fiction
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Wildest Dreams by Stefany Rattles
When nineteen-year-old Alaina Sanders scores a position as an assistant at L&A law firm where her lifetime crush Rayden Matthews happens to work, feelings and emotions from the past resurface. With the physical attraction stronger than ever, soon they find themselves in a complicated situation. Rayden is engaged to his high school sweetheart, but things are not what they seem and Rayden must make a choice before it’s too late.
L&A is Alaina’s first professional job, needless to say that the last thing she wants is drama or to lose her job. Unfortunately, she finds herself surrounded by a series of events that are out of her control… like a stalker for one. When her work and personal life intertwine, how will she be able to handle them? In a boring town like Springdale, Arkansas how much worse can things get for Alaina?
MAN UP ! BOY ! by KASEY TAYLOR
Fourteen year old Malik Fuller, nicknamed Tootie Boy, had many lessons to learn about growing up and hanging out with his seventeen year old brother Ty and his friends Corey Lee and Brent. Not only was Tootie Boy innocent to the fact that Ty and the guys were drinking, smoking and stealing, but he had no clue that his brother had a relationship Sasha, the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood, who Malik himself has loved all of his life.
Trouble came to light after Ty and Brent were arrested for stealing stereos from the boxcar of a parked train. Malik’s father Tyrone, the owner of a prominent construction business, made a back door deal with the judge to get Ty off, while Brent was sent away to the military instead of jail.
Later that year, armed with a basketball scholarship to Cornell University, Ty packed his bags and traded railroad tracks and swimming in the lake for the glitz and glamour of New York. As luck would have it, Ty just happened to be at an amateur runway model recruiting event and he was chosen to model for the renowned Western Jeans Company. Within two years, Ty’s good looks and southern charm had landed him the spot as top male model. His partner, Imani, Western’s top female model, introduced Ty to New York’s nightlife which in her world consisted of clubs, limo’s and fine dining.
One night in the well known, Club 99, Ty ran into his old friend Corey Lee Richardson, Brent’s cousin who was living in Harlem and conducting business at Club 99. Corey wasn’t in the modeling business though. Corey’s business was coke, girls and guns, but when Corey hooked up with Imani, his desire was to come up with enough illegal money to go straight.
No one could fathom the turns life would take for the guys in their new surroundings of the bright lights and street life of New York.
The Trouble With St. John: A Samantha Stone Novel by Katie Bloomstrom
“After all that work and sleuthing and investment in my great detective notebook, I had nothing. In fact, the only successful thing I’ve done since stepping foot on this island was successfully believe all the lies everyone told me. Oh, I’ve also successfully been kidnapped, successfully almost drowned, and successfully eaten more Xanax than I’ve ever eaten before in my life. And in two days I’m supposed to just leave and pretend none of this ever happened. If I can even leave after being framed for murder.”
When shy, medium-looking Samantha Stone winds up on the romantic tropical island of St. John after getting dumped at the altar, she’s faced with two options: (1) sit in her sweaty villa and cry over her un-marriage to her idiot ex-fiancé while watching Love Actually on repeat and mass-eating Oreos and Xanax, or (2) pursue a hot vacation sexcapade with the gorgeous travel god she meets at baggage claim. Really, what’s a girl to do?
But, after losing both her super spendy non-diamond engagement ring and her mysterious tropical island fling candidate in the same drunken night, Sam quickly learns that St. John isn’t quite what she bargained for. In fact, she’ll be lucky if she can make it back home alive.
Join breakthrough author Katie Bloomstrom as she takes you on a journey into a picture perfect paradise filled with men, money, and mystery where nothing – and no one – is quite what it seems.
Your Love Is King by Adrienne Thompson
Plus-sized divorced nurse and single mom, Marli Meadows, is tired of the monotonous rhythm of an unfulfilled life. She is seemingly stuck in a perpetual cycle of low self-esteem and bad decisions. With her daughter approaching adulthood, she decides to make a change and leaves her dysfunctional parental ties and going-nowhere relationship with an occasional boyfriend behind in exchange for a travel nursing job in another state. Enter the handsome Chris King, who oozes confidence and pursues Marli relentlessly. Chris is white. Marli is African American. And therein lies the first of her issues with him. Your Love Is King is an Edgy Inspirational Interracial Romance novel that chronicles one woman’s journey toward self-acceptance and love.
OUR TURN by Michael P Buckley
Anna, a hard-working businesswoman, wasn’t looking for love when a car accident introduced her to Bobby. He was all she wanted in a man, and most men would have bailed out when unimaginable suffering knocked on her door. Instead, it made their love stronger. Unknown to her, God helped arrange the accident to bring them together. After suffering a horrific abduction, nearly starved and beaten to death, together with the help from above, Anna and Bobby create the largest organization of its kind in the world.
“OUR TURN” takes over where local governments fail, corruption rules, and police no longer help. They step in to save people in need and give them a second chance at life. The organization will take any request for help throughout the world, “…but they can respond only in a few cases.” If “OUR TURN” responds to a request, the opposition is destroyed, at the cost of many security members losing their lives to save others.
