In a perfect life, these promises are easy to keep. When faced with spousal betrayal, idealistic oaths take a back seat. Justine Charles made the ultimate sacrifice for her dying husband. Will she rally after his death or be forced to give up a final chance at happiness?

    Entering the drug game is his ticket to the finer things in life, but it’s called a game for a reason. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. After marrying Shayla, attaining a lakeside property, and having anything he wants at his fingertips, he should be living the good life. But there’s always someone coming for the number one spot.Shayla Wilson gives up everything for her first love. Her pursuit of being a psychiatrist to help the mentally ill, attending church, and ties with her family are all broken when she marries Titus. However, she loves him too much to let go. Along with Titus, her best friends Gladys LaQuinn and Rhonda Jackson are all Shayla needs until the day she finds out that the people closest to her are not who they say they are. What will Shayla do when her beautiful, expensive, expertly designed house of lies threatens to fall?As rival drug cartels invade their lakeside property and friends unveil themselves as foes, will the walls come falling down around Titus and Shayla, or will they survive the darkest test of their lives?This is the second edition of Secrets of a Kept Woman, which has been edited and revised with 10,000 words of new content added.

    She was pretty and independent, petite and not too skinny, just his type. Franklin Swift was a sometimes-employed construction worker, and a not-quite-divorced daddy of two. Zora Banks was a teacher, singer, songwriter. They met in a Brooklyn brownstone, and there could be no walking away... In this funny, gritty urban love story, Franklin and Zora join the ranks of fiction's most compelling couples, as they move from Scrabble to sex, from layoffs to the limits of faith and trust. Disappearing Acts is about the mystery of desire and the burdens of the past. It's about respect, what it can and can't survive. And it's about the safe and secret places that only love can find. --

    She's a successful marketing executive who still believes in sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

    Divorced since her daughter, Amber, was young, Tee has been "handling her business," supporting herself after her would-be songwriter husband took off for L.A., and she's done all right. Organized, responsible, hardworking, and loyal, Tee went from being the first employee of a start-up purveyor of organic lotions to the right hand of the president of what became a major player in the home and personal fragrance market.But then everything changes. First, she's outplaced from her longtime job and doesn't tell anyone. Then she gives her daughter the wedding of her dreams and, after overindulging in champagne, Tee wakes up in bed with the younger best man.For the first time in twenty-five years, Tee doesn't know who she is or what she's going to do every day. Deep in denial, she continues to live her life as if nothing has changed. After a series of financial mistakes, miscalculations, and missteps compound her already shaky situation, she's soon teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. That's when Tee decides that it's time for her to wake up and face reality.Beyond "making money," Tee never really decided what she wanted to do with her life. Then she just stopped thinking about it and invested her hopes in someone else's dream. Now it's her chance to invest in herself. Can she step out on faith to follow her own dream?

    And when they meet at a fundraiser, they forge a deep, unexpected friendship.Beneath the glamour, all three are struggling to hide the void in their marriages. Bethany's teenage stepdaughter is wreaking chaos at home, and to escape Bethany begins writing an anonymous, dirt-dishing gossip column. Deanna is a successful event planner, longing for a baby and unaware of her husband's double life. Marisol, too, is desperate to start a family, and starting to question her husband's commitment, and her own.As their friendship deepens, Bethany, Marisol and Deanna help each other decide how far they'll go to fulfill their desires. Because in passion—as in politics—one mistake can change everything….

    According to everyone in the Windy City, Mayhem has an icebox in place of his heart and no lady has ever been able to penetrate it. That is, until he meets Xenobia Bell. Mayhem falls fast and hard for Xenobia, and in his eyes, their relationship is picture perfect. However, their relationship is ruined when Xenobia does the unthinkable, shattering Mayhem’s heart into a million pieces. That was eight years ago, and the heartache still feels fresh to Mayhem. Olena Hill, the polar opposite of Mayhem, is the free spirit that mothers warn their sons about. She lives her life unapologetically with no concern for what anyone thinks of her. Olena is content with keeping a rotation of male lovers until she is cornered aggressively by Mayhem, who claims her as his woman. The once free Olena finds her bright spirit being diminished by the aggressive Mayhem who craves control and grows enraged when he doesn’t have it. As Olena learns to take the beast as he is, she discovers a new side of Mayhem. That side of Mayhem is keeping a secret from Olena; a secret that has to do with how he become broken in the first place. Will Mayhem set aside his relationship paranoia to be the man that Olena wants, or will he take Olena down the same path of hurt that Xenobia took him down?

    The price they have to pay for the decisions they made as kids is steep. But the pair are ready to face whatever the streets bring them..as long as they have each other.

    A first novel. Original.

    He is entranced by her image, flooded by memories of their teenage summer together, and utterly conpelled to make contact with her again. Charles sends Sian a letter, knowing all the while that "from the very first sentence of the very first note there was nothing innocent about it." Sian writes back - she is now a poet living with her husband and small child on an onion farm in Pennsylvania. She is intrigued that Charles has sought her out after so many years but wary of where their correspondence might lead. For Charles, troubled by financial woes, on the verge of losing his home, and concerned about the security of his family, the letters become a secret obsession and another source of instability in his already complicated life. Despite their reservations, the power of Charles and Sian's attraction leads them to meet again . . . and again. As Charles understands it, "for the two of them, eros is linked with time. It is the very urgency of time he dreads, the sense that their minutes together are short and numbered, that he must say what he has come to say before she leaves, that gestures and words cannot be wasted." Anita Shreve takes the classic theme of "Romeo and Juliet" and gives it an unusual twist: two lovers struggle against formidable odds, reaching across a lifetime to reclaim what they once lost. In doing so, they set in motion a tumultuous series of events that moves inexorably to a shocking conclusion.

    Both are gainfully employed, Marcus as a detective for Chicago's Finest, and Monet as a nurse in the neonatal unit of an inner city hospital. They are faithful members of Reverend Ruth Wilcox's church, The Temple. The only thing missing from their life is a child. Doctors have been unable to explain the reason for Monet's inability to conceive, which she calls the Sarah Syndrome. Then the unthinkable occurs. Monet is brutally assaulted. Months later, she learns the news she has been longing to hear her entire married life: she's having a baby. Monet is thrilled, but Marcus is appalled by the news, and orders his wife to terminate the pregnancy. Monet refuses, and a cold war of monumental proportions breaks out in the Caldwell household. In the face of great adversity, will Monet's faith persevere?