So when her sister calls her back home to help with their aging mother, she doesn’t hesitate to leave the city behind. But she arrives to find her mother hoarding pills, her sister chain-smoking, her long-dead father’s shoes still lined up on the steps, and the cowboy posters of her younger brother Daniel (who threw himself under a train four years ago) still on the walls.Hoping to free her family from the grip of the past, Dada vows to unravel the mystery of Daniel’s final days. This American debut by a poet from Croatia’s “lost generation” explores a beautiful Mediterranean town’s darkest alleys: the bars where secrets can be bought, the rooms where bodies can be sold, the plains and streets and houses where blood is shed. By the end of the long summer, the lies, lust, feuds, and frustration will come to a violent and hallucinatory head.

    After a card game with Benny Gellerman, a man good with a gun, but bad with cards, Ketcham decides it is time to head out again. He finds a place to bed down on a lonely New Mexico farm run by old Corely Mattlin and his widowed daughter-in-law, Margaret. Ketcham has his eye on pretty Margaret, but he'd better keep his eyes open wide for trouble. A local rancher named Jeb Ollfinger is trying to run the Mattlins off their land, and he is not above using violence, even murder, to get what he wants. Margaret is sure her husband's killer was one of Ollfinger's men, a gunman named Gellerman. If Ketcham knew what was good for him, he would head out again. But this time he has a job to do first.

    

    Get your copy now! Destiny I've always been the girl with a plan, but when my disorganized best friend gets married after a whirlwind romance, I realize my plan hasn't gotten me where I really want to be. My babysitting business is never going to give me a family of my own. On the spur of the moment I take a job in St. Petersburg, Russia, to stir things up. I'm hoping to meet a Russian heartthrob of my own, but Viktor the Vor isn't the kind of older man this virgin had in mind. Lifetime criminal, hired by my employer to act as bodyguard, he's the opposite of everything I thought I wanted, but I'm falling for him despite all my plans. Can a man like him ever change his ways to give me the family and become the husband I crave, or am I on track to be a prisoner's wife and mistress to his life of crime? Is there love waiting for me in the snow, or will my heart get frostbitten on the way? Viktor All I ever wanted was to join the Bratva, and when they make a move to take over St. Petersburg, I take my chance. I'm not expecting to have to babysit the babysitter, but when things get out of hand, I'm right there willing to put my life on the line for the younger American woman who stole my heart the moment I set eyes on her. I never thought I'd be a family man, but when it comes to Destiny, it's clear that it's in my fate. When my past choices catch up with me and I have to pick a side, will I able to give her the happily ever after she craves, or will the ice palace of our love tumble down in the face of who we really are? *Bratva Babysitter is part of the Russian Underworld series, but can be enjoyed as a standalone. It ends with an HEA and contains no cheating and no cliffhanger.

    She smiles like she is hiding a secret. She holds her head high, like she is wearing an invisible crown. The air Around her is charged with confidence, strength, and courage. Have you heard the whispers? She woke up different today. Yet it feels she has been like this always. Maybe it’s the story that has changed.About the Author‘Fragile but Unbreakable’ is how Reecha describes herself. She believes in miracles, takes life head on, and is passionate about weaving magic with her words. And now that she has found her calling, she desires to spend her entire life reading, travelling, and dwelling in her own little fictional and poetic worlds. An MBA from Loyola Institute of Business Administration, she is based out of New Delhi where she lives with her husband and two kids. She – Screw Silence is her third book.

    They've been brought up to respect their elders and uphold family honour at all times. Then sweet, na??ve Katie falls pregnant, bringing shame upon the family's name. Alec Siddons, a local police constable, cannot and will not forgive his daughter for her immoral behaviour. But Katie isn't the only one with troubles ahead. Amy is in love with her cousin Paul, but owing to a family feud the mere mention of his name is forbidden in her father's presence; and Nancy is eager to wed her fianc?? Stan before the Second World War takes him away. With the outbreak of war, the three sisters offer each other comfort and support. Their mother, meanwhile, is battling with painful memories of the past, and their father lives in dread that his own dark secrets will be revealed. As the war takes its toll on the Merseyside girls they learn that few things in life are more precious than honesty, love and forgiveness.

