The Norseman Eyvind, a fierce and loyal Wolfskin, came to a new land on top of the world to find his destiny. With his priestess bride Nessa he saved the land and weathered the treachery that was caused by Eyvind's blood-sworn friend Somerled. After much pain and sorrow the two lovers have managed to create a society where the Norse warriors and the gentle folks of the Orkney Isles live and thrive in contentment at last. A decade and more has passed since the devastating events of the creation of the settlement and Eyvind and Nessa have watched their children grow and thrive in peace. But not all on the islands are content or at peace. Thorvald, the young son of Margaret, widow of the slain king and Eyvind's war leader, has always felt apart and at odds with all he knows. He learns upon his coming to manhood that he is not his father's son but that of the love that Margaret bore for the hated Somerled and that Somerled was not killed for his treachery but sent on a boat, adrift with little more than a knife and skein of water, doomed to the god's will. Thorvald is determined to find a boat and cast off to the West in a desperate bid to find a father he never knew...and to find out if he is made of the same stuff as the henious traitor. The tragedy of this scheme would be horrific enough...if it were not for the fact that Creidhe, the winsome daughter of Eyvind and Nessa has loved Thorvald since birth and unbeknownst to him conspires to go along on this most perilous of quests. What happens to them on their journey of discovery will ultimately change the lives of all they know and love...and will doom (or redeem) an entire people.

How it all started… One day I was a high school teacher on summer break, leading a relatively uneventful but happy life. Or so I told myself. Later, I’d question that, as I would question pretty much everything I knew about me, my relationships, and my desires. It all began when my neighbor thrust a key to a storage unit at me. She’d bought it to make extra money after watching some storage auction show. Now she was on her way to the airport to elope with a man she barely knew, and she needed me to clear out the unit before the lease expired. Soon, I was standing inside a small room that held the intimate details of another woman’s life, feeling uncomfortable, as if I was invading her privacy. Why had she let these items so neatly packed, possessions that she clearly cared about deeply, be lost at an auction? Driven to find out by some unnamed force, I began to dig, to discover this woman’s life, and yes, read her journals—-dark, erotic journals that I had no business reading. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I read on obsessively, living out fantasies through her words that I’d never dare experience on my own, compelled by the three men in her life, none of whom had names. I read onward until the last terrifying dark entry left me certain that something had happened to this woman. I had to find her and be sure she was okay. Before long, I was taking her job for the summer at the art gallery, living her life, and she was nowhere to be found. I was becoming someone I didn’t know. I was becoming her. The dark, passion it becomes… Now, I am working at a prestigious gallery, where I have always dreamed of being, and I’ve been delivered to the doorstep of several men, all of which I envision as one I’ve read about in the journal. But there is one man that will call to me, that will awaken me in ways I never believed possible. That man is the ruggedly sexy artist, Chris Merit, who wants to paint me. He is rich and famous, and dark in ways I shouldn’t find intriguing, but I do. I so do. I don’t understand why his dark side appeals to me, but the attraction between us is rich with velvety promises of satisfaction. Chris is dark, and so are his desires, but I cannot turn away. He is damaged beneath his confident good looks and need for control, and in some way, I feel he needs me. I need him. All I know for certain is that he knows me like I don’t even know me, and he says I know him. Still, I keep asking myself — do I know him? Did he know her, the journal writer, and where is she? And why doesn’t it seem to matter anymore? There is just him and me, and the burn for more.

New York Times Bestseller In this new holiday-themed novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Mistletoe Promise and The Walk, a man receives the best Christmas present he could ask for: the chance to re-write the past. Bestselling romance author Jacob Churcher hasn't been home for almost twenty years—not since his mentally ill mother kicked him out of the house when he was just sixteen. When a lawyer calls, days before Christmas, to inform him that his estranged mother has passed away and left her house to him, Jacob returns not just to settle the estate but to try and reconcile with the past and the pain and abuse he experienced as a child. Also, maybe cleaning out her house will be slightly less depressing than spending the holidays alone, watching re-runs of Christmas classics. But as it turns out, the house holds more than just difficult memories, Jacob’s mother had become a hoarder and he must excavate through two decades worth of clutter. As Jacob digs through the detritus, like an archaeologist, he uncovers many puzzling items including a diary left by someone named Noel, a young woman he has no recollection of, who stayed with Jacob’s family during her pregnancy. That’s not the only echo from the past. Jacob has an unexpected visitor, Rachel, a woman looking for the mother who put her up for adoption thirty years before. United by their quest to make sense of the past and rewrite their futures, Jacob and Rachel begin a search for Noel. Along the way they find more than they possibly imagined, including grace, forgiveness and a chance at love.

