The answer sent him into a web of treachery, of ancient secrets and forbidden knowledge, and entangled him in matters far beyond his understanding, until he found himself face to face with the gods of destruction and death.

    From a young child up until his teenage years, Frank struggles to find love and was lucky to find it in Alexandria Ware. While the secretive Frank doesn’t make her privy to his past, he loves Alex in his own way and plans to make her part of his future. Frank is convinced that after five years of being together, Alex is the one for him, but little does he know, she has an agenda of her own. While dealing with Frank’s emotionally unavailable nature, Alex’s love for him is purely conditional and has an expiration date set on whenever her boyfriend is finished stacking his money. Despite her fleeting feelings for Frank, she has no problem using him as an ATM, but when her boyfriend comes up with a plan for the perfect payday for them, will she end up on the wrong side of Frank’s love story? 
While Frank is building with Alex, Taiwan is living in Italy with her sugar daddy of over a decade, Romero Santiago. Being the sugar baby of a well-known cartel leader has its perks, and while Taiwan is enjoying the perks of her lifestyle, she finds herself craving more. As she approaches thirty, expensive trips and shopping trips courtesy of AMEX no longer enthrall her the way they did in her younger years. What Taiwan wants is one of the few things the happily married Romero can’t buy: a family. With a desire to stop sharing someone else’s husband and have one of her own, Taiwan tenders her resignation to a less than pleased Romero. But as a man of means with an endless amount of resources, Romero is able to offer her the deal of a lifetime. The question is, will Taiwan accept?
 Former gang member Rubee Bailey changed her life for the better when she becomes a mother to her daughter, Raylee, and couldn’t have a better father in Bash James. Rubee loves Bash with all her heart, but Bash has some hidden motives of his own when it comes to being with a Bailey. A secret from his pre-Rubee life almost catches up to him, causing him to move differently. When Bash breaks one straw too many, Rubee is sent straight into the arms of another man, with no feelings of remorse. This leaves Rubee asking herself if she’s willing to leave Bash or continue fighting for a lopsided love?

    The second is the reason I'm here. When Alexandra discovers that her husband Philippe is having an affair, she can’t believe he’d risk losing the love that has transformed both their lives.Still in shock, Alexandra finds herself powerfully attracted to a much younger man. Jean-Luc Malavoine is twenty-three, intense and magnetic. He’s also the son of Philippe’s best friend.With every increasingly passionate liaison, Alexandra is pulled deeper into a situation that threatens everyone she holds dear.Beautifully told through the boulevards and arrondissements of the City of Light, Paris Mon Amour is a sensual novel about inescapable desire and devastating betrayals. It is the story of one woman and two men, and what happens when there is no way out.‘A truly emotional ride. A story of lust, love and loss with a beautifully described Paris as its backdrop. I galloped through it in a couple of days’ Claire Fuller, author of Our Endless Numbered DaysIsabel Costello is the host of the Literary Sofa blog, which features authors from new talent to New York Times bestselling novelists. Guest writers on the blog have included Patrick Gale, Linda Grant, Tracy Chevalier and Karen Joy Fowler. She read Modern Languages (French and German) at Oxford, before pursuing a career in marketing and communications. She is now a full-time writer, and lives in London.

    Ten years later, Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at St Vitus' Hospital for the Mentally Ill to discover a world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes." Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy finds the companionship of two lonely children, Effie and Gus Mumford - one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, Billy confronts the monotony of his job in telephone sales, the awkward beauty of a desperate pickpocket named Penny Maple, and the seemingly impossible solution to the mystery of his sister's death. Along the path laden with hidden clues and codes that dare to be deciphered, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown.

    After being kicked out of a Catholic orphanage when it is discovered that he is of Jewish descent, a confused and deeply distraught Frankie turns to a life of crime, the only life he knows, and he’s good at it. Frankie quickly makes a name for himself and becomes one of New York’s most dangerous men, ruling the city with an iron fist and indulging in his passion for sex, power and the best things life has to offer—regardless of whether they’re for sale.In Stiletto, Cesare Cardinale is an amoral, aristocratic Italian playboy—an entrepreneur and race car driver who wants for nothing—whether it’s fast cars, beautiful women, or orgies of debauchery. Cesare, however, has two dirty secrets: First, he has a penchant for violence that borders on the sadistic and sociopathic; second, he owes his extravagant life to a Sicilian Mafia don, creating a seemingly perfect relationship—as he leads a double life as a Mafia assassin.“Robbins’s books are packed with action, sustained by strong narrative drive, and are given vitality by his own colorful life.” —The Wall Street JournalThe Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double includes: Never Love A Stranger and Stiletto.

    After a long career of being shot at, he’s about to be retired. The mildly larcenous, backwater island of Mancreu is the ideal place to serve out his time, a former British colony in legal limbo, belching toxic clouds of waste and facing imminent destruction by an international community concerned for their own safety. The perfect place for Lester is also the perfect location for a multinational array of shady businesses. Hence the Black Fleet of illicit ships lurking in the bay: spy stations, arms dealers, offshore hospitals, money laundering operations, drug factories and torture centres. None of which should be a problem, since Lester's brief is to sit tight and turn a blind eye.Meanwhile, he befriends a brilliant, internet-addled street kid with a comic book fixation who will need a home when the island dies. When Mancreu's fragile society erupts in violence, Lester must be more than just an observer: he has no choice but to rediscover the man of action he once was, and find out what kind of hero the island—and the boy—will need.From the award-winning author of Angelmaker and The Gone-Away World, Tigerman is a novel at once deeply heartfelt and headlong thrilling—about parenthood, friendship and secret identities, about heroes of both the super and the everyday kind.