    

    A marriage is tested as a mother struggles to cope with the disappearance of her prostitute daughter. Two angry women in a minivan act out their frustrations as they rampage through the night. A pill-dependent nurse juggles neuroses, infatuation, and exhaustion while supervising a high school dance-a-thon. A quiet tattoo artist takes in a homeless woman, and stumbles upon the true nature of beauty, jealousy, and love. Written in taut, unflinching prose, these stories are edgy and dark, sharply observed and uniquely imagined. As provocative as it is brilliant, Dead Girls introduces Nancy Lee as an astonishing and original new literary talent.

    The not-made-for-TV version. In 2006, American Chantal Panozzo moved to a spa town near Zurich ready for a glamorous life as an expatriate. She would eat chocolate. She would climb mountains. And she would order cheese in four languages. Instead, she lived a life more in tune with reality than fantasy. Contrary to popular American belief, Switzerland isn’t just a setting in a storybook called Heidi. It’s a real place where someone with a master’s degree in communications can’t make a phone call, where you can be hired in one language and fired in another, and where small talk doesn’t exist—but phrases like Aufenthaltskategorien von Drittstaatsangehörigen do. Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known is a collection of both published (The Christian Science Monitor, National Geographic Glimpse, Chicken Soup for the Soul Books, and Brain, Child) and new essays in which Chantal discovers that no matter how hard she wills her geraniums to cascade properly, she will never be a glamorous American expatriate—or Swiss.

    Like Helen Garner, she has a steady, careful eye, and uses it to bring back news of glorious, rackety life.’Susan JohnsonMe: ‘Are you going to be a good boy this year?’Boomer: ‘Uh huh. I have no interest in toilet humour.’Me: ‘You don’t?’Boomer: ‘No. No interest at all. I mean, I think “it’s funny”when, in The Bad Book, Terence takes off all his clothes.And when Horrid Henry shows his undies. But I wouldthink to myself, “That is something I should not do”.’Between juggling work, joint custody and the ordinary demands of motherhood, Jo tries to work out why her son Leo (aka Boomer) is finding it hard to fit in. His wit wins him friends, but the rituals of friendship—like learning to compromise—are proving challenging. Is it because he’s an only child? Could he be gifted?When Leo is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, Jo fears what it means—and sees herself, and her family, through new eyes. Trapped in a cycle of doubt and discovery, she wonders how you can stay true to who you are and fit in. What the hell is ‘normal’ anyway?This is the bittersweet story of a twenty-first-century family, and why being different isn’t a disability—it just takes some getting used to.

    Some forget the names of their villages. The youngest may not know the names of their parents. But Gladys Kalibbala—part journalist, part detective, part Good Samaritan—does not hesitate to dive into difficult or even dangerous situations to aid a child. Author of a newspaper column called “Lost and Abandoned,” she is a resource that police and others turn to when they stumble across a stranded kid with a hidden history.  Jessica Yu delivers an acutely observed story of this hardnosed and warmhearted woman, the children she helps, and the twists of fate they experience together. The subplot of Gladys’s garden—her precarious dream of providing a home and livelihood for her vulnerable charges—adds fascinating depth. Garden of the Lost and Abandoned chronicles one woman’s altruism, both ordinary and extraordinary, in a way that is impossible to forget, and impossible not to take to heart.

    The inspiration for Ray Bradbury's story.From Sara Teasdale's "Flame and Shadow" collection.

    nerds, sickly little girls - each coping with the limits of her life by making up an elaborate and flattering lie about herself, a fantastic tale in which she escapes her helpless situation. Whether describing a pilgrimage to Elvis Presley?s bathroom by two young punks, a rape in a farmhouse, or a mother-daughter relationship revolving around Prozac and a lifetime of thearpy, Pagan Kennedy expertly strips away the secrets and pretentions of American life.