Immortal Darkyn Lord Valentin Jaus and landscape artist Liling Harper are two lost souls. Brought together by fate, bound together by passion, Valentin and Liling find solace in each other’s arms. But the ties that bind them are deeper—and more dangerous—than either of them can possibly imagine…

The Town Preacher And The Town Madam… Haunted by his sordid past as the notorious gunslinger Nevada, Reverend Wade Weston had declared war against sin in the small town of Hanging Tree, Texas. But he hadn't counted on the arrival of the exotic Jade Jewel, whose visions of building a pleasure palace threatened the peace of the community, and whose person aroused in him passions that threatened to claim his immortal soul.

It is the third year after the Landing on Pangaea, and Brynna Olivier has lost her daughter, her sister, her brother, and her first love. Hoarded onto the Lapsarian Maximum Security Prison Ship, she must survive amongst the worst of Pangaea's criminals while also contending with her new arranged marriage to Adam. Meanwhile, Alice, Quinn, and Violet try to escape the clutches of the Old Spirits.It is the third year after the Landing on Pangaea, and Brynna Olivier has lost her daughter, her sister, her brother, her friends, and her first love. Hoarded onto the Lapsarian Maximum Security Prison Ship, she must survive amongst the worst of Pangaea's criminals while also contending with her new arranged marriage to Adam. Meanwhile, Alice, Quinn, and Violet try to escape the clutches of the Old Spirits, with Quinn and Alice using their evolution to slaughter every enemy in their path, and with Violet using her wits to outsmart Caspar, who has traitorously changed his allegiance.Twenty-five years later, Brynna is both Adam's Queen and the Queen of the Lapsarian. Fighting for her life every day has inevitably resulted in her taking many lives, and now, she is unrecognizable, to both herself and to all those who love her. Quinn and Alice battle against the Old Spirits, all to avenge their second family that they lost. But as Alice's rage and dedication to the cause only grow more violent over the years, Quinn begins to long more and more for the log cabin of which they dreamed in their youth. Violet is kept imprisoned in the city of Blancstizia, with Dr. Miletus and her wife, Macie. Together, their combined medical knowledge is much needed as a new, brutal plague begins to wipe out Old Spirit families left and right.Three new voices begin to tell their stories after the Fall of the Red Anarchy: Grace, a teenaged Old Spirit child imprisoned after trying to escape her arranged marriage to Caspar; Lara, Tyre's most favorite imprisoned woman; and James, Brynna's lost love. Each is connected to Brynna deeply, in a number of profound, mysterious, and sometimes devastating ways.Their world is lost. Their family is broken, perhaps irreparably. Their lives have faced a reckoning that can never be undone, and yet there is a larger, more utterly shattering reckoning to be had. Despite it all, Brynna, Quinn, and Violet continue to fight for their lives, their family, and their freedom in this third installment of the bestselling Eternity series.

Amirilla Asteras has a long-distant relationship with Ganth, a man she's never seen, but who has wormed his way into her heart. Unfortunately Ganth is a Gaian man must attach to a woman who is whole and healthy, and Ammi has been confined to a box-like wheelchair all of her life.She knows her misshaped legs should keep them apart but Ganth has his own plans for the girl in the box.Amirilla Asteras's only constant friends had been the stars she's lived among, until she started a long-distant relationship with Ganth Doranth, who operates a Gaian freighter with his father. Both had agreed early on to audio-only communications so she's never seen Ganth, but he's wormed his way into her heart anyway. Unfortunately Ganth is a Gaian man and must attach to a suitable woman, someone whole and healthy, and Ammi has been confined to a motorized box-like wheelchair all of her life.She knows her misshaped legs should keep her and Ganth apart and she dreads having to tell him the truth about her, but the tricky Gaian man has something else on his mind and seems determined to meet her in person, whether she wishes it or not. He has his own plans for the girl in the box.

