They descended from the sky amid smoke and fire, and created humanity and gave us rules to live by. They needed gold and they built our earliest civilizations to mine it for them. When they had what they needed, they left. But before they left, they told us someday they would come back, and when they did, a game would be played. A game that would determine our future.This is Endgame.For ten thousand years the lines have existed in secret. The 12 original lines of humanity. Each had to have a Player prepared at all times. They have trained generation after generation after generation. In weapons, languages, history, tactics, disguise assassination. Together the players are everything: strong, kind, ruthless, loyal, smart, stupid, ugly, lustful, mean, fickle, beautiful, calculating, lazy, exuberant, weak. They are good and evil. Like you. Like all.This is Endgame.When the game starts, the players will have to find three keys. The keys are somewhere on earth. The only rule of their Endgame is that there are no rules. Whoever finds the keys first wins the game. Endgame: The Calling is about the hunt for the first key. And just as it tells the story of the hunt for a hidden key, written into the book is a puzzle. It invites readers to play their own Endgame and to try to solve the puzzle. Whoever does will open a case filled with gold. Alongside the puzzle will be a revolutionary mobile game built by Google’s Niantic Labs that will allow you to play a real-world version of Endgame where you can join one of the lines and do battle with people around you.Will exuberance beat strength? Stupidity top kindness? Laziness thwart beauty? Will the winner be good or evil? There is only one way to find out.Play.Survive.Solve.People of Earth.Endgame has begun.

    The toxic gas that will complete her annihilation is invading her bloodstream. But she is not afraid.Thalli is different than others in The State. She feels things. She asks questions. And in the State, this is not tolerated. The Ten scientists who survived the nuclear war that destroyed the world above believe that emotion was at the core of what went wrong—and they have genetically removed it from the citizens they have since created. Thalli has kept her malformation secret from those who have monitored her for most of her life, but when she receives an ancient piece of music to record as her community’s assigned musician, she can no longer keep her emotions secreted away.Seen as a threat to the harmony of her Pod, Thalli is taken to the Scientists for immediate annihilation. But before that can happen, Berk—her former Pod mate who is being groomed as a Scientist—steps in and persuades the Scientists to keep Thalli alive as a test subject.The more time she spends in the Scientist’s Pod, the clearer it becomes that things are not as simple as she was programmed to believe. She hears stories of a Designer—stories that fill her mind with more questions: Who can she trust? What is this emotion called love? And what if she isn’t just an anomaly, but part of a greater design?

    Humanity has been their loyal subject ever since.This history has been ingrained in seventeen-year-old Dara Morrow since her first day of Creator-sponsored school. Grateful for the life-giving necessities her Creator provides, Dara is thrilled to be one of three students chosen for an elite, year-long apprenticeship program. Now is her chance to prove herself a devoted Contributor.But Dara’s competition is ruthless and will stop at nothing to win the competition. Worse yet, her exacting master has little patience for her.Then Dara’s mother is seriously injured, and Dara realizes the price of being a Contributor: once you’ve outlived your usefulness, you’re discarded. Can Dara learn to manipulate the system to save not only herself, but everyone she loves?

    A Natural Born amongst genetically-altered Aristocrats, all Ella ever wanted was to be like everyone else. Augmented, sparkling, and perfect. Then…the crash. Devastated by her father’s death and struggling with her new physical limitations, Ella is terrified to learn she is not just alone, but little more than a prisoner.Her only escape is to lose herself in Nexis, the hugely popular virtual reality game her father created. In Nexis she meets Guster, a senior player who guides Ella through the strange and compelling new world she now inhabits. He offers Ella guidance, friendship…and something more. Something that allows her to forget about the “real” world, and makes her feel whole again.But Nexis isn’t quite the game everyone thinks it is.And it’s been waiting for Ella.