     The Duke of Ruin When Lord Greene wagers his daughter's hand in marriage in a card game, no one is less surprised the woman herself. The only thing that shocks Olive is that the man that he has gambled her away to is none other than The Duke of Ruin. Rumours abound that the Sixth Duke of Everleigh callously murdered his late wife and killed her lover in a duel --and now Olive is to become his bride. Ruan Ashford took one look at Olive Greene and knew that he had to have her in his bed. The beautiful, auburn-haired temptress will make a perfect Duchess; there's only one problem - his new wife despises him. When a chance arises for Olive to disappear she readily grabs hold of it, and soon the Duke of Ruin is hunting the Cornish countryside for his runaway bride. When he finds her can he convince her that he's not the dreadful villain the world thinks him to be and that his love for her is real? The Lord of Heartbreak Miss Jane Deveraux is in a bind; her brother, Viscount Jarvis, has married and his new wife does not want her bookish sister-in-law encroaching on their wedded bliss. The Viscountess makes it very clear that Jane must find a husband, but at five and twenty the confirmed spinster doesn’t have many suitors lining up to claim her hand. What Jane needs is a large sum of money, so that she can buy the local boarding house, and live out her days holding intellectual saloons for the egalitarian set. Though where she’ll find this money is anyone’s guess… James Fairweather, Lord Payne is the heir to the Ducal seat of Hawkfield. Tall, handsome and with a roguish charm that has women falling at his feet, he should be living the easy life of an entitled bachelor. The only problem is that his father has tired of his rakish ways and declares that unless Payne cleans up his act he will be disinherited. What Payne needs is a respectable —dare he say boring— woman whom he can parade around for a season to convince his father that he has changed his ways. The only person who fits the bill is his friend’s sister Jane, who reluctantly agrees to go along with the charade —for a price, of course. The Marquess of Temptation Since her father’s death, Miss Hestia B. Stockbow has been living a lie. Working as a companion, under an assumed name, all she wants to do is keep her head down and forget about the scandalous tragedy that haunts her past. There’s only one problem… After two delicious, stolen kisses, the usually icy and aloof Alexander Delaney, Marquess of Falconbridge, finds himself entranced by Belinda Bowstock, a lowly paid companion. When he discovers that she is, in fact, his missing ward, Alex realises there's only one thing he can do: Marry the chit and help her solve the mystery of her father's suspicious death. The Captain of Betrayal At the age of eight and twenty, Polly Jenkins has happily resigned herself to the life of a spinster. Many years ago, a young man broke her heart, and she has guarded it fiercely ever since. Polly's life, on the coast of Cornwall, is one of peaceful happiness--until, that is, Captain James Black arrives at her door. The young man she once knew is gone, replaced by a dashing Captain--one who is determined to marry her, and who won't take no for an answer...

    He thought the small, peaceful valley miles away from the busy resort town of Hawthorn would be the perfect setting for his work. He invites two of his closest friends to stay a few weeks to do some hunting in the rugged and remote area. After their arrival, Troy gives them a tour around the property and plans are made to get an early start the next day. Morning arrives quickly and the eager hunters head out to their tree stands to settle in for a long hunt. Soon, an unexpected storm front moves in, and they are forced off the mountain. As they begin making their way down, they are suddenly and viciously attacked by a beast they can't believe is real. Separated from the others, badly injured and desperate to escape, Troy attempts to go for help. The winter storm makes the drive down the mountain road extremely treacherous and with his injuries making it more difficult, he loses control and wrecks his Jeep. He is found unconscious by a snow plow driver and wakes up days later in a hospital bed. Troy tells the unbelievable and horrifying story of the cryptid encounter on the mountain and desperately pleads for help for the friends he was forced to leave behind. Believing it to be a sensationalized story geared at publicity, the sheriff all but dismisses Troy's unbelievable claims, but when a search uncovers the body of one of the men and the other one missing, Troy becomes the prime suspect. How can he prove his innocence when the real killer isn't supposed to exist?