    Easy to tick off so you can keep track of which book is next in reading order. There are no parts or portions of the books themselves here, just the titles in reading order. Perfect for keeping a checklist in your kindle app.

    Vicious, funny stuff."—Andrew Klavan, author of Hunting Down AmandaCyrus is a millionaire recluse. Oh, and a serial killer who preys upon apartment hunters in New York City. Armstead Maupin meets Carl Hiaasen in a brilliant black comedy that traces the paths of disparate characters floating through New York, about to collide in a treacherous story that will make you think twice about ever answering a classified ad.Chris Niles was born in New Zealand, and currently resides in New York. She is the author of a series of mysteries featuring radio reporter Sam Ridley: Spike It, Run Time and Crossing Live.

    Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose - selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate - and not everyone will survive.

    Precocious, self-conscious and preternaturally gifted, young Bruno, born and raised in a habitat at the local zoo, falls under the care of a university primatologist named Lydia Littlemore. Learning of Bruno's ability to speak, Lydia takes Bruno into her home to oversee his education and nurture his passion for painting. But for all of his gifts, the chimpanzee has a rough time caging his more primal urges. His untimely outbursts ultimately cost Lydia her job, and send the unlikely pair on the road in what proves to be one of the most unforgettable journeys -- and most affecting love stories -- in recent literature. Like its protagonist, this novel is big, loud, abrasive, witty, perverse, earnest and amazingly accomplished. The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore goes beyond satire by showing us not what it means, but what it feels like be human -- to love and lose, learn, aspire, grasp, and, in the end, to fail.

    He arrives at his friends' house without knowing how he got there. Nor do they. He seems to be having an affair with his secretary which is exciting, but unlikely. Further unsettled by leaps in logic and time, Carl wonders if he's actually reacting to the outside world, or if he's terribly mistaken. So begins a psychological adventure that stretches the boundaries of conciousness.

    Now, unable to play, adrift in an alcoholic daze, and with only fragmented memories of his past, Braden wants desperately to escape the darkness of the last eleven years.When his ex-wife and son are killed in a car accident, Braden returns home, hoping to forge a relationship with his troubled seventeen-year-old daughter, Allie. But how can he hope to rescue her from the curse that seems to shadow his family?Ophelia “Phee” MacPhee, granddaughter of the eccentric old man who sold Braden his cello, believes the curse is real. She swore an oath to her dying grandfather that she would ensure Braden plays the cello as long as he lives. But he can’t play, and as the shadows deepen and Phee finds herself falling for Braden, she’ll do anything to save him. It will take a miracle of forgiveness and love to bring all three of them back to the healing power of music.

    She hitchhikes as far as the freeway outside a small Northwestern town. The closest thing within walking distance is a strip club, and Janie finds herself working there, where she falls for Paul Jesse, a drug dealer, and moves in with him as he spirals into addiction and physical abuse. As the violence escalates, Janie finds a job in a bookstore and begins to establish her independence. Leaving Paul after a brutal beating, Janie must reconcile their relationship and make the most difficult, most dangerous choice she’ll ever make.Like Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Little Green examines the psychology of a woman who has experienced violence at the hands of someone she loves and the complexity of leaving with sensitivity and insight. This is a life-affirming story about a woman who finds strength in books, in the promise of education, and in the community of friends who help her find a way out.

    Now Val must reunite nine-year-old Alex with his estranged father, so they set out on a road trip from New York, Val making appearances at comic book conventions along the way.  As they travel west, encountering superheroes, monsters, time travelers, and robots, Val and Alex are drawn into the orbit of the comic-con regulars, from a hapless twentysomething illustrator to a lesbian comics writer to a group of cosplay women who provide a chorus of knowing commentary. For Alex, this world is a magical place where fiction becomes reality, but as they get closer to their destination, he begins to realize that the story his mother is telling him about their journey might have a very different ending than he imagined. A literary-meets-genre pleasure from an exciting new writer, A Hundred Thousand Worlds is a tribute to the fierce and complicated love between a mother and son—and to the way the stories we create come to shape us.

    . . . SaFranko’s prose is precise, flawless, and the work of a man who truly loves and understands great writing.” —Tony O'Neill, author of Sick City and Down and Out on Murder Mile “SaFranko writes from the heart, and the balls, crafting a furious and passionate piece of work that is entirely his own, with some scenes that would make even Bukowski blush.” —Susan Tomaselli, editor of Dogmatika.comHating Olivia is acclaimed underground author Mark SaFranko’s darkly twisted story of two people’s descent into sex, obsession, and mutual destruction. A gritty confessional tale, Hating Olivia is sure to appeal to fans of Charles Bukowski, John Fante, and Huburt Selby, Jr.