A Love to Call Her Own It's been two years since Jessy Lawrence lost her husband in Afghanistan, and she's never fully recovered. Drowning her sorrows didn't help, and neither did the job she'd hoped would give her a sense of purpose. Now trying to rebuild her life, she finds solace in her best friends, fellow military wives who understand what it's like to love-and lose-a man in uniform . . . and the memory of one stolen night that makes her dream of a second chance at love. Dalton Smith has known more than his fair share of grief. Since his wife's death, he revels in the solitude of his cattle ranch. But try as he might, he can't stop thinking about the stunning redhead and the reckless, passionate night they shared. He wasn't ready before, but Dalton sees now that Jessy is the only woman who can mend his broken heart. So how will he convince her to take a chance on him?
Two besties and a baby make for an instafamily and a surprising romance in a delightful series by Melissa Foster, the New York Times bestselling author of the Sugar Lake novels. Ben Dalton has always been honest, except where his heart is concerned. He's been in love with his best friend--saucy, smart-mouthed Aurelia Stark--forever. But Ben's a planner, and timing has never been on his side. When he finally decides to make his move, Aurelia beats him to the punch with a move of her own--to a different town. Aurelia loves her new life in the charming town of Harmony Pointe. She has a great apartment and her very own bookstore, and best of all, the sinfully hot, commitment-phobic friend she's crushed on for years is no longer just around the corner. Maybe she'll finally be able to leave her unrequited love behind and move on. But when a baby is left on Ben's front porch--a baby that is presumably his--Aurelia is there for him. Neither one knows the first thing about babies, but how hard can it be? Ben and Aurelia are catapulted into a world of love, laughter, and tracking down the baby mama, and it might even add up to a very happily ever after... just not one either of them expects.
Psychic Emory Jackson and former black ops specialist Jonathon Silver are men from two completely different worlds with one thing in common: heartbreak. Emory still mourns the loss of his husband five years prior, and Jon is reeling with grief from the recent death of his twin brother. Sparks fly when mutual friends introduce them, but it's so much more than basic attraction. There's an undeniable awareness and a sense of belonging that neither man can deny. Despite Emory's premonition of a future with Jon, he has vowed never to love again. Jon is convinced that his tainted soul is the reason he will never have someone to call his own. What if they're both wrong? Maybe these broken men with their jagged edges could somehow align perfectly to form something whole and beautiful. But will that realization come too late for them? Someone to Call My Own is the second book in the Road to Blissville series. These books can be read as standalone or as part of the series. The author first introduced these characters in the Curl Up and Dye Mysteries, but it isn't necessary to read that series first. This book contains sexually explicit material and is intended for adults 18 and older.
An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.
“A journey to the center of a woman’s life.”—Maggie Scarf “A moving and exquisitely drawn portrait . . . Spirals is about commitment, courage, and the meaning of love.”—New Woman “Family. Familiar. Only my family isn’t familiar at all. My friends are familiar, my friends are as dependable as telephone poles, but the members of my family change in size, looks, powers, burdens and expectations, when all I ask of them is that they remain the same. Children grow, gather power while their parents lose it, leave home, travel in other orbits. Parents move, remarry or don’t remarry, dwindle away, die. Spouses may stay around for a long while—mine did, for twenty-eight years—but sooner or later they leave. And I keep changing too, even though I’m the one who stays home. I picture myself in the role of mother, particularly the mother of young children, because this is a self I like—distracted and short-tempered, I grant you, but well-meaning in spite of outbursts. Still, I have to recognize that this is different from the self who was a daughter or wife—and these don’t have much in common with the new, apprentice selves, who have to learn a whole set of limits, as mother of adults, mother-in-law, widow and grandmother. One thing these selves have in common, however: They’re not the same as my self when I’m alone.”—from Spirals
The complete uncollected fiction and nonfiction, including the five posthumously discovered “last” stories, published here in book form for the first time—from “one of the great short story writers of our time—of any time” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Call If You Need Me includes all of the prose previously collected in No Heroics, Please, four essays from Fires, and those five marvelous stories that range over the period of Carver’s mature writing and give his devoted readers a final glimpse of the great writer at work. The pure pleasure of Carver’s writing is everywhere in his work, here no less than in those stories that have already entered the canon of modern literature.
The #1 New York Times Bestseller “An engaging look at the often head-scratching, frequently infuriating mating behaviors that shape our love lives.” —Refinery 29 A hilarious, thoughtful, and in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance from Aziz Ansari, the star of Master of None and one of this generation’s sharpest comedic voices At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.
An Instant New York Times Bestseller! Winner of the Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe for New Talent Author Award Filled with mystery and an intriguingly rich magic system, Tracy Deonn’s YA contemporary fantasy reinvents the King Arthur legend and “braids together Southern folk traditions and Black Girl Magic into a searing modern tale of grief, power, and self-discovery” (Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles). After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down. And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw. The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates. She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.
Paris, late nineteenth century. A ballerina sees her life take a turn when her supposed lover turns her into the victim after having ruined her promising career in a Ballet company that leads her to dance in the Moulin Rouge to subterfuge as she tries to have a chance to achieve fame. When all seems completely lost, she surprises him with a come back up and starts to write screenplays. Only that she does not know that she is already living as a ghost and cannot leave the arthly bounds tormenting a girl born in the twenty first century and who had gone through a similar experience to hers. Is she prepared to face her own demons, or succumb to random colossal forces that prevent her from a follow-up while the girl is reporting both lives? A thriller with good doses of humor and horror spiced with artistic mastery of several composers of the nineteenth and twentieth century that give life to a seemingly familiar saga to all who dream by reaching the final glory... or be fatally sorry! Ana, a teenage girl who dreams of being an actress, has become entangled in a plot where a ghost of a nineteenth-century dancer who is the first to contact her to tell her story does not seem to match the facts reported by another ghost, allegedly her ex-lover and possible serial killer, and who also appears to insert into their midst to be involved in the same case. She hopes to resolve the issue as soon as possible, before they devour her or engage her further in a tangle of misunderstandings. Or she will start to disbelieve her own ears and lose herself in the path of her own acquittal tied into an emotional touch revealing a tough ancestor line that she treads. For doing so she will need all her courage thus find a heroin in her vein, facing her own fate ... Or hate!
Charismatic twins Amanda and Marlan Laton, sent to live with their aunt on a sprawling 1870s Texas ranch, find themselves competing for the love of cowboy neighbor Chad Kinkaid.
