A young Henry. A young Thomas of London. One, by politics, determination, and birth, the King, and one, a commoner, and outsider at Court. We know how their friendship played out, in the end: with the murder of Thomas Beket. But where would the friendship have ended had the murder not occurred, had there been no death in the cathedral? This is one possibility, an alternate history.

The first book in a sweeping family saga from the author of the popular Deverry series. From San Francisco's Summer of Love through revolution and war to the most unexpected challenge of all, five generations of Corey mothers and daughters face the past and the future.

It is a bizarre story of unholy union of two persons of uneven age, uneven economic background and uneven society. But is it the end the story? Or the old lady had a plan B?It is a bizarre story of unholy union of two persons of uneven age, uneven economic background and uneven society. But is it end the story? Or the old lady had a plan B?It is also a story far from reality.If, however, my story resembles with some reality, it is pure coincidence only, nothing to do with any reality or any real person.

New York Times bestselling author Gena Showalter returns with a sizzling Angels of the Dark tale about a winged warrior renowned for his ruthlessness, and the woman who becomes his obsession.... A tormented past has left Thane with an insatiable need for violence, making him the most dangerous assassin in the skies. He lives by a single code: no mercy. And as he unleashes his fury on his most recent captor, he learns no battle could have prepared him for the slave he rescues from his enemy's clutches--a beauty who stokes the fires of his darkest desires. Elin Vale has her own deep-rooted scars, and her attraction to the exquisite warrior who freed her challenges her every boundary. But Thane's unwavering determination to protect her means she must face her greatest fears--and enter a world in which passion is power, and victory means breathtaking surrender.

When Santa Fe antique dealer Julie Anderson was curiously drawn to purchase a battered jewelry box, she never expected it to contain her own personal love slave. Especially not tall, dark and sinfully handsome Tristan-a man hard to resist, and determined to fulfill her every desire. Though Tristan was a rogue of the battlefield and the boudoir, making love with Julia was like nothing he'd ever known. Yet revealing his true heart would break the centuries-old spell and separate them forever. And Tristan would do anything to go on loving Julia. . .even remain a slave through all eternity. . .

In her twenty-fifth adventure, vampire hunter and necromancer Anita Blake learns that evil is in the eye of the beholder... Anita has never seen Damian, her vampire servant, in such a state. The rising sun doesn’t usher in the peaceful death that he desperately needs. Instead, he’s being bombarded with violent nightmares and blood sweats. And now, with Damian at his most vulnerable, Anita needs him the most. The vampire who created him, who subjected him to centuries of torture, might be losing control, allowing rogue vampires to run wild and break one of their kind’s few strict taboos. Some say love is a great motivator, but hatred gets the job done, too. And when Anita joins forces with her friend Edward to stop the carnage, Damian will be at their side, even if it means traveling back to the land where all his nightmares spring from...a place that couldn’t be less welcoming to a vampire, an assassin, and a necromancer. Ireland.

Katherine and Michael meet at a New Year's Eve party. They're attracted to each other, they grow to love each other. And once they've decided their love is forever, they make love. It's the beginning of an intense and exclusive relationship, with a future all planned. Until Katherine's parents insist that she and Michael put their love to the test with a summer apart... Forever is written for an older age group than Judy Blume's other novels for children. It caused a storm of controversy when it was first published because of its explicit sexual content.

The story is set in the distant future, where humanity is at war with "Yuks," an alien life form which does not use mechanical spaceships nor constructions. Instead, it relies on life forms. The war has been going on for a long time, and humanity has not been able to come up with a solution against the life-form based ships and mines that the Yuks use. A human brain-controlled spacecraft would mean mechanical perfection. This was accomplished, and something unforeseen: a strange entity called . . . Mr. Spaceship!

