Book picks similar to
Empty Me Out (The Liquid Series, #1) by S.A. Healey
december
new-adult
theme-addiction
favorites
Heartbroken
Lisa Unger - 2012
Emily is a struggling waitress whose toxic relationship with the wrong man has led her to make a horrible, life-altering decision.Without knowing each other, and with lives that couldn't be more different, they head to the same point on the map: Heart Island. It's an idyllic place in the middle of an Adirondack lake, and home to harsh and unyielding matriarch Birdie Burke. These three women find themselves on a heart-wrenching collision course--with dark memories, restless ghosts, and one another. And unbeknownst to them all, Heart Island has a terrifying history of its own.Heartbroken is a tense, mesmerizing novel about the limits of dysfunctional families, of an island haunted by dark memories, and of the all-too-real demons we must battle. Wonderfully suspenseful, exquisitely crafted, and written with raw, emotional power, this is New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger at her very best."Stellar... Should be on everyone's to-read list." (USA Today)
Stubborn Love
Wendy Owens - 2013
She had given him her youth, and all he gave in return was misery and pain. She was ready for a new beginning, but Ashton wasn’t about to let her go so easily, even if it meant destroying both their lives in the process.Three years later Emmie convinces herself she is ready to leave all of that heartbreak in the past and find a little piece of normal for herself. She heads to New York City to pick up where she left off, determined to finish art school. Emmie is determined to focus on school and not let anything distract her, but life has a way of throwing curveballs.Paige, Emmie’s new roommate, brings Colin Bennett into her life. His smoldering eyes and lean muscular body are difficult for any girl to ignore. Only thing is, Emmie isn’t any girl. Her past makes her resistant to his charms. Colin isn’t one to give up easily, and just when he thinks he may have found a way to her stubborn heart, her tragic history may have found a way to tear them apart.
9 Letters
Blake Austin - 2016
After his wife's tragic death, he lost everything that mattered in the world. Now, his life is filled with hard days, harder nights, and a steady stream of alcohol and the wrong kind of women. Nothing helps.Until the letters arrive on Luke's doorstep.Nine envelopes. Nine messages. Nine chances to find his way back.Rae Goode is looking for the real thing. After fighting her way out of a string of bad relationships, she's ready for something different--something true.She meets Luke while piecing her life together, and right away she can tell that he's different. Drawn together by fate and the desire to heal, Rae and Luke discover new ways to mend their broken hearts--one letter at a time. Discover Blake Austin's debut novel of loss, redemption, and ever-enduring love.
The First Wife
Erica Spindler - 2015
As a child, Bailey Browne dreamed of a knight in shining armor swooping in to rescue her and her mother. As she grew older, those dreams transformed, becoming ones of a mysterious stranger who swept her off her feet and whisked her away from her ordinary existence; then, suddenly, there he was. Despite the ten-year difference in their ages and her working class upbringing and his of privilege, Logan Abbott and Bailey fall deeply in love. Marriage quickly follows.But when Logan brings her home to his horse farm in Louisiana, a magnificent estate on ninety wooded acres, her dreams of happily-ever-after begin to unravel. A tragic family history Bailey knew nothing about surfaces, along with whisperings about the disappearance of his first wife and rumors about women from the area who have gone missing, and when another woman disappears, all signs point to her husband's involvement.
Atlas
Alison Ryan - 2016
Atlas Titan isn't your typical billionaire heir. He defied the expectations of his tycoon father and well-heeled, affluent family by becoming a Navy SEAL and later a clandestine operative for the darkest government agencies. He thought he'd left that world behind for a Bay Area start-up with his brothers, but a man's past has a way of catching up with him. I'm Piper Kipton. I'm on the run from my own mistakes, and there's only one man who can protect me from them. And he just so happens to be 6'5 with rugged good looks and a penchant for making me weak at his touch. Brought together by unfortunate circumstances, Atlas will do everything in his power to protect me from the dangers that lurk beyond the guarded walls of our luxury digs. But who will protect us from our forbidden desire for one another? Atlas says it's a waste of time to wish for a better past. Little do we both know- the secrets of our pasts might be the only way we can possibly have a future. WARNING: This is a steamy read full of tons of hot sex and high-stakes situations. It involves a love that happens fast and is an action-packed, fast paced romance where nothing is as it seems... except the need for a man to protect the woman he loves and wants at all costs. Buckle up! Because this is the sexiest Alison Ryan novel yet.
