Alex Lake’s life is centered on helping people. Her job as a social worker in a British seaside town is more than a career: It’s the very essence of who she is. And though there are frustrations, Alex takes to heart the rewards of placing a child in a safe and loving home. But when she encounters three-year-old Ottilie Wade, Alex is completely unprepared for the effect the sweet, shy little girl has on her. Though on the surface Ottilie seems to want for nothing—she’s perfectly healthy and lives in a very nice home—she’s mysteriously silent and asocial. Alex knows that something is not right in the Wade house. And the deeper she looks into the case, the more Alex comes to feel that she and Ottilie are being drawn together by fate.   As disturbing evidence mounts and Alex’s superiors seem unwilling to help, Alex knows she will have to risk everything—her job and the life she loves—to save Ottilie. But Alex will also have to wrestle the demons of her own past before she can secure a future for this child in need.Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.

    She’s landed an internship with the fabulous Selah Smith, event planner for the Hollywood elite, taking her from small-town Texas to the bright lights of LA. Landon soon finds herself in a world in which spending a million dollars on an event—even a child’s birthday party—is de rigueur and the whims of celebrity clients are life-and-death matters. At first, the thrill of working on A-list parties and celebrity weddings is enough to get Landon through the seventy-five-hour workweeks and endless abuse at the hands of her mercurial boss. But when the reality of the business reveals itself, she’s forced to make a choice: do whatever it takes to get ahead, or stay true to herself.Drawing on the author’s real-life experiences as an event planner to the stars, Party Girl takes readers on an adventure among Hollywood’s most beautiful—and most outrageous—people, revealing the ugly side of Hollywood’s prettiest parties.

    Meet Anika, Mia and Legacy. Three friends going through the trials and tribulations of love and heartache. Young and deep in love, they can’t seem to let go of the men they’ve fallen madly in love with. When Anika is forced to face the truth she was so determined to find, her world comes crumbling down, and she has to decide whether to love herself first or stay in a relationship that could destroy her. Mia is given a reality check and quickly learns that looks don’t always keep a man, and that sometimes men make promises they can’t keep to get what they want. Legacy is tired of being put on the back-burner and finally realizes she deserves better. Unfortunately, her other half plays on her low self-esteem and uses it to his advantage, but Legacy has had enough. The women find themselves sacrificing their values, morals and standards over men who toy with their feelings and emotions. When the drama and secrets become deeper than one could imagine, this trio fights to find the love for themselves again while they struggle to let go of the men who are not quite right for them. Will these three overcome their insecurities, or will they stay in their feelings and keep holding on to the wrong damn man?

    Stranded in Georgia with only her backpack and a few dwindling dollars, she already has too much baggage. Like her twin sister, Hana, who has broken Cara’s heart one too many times. After a lifetime of family troubles, and bouncing from one foster home to another, Cara decides to leave it all behind and strike out alone—on foot.Cara sets off to Florida to see the home of her literary hero, Ernest Hemingway, accompanied only by Hemi, the stray dog who proves to be the perfect travel companion. But the harrowing trip takes unexpected turns as strangers become friends who make her question everything, and Cara finds that as the journey unfolds, so does her life—in ways she could never imagine.

    This unknown legacy, now Merritt’s, will change and define her as she navigates her new life—a new life complicated by the arrival of her too young stepmother and ten-year-old half-brother.Soon, in this house of strangers, Merritt is forced into unraveling the Heyward family past as she faces her own fears and finds the healing she needs in the salt air of the Low Country.

    With a supporting cast of grifters and killers, broken-hearted squares and streetwalkers and three very different women who each want to become bad-boy Gideon's leading lady, this is a world that thrives on the darker passions of revenge and desire.

    Bound by duty and love, he has spent five thousand years living in the shadows, protecting God's 'so loved' humanity from his evil demon brethren. For his faithfulness to his commission, he has been promised a "Spirit" mate, that he will find in due season. After five thousand years, of searching...he has found her, at last. Nothing and no one will keep him from claiming his woman. Not even her! JODI is a college professor who has been abandoned by her husband, family and friends. She has lost faith humanity and has no interest in establishing a new relationship. With anyone! But when she walks upon Brock, in the park, both their worlds are changed. But is that change for the better? Jodi is Brock's 'Spirit' Mate. She's the one woman whose blood promises to extinguish the fiery darts of his demon within. Nothing will keep him from claiming her. But can she risk it? Are her wounds too deep? Unknown to both of them Brock's, enemies are gathering en masse. In hopes of delivering a devastating final blow to him, Jodi becomes their number one target. Just how far will Brock go to save his "Spirit" Mate? Will he rescue her in time? What will the fallout be? Will they survive this attack and kindle the love affair of both their dreams? Their contemporary love story is fraught with new found self-worth, spirituality, sexuality, fierce bloody battles...and REDEMPTION!

     He’s been hooked on her since he caught her singing in her garage. She felt their souls intertwine the moment they touched. But their love goes deeper than a chance encounter. Just how far will one of them have to go to prove it?

