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2:32AM: Losing Faith in God


Lakisha Johnson - 2018
     Now, she finds herself angry at God. She trusted Him and He took her only child. She prayed to Him and it seems as if He has turned His back on her. And if things could not get worse, hell keeps showing up at her door. What can she do, when she continually cries in the darkness but gets no answer? Where can she turn when it feels like her back is against the wall and there is no way out? Who can she depend on if God let her down? Questions Charlotte ponder when the memories snatch her from her sleep at 2:32AM. Questions that make her angry because to her, God has forsaken them.

Hearts Don't Break Even


Brix McQueen - 2019
    Love another man and give him all of me again. In fact, I was still dealing with the broken heart my ex-fiancé left me with. Time doesn’t heal all wounds… hardly any if you asked me. What time did do though, was give me a chance to find myself. I thought I was madly in love when really, I just loved the idea of it. I still do. I’m a hopeful romantic and loved knowing that one day I'd be a man’s everything, get married and start a family of our own. It was on my list of things to do before I was called home. With the abrupt death of my Aunt, the realization of time stopping for no one hit me. I didn’t have time to sulk in my sorrows anymore. And, Rashad wouldn’t let me. He wanted me… baggage and all. To fulfill every need that had gone unmet with what’s his name. He wanted me… smart mouth and all. Insecurities and all… Because his heart had been broken too. So, we connected even though I wasn’t ready for us too. Sometimes, men were just extra baggage, and Lord knows I didn’t need that but was Rashad worth it? Could he and I possibly seal our shattered hearts together and master loving again? I was ready to take that risk and find out.

U.S. Marshal Shorty Thompson - Mister You Was Shot In The Head: Tales of the Old West Book 83


Paul L. Thompson - 2020
    

A Bad Boy Captured My Heart


Tay Mo'Nae - 2018
    What’s the point in giving you’re heart to someone, only to have it broken and your trust betrayed? She was perfectly content with the absence of love until Cameron aka Murda enters her life unexpectedly, awakening a need for a connection that she hadn’t realized that she was missing. Cameron just got released from jail after doing a 5 year bid and is back in the streets force. Cam is rude, and trigger happy and won’t hesitate to kill whenever necessary. With a street war going on with an unknown enemy Cameron and his cousin, Justin have too many thing to worry about and love isn’t on his list but meeting Raegan changes that. Cam tries to break the ice around Raegan’s heart but will her closed off behavior make him give up before he starts? Justin and Morgan are together and happy or so it seems. Still dealing with the insecurities from Justin cheating on her Morgan causes unnecessary issues in her relationship. When she takes it too far and a secret is revealed Justin calls it quits and leaves the relationship. Seeing the mistakes she made Morgan struggles trying to get Justin back but will he be willingly to forgive her and come home? Love, wars, and an unexpected reveal from an ex will turn these couples life’s upside down and they’ll have to deal with consequences before it breaks them.

Salamanca Cottage


Mary Fitzgerald - 2014
    But Salamanca Cottage is not all that it seems and soon she finds that she is not alone. Then she has decide if the being she talks to and finds herself becoming fond of is real or merely a manifestation of her grief and longing.

Shawty Fell in Love With A Rude Boy 2


P. Dotson - 2017
    Erica learns that falling in love with a Rude Boy isn’t easy. The boundaries of her relationship are tested when outsiders seek to destroy the love she’s found. Will love withstand the test, or will she fold under the pressure? Erica isn’t the only one who falls for a Rude Boy. Jade finds herself slowly falling in love with the handsome, yet mysterious Detective Keenan Elba. The loving and doting father of three managed to sneak past the wall she built around her heart. There’s just one problem standing in the way of their chemistry… his wife! Will these ladies truly find happiness or will Falling in Love with a Rude Boy prove to be more complicated than they ever imagined????