     Rich as in affluent, well to do, prosperous… So, although they’d been beaten down by life the one thing they didn’t worry about was money. Four friends find themselves at a crossroad in life. For years they’ve hidden behind their smiles while suffering behind closed doors. For Jerzey, her biggest issue is her taste in men. After surviving a near-death experience, she vows to stay away from the hustlers until Snowden steps into her art studio. He’s like no man she’s met before but because of past pain, she’s afraid to freely give herself to him. Miko is known to be the life of the party. You can count on her to make you smile and give you a good laugh. However, it’s the things Miko isn’t joking about that torment her every day. At a young age, she was subjected to volatile things. Acts of hatred that shape her into a woman afraid of love. A woman that’s determined to lay every man down in her path but when she can no longer run from her pain she’s forced to face her truths. In doing so she is liable to hurt the two people who mean most to her in the world. Rumer is driven. With determination, she pushed herself to become one of the lead real estate agents at her father’s company. She seems to have it all but the thing she lacks most is self-love. When she looks in the mirror she doesn’t see the beautiful woman that people say she is. She finds herself with a nasty addiction and to make matters worse she’s fallen for her step-brother. With her life spiraling in a direction she never saw coming Rumer is given the choice to get help or stay stagnant in the dark world she’s created for herself. Nelly is torn between heaven and hell. Her life with her handsome fiance is everything that she ever wanted it to be. Jannero love and adores Nelly. All he wants in return is for her to love him back. Nelly does but because of her horrid childhood, she struggles to express it to him verbally. When faced with impending charges that could forever alter her life Nelly is changed into someone Jannero doesn’t know. A woman that is so angry it makes him question if marrying her is the right thing to do. This is a two-part series filled with real women that are dealing with real pain. Read at your own risk.

    Despite this apparent turn of luck, he is a prisoner. And part time circus monkey. Forced to compete in deadly games and entertain unseen viewers, Joah plots escape as he draws his new female friends closer. The tropical island home is deceptively enticing but unforgiving. Island Girls is a new harem adventure novel by Rodzil LaBraun. This book is intended for MATURE READERS ONLY, due to profanity, violence and sexually explicit scenes.

    The women on the station turned away with tears, images of their husbands, fathers, sons, brothers and boyfriends disappearing through the smoke. Dorothy stood there alone, until every trace of smoke from the train engine had dissipated. She suddenly felt cold and alone. She finally turned and followed the other women down the metal steps, off the station and back to Edward Street. 1927. The poverty-stricken streets of Neck End in England’s industrial midlands, were a lonely and miserable place for a little girl. Abandoned by her mother, Dorothy clings to the memory of her father, who lives in the capital city. London seems an entire world away, as she hopes for the day when he might send for her and she can finally get out. Twelve years later, the country is plunged into war with Germany and Dorothy’s world is thrown into chaos. Can she have a life in London with her father despite the dangers of war or will a chance encounter with a dashing soldier change her path for good?  Torn between loyalty to her father and the possibility of love, Dorothy struggles with the greatest decision of her young life. A decision influenced by war and the love of two strong, yet vastly different, men.

    With hurt in her heart and confusion clouding her mind, Promise is forced to believe that no one will ever love her since her own mother couldn’t.Hassan is a young, black Doctor that every girl wants, but he’s not impressed by them. Following an encounter with Promise, he knows he has to have her. After a brief game of cat and mouse, Promise falls head over heels in love with Hassan.Promise eventually has it all—well, except all the unanswered questions of why her biological mother didn’t want her. Determined to know the truth, she sets out to find the woman who is only a memory.Will Promise get the answers she’s looking for and finally have closure, or is it possible she won’t have closure at all and lose the ones that really care about her while searching for something that was long gone?

    She is cooking and cleaning and hiding something. She meets Paul, the new equestrian teacher, who does cowboy rodeo events and seems entirely uninterested in the school, except when it comes to getting by with the minimum amount of work. Rachel discovers that Paul is recovering from a fire that happened on his ranch. Rachel doesn’t want to get too familiar with him or anybody since she has a secret, which has to do with being the witness at a trial long ago. Rachel is afraid all the time, and it’s unclear why. Paul begins to fall for her but isn’t sure he will ever get to the bottom of what’s troubling her. Can they find happiness? A standalone short story ending Happily Ever After and unlimited reading with Kindle Unlimited!

