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contemporary-romance

This Man


Jodi Ellen Malpas - 2012
    She is expecting nothing more than an overweight, cravat wearing, well-to-do countryman, and on arrival, nothing would suggest otherwise. How wrong could she be? This Man is devastatingly handsome, charming and confident. He is also a conceited, hedonistic playboy, who knows no boundaries. Ava desperately does not want to be attracted to him, but she can’t control the overwhelming effect he has on her. Every instinct is telling her to run, so she does, but Jesse Ward is not so willing to let her go. He wants her and is determined to have her. She knows she is heading for heartbreak, but how can she run when he won’t let her?

Shine Not Burn


Elle Casey - 2013
    Determined to move on from a bad break-up, she joins her girlfriends for a wild bachelorette weekend in Las Vegas, promising to let her hair down just this once.Vegas is a blur of cocktails and blackjack, and in the middle of it all she meets Mack, a real-life cowboy with a winning hand and an irresistible body. They get lucky in the casino and luckier back at the hotel, a hot night of passion that was definitely not part of Andie’s life plan.By dawn Mack is gone and all she has to remember their one-night romance is a hangover and a pile of casino chips. Or so she thinks… Revised edition: This edition of Shine Not Burn includes editorial revisions.

The Traveling Man


Jane Harvey-Berrick - 2015
    Nice. He was extraordinary. And he wasn’t always nice.Moody and difficult, brilliant and beautiful, Kes scared me and he protected me. He could be incredibly hurtful and incredibly thoughtful. He wasn’t perfect, but he was perfect for me. He challenged me, he took me out of my safe little box and showed me the world could be magnificent. He was everything I wasn’t. Aimee Anderson is ten when the traveling carnival first comes to her nice little town. She doesn’t expect her world to change so completely. But meeting Kestrel Donohue puts her life on a different path.Even though she only sees him for the two weeks of the year when he passes through her home town, his friendship is the most important of her life. As a child’s friendship grows to adult love, the choices become harder, and both Kes and Aimee realize that two weeks a year will never be enough.

In the Unlikely Event


L.J. Shen - 2019
    Shen comes a new, star-crossed lovers romance about loss, love, and meeting The One when you are too young to know how to keep them. Sometimes you meet people who are out of this world, so you make them a part of yours. A one-night stand born from vengeance in a foreign land. An explosive chemistry neither of us could deny. We signed a contract on the back of a Boar’s Head Pub napkin that said if we ever met again, we would drop everything and be together. Eight years and thousands of miles later, he’s here. In New York. And he’s America’s music obsession. The intangible Irish poet who brings record executives to their knees. The blizzard in my perfect, unshaken snow globe. Last time we spoke, he was a beggar with no intention of becoming a king. But a king he became, and now I’m his servant. I’m not the same broken princess Malachy Doherty put back together with his callused hands. I have a career I love. A boyfriend I adore. An apartment, a roommate, a life. I changed. He changed, too. But Mal kept the napkin. Question is, will I keep my word?

Calico


Callie Hart - 2016
     Port Royal, South Carolina, was my home. I was born there. I fell in love there. And I nearly died there. I never thought I’d go back. Now, after so many years, I have to return to bury the man who made my life a living hell. Some nights, I used to cry myself to sleep, praying my father would die. Other nights were different. Other nights, there was him. Callan Cross. My first confidante. My first kiss. My first love. My first everything: Callan was the glue that held me together when everything else was falling apart. He was my savior. He was there for me whenever I needed him… Until he wasn’t. Every night, I’ve seen the love of my life in my sleep. I just never thought I’d have to face him again. Callan Twelve years ago, I f*#@ed up big time. Living life through a camera lens is sometimes easier than dealing with it head on. Scratch that. It’s always easier. For over a decade, I’ve been a master of my art, taking photographs all over the world. Yet despite all of the countries I’ve visited, the amazing things I’ve seen, the beautiful women I’ve screwed, my heart has remained in pieces. Coralie’s the only woman I’ve ever loved, will ever love. And I’m determined to show her that we’re meant to be together. Even if it means unearthing the bones of the past in the process. A lifetime and a thousand miles have stood between us. Now, there’s no length of time I won’t wait, no distance I won’t travel, in order to make her mine.