Blush


CICI B - 2016
    B is known for her amazing ability to make readers feel like they are walking beside her with every page that they turn, and this book, the follow up to the notorious "Letters To My Ex," is another testament to that. Fresh out of an intense break-up, and with her three closest friends by her side, Cici brings you with her as she learns what it means to take back control of her life, and to be her own woman. Completely raw and unfiltered, as always, she doesn't hold back. This is a story for the modern day grown woman. It will make you smile, laugh out loud, hold your breath, bite your bottom lip, and most importantly... Blush.

All the Thug I Want: Not the Man I Need


Lady Lissa - 2018
    Lexus is the middle daughter and being Big Jim’s princess has been nothing shy of perfect for her, until she meets Xavier, or Zay, as he’s known in the streets. Zay is a new soldier who was hired by her brother, Princeton to work for their family. As soon as Lexus and Zay meet there’s an instant attraction, especially since he played hero for her and her best friend, Malaysia. Zay feels the attraction to Lexus almost immediately, but has been warned by her brother that she is off limits. Malaysia is the jealous best friend who wants what Lexus has, by any means necessary. What is she willing to do to get what she wants? Princeton is the only son, who plans to follow in his dad’s footsteps. The tension between he and Big Jim is seen by everyone on the crew. As their beef continues to boil out of control, Princeton begins his plans to take over the empire. But will he wait for his dad to step down before he takes his spot as king of Brooklyn? Will Lexus and Zay be able to fight their feelings for each other or will they act on those feelings despite the warnings from her family? Will Malaysia be the best friend she portrays herself to be or will her jealousy drive a wedge between her and Lexus? Will Princeton’s drama take him to the top or will it be his downfall? Find out how this family gets down as everyone tries to claim what’s theirs, even when it belongs to someone else.

Eye Candy Ink: The Complete Series


Shaw Hart - 2021
    Neglected by his parents his whole life, he’s finally found the family that he’s always wanted at the shop. He thinks he’s got everything that he needs...until Darcy walks into the shop.One look at the shy girl with the kind eyes and the curvy body of a goddess and Atlas is hooked. Now, he just needs to show Darcy that he’s here to stay.Mischa:Love, romance, dating. Mischa Jennings wants no part of any of it. He’s seen up close and personal how love can ruin your life and he’s vowed to stay far away from that emotion. Armed with a set of rules to keep him safe, he’s been going through life just fine. Then Indie Hearst comes bouncing into Eye Candy Ink and turns his whole world upside down.Suddenly, he’s breaking every one of his rules, but it’s okay. He’s not even close to falling for Indie.Right?Sam:Sam Kavan has grown up learning to be tough, at least on the outside. Like everyone else at Eye Candy Ink, she’s not interested in falling in love. In fact, after a string of failed dates, she's grown disillusioned with dating. She doesn't want to go out with boys who send her dick pics or who text at midnight looking to hook up. She wants someone that she can rely on—someone who loves and wants her for her. She wants a real man.Then she meets Maxwell Schulz, and she wonders if she’s finally met her match.Zeke:Zeke Miller is the owner of Eye Candy Ink and the father figure to everyone at the shop. He’s spent years building Eye Candy Ink into what it is today. While others dated and settled down, he worked, honing his skills until he’s one of the best and most sought after tattoo artists in the world. At thirty-six, he thinks his time to meet someone has passed and he’s resigned to being happy with the family that he’s found at his shop.Then Trixie Clemonte comes into Eye Candy Ink. She has all of his protective instincts kicking in. But none of them are fatherly.Nico:Nico Miller is the quiet, silent type. With ten years of experience, he’s probably the best artist at the shop. He's a giant at 6'8" and built like a linebacker with tattoos covering his neck and torso. Most people are a little afraid of him when they first meet him, but it doesn’t take long to see that while he might look scary, with his almost permanent frown, tattoos, and size, he was actually a giant teddy bear.Most of the time, he can’t wait for people to leave, but one encounter with Edie, and he doesn’t want to let her go. Will he be able to convince her that settling down with him doesn’t mean settling?