Ruby
Cynthia Bond - 2014
Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby, "the kind of pretty it hurt to look at," has suffered beyond imagining, so as soon as she can, she flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York. Ruby quickly winds her way into the ripe center of the city--the darkened piano bars and hidden alleyways of the Village--all the while hoping for a glimpse of the red hair and green eyes of her mother. When a telegram from her cousin forces her to return home, thirty-year-old Ruby Bell finds herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood. With the terrifying realization that she might not be strong enough to fight her way back out again, Ruby struggles to survive her memories of the town's dark past. Meanwhile, Ephram must choose between loyalty to the sister who raised him and the chance for a life with the woman he has loved since he was a boy.Full of life, exquisitely written, and suffused with the pastoral beauty of the rural South, Ruby is a transcendent novel of passion and courage. This wondrous page-turner rushes through the red dust and gossip of Main Street, to the pit fire where men swill bootleg outside Bloom's Juke, to Celia Jennings's kitchen where a cake is being made, yolk by yolk, that Ephram will use to try to begin again with Ruby. Utterly transfixing, with unforgettable characters, riveting suspense, and breathtaking, luminous prose, Ruby offers an unflinching portrait of man's dark acts and the promise of the redemptive power of love.
Team Hate
Rebel Hart - 2020
After my father died in a car accident when I was sixteen, I decided to pursue football as a tribute to him. I struggled my way through college coaching for experience, always trying to prove I belonged to the field. And now I’m excited to finally jump into the big leagues as a strength and conditioning assistant coach of the North Carolina Knights.I’ve always been a stubborn, short-tempered, swearing-like-a-sailor tomboy. But it's a different ballgame with the football players.They can be crass, rude, misogynistic.One in particular, the arrogant and egotistical star quaterback, John Scepter.He thinks there’s no place for women in professional football and is not subtly trying to force me out.I hate him.Yet, no one makes my heart race like he does…And that makes me hate him even more.
Dirty Saint
Vesper Vaughn - 2016
He has this whole university fooled. Not me. I've seen a whole other sinful side to Mr. Touchdown. I've witnessed his swagger. Heard his filthy mouth and lost count how often he says the Lord's name in vain. I can’t stand that man. So why is he starring in my dreams? Why do I have a carnal highlight reel in my mind, looping with images that have nothing to do with the game of football? Now I’m the first-ever water girl for the university football team. My plan? I need to stay far, far away from temptation. I’m here for the thrill of the game. Not to worship the sexy-as-sin Quarterback. But from the first day of practice Saint's sultry gaze makes it perfectly clear that he intends to score. SAINT: They call me Saint. That’s because I’m a miracle on the football field. I’ve taken this cloistered, religious university and launched it into the national spotlight. All I want is to play ball and get to know some of my lovely and devoted female fans. They flock to my games. They can't wait to offer me anything I want after the final play. But all that changes when I catch sight of Esther. The water girl is the only girl on campus who doesn't want me. That's okay because I like a challenge, I like strategy and I really like the idea of finally claiming Esther's heavenly body. This standalone, full-length novel contains cursing, steamy sex scenes, no cheating, and a guaranteed happily ever after.
The Body in Question
Jill Ciment - 2019
. . I loved every page” —Ann Patchett), Act of God (“A feat of literary magic”—Booklist) and, with Amy Hempel, The Hand That Feeds You (“An unnerving, elegant page-turner” —Vanity Fair), a spare, masterful novel.The place: central Florida. The situation: a sensational murder trial, set in a courthouse more Soviet than Le Corbusier; a rich, white teenage girl—a twin—on trial for murdering her toddler brother.Two of the jurors: Hannah, a married fifty-two-year-old former Rolling Stone and Interview Magazine photographer of rock stars and socialites (she began to photograph animals when she realized she saw people “as a species”), and Graham, a forty-one-year-old anatomy professor. Both are sequestered (she, juror C-2; he, F-17) along with the other jurors at the Econo Lodge off I-75. As the shocking and numbing details of the crime are revealed during a string of days and courtroom hours, and the nights play out in a series of court-financed meals at Outback Steak House (the state isn’t paying for their drinks) and Red Lobster, Hannah and Graham fall into a furtive affair, keeping their oath as jurors never to discuss the trial. During deliberations the lovers learn that they are on opposing sides of the case. Suddenly they look at one another through an altogether different lens, as things become more complicated . . . After the verdict, Hannah returns home to her much older husband, but the case ignites once again and Hannah’s “one last dalliance before she is too old” takes on profoundly personal and moral consequences as The Body in Question moves to its affecting, powerful, and surprising conclusion.