In this collection of Flash Fiction you'll find three stories that focus each on a different subject. The first one is called Bioluminescent, the story of a biologist who finds his dead friend after a job gone wrong. The second one shows the struggle of a woman trying to accept the end of her marriage. And the last one gives us a glimpse of a love that should happen, but it didn't.In this collection of Flash Fiction you'll find three stories that focus each on a different subject, but all of them follow a single tone. They were all based on different moments of the author's life, which translate those feeling into stories that do not tell exactly what happened them, but explore the same feeling. The first story, Bioluminescent, tells the story of a biologist who found his former partner's body at the end of a cave. He decides to read his partner's diary and so we witness the man's last moments inside the cave. The second story, The End Table, explores the idea of wasted life. A woman who now faces the truth about her failed marriage daydreams about her mistakes and what lead her to this sad situation. The third and final story, Cigarettes and Random Melodies, takes a moment that summaries an entire relationship that never happened. All the interactions that could be something but are not, and by the end, it doesn't really matter.

Just a city girl, living in a lonely world. Displaced Steel Magnolia Norah Burke doesn't know the meaning of failure. But when she threatens to blow the whistle on some shady business practices at her Chicago marketing firm, she gets fired fast as all get out. Licking her wounds, she heads back below the Mason-Dixon for a little home-grown Southern comfort. Just a small town boy. With his iron-clad Mississippi roots, Councilman Cam Crawford is a man who values tradition, preservation, and the love of a good dog. When a big box warehouse store tries to capitalize on his hometown's economic downturn, it seriously burns his biscuit. He's not about to let anyone's ambition destroy what he holds dear. A David vs. Goliath story with a side of grits. This unlikely pair just might be the perfect allies--in war and out. But as the battle to stop GrandGoods heats up and sparks of attraction turn to something more, will Norah's bigger-picture perspective go with Cam's "keep it as it is" attitude? Are they meant to be like biscuits and gravy? Or are they just as wrong as unsweetened tea?

It’s time. Evil is running rampant and sweet Anna Whitt is its target. Nobody knows when or how the Dukes will strike, but Anna and her Nephilim allies will do anything necessary to rid the earth of the demons and their oppressive ways. The stakes are higher than ever, and Anna is determined that the love she feels will be her strength, not a liability. But trying to protect the ones she loves while running for her life and battling demonic forces proves to be perilous—especially as faces are changing and trust is fleeting. When the Duke of Lust sends Anna’s great love, Kaidan Rowe, to work against her, Anna must decide how much she’s prepared to risk. In the most sensual and fast-paced installment yet, Sweet Reckoning brings all the beloved Neph together one last time to fight for their freedom.

When three college besties meet three hot guys in Vegas, anything can—and does—happen. Book Four in the New York Times Wild Seasons series that began with Sweet Filthy Boy (the Romantic Times book of the year that Sylvia Day called “a sexy, sweet treasure of a story”), Dirty Rowdy Thing, and Dark Wild Night. For two people ambivalent about dating and love, they sure get naked around each other an awful lot . . . London Hughes is very content to surf daily, tend bar, hang out with her group of friends, and slowly orient herself in the years after college. Everything’s going great and according to the non-plan. But when a wave knocks her for a loop one morning, then Luke Sutter’s flirtatious smile knocks her for another that evening, she veers slightly off course…and into his path. Sure, he’s a total player, but the Why not—it’s only one night is a persistent voice in her ear. For his part, Luke’s been on hookup autopilot for so long that he rarely ever pauses to consider what he’s doing. But after an amazing time with London, he realizes that he hasn’t been moving on from a devastating heartbreak so much as he’s been drifting to wherever—and whomever—the current takes him. With London he wants more. Every relationship involves two people…plus their pasts. And as much as she enjoys her fling with Luke, when London learns about his past—more specifically, who’s in it—everything becomes the brand of complicated she strives to avoid. It’s up to Luke then to change some things in order to try and ensure he’s not something she’ll outright avoid as well.