    Mastering life’s principal and hellacious course of Hard Knock Life 101 was nothing to eXavier and eZekiel Yarbrough at an early age. Their wisdom and fearless innocence allocated them guardian angels over baby cousin, iYanna. Drug addictions, immorality, abuse, and evil are all cycles that these three have a vivid familiarity with, yet out of the wicked mentalities that assaulted them grew love, loyalty, hope, tenacity and nobility. Despite the licks they gave, as well as took, they found a safe haven in an old head called Diego. A man that knew the streets and the streets respected him. This family has an abundance of dysfunction, but their devotion to each other is unrestricted and immovable! Friends for life. Life has not been particularly kind to Najia Kennedy. She's had to sacrifice more than she's wanted and taken more L's than wins. But somehow, she's managed to stay on her feet with her head held high, all the while searching for where broken hearts go. Love remains elusive as her son's father pops in and out of their lives with empty promises and leftover lies. Najia's friendship with iYanna has withstood the test of time and her shenanigans, as she factors into the equation that is XYZ. Love forever. The streets don't owe him anything. He's taken everything he's wanted by omission or commission. Kreed is a new breed of boss, college educated and street smart. He's the boogeyman in a suit, encompassed in a mystical aura of strength and power that leaves many starstruck. He's so immune to the world around him that he's stunned at the foreign emotions caused by the feather-like thundering of a miniature storm called iYanna. He envisions her as his future, but her family views him as a catastrophic danger to all that they've invested in her. Love and hurt, joy and pain, good times and bad, take all as prisoners. When you have everything you want, is there room for more? When you have nothing, will you accept anything? XYZ is a spicy urban romance with charismatic characters, life altering situations and breathtaking moments that will fascinate you from beginning to end.

    Putting his dark past behind him, he decides to get a normal 9 to 5 working as a corrections officer at a minimum security prison in Gainesville, Georgia. Things are going swimmingly until the troublesome and mysterious Diana Prince crosses his path. She's annoying, obnoxious, and a pain in his ass. But on the upside, she's also beautiful, kind-hearted, and compassionate. When she's finally released due to lack of evidence, their relationship takes off in a whirlwind of lust. She's a rider and she's down to do whatever it takes to prove her loyalty--be it catching a body or a case. And the fact that she lovingly accepts his daughter is just the icing on the cake. All seems well until their perfect world is shattered by a sudden, tragic death, leaving Soul to take over a multi-billion dollar drug business. Not only does he inherit the company, he also inherits the enemies and debt that come along with it. Will Soul be able to juggle his duties as a father, husband, and businessman? Or will he fall prey to the rivals that are waiting to see him crash and fail? "Soul and Diana" is the highly-anticipated and riveting spin-off of the "Wife of a Misfit" series. If you loved "Cameron" and all of her juicy drama, you'll love this fast-paced, heart-gripping love story from national bestselling author Jade Jones.

    A woman who remembers nothing—except the distant past. Visiting Sarah Tolley seemed a small enough sacrifice to make.But Laura's promise results in another death. Her husband's. And after their five-year-old daughter, Emma, witnesses her father's suicide, Emma refuses to talk about it…to talk at all.Frantic and guilt ridden, Laura contacts the only person who may be able to help. A man she's met only once—six years before. A man who doesn't know he's Emma's real father.Guided only by a child's silence and an old woman's fading memories, the two unravel a tale of love and despair, of bravery and unspeakable evil. A tale that's shrouded in silence…and that unbelievably links them all.

    Now, in the provocative Safe with Me, Amy Hatvany explores controversial and timely issues with astonishing emotional complexity.The screech of tires brought Hannah Scott’s world as she knew it to a devastating end. Even a year after she signed the papers to donate her daughter’s organs, Hannah is still reeling with grief when she unexpectedly stumbles into the life of the Bell family, whose child, Maddie, survived only because hers had died. Mesmerized by this fragile connection to her own daughter and afraid to reveal who she actually is, Hannah develops a surprising friendship with Maddie’s mother, Olivia.The Bells, however, have problems of their own. Once on the verge of leaving her wealthy but abusive husband, Olivia now finds herself bound to him as never before in the wake of the successful transplant that saved their fifteen-year-old daughter’s life. Meanwhile Maddie, tired of the limits her poor health puts upon her and fearful of her father’s increasing rage, regularly escapes into the one place where she can be anyone she wants: the Internet. But when she is finally healthy enough to return to school, the real world proves to be just as complicated as the isolated bubble she had been so eager to escape.A masterful narrative, shaped by nuanced characters whose fragile bonds are on a collision course with the truth, Safe with Me is a triumph.

    Her childhood friend Tracie is a computer expert whose personal vendetta backfires. Eva is a jurist but uses men to hide her pain and mask her childhood tragedy, and her cousin Tina wears a sweet exterior but takes risks that threaten to jeopardize her professional career. Kevin and Aaron are sexy twins who go to great lengths to get the women they want; and Angelo, gorgeous and ambitious, lets nothing stand in his way to accomplish his career goals, even at the expense of friends.Pilar is a beautiful but naive orphan who overnight is catapulted to fame; and Denene, a woman scorned, is determined to wreak havoc in the lives of those she feels has wronged her in some way. From the heart of Los Angeles to the South of France, In Laws and Play Cousins tells a story about love and heartbreak, success and envy and the price it ultimately commands.

    On the cusp of adulthood, eighteen-year-old Penny Carson is swept off her feet by a handsome farmhand with a confident swagger. Though Trent Taylor seems like Prince Charming and offers an escape from her one-stop-sign town, Penny’s happily-ever-after lasts no longer than their breakneck courtship. Before the ink even dries on their marriage certificate, he hits her for the first time. It isn’t the last, yet the bruises that can’t be seen are the most painful of all.When Trent is injured in a welding accident and his paycheck stops, he has no choice but to finally allow Penny to take a job cleaning houses. Here she meets two women from very different worlds who will teach her to live and laugh again, and lend her their backbones just long enough for her to find her own.Gina Holmes ’ stunning literary talent glistens like crystal in Wings of Glass. With subtle brilliance, she takes us into the very heart of what makes us hungry to love and be loved. Simply stellar!” Susan Meissner, Author of A Sound Among the Trees

    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.