To survive another generation, they'll need to live among the shifters. Long ago, a world war waged between shapeshifters and humans. Humans lost, and the consequences were dire…. Ella is part of a clan hidden deep in the forests of Washington State. She doesn't know if there are other human clans out there or if hers in the last one, but she knows there isn't a future for her people if they don't do something drastic. All of her life, she has heard horror stories about the Others, the beasts that surround them in high-tech dwellings beyond the mountains, but the Others may be their only hope. Ty Bearclaw, a grizzly shifter, is the curator at the Washington State Animal Sanctuary, Research, and Observation Center (WSASROC). A call from a rancher about something causing an unusual kind of havoc along the borders of the National Forest brings him to the Olympic Mountain National Park, where Ty is furious to discover that the rancher placed a trap to capture the creature on government-protected property. It isn't an animal caught in the trap, though—it's a human woman! Her entire species was believed to be extinct! What is even more confounding is his bear's reaction to the female. All his life he wondered who his mate would be, what she'd be like, what kind of shifter she would be. He never once considered that his mate might not be a shifter at all, and her very presence would change their understanding of the past and the future. A NY Times and USA Today bestselling author, the internationally acclaimed S.E. Smith presents a new story with her signature humor and unpredictable twists! Exciting adventure, hot romance, and iconic characters have won her a legion of fans. Over TWO MILLION books sold!
‘Ella Baxter’s debut novel is drenched in sex and death . . . there’s also much love . . . An intense, viscerally affecting book, with the quotient of tenderness to violence in an equal scale.’ Sydney Morning Herald Amelia is no stranger to sex and death. Her job in her family’s funeral parlour, doing make-up on the dead, might be unusual, but she’s good at it. Life and warmth comes from the men she meets online – combining with someone else’s body at night in order to become something else, at least for a while. But when a sudden loss severs her ties with someone she loves, Amelia sets off on a seventy-two-hour mission to outrun her grief – skipping out on the funeral, running away to stay with her father in Tasmania and experimenting on the local BDSM scene. There she learns more about sex, death, grief, and the different ways pain works its way through the body. It takes two fathers, a bruising encounter with a stranger and recognition of her own body’s limits to bring Amelia back to herself. Deadpan, wise and heartbreakingly funny, Ella Baxter’s New Animal is a stunning debut.
After falling off the roof, fifteen-year-old misfit Dylan must attend a therapy group for self-harmers where he meets Jamie, a beautiful and amazing person he doesn't know is transgender.
'Not since Faulkner have I read American prose so bristling with life and particularity.' -- J M Coetzee Following in the footsteps of such chroniclers of American absurdity as Cormac McCarthy, Joy Williams, and Charles Portis, Robin McLean's Pity the Beast is a mind-melting feminist Western that pins a tale of sexual violence and vengeance to a canvas stretching back to prehistory, sideways into legend, and off into a lonesome future. Millennia ago, Ginny's family ranch was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousand years hence, it'll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here and now, though, it's a hotbed of lust and resentment, and about to turn ugly, because Ginny's just cheated on her husband Dan with the man who lives next door. Out on these prairies, word travels fast: everyone seems to know everyone's business. They know what Ginny did, and they know Ginny isn't sorry. She might not be proud of what she's done, but she doesn't regret it either. To be honest, she enjoyed the hell out of it, and as far as Ginny is concerned, that should be the end of the story. Problem is, no one else seems able to let it go. The community can't bear to let a woman like Ginny off the hook. Not with an attitude like hers. With detours through time, space, and myth, not to mention into the minds of a pack of philosophical mules, Pity the Beast heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American letters. It is a novel that turns our assumptions about the West, masculinity, good and evil, and the very nature of storytelling onto their heads, with an eye to the cosmic as well as the comic. It urges us to write our stories anew--if we want to avoid becoming beasts ourselves.