    This afternoon, her planet was invaded.The year is 2575, and two rival mega-corporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than a speck at the edge of the universe. Now with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra — who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to evacuate with a hostile warship in hot pursuit.But their problems are just getting started. A plague has broken out and is mutating with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a web of data to find the truth, it’s clear the only person who can help her is the ex-boyfriend she swore she’d never speak to again.Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents — including emails, maps, files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more — Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

    But if she sometimes manipulates the black market traders by reading their thoughts when she touches their skin, so what? Anything to help her survive.Russia's powerful spy agency, the KGB, is recruiting young people with mind-reading capabilities for their psychic espionage program. Their mission: protect the Soviet space program from American CIA spies. Why shouldn't the KGB use any means necessary to make the young psychic cooperate? Anything to beat the American capitalist scum to the moon.Yulia is a survivor. She won't be controlled by the KGB, who want to harness her abilities for the State with no regard for her own hopes and dreams. She won't let handsome Sergei plan her life as a member of elite Soviet society, or allow brooding Valentin to consume her with his dangerous mind and even more dangerous ideas. And she certainly won't become the next victim of the powerful American spy who can scrub a brain raw—and seems to be targeting Yulia.

    But surviving the sun flares was easy compared to what came next. Now a disease of rage and lunacy races across the eastern United States, and there’s something suspicious about its origin. Worse yet, it’s mutating, and all evidence suggests that it will bring humanity to its knees.Mark and Trina are convinced there’s a way to save those left living from descending into madness. And they’re determined to find it—if they can stay alive. Because in this new, devastated world, every life has a price. And to some, you’re worth more dead than alive.

    If their Deviant abilities are discovered, they’ll be expunged—kicked out of the dome to be tortured and killed by the Shredders. Glory would give anything to get rid of her unique ability to kill with her emotions, especially when Cal, the boy she’s always liked, becomes a spy for the authorities. But when her brother is discovered, and she learns their father, who was expunged for killing their mother, is still alive, she must escape the domed city that’s been her entire world.Outside in the ruins, they’re pursued by the authorities and by sadistic, scab-covered Shredders who are addicted to the lethal-to-humans dust now covering the planet. Glory’s quests to transport herself and her brother to safety make up the thrilling and fascinating first volume of The Dust Chronicles.

    After 178 minutes she came back as a Reboot: stronger, faster, able to heal, and less emotional. The longer Reboots are dead, the less human they are when they return. Wren 178 is the deadliest Reboot in the Republic of Texas. Now seventeen years old, she serves as a soldier for HARC (Human Advancement and Repopulation Corporation).Wren’s favorite part of the job is training new Reboots, but her latest newbie is the worst she’s ever seen. As a 22, Callum Reyes is practically human. His reflexes are too slow, he’s always asking questions, and his ever-present smile is freaking her out. Yet there’s something about him she can’t ignore. When Callum refuses to follow an order, Wren is given one last chance to get him in line—or she’ll have to eliminate him. Wren has never disobeyed before and knows if she does, she’ll be eliminated, too. But she has also never felt as alive as she does around Callum.The perfect soldier is done taking orders.

    But before Zel has a plan, Dyl is taken by strangers using bizarre sensory weapons, and Zel finds herself in a safe house for teens who aren’t like any she’s ever seen before—teens who shouldn’t even exist. Using broken-down technology, her new friends’ peculiar gifts, and her own grit, Zel must find a way to get her sister back from the kidnappers who think a powerful secret is encoded in Dyl’s DNA. Set in 2150—in a world of automatic cars, nightclubs with auditory ecstasy drugs, and guys with four arms—this is about the human genetic “mistakes” that society wants to forget, and the way that outcasts can turn out to be heroes.