For a woman like Hadley, deemed not acceptable to procreate, there’s only one recourse. Unlicensed for motherhood, she can alleviate her grief and frustration at a “baby library,” where a curiously endless supply of infants is available for a two-week loan. But the borrowed life that serves as a temporary balm leads to a journey of self-discovery that will forever change the direction of Hadley’s future.Roxane Gay’s Graceful Burdens is part of Out of Line, an incisive collection of funny, enraging, and hopeful stories of women’s empowerment and escape. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

    Princess Magnolia - AKA, the Princess in Black - returns in this brief look at the Coronavirus crisis, and the simple things we can all do to improve the current situation.Available to download for free here:https://www.princessinblack.com/downl...

    And when Jamal Watts hears the stunning songbird, he’s ready to sign her to his label. The love-burned producer isn’t prepared for the passion Regina unleashes in him. Suddenly they’re both hitting all the right notes. But Regina isn’t ready to trust her heart—unless this gorgeous, caring man can show her how, together, they can make the most beautiful music of all…. Holiday Heat For Eve Clark, winter usually means long cold nights spent alone, until she’s persuaded to attend a masked ball. Abandoning her inhibitions, she shares a blissful tryst with a mysterious partner. Though she runs from their hotel room the next morning, Leyton Palmer is determined to track Eve down and show her that the night neither can forget was only the start of something sensational…. I’ll Be Home for Christmas Three years ago, Broadway star Dina Caldwell and celebrity chef Morgan Caldwell were passionately in love. Now America’s onetime favorite couple are about to be reunited in Morgan’s Detroit hometown for the holidays. Is this the season for forgiving and forgetting? With sizzling kisses under the mistletoe, Morgan vows to make this a Christmas Dina will never forget! Hawaii Magic Workaholic attorney Anita Hunt is on the job 24/7. She’s looking to make partner, not party. While on a forced vacation in Hawaii, she meets gorgeous pilot Steve Blair. When engine trouble forces them to make a crash landing, the seductive airman shows her a side of the exotic island and herself she never expected—and a passion that could make them partners in paradise forever.… Overtime Love Drew Davis’s goal is to buy the semipro football team where he is general manager. But the owner’s grandaughter, Tasha Bloom, unexpectedly inherits it first. Still, Drew’s not brokenhearted, since their mutual passion for football runs second only to their attraction to each other. But can the team and their budding romance make it to the New Year’s Day championship?

     To his dismay, Spencer Edelton, the venerable Marquess of Carey, has fallen in love with a whore. But Miss Beatrice Primrose is no common strumpet. She is a siren who enflames his desires and provokes him to do the most wicked, wanton things to her. After suffering the wrath of Lord Carey, Miss Beatrice Primrose wants more than a little revenge. But if she stays in his company, she risks revealing the truth of what happened between his family and hers. It is a truth she must keep secret from him at all cost. Spencer knows there is no future between them, and he must let Miss Primrose go before his brother returns to England. To safeguard her family—and her own heart—Beatrice must put as much distance between her and Lord Carey as possible. If only passions did not burn so hot…If only submission were not so seductive…nor punishment so sublime… READER ADVISORY: Punishing Miss Primrose is an erotic historical written as a serial of short stories available for purchase in individual parts or bundled in sets of five. This serial contains BDSM elements.

    Whether fending off bad guys or braiding hair, they show up Every. Single. Day. Ready to do anything it takes to show their daughters how a good man treats a woman. Bonus? There’s room aplenty in those big strong arms—and those hearts of gold—for the right woman who can love on their babies too, and bring a fiercely protective #GirlDad straight to his knees.One Night Stand with the Girl Dad by Tarin LexClimbing the Girl Dad Mountain Man by Sara HazelGirl Dad's a Rising Star by Ember DavisSecond Chance with the Girl Dad by Elsie JamesTrading Favors with the Girl Dad by Piper CookTaming the Girl Dad by Khloe SummersHealing the Girl Dad by Fern FraserSmitten with the Girl Dad by Carly KeeneRocked by the Girl Dad by Mazzy KingFix Me Up with the Girl Dad by Scarlett WoodsBest Friends with the Girl Dad by Kali HartEmployed by the Girl Dad by Ava PearlPlaying Around with the Girl Dad by Kameron ClaireFalling for the Girl Dad by Jade BayRomancing the Girl Dad by Andrea MarieFlirting with the Girl Dad by Sadie King

    She had the radio on as she danced around the kitchen waiting for Karl to get back from his business trip in New Orleans. They were married almost 2 months and she had missed him. That is when it happened. There was a knock at the door; she almost didn’t hear it as she sang along to the latest catchy tune that was sure to get annoying in the next few days. She ran from the kitchen thinking Karl was going to be his usual sweet self and try to surprise her with a grand entrance – or maybe he had left his keys. She opened the door with excitement only to see two police officers with solemn faces. Her world came crashing down around her as she invited them in and continued cooking. She couldn’t believe it, Karl was going to come through that door any minute and tell them it was all a mistake. He would want dinner when he got back. She needed to keep cooking so he wouldn’t go hungry. Jessica came around and talked her down, told her that she needed to go with the police officers to identify the body. She would be with her every step of the way. What followed was the realization that her husband was dead and their future was no more. All the things they were going to do; getting a chateaux in France, having a family, getting a cat when they moved to the suburbs and bought their own place. The future was full of life and in a split second it became a blank canvas; all because of a stupid accident.