Hot vampires and alpha werewolves are waiting for you...Enter the sexy world of New York Times best-selling author Cynthia Eden’s “Purgatory” paranormal series. “The Beasts Inside” anthology contains the following titles: THE WOLF WITHIN (Book 1) FBI Special Agent Duncan McGuire spends his days—and his nights—tracking real-life monsters. He hunts the monsters, and he protects the innocent. Duncan just never expects to become a monster. But after a brutal werewolf attack, he begins to change. Dr. Holly Young is supposed to help Duncan. It’s her job to keep him sane. But as Duncan’s beast grows stronger, the passion that she and Duncan have held carefully in check pushes to the surface. The desire that is raging between them could be a very dangerous thing…because Holly isn’t exactly human, not any longer. As they give up more of their humanity and embrace the beasts within them both, they realize that the passion between them isn’t safe, it isn’t controllable, and their dark need may just be an obsession that could destroy them both. MARKED BY THE VAMPIRE (Book 2) The creatures that you fear in the darkness? They’re all real. And the baddest of the paranormals…those who love to hurt humans…they’re sent to Purgatory, the only paranormal prison in the U.S. Deadly forces are at work within Purgatory. FBI Agent Shane August, a very powerful vampire with a dark past, is sent into the prison on an undercover assignment. His job is to infiltrate the vampire clan, by any means necessary. Dr. Olivia Maddox wants to find out just why certain paranormals go bad. If she can understand the monsters, then Olivia thinks she can help them. When she gets permission to enter Purgatory, Olivia believes she is being given the research opportunity of a lifetime. When the prisoners break loose, there is only one person—one vampire—who can protect her, but as Olivia and Shane fight the enemies that surround them, a dark and dangerous passion stirs to life between the doctor and the vamp. Some passions can push you to the very limits of your control…and the growing lust that she feels for her vampire…it’s sending her racing right into a deadly storm of desire. CHARMING THE BEAST (Book 3) Connor Marrok never intended to work for the Seattle Para Unit. He’s not one of the good guys—he’s a real monster. But now he finds himself being blackmailed into a new assignment. It’s supposed to be his last gig. His mission? Protect the beautiful Chloe Quick. Easy enough…until he starts to fall for Chloe. Chloe is tired of being a prisoner. She wants to get away from her Para Unit guard and run fast into the night. So what if Connor is the sexiest guy she’s ever met? Chloe knows trouble when she sees it, and Connor is one big, dangerous package of trouble. But, when an obsessed werewolf begins stalking Chloe, she realizes that her paranormal bodyguard may just be the one man she needs the most. DEAL WITH THE DEVIL (Book 4) Eric Pate is used to making his own rules—as the director of the PARA Unit, he is the boss. Everyone rushes to obey his commands, and no one knows his secrets. No one ever gets too close to him. But then he meets her. Ella Lancaster is tired of being a prisoner. She escaped one hell just to find herself in another, though Eric doesn’t consider her containment with his agents as punishment. He actually thinks it is a form of protection. But Eric is so very wrong. Ella doesn’t need protecting, not from anyone or anything. As Eric falls deeper and deeper under the mysterious Ella’s spell, his legendary control begins to crack. The beast that he has kept chained so carefully inside rises to the surface. Unfortunately, when the devil loses his control…there is real hell to pay.
Holden Harris is an autistic 18-year-old who is bullied at school. Laura Reynolds, the head cheerleader who befriends Holden, has problems of her own at home. In her trademark way, Kingsbury tackles real-life issues of high school bullying, autism, adultery, and ultimately acceptance.
Set amidst the turbulence of WW1, Mary Wood’s evocative historical saga The Abandoned Daughter follows Ella, a voluntary nurse tormented by soldiers' cries and the wound of a shattered trust. As her friendships teeter, exacerbated by the strains of war, Ella's isolation deepens. Within the confines of a French military hospital, she finds companionship in Connie and Paddy, and comfort in the arms of a French officer, Paulo. As war rages around them, could Paulo be Ella's refuge? With the end of the war on the horizon, surely things have to get better? Ella grew up not knowing her real family but a clue leads her in their direction. What did happen to Ella’s parents, and why is she so desperate to find out? The second book in The Girls Who Went To War series, The Abandoned Daughter takes you on an emotional roller-coaster of love, deception, and the relentless pursuit of truth amidst war's chaos.
I've never been a cute, petite little thing. And my stepsister Ella and her friends never let me forget it. In fact, growing up, I always felt like Cricket, the jolly, mean giant—not that I'm mean. More like I'm a scapegoat. Now, I have one month until I get the heck out of Dodge and escape my family, this city and all the people who've called me Beast all these years. I'm never coming back. Until then, I just need to avoid my parents, Ella and the gorgeous billionaire she has her eye on. Not so hard. I know how to fly under the radar. Except…he has no interest in my stepsister. No, his eye is on me. He calls me his princess. And there's nothing I can do to escape my fate, especially when Ella discovers his interest. She's determined to prove I'm Cricket the Beast again. And maybe, I should let her, just so I can leave here before I get hurt. Because hot guys like him? They're definitely not into beasts like me.
“[A] novel of fractured childhood in East Germany . . . a powerful elegy” from the author of the international bestseller, The Blindness of the Heart (Booklist, starred review). Echoing themes of Julia Franck’s German Book Prize–winning novel, The Blindness of the Heart, Back to Back begins in 1954 and centers around a single family living in Berlin in the socialist East. A cruel and unaffectionate mother, Käthe, is a sculptor of Jewish heritage, devoted entirely to becoming a success in the socialist state. Thomas and Ella’s father emigrated to West Germany after World War II, and they deeply long to see him again. But Käthe’s hard-nosed brutality—a reflection of the materialistic, unsentimental state in which she lives—means Thomas and Ella are unable to live the lives they want to. As the siblings grow up, “the enchanted bubble of childhood fades, replaced by a sense of pitiless confinement—an ideological claustrophobia made concrete as the wall is constructed around them, touching off the book’s devastating climax” (Vogue). “Like an expert geologist, Franck is digging deep into her family’s extraordinary history creating things of great beauty from its dark recesses. Diamond-hard and full of glittering prose, Back to Back is a powerful and moving book. I suspect there are more gems to come.” —Daily Telegraph “Intoxicating . . . a curious fusion of stark realism tempered with quirkily stylistic flights of fancy: the trademark of one of Germany’s finest contemporary novelists.” —Literary Review “Mournful and intense . . . captures a slice of life during a particularly harsh and brutal time and place, through the lens of a quickly disintegrating childhood innocence.” —Bust Magazine
