a tramp, besides having many other wonderful adventures. It tells, too, how Dickie nearly was made to be a burglar, of his great moon-flower, and the magic of its seeds, and how he slipped back in history five hundred years and became Master Richard Arden, who was not lame and poor, and how and why he came back again; of the Mouldiwarp, the Mouldierwarp, and the great Mouldiestwarp and what they did; of the buried treasure and how Dick and his friends found it, and so on to the end of the book. Edith Nesbit (1858–1924) was an English author and poet; she published her books for children under the name of E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on more than 60 books of fiction for children. She was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later affiliated to the Labour Party.

WHEN the world was in its childhood, men looked upon the works of Nature with a strange kind of awe. They fancied that every thing upon the earth, in the air, or in the water, had a life like their own, and that every sight which they saw, and every sound which they heard, was caused by some intelligent being. All men were poets, so far as their ideas and their modes of expression were concerned, although it is not likely that any of them wrote poetry. This was true in regard to the Saxon in his chilly northern home, as well as to the Greek in the sunny southland. In the north a different story was told, but the meaning was the same. Sometimes men told how Odin (the All-Father) had become angry with Brunhild (the maid of spring), and had wounded her with the thorn of sleep, and how all the castle in which she slept was wrapped in deathlike slumber until Sigurd or Siegfried (the sunbeam) rode through flaming fire, and awakened her with a kiss. Sometimes men told how Loki (heat) had betrayed Balder (the sunlight), and had induced blind old Hoder (the winter months) to slay him, and how all things, living and inanimate, joined in weeping for the bright god, until Hela (death) should permit him to revisit the earth for a time. So, too, when the sun arose, and drove away the darkness and the hidden terrors of the night, our ancestors thought of the story of a noble young hero slaying a hideous dragon, or taking possession of the golden treasures of Mist Land. And when the springtime came, and the earth renewed its youth, and the fields and woods were decked in beauty, and there was music everywhere, they loved to tell of Idun (the spring) and her youth-giving apples, and of her wise husband Bragi (Nature's musician). When storm clouds loomed up from the horizon and darkened the sky, and thunder rolled overhead, and lightning flashed on every hand, they talked about the mighty Thor riding over the clouds in his goat-drawn chariot, and battling with the giants of the air. When the mountain meadows were green with long grass, and the corn was yellow for the sickles of the reapers, they spoke of Sif, the golden-haired wife of Thor, the queen of the pastures and the fields. When the seasons were mild, and the harvests were plentiful, and peace and gladness prevailed, they blessed Frey, the giver of good gifts to men. To them the blue sky-dome which everywhere hung over them like an arched roof was but the protecting mantle which the All-Father had suspended above the earth. The rainbow was the shimmering bridge which stretches from earth to he-aven. The sun and the moon were the children of a giant, whom two wolves chased forever around the earth. The stars were sparks from the fire land of the south, set in the heavens by the gods. Night was a giantess, dark and swarthy, who rode in a car drawn by a steed the foam from whose bits sometimes covered the earth with dew. And Day was the son of Night; and the steed which he rode lighted all the sky and the earth with the beams which glistened from his mane ..

All space was electrified as that harsh challenge rang out . . . but John Endlich hesitated. For he saw beyond his own murder -- saw the horror and destruction his death would unleash -- and knew he dared not fight back! The space ship landed briefly, and John Endlich lifted the huge Asteroids Homesteaders Office box, which contained everything from a prefabricated house to toothbrushes for his family, down from the hold-port without help or visible effort. In the tiny gravity of the asteroid, Vesta, doing this was no trouble at all. But beyond this point the situation was -- bitter.