    Then the tragic day arrives on which the terrible true nature of the beast is revealed.

    ‘It didn’t take long for the citizens of Moscow to realize that if you had no choice but to stand in line, then Pushkin was the man to stand next to.’A new story by the New York Times best-selling novelist Amor Towles, featured in Granta 148: Summer Fiction.

    Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos is explored and reinvented in style in “Down and Out in R’lyeh.” In the novelette “The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery,” Perpetua masquerades as a man in order to continue her father’s business as a glassblower and must fashion a special eye for a queen. And in “The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End,” the wyvern A-Through-L, the warrior Green Wind and his giant cat the Leopard of Little Breezes cope with their broken-hearted disappointment over politicks as the evil Marquess ascends to rule. Of her previous collection, The Bread We Eat in Dreams, the New York Times said, “Valente’s writing DNA is full of fable, fairy tale and myth drawn from deep wells worldwide.” With The Future Is Blue she continues to build and invent unforgettable worlds and characters with lyrical abandon, creating stories that feel old and new at once.The Future is Blue also includes three never-before-printed stories, for almost 30,000 words of work exclusive to this collection: “Major Tom,” “Two and Two is Seven,” and the long novelette “Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave.”Limited: 1250 signed numbered hardcover copiesTable of Contents:The Future Is BlueNo One Dies in NowhereTwo and Two is SevenDown and Out in R'lyehThe Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of DebaucherySnow DayPlanet LionFlame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and GraveMajor TomThe Lily and the HornThe Flame After the CandleThe Long Goodnight of Violet WildThe Beast Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End

    Outside the walls of Consilience, half the country is out of work, gangs of the drug-addicted and disaffected menace the streets, warlords disrupt the food supply, and overcrowded correctional facilities churn out offenders to make room for more.The Consilience prison, Positron, is something else altogether. The very heart of the community and its economic engine, it’s a bold experiment in voluntary incarceration. In exchange for a house, food, and what the online brochure hails as “A Meaningful Life,” residents agree to spend one month as inmates, the next as civilians, working as guards or whatever’s required.Stan and Charmaine have no complaints—until the day Stan discovers an erotic note under the fridge of the house he and Charmaine must share with another couple while they’re back inside Positron. It’s a missive of erotic longing, pressed with a vivid lipstick kiss: “I’m starved for you!” it breathes. If Stan rarely thought about the house’s other residents before—they’ve never met them and don’t know their names; it’s not allowed—now he can’t stop thinking about them, especially the note’s sex-addled author, a woman apparently named Jasmine, so unlike his girlish wife, Charmaine. He HAS to meet her, but in this highly ordered and increasingly surveilled world, disorderly thoughts are a risk, and breaking the rules has dire consequences.

    No waiting in line, no wardrobe malfunctions, no jockeying for position as you try to catch the bartender's eye. With a lineup of fantastic writers like Meg Cabot (The Boy Next Door), Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed), Kristin Gore (Sammy's Hill), Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus (The Nanny Diaries), Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (The Dirty Girls Social Club) and Lolly Winston (Good Grief), you'll be hanging with the VIPs all night long!Net proceeds to benefit War Child and No Strings.Unfortunately, this title is not available to Canadian residents.

    Their home. Her sanctuary. When Prue Bridgewater first glimpses the abandoned old house, it's love at first sight. Her husband Ray is not so sure. The property has been neglected for decades, and Ray can’t help wondering why. But with Prue on the brink of a nervous breakdown, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her sane, even if it means he has to live there. Once ensconced in their new home, Prue begins fixing up the place while Ray is away at work. But after a series of disturbing discoveries, she fears she's losing her mind. She hears things and sees people who couldn’t possibly be there, and she can’t shake the feeling she’s being watched. As Prue’s hold on reality begins to disintegrate, along with her marriage, she struggles to tell truth from delusion. But things go from bad to worse, and soon not just her sanity, but her survival hinges upon the long-buried secrets of THE HOUSE. This is a novella of approximately 27,287 words

    Samuel has his future set for him, but when he encounters the angelic Grace, he suddenly realizes he wants out of his commitments so he can pursue her. Can the two of them make it work, or has someone else already laid claim to the future they desire?

    Supposedly corroborating the mermaid story, a ship's log (in the collections of the Provincetown Historical Museum) of the schooner Hannah, which plucked Mr. Stanton from South Weepecket in 1788, indicates that the crew saw two figures on the island prior to his rescue, but failed to locate a second victim. However, regarding accuracy and reliability, this is the same crew, under Captain John Merriweather, that reported sightings of a ghost ship and not one, but two sea monsters. ~~James S. Rucker, Archivist, Family Collections, Falmouth Historical Society, 1924Companion story to Monstrous Beauty.

    Ranging from the 19th to the 20th centuries, writers include James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, Richard Edward Connell, Henri Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Jack London, Henri Ringgold Wilmer Lardner, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe.