Enjoy this steamy contemporary story by USA Today Bestselling dark billionaire romance author Summer Cooper! Since my ex, I desired no one — until I saw her. My new neighbor. Lydia is not my type. A loving, caring single mother. I can tell that I’m not exactly her type either. A young broken boxer. But I know that we need each other. I need to pleasure her, kiss her, own her and most importantly, protect her. As for her, I think she just needs to be reminded of just how beautiful she still is... Indulge in a scintillating tale of desire and forbidden love! Experience the sizzling chemistry between a strong, single mom and a hunky, younger boxer next door. Discover passion, romance, and the thrilling journey of love defying all odds in this captivating contemporary romance. Dive into the pages and let your fantasies come alive as age becomes just a number, and hearts collide in an irresistible tale of mature love and steamy encounters! This is a full-length, standalone, older woman younger man with a happily ever after.
Ways to screw up the MMA comeback I've been working so hard on: 1. Check out my trainer's little sister in front of him, which gets me hit in the head 2. Make excuses to stay at the gym afterhours so I can watch her face scrunch up while she balances the books 3. Forget that she's leaving at the end of the summer and we're supposed to be sticking to just friends 4. Get caught making out with her, earning even more hellacious training sessions, along with a warning to stay away 5. Switch my focus to proving I won't stop fighting until she's mine Each book in the Fighting for Her series is STANDALONE: * Until You're Mine * Until We're More
A gorgeous debut about family, friendship, first romance, and how to be true to one person you love without betraying another The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, seventeen-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them . . . until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase's family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself? A dreamy summer read, full of characters who stay with you long after the story is over. "A summer romance with depth." —The Boston Sunday Globe "Fitzpatrick's excellent first novel movingly captures the intensity of first love." —Publishers Weekly, starred review "An almost perfect summer romance." —Kirkus Reviews "On par with authors such as Sarah Dessen and Deb Caletti." —SLJ
Shattered. That's the best way to describe Claire Thompson after the ultimate betrayal. When her long-term boyfriend cheats on her, Claire decides she's done with men. Maybe forever. Healing the pieces of her broken heart seems like too impossible a task. Rumor has it the best way to get over someone is to get under someone new, but a rebound is the last thing she wants or needs, and she's definitely not letting her guard down for anyone, especially not for charming, sexy-as-sin, multi-millionaire playboy Avery Beck. Avery Beck, womanizer extraordinaire, prefers his women with no strings attached. Until he sets his eyes on Claire. As fiery and feisty as her hair, with stubbornness and tenacity to match, he's sure he's never worked harder for anything. Avery is determined to tear her walls down one piercing gaze, one lingering touch, one sweeping kiss at a time. He's never given up before, and he doesn't plan on starting now. Will Avery's wild heart finally be tamed? Or will this be the one time the relentless millionaire doesn't get what he wants?
America's next favorite Australian author! "With jaw-dropping discoveries and realistic consequences, this novel is not to be missed. Perfect for lovers of Big Little Lies." —Library Journal, starred review Small, perfect towns often hold the deepest secrets. From the outside, Essie’s life looks idyllic: a loving husband, a beautiful house in a good neighborhood, and a nearby mother who dotes on her grandchildren. But few of Essie’s friends know her secret shame: that in a moment of maternal despair, she once walked away from her newborn, asleep in her carriage in a park. Disaster was avoided and Essie got better, but she still fears what lurks inside her, even as her daughter gets older and she has a second baby. When a new woman named Isabelle moves in next door to Essie, she is an immediate object of curiosity in the neighborhood. Why single, when everyone else is married with children? Why renting, when everyone else owns? What mysterious job does she have? And why is she so fascinated with Essie? As the two women grow closer and Essie’s friends voice their disapproval, it starts to become clear that Isabelle’s choice of neighborhood was no accident. And that her presence threatens to bring shocking secrets to light. The Family Next Door is Sally Hepworth at her very best: at once a deeply moving portrait of family drama and a compelling suburban mystery that will keep you hooked until the very last page.
I come from a family of fighters. I always thought I'd follow in their shadows, becoming unstoppable in the ring. That changed the day I saved the life of a woman I loved, but could never have. My brother hailed me as a hero, and my reward was a wheelchair. Paralyzed, my life became an inescapable nightmare. Until I met her. Ash Mabie had a heart-stopping smile and a laugh that numbed the rage and resentment brewing inside of me. She showed me that even the darkest night still had stars, and it didn't matter one bit that you had to lie in the weeds to see them. I was a jaded asshole who fell for a girl with a knack for running away. I couldn't even walk but I would have spent a lifetime chasing her. Now, I'm on the ropes during the toughest battles of my life. Fighting the shadows of our past. Fighting to reclaim my future. Fighting for her.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
His scarred hands are the gentlest I've ever known. If only life were a fairy tale where Beauty got to keep her Beast... Every morning I wake up and remind myself I am not my past, but beneath my drab clothing hides a secret—proof of the abuse I suffered at the hands of my possessive ex, tattooed on my skin in a lurid reminder of everything I've survived. I'm alone and in hiding, trying to rebuild some semblance of a normal life. I didn't expect healing to come in the form of a rough ex-con whose rage drives him in ways I'll never understand. Ivan's scars are on the inside—a wounded soul like me. But day by day, this gentle giant proves to me that there are second chances in life, and he deserves them as much as I do. And maybe finding each other will finally allow us to pick up our broken pieces and make something beautiful and new... This high-heat romance is an emotional tale of survival and contains strong themes of past domestic/sexual abuse. Please see reviews for details. Praise for Under Her Skin: "A dark and emotional tale that will make your spine tingle as well as your heart."—SARINA BOWEN, USA Today bestselling author of Bittersweet "The perfect romance...a hint of danger, a whole lot of spice, and an HEA you believe in."—ANNE CALHOUN, award-winning author of Under the Surface "Emotionally riveting page-turner."—Publishers Weekly STARRED Review "Incredibly sexy, heartbreaking, and intense."—Kirkus STARRED Review
For years Grant Kessler has smuggled goods from one end of the world to the next. When business turns in a direction Grant isn't willing to follow he decides to retire and by all appearances he settles down in a nowhere town called Durstrand. But his real plan is to wait a few years and let the FBI lose interest, then move on to the distant coastal life he's always dreamed of. Severely autistic, Morgan cannot look people in the eye, tell left from right, and has uncontrolled tics. Yet he's beaten every obstacle life has thrown his way. And when Grant Kessler moves into town Morgan isn't a bit shy in letting the man know how much he wants him. While the attraction is mutual, Grant pushes Morgan away. Like the rest of the world he can't see past Morgan's odd behaviors Then Morgan shows Grant how light lets you see but it also leaves you blind. And once Grant opens his eyes, he loses his heart to the beautiful enigma of a man who changes the course of his life.
When bones are discovered in a tin box inside the tunnel a group of long-time friends played in as children, they reunite to recall their adventures in the tunnel for the detective investigating the case.
