Holmes’s poems are like little stories, hooking readers while navigating issues like body image, family relationships, loneliness, failed relationships, and finding belonging. Don’t Tell Me Not to Ask Why is a call to introspection, a demand for honesty, and an affirmation of second chances.

    In the tiny front parlour fourteen-year-old Laura Blake watches her beloved father die. But not before he tells her she will make something of her life. Laura never forgets his words. Yet her path to success proves to be a rocky one. Forced to trundle a cart around the back streets, selling other folk's cast-offs to support her family, Laura learns enough to start work in her uncle's furniture shop. But then fate deals another cruel blow when Laura is brutally raped. Bearing the child of her attacker in secret, she vows to make the world pay for its injustice towards her.As she grows older her protective shell hardens even as her beauty blossoms, and her new toughness helps her forge a successful career in the antiques business. But it is in affairs of the heart that Laura stumbles...

    The language, the invention, the imagination, and the sheer fun of his poems is astounding. It's not all dazzle either. The poems are also moving. This man reminds us that there is nothing more serious than a joke' - Charles Simic, final judge and author of "Jackstraws", "Walking the Black Cat", and "A Wedding in Hell".

    As a rule, I don’t date. Spending one night with the gorgeous Cole Mardsen is as far as I’m willing to go, that is, until he has me wanting to break all my rules for him.Cole MardsenI saw her as soon as she walked into the bar, looking beautiful and elegant, and I was immediately drawn to her. But Rae resists me at every turn. She’s about to find out how determined I can be when I want something - and I definitely want her. And not just for one night.Rae is a stand-alone romance novella with a guaranteed HEA.

    Forced to undergo counseling with a new, peculiar therapist in town, Tony Prost, Cindy defiantly resists both his unnerving charm and the truth behind the haunting images that are unleashing her anxiety.As Cindy’s memory flashes increase in frequency, she is jolted by the terrible deed her beloved mother committed to gain their freedom from her father. That memory is one clue to the mystery behind her compulsive behaviors: carrying a headless Raggedy Ann doll throughout the five-story mansion in which she lives alone, spot cleaning the mansion’s thirty-one rooms, and crying herself to sleep in an empty red room. Cindy slowly recalls her grandmother’s dominating, divisive presence and a violent history shrouded by years of silence, binding three generations. She soon realizes that the key to her future is buried in her past, but finding the truth means embarking on a harrowing journey back into the heart of her darkest fears.

    Dr. Martina McGowan is a retired MD, a mother, grandmother, and a poet. Her poetry provides insights that no think piece on racism can; putting readers in the uncomfortable position of feeling, reflecting, and facing what it means to be a Black American.This entire collection was created during 2020, many shortly after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, to name but a few.

    S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser at the top of his imaginative and storytelling powers. Here are the richly metaphorical, imagistically masterful, clear and accessible poems for which he has become widely known. Kooser writes for an audience of everyday readers and believes poets "need to write poetry that doesn't make people feel stupid." Each poem in Red Stilts strives to reveal the complex beauties of the ordinary, of the world that's right under our noses. Right under Kooser's nose is rural America, most specifically the Great Plains, with its isolated villages, struggling economy, hard-working people and multiple beauties that surpass everything wrecked, wrong, or in error.

    Her arresting, edgy poems about aging and grief are surprising and invigorating: a defiant balm. At the same time, she revels in the quirkiness and whimsy of the natural world: the vision of a fly, the naming of an eggplant, and a woman who — not unhappily — finds that cockroaches are drawn to her.“God draws a life. And then begins to rub it out / with the eraser on his pencil.” Lorna Crozier draws a world in What the Soul Doesn’t Want, and then beckons us in. Crozier’s signature wit and striking imagery are on display as she stretches her wings and reminds us that we haven’t yet seen all that she can do.