Arthur Penhaligon's first days at his new school don't go too well, particularly when a fiendish Mister Monday appears, gives Arthur a magical clock hand, and then orders his gang of dog-faced goons to chase Arthur around and get it back. But when the confused and curious boy discovers that a mysterious virus is spreading through town, he decides to enter an otherworldly house to stop it. After meeting Suzy Blue and the first part of "the Will" (a frog-looking entity that knows everything about the House), Arthur learns that he's been selected as Rightful Heir to the House and must get the other part of the clock hand in order to defeat Monday. That means getting past Monday's henchmen and journeying to the Dayroom itself. Thankfully, Arthur is up to the challenge, but as he finds out, his fight seems to be only one-seventh over. With a weapon-wielding hero and a villain who doesn't make Mondays any nicer, Nix's Keys to the Kingdom launch is imaginative and gripping. After an action-packed crescendo to the book's middle -- when Arthur finally learns his destiny -- Nix keeps the drama going and doesn't let it fall. By the end, you might be winded from all the fantastic explanation, but you'll definitely be salivating for what's to come.

PROMISED TO LOVE Alaina McMann is stunned by the brazen sensuality of Union major Ian McKenzie. Suddenly she is in his arms, engulfed by desire. Her honor compromised, Alaina's options are either scandal or marriage--to a man who will soon be her bitter enemy. SWORN TO BETRAY As the Civil War turns brother against brother, Ian is ordered to capture the South's most notorious spy, the Moccasin. She is beautiful, deadly. And she is his wife. Duty demands she hang, yet Ian's heart demands another choice...a magnificent rebellious love that can destroy or save them both.

"Too funny for words." -All About Romance They share love, laughter, and a passion that burns up the night. But can he share the secrets that threaten their marriage? Nick and Paula DeCello are getting divorced in seven days, even though they love each other dearly. His overprotectiveness has finally become too much for her, and there's something painful locked deep inside him. Desperate, Nick takes the advice of a quirky, old fortune teller to find his wife's "heart craving." To Nick, that means sexual fantasies. Armed with a hilarious collection of advice books, he embarks on a wild, funny seduction of Paula that proves there's nothing wrong with their relationship in the bedroom. When it comes to giving her what her heart really craves-soul-sharing communication-he'll have to take a big step outside his comfort zone.

Best friends Jack and Conner can't stay away from Marbury. It's partly because of their obsession with this alternate world and the unresolved war that still wages there. But it's also because forces in Marbury—including the darkest of the dark, who were not revealed in The Marbury Lens—are beckoning the boys back in order to save their friends . . . and themselves. The boys try to destroy the lens that transports them to Marbury. But that dark world is not so easily reckoned with. Reality and fantasy, good and evil—Andrew Smith's masterpiece closes the loop that began with The Marbury Lens. But is it really closed? Can it ever be?

She's about to walk on the wild side . . . While filling the display case in her bakery, the bell over the door sounds and Tessa O'Hara looks up to see the man of her dreams. Within thirty seconds he asks her out for a beer. But after four months of dating, she discovers he's an undercover DEA agent-and he's investigating her possible role in her ex-husband's drug business. For Tess, this means their relationship is over. Brock disagrees. He's committed to his anti-drug mission, but he's fallen in love with the beautiful woman who's as sweet as her cupcakes-and he'll do anything to win her back. Standing between Tess and Brock are their own exes, one of them a drug lord who's determined to get what he wants. Now as danger threatens, can Brock break the rules he's lived by and let loose his wild side to protect the woman he loves? 125,000 words

'I fear nobody. But my enemies fear me . . . Without ruthlessness and savagery I would not survive even a week of the life I lead. I am the witch assassin of the Malkin clan.' Meet Grimalkin, the fearsome witch assassin, and find out how she came to take the role she now holds. This exclusive digital short story set in the world of Joseph Delaney's best-selling series The Wardstone Chronicles first appeared in the spine-tingling collection The Spook's Stories: Witches. Now available separately for the first time, and including a preview of the first chapter of I Am Grimalkin, this is perfect for existing fans and newcomers alike. The only question is, are you brave enough . . .