When Fate and a chivalrous impulse combine to saddle Viscount Desford with a friendless homeless waif named Cherry Steane, to whom else should he turn in such a scrape but his old childhood playmate, Henrietta Silverdale? For all they refused to oblige their parents by marrying, they have always been the best of friends. But as Desford pursues Cherry's lickpenny grandfather and reprobate father around unfashionable watering places and the seedier fringes of society, Hetta is forced to wonder whether he might not, at last, have fallen in love. Without the timely intervention of his scapegrace brother Simon, and Hetta's worthy suitor Gary Nethercott, Desford is in danger of making a rare mess of his affairs. Charity Girl is a wonderful romantic novel by the queen of the Regency romance, one of the most popular historical novelists of all time.

The women in Brianne Montgomery’s family have a curse that compels them to marry before the age of thirty-one, and she wasn't going to be the first one to break it. Her life seemed perfect. Her parents were happily married and she had a wonderful brother who looked out for her. The only thing she hated about her life was Travis Cross—her brother’s annoying best friend. But Brianne’s life took a sudden turn with a tragic death in her family. In an instant, she lost everything she held close to her in her perfect life. Travis made a lifetime promise to take care of Brianne for the rest of his life. He promised to be her safety guy to save her from the family curse. He also promised her brother he wouldn't touch her. And Travis is one person who knows how to keep his promises--no matter what the cost. Soon, their once hateful relationship turned into an unbreakable bond of love and friendship. However, their dependent and comfortable relationship would always be complicated because of the yearning inside Travis that craved Brianne like a drug. And Brianne struggled to stay immune to his charms. She had already lost so much, and Travis had become the most important thing she couldn’t afford to gamble with. This romance follows Travis and Brianne's lives from the age of sixteen to adulthood and how they dealt with family, divorce, death, teen peer pressure, marriage and breakups… all of which make up their deep and unbreakable connection: A relationship so beautiful, they’re afraid to risk it for anything… not even for love itself.

Authorized by the Margaret Mitchell Estate, here is the first-ever prequel to one of the most beloved and bestselling novels of all time, Gone with the Wind. The critically acclaimed author of Rhett Butler’s People magnificently recounts the life of Mammy, one of literature’s greatest supporting characters, from her days as a slave girl to the outbreak of the Civil War. “Her story began with a miracle.” On the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue, an island consumed by the flames of revolution, a senseless attack leaves only one survivor—an infant girl. She falls into the hands of two French émigrés, Henri and Solange Fournier, who take the beautiful child they call Ruth to the bustling American city of Savannah. What follows is the sweeping tale of Ruth’s life as shaped by her strong-willed mistress and other larger-than-life personalities she encounters in the South: Jehu Glen, a free black man with whom Ruth falls madly in love; the shabbily genteel family that first hires Ruth as Mammy; Solange’s daughter Ellen and the rough Irishman, Gerald O’Hara, whom Ellen chooses to marry; the Butler family of Charleston and their shocking connection to Mammy Ruth; and finally Scarlett O’Hara—the irrepressible Southern belle Mammy raises from birth. As we witness the difficult coming of age felt by three generations of women, gifted storyteller Donald McCaig reveals a portrait of Mammy that is both nuanced and poignant, at once a proud woman and a captive, and a strict disciplinarian who has never experienced freedom herself. But despite the cruelties of a world that has decreed her a slave, Mammy endures, a rock in the river of time. She loves with a ferocity that would astonish those around her if they knew it. And she holds tight even to those who have been lost in the ravages of her days. Set against the backdrop of the South from the 1820s until the dawn of the Civil War, here is a remarkable story of fortitude, heartbreak, and indomitable will—and a tale that will forever illuminate your reading of Margaret Mitchell’s unforgettable classic, Gone with the Wind