Favorite Daughter, Part One by Paula Margulies
Set in the time of the Jamestown settlement and the English explorer John Smith, Favorite Daughter, Part One recounts the story of Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, as she prepares to take her place as one of our nation’s earliest leading women. Pocahontas invites readers to experience her native world when strangers appear on the shores near her village. From forging a relationship with the charismatic Smith, to experiencing love for the first time and creating a role for herself in her father’s plans for peace, this young girl takes us on a poignant and harrowing journey through the turbulent events of her life. Eventually betrayed by all of the men she loves, Pocahontas matures into a heroine of tremendous nobility, courage, and heart.
Told in first person, in a voice brimming with compassion and wisdom, Favorite Daughter, Part One provides a compelling look at the early days of one of the most remarkable legends in American history.
Editor’s Choice Award Winner, 24th Annual San Diego State University Writers’ Conference
Risk (A Billionaire Love Story) by Kaelyn Swan
Money Loyalty Danger
Deborah
Growing up was rough for me, from foster home to foster home, and finally into my own makeshift family of the lost and forgotten. But I had overcome that, determined to give both myself and the ones I cared for a better life. That meant giving up a lot.
1. Never choose love over money.
2. Never take a risk, always keep my head in the game.
Until..
Loyalty caused me to take the ultimate risk.
Aidan Price demanded to be in my life.
Aidan Price, a playboy who had never wanted for anything, until he wanted me. I had been burned by love once, and I wasn’t about to be distracted by a man whose bed was a revolving door. But Aidan had other plans. He reminded me, that despite my best efforts, I still had desire raging through me. In the midst of my dangerous past colliding with my successful present, Aidan stirred inside of me a need that I thought I had sacrificed long ago. I had taken a huge risk out of loyalty, could I take another risk for love?
Aidan
I was born with everything I could want or need at my fingertips. But all of that luxury wasn’t enough to keep me out of trouble. With a purchased education and zero direction in life I buried myself in the pleasures of life. All I needed was a good drink, and a sexy woman in my bed, or two. Happiness was one luxury I didn’t expect to ever experience. I had only one plan for my life.
1. Don’t have a plan.
2. Don’t think about the past.
Until..
My determined sister forced me to take some control.
I wanted a woman that I could never live without.
Deborah Klein the first woman to resist my charms, and demand my attention. I wanted more than I had ever wanted any woman, which left my curious and insatiable. But there was much more to Deborah than I could have ever expected. Was she really the woman who had stolen my heart, or was she just a stone cold thief? She made me want to be a better person, but would she ever see me that way if she knew about my past?
Twisted by Lola Smirnova
Back in the 90’s, the corrupt post-Soviet Ukraine with its faltering economy, is thrown into a devastating
depression. Times are hard. Opportunities are scarce. Three young and eager sisters – Natalia, Lena and
Julia – dream of a better life and weigh their options: do they stay and struggle like their parents, or
join scores of their compatriots in the sex trade in glittering western European cities, who earn in a night
what they’d take several months to earn at home? Naive and tempted by the allure of ‘quick’ money, the girls
set off on an adventure that changes their lives forever.For sensible, resilient and calculating Lena and
Natalia, the transition to the underworld of Luxembourg’s deceptive champagne bars is eye-opening, but
smooth. But for fragile, brittle Julia, haunted by a childhood assault, the change is more than just
vocational. Struggling to adapt, she turns to alcohol and drugs, exposing herself to increasing danger and
depravity; and, ultimately, betrayal, when a deceitful client, who claims to love her, drugs her and cleans
her out. Despite her sisters’ best efforts to intervene, she finds herself in Istanbul – culturally a world
apart – in an attempt to make back the money and self-respect she’s lost. Vulnerable without the protection
of Luxembourg’s champagne bars, she descends into a hell of drugs and high-risk sex until, at the novel’s
terrible climax, a kidnapping, brutal assault and one-sided justice system lead to her imprisonment and a
threat of deportation.
The Realist by Abbie Zanders
That’s Clarissa Sullivan’s new philosophy. No more bad relationships. No more dead-end jobs. No more depending on anyone for anything. The rustic mountain cabin in the middle of nowhere is the perfect place to start over and simplify.
Adopting a mongrel stray isn’t part of the plan. Neither is guarding her heart against her sexy, survivalist neighbor.
Ex-marine Travis Maxwell is totally onboard with that. He sought out the seclusion of the mountains to get away from betraying fiancés and back-stabbing best friends. The last thing he needs – or wants – is to get close to anyone ever again.
Worrying about his prickly, sexy little neighbor isn’t part of the plan. And any kind of relationship is definitely out of the question.
But in the unforgiving wilderness, it just makes sense to have each other’s back, right?
Every Woman Deserves an Accessory by Von Powell
When Raquel Davis, a successful, but jaded makeup artist first heard about personal trainer Javier Vasquez, she wasn’t interested. Her marriage was crumbling and her friendships were becoming destructive. Overweight and lacking confidence, Raquel wasn’t ready or interested in meeting anyone new.
Fast forward five years. Raquel is eighty pounds slimmer with much more confidence in herself. She has ended her marriage and traded in the flash of a diamond ring for the flashbulbs of the red carpet. But, despite all her material and career success, she wants something more.
Raquel has survived heartbreak, handled single motherhood, and thrived in the world of fashion, but will she allow herself to take a chance on love again? Although she is now use to wearing diamonds only on her ears, perhaps Javier will be able to show Raquel an accessory or two that she’s been missing.
She knew what she wanted. She knew what she needed. But she had no idea what she deserved.