Leesie Hunt has many rules: No kissing. No sex. No dating outside the Mormon faith. When Michael Walden?a deep-sea diver who lost his parents in a violent hurricane?arrives in town, Leesie sees someone who needs her. They fall for one another, even though his dreams are tied to the depths of the ocean and hers to salvation above. Will their intense chemistry be too strong to resist? Leesie and Michael must make the hardest choice of their lives: whether to follow their beliefs or their hearts. Readers will be swept away by this tale of forbidden romance told in online chats, Leesie?s chapbook poems, and Michael?s dive log. It?s as steamy as Twilight and just as clean.

In 1897 London, something not quite human is about to awaken... When mechanical genius Emily is kidnapped by rogue automatons, Finley Jayne and her fellow misfits fear the worst. What's left of their archenemy, The Machinist, hungers to be resurrected, and Emily must transplant his consciousness into one of his automatons—or forfeit her friends' lives. With Griffin being mysteriously tormented by the Aether, Finley turns to Jack Dandy, but trusting the master criminal is as dangerous as controlling her dark side. Meanwhile, Sam is searching everywhere for Emily. He would walk into hell for her, but the choice she must make will test them more than they could imagine. To save those she cares about, Emily must confront The Machinist's ultimate creation—an automaton more human than machine. And if she's to have any chance at triumphing, she must summon a strength even she doesn't know she has...

It's Dade's last summer at home. He has a crappy job at Food World, a "boyfriend" who won't publicly acknowledge his existence (maybe because Pablo also has a girlfriend), and parents on the verge of a divorce. College is Dade's shining beacon of possibility, a horizon to keep him from floating away. Then he meets the mysterious Alex Kincaid. Falling in real love finally lets Dade come out of the closet - and, ironically, ignites a ruthless passion in Pablo. But just when true happiness has set in, tragedy shatters the dreamy curtain of summer, and Dade will use every ounce of strength he's gained to break from his past and start fresh with the future.

The Australian Booksellers' Association Book of the Year begins in 1954, in Tasmania where Bojan Buloh brings his family to start a new life away from Slovenia's privations of war and refugee settlements. Bojan's wife abandons him to care for their three-year-old daughter Sonja alone. Sonja returns to Tasmania 35 years later, and to a father haunted by memories of the war and other recent horrors.

The Strange Bird—from New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer—is a digital original that expands and weaves deeply into the world of his “thorough marvel” of a novel, Borne*. The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory—she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape. But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology—satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans—all of them now simply scrambling to survive—who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home. With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne—a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.

The runaway bestseller "Chicken Soup for the Soul" captured the imagination of millions of readers with its uplifting message of hope and inspiration. With a nation still hungering for more good news, Canfield and Hansen went back to work and cooked up another batch of life-affirming stories to warm your heart and soothe your soul.Through the experiences of others, readers from all walks of life can learn the gift of love, the power of perseverance, the joy of parenting and the vital energy of dreaming. Share the magic that will change forever how you look at yourself and the world around you. Special contributions from M. Scott Peck, Ann Landers, Art Linkletter, Harold Bloomfield and many others are included.

I was an ex-con. A convicted killer. And I knew that’s all anyone would ever see me as. At least I thought so…until I met her… When recent parolee Bobby Cantrell loses yet another job, he resigns himself to the usual struggle of finding a place willing to take a chance on someone with his past. Then, without warning, a gorgeous blonde careens into his life and everything changes. Carly Prince. Gorgeous. Untouchable. Everything Bobby could ever want and knows he can never have. Except, maybe, he’s finally found someone who sees the good inside him, something even he can’t see. What he can’t do, however, is escape from his past. A past that now threatens to destroy the new life he’s building for himself…and threatens people he’s come to care about. Can he save them, or will he have more blood on his hands?