    Darren is a psychopath who thought he’d found somebody who would kill with him, and when he realized he was wrong, he took everything from Alex. Losing his family—and coping with the heinous act Darren forced him to commit—is too much. Alex is unable to have a normal social life.Until he meets Luna Booth.She’s fun. Intelligent. Sexy. She’s exactly what he needs right now. Alex may not have found his soulmate, but he’s found somebody that he loves spending time with. Somebody who doesn’t mind the nightmarish skeletons in his closet.In fact, she may be too understanding. Too interested. And she may have a very dark and twisted secret…

    But after he purchased it, Ben Holiday learned that there were a few details the ad had failed to mention. The kingdom was in ruin. The task of proving his right to be King seemed hopeless. But Ben Holiday was stubborn...The Black Unicorn:A year had passed since Ben Holiday bought the Magic Kingdom from the wizard Meeks, who had set a series of pitfalls against him. But Ben had been troubled by dreams of disaster to his former partner, Miles Bennett. Unknown to Ben, the dreams had been a trap by Meeks.Wizard at Large:It all began when the half-able wizard Questor Thews announced that finally he could restore the Court Scribe Abernathy to human form. All went well - until the wizard breathed the magic dust of his spell and suddenly sneezed. Then, where Abernathy had stood, there was only a bottle containing a particularly evil imp.The Tangle Box:Horris Kew, conjurer, confidence-man, and trickster, had returned to Landover from Ben's own world. Alas, he had been sent by the Gorse, a sorcerer of great evil, whom Horris had unwittingly freed from the magic Tangle Box. Now it had returned to enslave those who had once dared to condemn it.Witches’ Brew:The Magic Kingdom of Landover was finally at peace, and Ben and his wife, the sylph Willow, could watch their daughter Mistaya grow. But his idyll was interrupted when Rydall, a king of lands beyond the fairy mist, assembled armies on Landover's border and threatened to invade.Read by Dick Hill.28 audio discs (approximately 31 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

    which means it's time for Jahir and Sediryl to marry, and Sediryl to kneel for the coronet of the imperial heir! All their allies are gathering to celebrate, from the expected, like the Queen Ransomed and Lisinthir, to mentors and friends from years past. But life doesn't pause for momentous events, no matter how joyous or anticipated. There are issues Jahir and Sediryl have yet to resolve, issues that reflect the greater challenges besetting their world and the Alliance. Before they can join hands for the wedding cloth, they'll have to face at least one of those challenges... and it won't be the first. Healer's Wedding, Book 1 in the Jubilee Summer duology, brings together the characters from Her Instruments, Dreamhealers, and Princes' Game for a capstone season of politics and pleasure. Return to the homeworld of the Eldritch and the company of friends!

    As a girl, I believed in the friendship and protection of Aden.He made me begin to believe again.As a woman, I believed in the possibility of love and passion between myself and Aden.Until he was gone and with him, my belief in magic and happy endings.AdenWhen she was a child, I was tasked with her protection.As a girl, I became her friend.As a woman, I could no longer see the child I knew and was forced to fight a growing attraction.Unable to lie and unable to tell the truth, I left.Now I’ve returned to give the knowledge I couldn’t before, that she is half Fae.The darkness is stalking her and I am desperate to teach her what she needs to know to protect herself.And determined to make her mine.*Part of a series, while it can be read as a standalone, the story continues to build through the following books. **Recommended for 18+ due to sexual content and language. ***Approx 73,000 words, this is a full length novel.

    Featuring brand new stories and some old favorites, many of these tell-all, gritty tales were originally published on the blog Make It MAD between 2010 and 2012, and have been rereleased in their originality for this special print and digital anthology.

    She has since become one of our most respected authors of verse.Schnackenberg's first three books, collected in Supernatural Love, show the thrilling evolution of a unique voice in today's letters. From an early mastery in which precision and heartbreak are inseparable, her poetry accelerates book by book through the searching, dense, and metaphysical imagery--as well as the cascading syntax--which have become her signature. Whether we are witnessing her classic portrait of Darwin in his last year or discovering the vertiginous brillance of her elegy for the Byzantine monuments of Ravenna, we find in Schnackenberg gemlike poems offered as visionary documents, unmistakable in their glittering range and passion--and never the same twice.

    In his second collection of poetry, The Dark Between Stars, he turns his attention to the dualities of our lived experiences—the inescapable connections between our highest highs and lowest lows. He captures the infectious energy of starting a relationship, the tumultuous realities of commitment, and the agonizing nostalgia of being alone again. While grappling with the question of how to live with purpose and find meaning in the journey, these poems offer both honest explorations of loneliness and our search for connection, as well as light-hearted, humorous observations. As Atticus writes poignantly about dancing, Paris, jazz clubs, sunsets, sharing a bottle of wine on the river, rainy days, creating, and destroying, he illustrates that we need moments of both beauty and pain—the darkness and the stars—to fully appreciate all that life and love have to offer.