“How did it happen?”“How did what happen?”The growl in his voice probably cowed a great many folks. She didn’t happen to be one of them. Even if he was big and intense and talked about delivering death like it was the mail. “Your leg.”He didn’t respond. Instead, he stood at the sink and stared out into the storm.“Is it a state secret?” she wanted to know. “A matter of national security? An injury suffered while on a clandestine mission that you can’t talk about under penalty of death? Did they make you swear on a Bible?”“You’re a piece of work,” he said. “I know.” When he turned to glower at her, she smiled. “It’s a gift.”His gaze fell to her mouth, and awareness speared through her, a hot, electric slide that made her cheeks burn. He was attracted to her, the same way she was attracted to him. And he didn’t like it.Not one bit.You and me both, bucko...◆◆◆When a local bank robbery brings newly elected Sheriff Beau Greystone to Wynn Owens’ front door, she has only two things to give him: the endless bounty of her caustic wit and a one-finger salute. Wynn has history with the law, none of it good. And the notion that one of her elderly tenants might have something to do with the robbery is just plain crazy.A former DEA agent, Beau owes his newly minted badge solely to his meddling aunt and his own foolish indifference. Recovering from the murder of his wife—and the debilitating injury caused by the explosion that killed her—Beau has been happily checked out for some time. But the people of Blossom Hills are counting on him to do his job, and bringing a bank robber to justice is a fine place to start…until the killer that's haunted the town for the last decade abruptly returns. Wynn has a tenant to exonerate; Beau, a killer to catch. Neither is prepared for the compelling but unwelcome current between them, or the unexpected circumstances that will force them to reassess the rules by which they live. But the clock is ticking, and they must decide: adapt and evolve, or surrender to the past and the dark malevolence that has risen within it…. A dark, edgy, steamy thriller with characters you won't forget…contemporary romantic suspense at its best.

    Catherine was reading a novel. So begins Room on the Sea, André Aciman's scorching and elegiac love-story about a middle-aged man and woman who meet in the bullpen of jury selection and spend a sultry summer’s week trespassing ever further into each other's hearts.What begins as a flirtation quickly evolves into something deeper, something Paul and Catherine must carry on in secret—and with the understanding that anything more than a casual crush is out of the question. But as the week draws to a close, the end of their rendezvous comes into focus, and Paul and Catherine are forced to decide whether to act on their feelings or leave the fantasy of what could have been to the annals of the past.By turns scintillating and philosophical, Room on the Sea is a compulsively listenable story of love, fate, and last chances.©2022 Andre Aciman (P)2022 Audible Originals, Inc.

    Problems almost crushed him. Love motivated him to mend the damage, once he found all the pieces. After only a few months of marriage, Lorraine left Dylan on a wintry night after he'd spent one too many nights out with the guys. Unable to cope with the loss, Dylan escapes the painful feelings by drinking them away. This decision costs him a year-and-a-half of his life after he stops in a little mountain town and ends up in the local jail. When he's released, he returns home in search of a job to get his life—and his wife back. THE MISSING PIECE is not only a love story about a man who loves a woman, but is also a love story about a merciful God who loves mankind, even when he falls. The novel is an emotionally-charged journey of hope and redemption with a touch of spunk, a hint of humor, and a few twists along the way.Engaging and inspiring!

    As the Son of Sam and a scorching heat wave plague New York City, Laila Levin, a Jewish sociologist from Long Island, meets Dr. Eduardo Quintana while giving a speech on the epidemic problem of teenage pregnancies. Laila is relationship-shy after a disastrous marriage, and Eduardo has never completely recovered from his high school sweetheart’s desertion. He is finishing up a residency in New York City and plans to open a family practice near his hometown in New Mexico.The unlikely pair share strong family values and an interest in helping prevent teen pregnancy. Their mutual passion is so intense it stuns them both. After a brief courtship, Eduardo persuades Laila to accompany him to his family ranch near Española, New Mexico, a rural area with one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in North America.  Once in New Mexico, Laila is blatantly rejected by Sylvia, Eduardo’s controlling mama. Sylvia desperately wants Eduardo to marry Violet, his high school sweetheart. Violet has just returned to New Mexico after a failed flight attendant career, and a walk on the dark side of Hollywood. Her mama and Sylvia cook up a plan to get rid of Laila and reunite their children. The Quintanas hold a large pig roast and invite a menagerie of tattooed cousins, rodeo stars, and mariachis, where the drop-dead gorgeous Violet makes a grand entrance.In the midst of the pandemonium that results, a shocking family secret is revealed, and Laila and Eduardo’s love for each other is severely tested. Can their relationship survive the fierce clash of cultures, the murderous intentions of a Son of Sam copycat who has stalked Laila from New York City, and their own uncertainties about the upheavals that their union will cause in their lives?