Still Beating


Jennifer Hartmann - 2020
    This book contains subject matter that may be sensitive for some readers, including rape, as well as strong language and explicit sex. 18+ only. Please read responsibly. When Cora attends her sister’s birthday party, she expects at most a hangover or a walk of shame. She doesn’t anticipate a stolen wallet, leaving her stranded and dependent on Dean—her arch nemesis and ultimate thorn in her side. And she really doesn’t anticipate waking up in shackles in a madman’s basement.To make matters worse, Dean shares the space in his own set of chains.After fifteen years of teasing, insults, and practical jokes, the ultimate joke seems to be on them. The two people who always thought they’d end up killing each other must now work together if they want to survive.But Cora and Dean have no idea their abductor has a plan for them. A plan that will alter the course of their relationship, blur the line between hate and love, and shackle them together with far more than just chains.

Release


Aly Martinez - 2020
     Growing up, Ramsey Stewart branded my soul in ways time could never heal. At twelve, he asked me to be his girlfriend. At thirteen, he gave me my first kiss. By sixteen, we’d fallen in love, planned a future together, and had our eyes set on the horizon. Love never fails, right? But for Ramsey, it did. Love failed him. I failed him. The entire world failed him. At seventeen, Ramsey was convicted of killing the boy who assaulted me. Move on, he wrote in his first and only letter from prison. Start a new life, he urged. I don’t love you anymore, he lied. There was no such thing as giving up on Ramsey. Love may have been our curse, but he was mine—then, now, and forever. So here I am, twelve long years later, waiting for a man I don't even know to emerge from between the chain link gates.

From Rags


Suzanne Wright - 2012
    Her mum, who committed suicide. Her sister, who she hasn’t seen since her teens. And Connor McKenzie, who disappeared from her life the same day he left their foster home. The hardest part of that was that he never completely left her life because she was forever seeing him on T.V. or in magazines as a Formula One Driver. But Jaxxon refuses to live a ‘woe is me’ life, even in spite of living alone in her one-roomed flat and being expected to survive on a ridiculously low income. Then one night she is offered a modelling job and before she knows it she has been catapulted to the peak of success, gaining fame, fortune and security. Oh and a stalker. Connor McKenzie is busy trying to shake off his crazy ex-girlfriend – another woman who thought she could get around his no marriage rule – when he sees Jaxxon on the cover of a magazine. Remembering how close they had once been, he’s shocked when she doesn’t respond to his attempts to contact her and then acts indifferently to him when they meet. But Connor can’t let it go. The only reason he had kept his hands off her ten years ago was that she had been younger than him. Now that they’re adults, he isn’t prepared to allow anything – not even Jaxxon – to stop him from having her. Warning: This novel contains a bitchy female who curses like a sailor, a persistent alpha male who doesn’t understand the word ‘no’, and explicit hot sex in some very public places.

This Much is True


Katherine Owen - 2013
    A ballerina who lies. A baseball player who believes her. Well, the truth changes everything. Tally Landon just wants to escape her tragic story if just for one night. She doesn't count on meeting Lincoln Presley, Stanford's baseball wonder, but plans to add him to her long list of one-night stands. That's the plan. Lying to him about her age and her name is just a part of her don't-get-emotionally-attached style. She doesn't count on being found out, nor on ever seeing Linc again or falling in love. Lincoln Presley's life is all mapped out. There is only baseball. With the major leagues circling their favorite prospect with a lucrative offer, he cannot afford to mess up. And, he doesn't; until he meets up with the girl he saved from the burning wreckage on the 101 on Valentine's Day months before. By the time he learns her real name and of all the lies she's told, he's in far too deep to ever really let her go. When fame and lies tear them apart, one truth remains; and fate, most definitely, has a different set of plans. This much is true.Author's Note: A coming of age story? Could be. A powerful love story? Most definitely. An unforgettable read? Most likely. Intended for mature audiences, ages 17+? Absolutely. This best selling new adult contemporary romance novel will take you on an emotional roller coaster ride and is the first book (which should really be two books) in the Truth In Lies series, but it can be read as a standalone. It is 432 pages long in 12-point type so carve out some time.