Lucky Number Four
Amanda Jason - 2014
Okay, so her best friends being newlyweds isn't really abnormal, but living with them in a cramped two-bedroom apartment definitely is. Sex, sex, sex is totally on their minds. Actually it's not only on their minds, but it's on the kitchen table, couch, on top of the washer...well, you get the picture.Being a celibate (not by choice, mind you) full-time college student, and an almost full-time barista, Pandora can't afford to lose anymore sleep. So, she seeks out a new place to lay her head. Enter three "drool worthy" male models that are looking for a fourth roommate and they want her...and won't take no for an answer.Hilarity ensues as Pandora's life turns completely upside down, and she begins to wonder if it will ever be the same again!
Immortal
Lauren Burd - 2010
A small cut was the only sign that anything had occurred. I watched in disbelief as it finished closing and eventually disappeared.“What are you?” * * *Gods, demons, and vampires… Eighteen-year-old Alina Taylor doesn’t believe in any of them. Then, she meets Samuel Grant and Duncan Michaels and discovers a world that could destroy everything she loves.First book in the Immortal Trilogy.
The Lonely Girl
Gracie Wilson - 2014
One argument can leave you reeling. A look can take you to a place you can never return from again. What happens when one day, you wake up and find your world has been turned upside down? The person you love is gone. The life you thought you'd have is no longer one you see being able to get back to. You lost the one person you loved more than anything. They tell you to move on, try. For them. It’s what they would want. But is it really? So I try. This time, will be different. I slowly start to put the shattered pieces of my heart back together, only to have it broken again, by someone I thought I trusted. My heart's barely healed, my world just starting to make sense again, when tragedy and devastation strikes. My circumstances leave me asking one question… Is it worth the risk to love again?
Georgia Clay
K.G. Fletcher - 2018
An incredible talent in his own right, Clay has always hesitated to step into the spotlight on his own for fear his debilitating childhood secret will rear its ugly head. Katie Parker is a workaholic Southern beauty who’s first love is her career. It’s not just her knowledge of the cut-throat insurance business she has skillfully navigated over the years, but her tenacity and gumption in climbing the corporate ladder. The musician and career woman run into each other in the heat of the Atlanta summer at their ten-year high school reunion and unexpectedly end up in the bed of his pickup truck talking till dawn. As they forge ahead in a passionate long-distance relationship, can Clay admit to Katie she had his heart a long, long time ago? Will her drive and encouragement finally be the reason Georgia Clay takes a chance on his career…and love?
Those Who Prey
Jennifer Moffett - 2020
College life isn’t what Emily expected.She expected to spend freshman year strolling through the ivy-covered campus with new friends, finally feeling like she belonged. Instead, she walks the campus alone, still not having found her place or her people so far away from home. But then the Kingdom finds her. The Kingdom, an exclusive on-campus group, offers everything Emily expected of college and more: acceptance, friends, a potential boyfriend, and a chance to spend the summer in Italy on a mission trip. But the trip is not what she thought it would be. Emily and the others are stripped of their passports and money. They’re cut off from their families back home. The Kingdom’s practices become increasingly manipulative and dangerous. And someone ends up dead.At times unsettling and always riveting, Those Who Prey looks at the allure of cult life, while questioning just how far we’re willing to go to find where we belong.
Let Me Be the One
Lily Foster - 2014
Her boyfriend? The guy who came off as sweet and devoted, the life of the party? Try obsessed, out of control and hell-bent on ruining her life.One year later, a new and improved Darcy Donovan is back on campus and she’s got a plan. That plan doesn’t include Tom Farrell, or any other guy for that matter. He’s surfer-boy hot and he talks a good game, but don’t they all?Hell to the yes…She’s back.Going after his friend’s girl is wrong, but Tom is too hung up on Darcy to care. Screw principles, screw ethics, screw the bro code. An hour in her presence would lead the best of men to veer off the high road.And he has his work cut out for him. She still thinks he’s a joke, nothing more than a walking, talking one-night stand. What she doesn’t know is that Tom has spent the past year changing his ways. He’s not all talk, and he’ll do whatever it takes to prove it.But when a menace from Darcy’s past resurfaces and Tom’s past comes back to bite him hard, their one shot at happily ever after may be shot to hell.What you don’t know? Turns out that it can hurt you.Let Me Be the One is the first book in Lily Foster's Let Me series. Gripping and emotional, these stand-alone romances are intended for the 18 and older crowd due to mature language and sexual content.