    Chronicling the sordid world of a teenage prostitute, it was the biggest bestseller of the year. It broke conventions, inspired a cult following, and made Peter Robertson rich, admired...and scared. There, on the edge of the crowd, he always sees her. She not only looks like Angel, she embodies the desperate creature he created. Everywhere Peter goes, she goes, obsessed with everything about him. What could she possibly want? Soon, curiosity will get the best of him. So will the girl with the haunted eyes. Because what she's really after is something that will explode Peter's world.

    But while her family despairs of marrying her off, she has a passionate heart and powerful dreams, and wants only to find a way to make them come true.Then a young man named Sterling Promise comes to their village to offer Jade Moon and her father a chance to go to America. While Sterling Promise's smooth manners couldn't be more different from her own impulsive nature, Jade Moon falls in love with him on the long voyage. But America in 1923 doesn't want to admit many Chinese, and when they are detained at Angel Island, the "Ellis Island of the West", she discovers a betrayal that destroys all her dreams. To get into America, much less survive there, Jade Moon will have to use all her stubbornness and will to break a new path... one as brave and dangerous as only a Fire Horse girl can imagine.

    Her sheltered upbringing leaves her exposed to a harsher world, and one complicated male in particular - Shawn Michaels. The tattooed and intimidating underground fighter, who is nothing like anyone she had ever met before.

    😞 Just her luck that it belongs to Talon, a totally arrogant jock 🏈 who’s just left for football camp—with her phone. Keeley doesn’t know him, but they’ll need to rely on each other to forward their messages for an entire week.Talon is so full of himself, but Keeley quickly discovers he’s funny, too—at least his texts are. 😅 And he listens to Keeley—which is more than anyone else does. Texting Talon, she can be more than just the quiet twin sister of a popular boy. Texting Talon, she can be the outgoing person she’s always wanted to be. Soon the two are falling for each other, hard.But when true identities are revealed and secrets are exposed, will Keeley’s feelings stay the same?

    But her parents insist that she get out of her head—and her home state—and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.Zander does not fit in—or so she thinks. She has only one word for her fellow campers: crazy. In fact, the whole camp population exists somewhere between disaster and diagnosis. There’s her cabinmate Cassie, a self-described manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic. Grover Cleveland (yes, like the president), a cute but confrontational boy who expects to be schizophrenic someday, odds being what they are. And Bek, a charmingly confounding pathological liar.But amid group “share-apy” sessions and forbidden late-night outings, unlikely friendships form, and as the Michigan summer heats up, the four teens begin to reveal their tragic secrets. Zander finds herself inextricably drawn to Grover’s earnest charms, and she begins to wonder if she could be happy. But first she must come completely unraveled to have any hope of putting herself back together again.

    Well, if so, Ruth and Richard are “the old masters” of the flirting game. Despite their strictly platonic relationship, there’s “something there,” as so many of their friends and families say. Neighbors and friends for ten years, neither seems willing to change the course of their relationship. Three doors down, at the end of the cul-de-sac, Mason Dickenson has watched his favorite neighbors with an interested eye, but he’s finally had it with the dance. So, with a pack of cards and a few tricks up his sleeve, he's determined to get them out of the "friend rut" and into romance. Thanks to Mason’s unique matchmaking scheme, Ruth and Richard concoct one of their own—a deeper, stronger, eternal love and relationship that nothing on earth can match.

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    Those words drove Caleb Knight from his bed and across town well before sunrise. Find my sister. She isn't answering her phone. There were many reasons a woman like Grace didn't answer her phone before dawn. He could only imagine the look on her face when he dragged her from her bed. With a shake of his head, Caleb stepped out of the car. Then he heard her scream.

    The scowl on his face? Definitely to warn people to stay away. His deteriorating grades? Obviously maintaining the bad boy façade. The silence he rarely breaks? Clearly so that he doesn't spill his secrets. He's cold. He's fucked up. He's an asshole. Or so they say. They think they know Xavier. They sure as hell don't. It takes one glimpse of Xavier's reality for Haley to realize nobody knows the person they all think they know. Nobody knows the frightened little boy hiding behind the cool façade, the silence brimming with unuttered screams, the grey eyes concealing all that pain. Nobody knows Xavier. But maybe Haley can. And maybe she can save him.

    Their friendship has now lasted thirty-five years. As their birthdays all fall in the same week they long ago made a pact to spend each big decade birthday together. So far they'd managed it. Now as their thirty-ninth birthday looms, Angel, a famous Hollywood actress, announces that this will be her last birthday. Terrified of aging, she absolutely refuses to turn forty. So Lexi, the mother hen of the group and an artist, invites them to Florida for a week-long celebration of this, their last birthday together. Brenda, mother to five grown-up children, flies in from Dublin, eagerly looking forward to her first foreign holiday ever. Mel, however, has to be prised away from New York where she is a successful partner in a law firm - she is a workaholic with no other friends or love in her life. The four come together for the celebration but soon things start to unravel and the week ends disastrously. Lexi is distraught. Can their friendship endure? Only time will tell.