If He Had Been with Me


Laura Nowlin - 2013
    But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial.So let me tell you...

Puddle Jumping


Amber L. Johnson - 2014
     Everyone thinks Colton Neely is special. Lilly Evans just thinks he’s fascinating. Once friends when they were younger, their bond is cut short due to her accident prone nature and they go their separate ways. Years later, they meet again and Lilly learns that there is something special about the boy she once knew, but she has no idea what it all means. And she’s not sure if she’s ready to find out. When he walks through the corridor of her school the first day of her senior year, she knows that it’s time to get to know the real Colton Neely. The more she learns, the deeper she falls. Their friendship grows into love, even as Colton does not express it in words. But one decision threatens to break down the world that Lilly has tried so hard to integrate into and she must figure out if the relationship can survive if they are apart.

That Thing Between Eli & Gwen


J.J. McAvoy - 2016
    McAvoy**Eli Davenport thinks he’s found the perfect woman to be his wife. She’s a doctor, like he is. She’s brilliant, like he is. And she’s wealthy, like he is. Guinevere 'Gwen' Poe thinks her fiancé is the perfect man. He’s handsome, successful and he was her first… But when Eli’s bride runs off with Gwen’s fiancée on his wedding day, they are left to pick up the broken pieces of each other...

Binding Arbitration


Elizabeth Marx - 2011
    The undefeated defense attorney is prepared to take her fight all the way to the majors.Circumstances force Libby to plead her case at the cleats of celebrity baseball player Banford Aidan Palowski, the man who discarded her at their college graduation. Libby has worked her backside bare for everything she’s attained, while Aidan has been indulged since he slid through the birth canal and landed in a pile of Gold Coast money. But helping Libby and living up to his biological duty could jeopardize the only thing the jock worships: his baseball career.If baseball imitates life, Aidan admits his appears to be silver-plated peanuts, until an unexpected confrontation with the most spectacular prize that’s ever poured from a caramel corn box blindsides him. When he learns about his son’s desperate need, it pricks open the wound he’s carried since he abandoned Libby and the child.All Libby wants is a little anonymous DNA, but Aidan has a magical umpire in his head who knows Libby’s a fateball right to the heart. When a six-year-old sage and a hippy priestess step onto the field, there’s more to settle between Libby and Aidan than heartache, redemption, and forgiveness.

Withering Hope


Layla Hagen - 2015
    Her dress, her fiancé and the location—the idyllic holiday ranch in Brazil—are perfect. But all Aimee’s plans come crashing down when the private jet that’s taking her from the U.S. to the ranch—where her fiancé awaits her—defects mid-flight and the pilot is forced to perform an emergency landing in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. With no way to reach civilisation, being rescued is Aimee and Tristan’s—the pilot—only hope. A slim one that slowly withers away, desperation taking its place. Because death wanders in the jungle under many forms: starvation, diseases. Beasts. As Aimee and Tristan fight to find ways to survive, they grow closer. Together they discover that facing old, inner agonies carved by painful pasts takes just as much courage, if not even more, than facing the rainforest. Despite her devotion to her fiancé, Aimee can’t hide her feelings for Tristan—the man for whom she’s slowly becoming everything. You can hide many things in the rainforest. But not lies. Or love.Withering Hope is the story of a man who desperately needs forgiveness and the woman who brings him hope. It is a story in which hope births wings and blooms into a love that is as beautiful and intense as it is forbidden.

Ruining Me


Nicole Reed - 2012
    Secrets, lies, and the worst imaginable betrayal haunt her new reality. Burying her problems under a cold façade seems to be the only way to cope until it all catches up with her. Soon, she loses control of the lonely world she built around her, and the past, present, and future collide.Three guys are there when it all comes crashing down: JT, the perfect boyfriend she never wanted to give up; Rhye, the local bad boy “rock star” who made her forget the past; and Kane, the funny and sweet tattooed bartender who wants her future. Secrets must be kept. Choices must be made. Is it possible to move forward while still chained to the wicked vices of the past?