The Romance of Happy Workers


Anne Boyer - 2008
    Political and iconoclastic, Anne Boyer’s poems dally in pastoral camp and a dizzying, delightful array of sights and sounds born from the dust of the Kansas plains where dinner for two is cooked in Fire King and served on depression ware, and where bawdy instructions for a modern “Home on the Range” read:Mix a drink of stock lot:vermouth and the water table.And the bar will smell of IBP.And you will lick my Laura Ingalls.In Boyer’s heartland, “Surfaces should be worn. Lamps should smolder. / Dahlias do bloom like tumors. The birds do rise like bombs.” And the once bright and now crumbling populism of Marxists, poets, and folksingers springs vividly back to life as realism, idealism, and nostalgia do battle amongst the silos and ditchweed.Nothing, too, is a subject:dusk regulating the blankery.Fill in the nightish sky with ardent,fill in the metaphorical smell.A poet and visual artist, Anne Boyer lives in Kansas, where she co-edits the poetry journal Abraham Lincoln and teaches at Kansas City Art Institute.

Don't Tell Me to Be Quiet


Christina Hart - 2019
    You never mourned loudly, in the streets. You never stopped (couldn’t stop) to wonder if drowning parts ofyourself was a mistake. You never kissed them goodbye.Why didn’t you kiss them goodbye?Was it too hard?Were you ashamed?Of them, or of you?Don’t tell me to be quiet.You need to hear this. Christina Hart, bestselling author of Empty Hotel Rooms Meant for Us, Letting Go Is an Acquired Taste, and There Is Beauty In the Bleeding releases her new poetry chapbook, written in second person POV, which focuses on love, loss, and hope.

And to Each Season...


Rod McKuen - 1972
    Rod McKuen's most personal book of poetry.

The Europe of Trusts: Poetry


Susan Howe - 1987
    These are the books -- following her volumes from the previous decade (Hinge Picture, Chanting at the Crystal Sea, Cabbage Gardens, and Secret History of the Dividing Line) -- which established Howe as one of America's most interesting and important contemporary writers. "Her work, " as Geoffrey O'Brien put it, "is a voyage of reconnaissance in language, a sounding out of ancient hiding places, and it is a voyage full of risk. 'Words are the only clues we have, ' she has said. 'What if they fail us?'"

Sky Burial


Dana Levin - 2011
    Highly recommended."—Library Journal"Intimate and hypnotic."—Ploughshares"Levin has the skilled ear, magnificent tongue, and fierce mind of the truly prophetic."—Rain Taxi"Levin's work is phenomenological; it details how it feels to be an embodied consciousness making its way through the world."—Boston Review"Death is the new and unshakeable lens through which I see," writes Dana Levin about her third book, in which she confronts mortality and loss in subjects ranging from Tibetan Buddhist burial practices to Aztec human sacrifice. Shaped by dreams and "the worms and the gods," these poems are a profound investigation of our inescapable fate. As Louise Glück has said: "Levin's animating fury goes back deeper into our linguistic and philosophic history: to Blake's tiger, to the iron judgments of the Old Testament."They took you in an ambulance even though you were dead,they took youand my sister saidWhy are you saving her if she is dead?     shey shey—Curve of sky a crescent blade.Vultures wheeling     on thermal parapets, shunyata,     void that flays—Yak butter,     barley flour and tea: you watch him     make the paste.Dana Levin's debut volume In the Surgical Theatre won the prestigious APR/Honickman First Book Prize. She teaches creative writing at the University of New Mexico and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Frowns Need Friends Too


Sam Pink - 2010
    Including such subjects as "I Heart Unending Paranoia," "Because You Know You're Avoiding Going Somewhere But Don't Even Know Where Yet," and "I'm Not Going To Change My Clothes Today," Pink's collection is bizarre, funny, and original.