Prefatory Note Masterman Ready is the first, the most famous, and certainly the best of the short series of stories for children which Marryat began, comparatively late in life, under the impression that his former productions, like all novels, had had their day, and for the present, at least, would sell no more. He anticipated, and secured, a little income from these juveniles. In his preface, printed below, he expounds the origin of the tale ;and no one will be inclined to dispute the advance in correctness on The Swiss Family Robinson, to which he lays claim. Indeed the treatment of a well-worn subject is surprisingly fresh and convincing. The hypercritical reader may cavil at the thoughtfulness of the seawaves in washing ashore the very articles required for comfort, and no one can fail to resent the excess of righteousness in old Ready; but these are small blemishes in a work so really interesting and so admirably executed. It is exactly suited for children, abounding in detail, simple in conception, and pathetic without being melancholy. The style of direct narration is perfectly clear and attractive, without foolish condescension. Were there no external evidence of the fact, we could be confident from a study of this volume, that Marryat loved children and understood them. The death of Ready, through Tommy sselfishness, is artistically inevitable, and told without sentimentality. For ourselves, however, we confess to finding that greedy boys naughtiness in most cases peculiarly unattractive and scarcely amusing.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writing --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Logan Tanner shook the red dust of West Texas off his boots at the age of eighteen and hasn't looked back. When his father has a stroke, Logan is temporarily forced to return home and take over the family ranch. Megan Flynn falls in love with Morris Springs, Texas, population 976, when she delivers Logan's runaway daughter to his doorstep. But Logan hates the one thing she wants most.Logan Tanner shook the red dust of West Texas off his boots at the age of eighteen and hasn't looked back. When his father has a stroke, Logan is temporarily forced to return home and take over the family ranch. He still feels responsible for his mother's death when he was twelve, and has never gotten over the guilt. Now he's faced with having to protect his twelve year old daughter Katie and his sister and her friend Megan Flynn. It's nearly more than one man can handle. He can't wait to get back to Dallas.Megan Flynn immediately falls in love with Morris Springs, Texas, population 976, when she delivers Logan's runaway daughter to his doorstep. Raised as a city girl, Megan has a dream of a few acres, a few champion Blue Heelers, and a small-town veterinary practice. The only thing standing between her and her dream is one stubborn, reluctant cowboy with an overprotective streak as wide as the West Texas prairie. But her stubborn streak is a match for his any day. And she's determined to prove it.Blame it on Texas is a story of the power of love to overcome any adversity, the strength of family and friendship, and the joy that comes with being part of something bigger than yourself.

25 of the best short stories published on the web in 2009/10--chosen by the editors of ChamberFour.com, a website dedicated to making reading more enjoyable and more rewarding. Includes a wide range of stories from great online lit mags. This anthology is DRM-free and free to download. Find a complete table of contents, a PDF version, author bios, interviews, and more at Chamber Four.~BOOK ONE~ Sara is a Guardian, an elite human warrior trained to battle the races of Rhea, but she soon finds herself on a quest to save them when their afterlife is invaded by a powerful, mysterious race called the Pelasgians. In the journey that follows, she will see a side of the Rheans never before seen, and discover that the Pelasgians are a much greater threat than anyone can imagine.Vampires, mummies, werewolves and other creatures of mythology are reimagined as various races who must join forces to confront an ancient evil.

Fantasy, friendship, and fate await you in Collin Earl’s The House of Grey, based on the popular audio fiction by the same name. 14-year-old Monson Grey faces the same challenges that any freshman high school kid would: difficult classes, weird teachers, food fights…girls. Except, Monson Grey is not Monson Grey.Fantasy, friendship, and fate await you in Collin Earl’s The House of Grey, based on the popular audio fiction by the same name. 14-year-old Monson Grey faces the same challenges that any freshman high school kid would: difficult classes, weird teachers, food fights…girls. Except, Monson Grey is not Monson Grey. At least, when he looks at himself in the mirror, the scarred face staring back is not someone he recognizes. Now he finds himself attending an extraordinary school, the recipient of an incredible scholarship, among ridiculously rich classmates, all with no memory of how he got there or what to expect.All he has from his former life are the flashes of haunting images that plague his dreams and the echoing voices that he hears, but cannot see. Luckily, Monson finds fast friendship in two of his classmates, Casey and Artorius. Little  does Monson know, they too carry their own skeletons. Yet, as bizarre events start to unfold around them, Monson wonders what secrets lay buried in his mind or if he will ever be able to share his true fears with his newfound friends.Join our three heroes as they roam the halls of the most prestigious high school in the country, finding love, mystery, and answers to their algebra homework- all while peeling away the layers of Monson’s shadowy past. Author’s Note: The House of Grey was originally a serialized audio fiction. Volume 1 begins the written adaptation of that story told in a six part series. Individual volumes do not contain the complete story.