Last Times. Connections. And No Regrets...I only wanted a tattoo. A mark on my body to remind me of who I used to be. Something to hold onto when I started my penance for all the things I’d done wrong, the bad choices I’d made by the time I turned nineteen. Instead, I found a night of possibility, of truth, of hope for the future. And the most intense physical connection I’ve ever had. The only one I’ve ever had, and one I will never forget.Trey...When she walked into my tattoo shop, I knew she was like me. Harley had secrets. She had a messed-up past, and things she wanted to run from, or forget ever happened. I couldn’t let her go. So we agreed on one night – to spend it together wandering around the city, getting to know each other, the clock ticking because we knew tomorrow would bring an end to the possibility of an us.Unless tonight was only the start.How can one night be the start of something when tomorrow it has to end?

    These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another. A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter—whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them.Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat forms an ouroboros of stories that bewitch with their truth.

    In Only Once, a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate—and final—act of foolishness. Collins’s work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters’ lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women, and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader’s head and heart.Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? is a major addition to the literary canon, and is sure to earn Kathleen Collins the widespread recognition she is long overdue.

    Call Us What We Carry is Gorman at her finest. Including “The Hill We Climb,” the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, and bursting with musical language and exploring themes of identity, grief, and memory, this lyric of hope and healing captures an important moment in our country’s consciousness while being utterly timeless.The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman.

    Ms. Ford knows how to turn up the heat.”—Romantic Times   In Can’t Get Enough of You, perennial favorite Bette Ford revisits the group of friends she introduced in Unforgettable, and enthralls readers once more with a tale about the chances we take for love, and what we’re willing to risk for a second shot at happiness. Can’t Get Enough of You is a sizzling hot love story about a brilliant and beautiful professor who’s life is turned upside-down when the ex-love of her life, who once chose an NBA career over her, re-enters her world—and it reestablishes Bette Ford as a major force in African American romance fiction.

     ***Warning Sexual Content*** Handsome billionaire, Brandon Hastings was Katie Raymond's first love. They had a whirlwind romance that captivated her heart and took her on a sexual journey she never wanted to end. Their future together looked bright until Brandon found out that Katie was keeping a huge secret from him. Once he realized the truth, he broke her heart and she never saw him again. Seven years later, Katie has finally moved on and accepts the position of her dreams at Marathon Corporation as an executive manager. The only problem is, Brandon Hastings bought the business a month after she started working there. Now Katie has to fly to San Francisco to attend a company-wide orientation and she is scared that Brandon is going to fire her on sight. Little does she know that Brandon has lot more planned for her and this time he's the one keeping a secret. This is part one of a three part erotic romance novella series. Part two will be released on January 2nd and part three will be released on January 9th.

    All anyone knew was that her boyfriend, Reno, convinced her to abandon her family. But when she shows up at the family house on Christmas thirteen years later, what’s revealed about her absence will either tear her family further apart or bring them closer together.

    For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.

    What she hates is her expanding waistline. Determined to drop the pounds, Violet hatches a plan to kick start a fitness regimen. But when her determination isn’t enough to get her through even one intense group class without breaking down into tears, she knows she needs a new approach and possibly a new trainer—one with a lighter touch.Grant Gibson has always managed to mix business with pleasure, but now this trainer by day, and Dominant by night, is bored. Bored and lonely. Even though he owns one of L.A.’s hottest private gyms, his personal life is sorely lacking. After his last submissive tried to kidnap his dog and the contents of his bank account, he’s in no hurry to take a new lover under his wing. Not until the voluptuous Violet falls into his lap.She may be wary of his unorthodox approach of using sexual gratification as a reward, but even before her initial weigh-in Violet can’t seem to stay away from the sexy fitness god. She may have to let Grant show her there’s more than one way to get in shape…

    While their lonely upbringing made Killian a cynic, it isn’t in Autumn’s nature to be anything but warm and open. However, after a series of relationship disasters and the unsettling realization that she’s drifting aimlessly through life, Autumn wonders if she’s left herself too vulnerable to the world. Deciding some distance from the security blanket of her brother and an unmotivated life in Glasgow is exactly what she needs to find herself, Autumn takes up her friend’s offer to stay at a ski resort in the snowy hills of Montana. Some guy-free alone time on Whitetail Mountain sounds just the thing to get to know herself better. However, she wasn’t counting on colliding into sexy Grayson King on the slopes. Autumn has never met anyone like Gray. Confident, smart, with a wicked sense of humor, he makes the men she dated seem like boys. Her attraction to him immediately puts her on the defense because being open-hearted in the past has only gotten it broken. Yet it becomes increasingly difficult to resist a man who is not only determined to seduce her, but adamant about helping her find her purpose in life and embrace the person she is. Autumn knows she shouldn’t fall for Gray. It can only end badly. After all their lives are divided by an ocean and their inevitable separation is just another heart break away… The Kristen Proby Crossover Collection features a new novel by Kristen Proby and six by some of her favorite writers: Kristen Proby – Soaring with Fallon Sawyer Bennett – Wicked Force K.L. Grayson – Crazy Imperfect Love Laura Kaye – Worth Fighting For Monica Murphy – Nothing Without You Rachel Van Dyken – All Stars Fall Samantha Young – Hold On

    A partner at a prestigious Atlanta law firm that represents famous—if guilty—clients, she’s far from her days as a lonely orphan in rural Georgia. But one frantic phone call will bring her back to the place she’s spent years trying to escape. The head of her childhood orphanage has been accused of murder, and Kell is her only hope for freedom.From the first moment Kell meets Sheriff Luke Calder, tempers flare. Luke is a stickler for law and order, and while he finds Kell compelling, unfortunately she represents his prime suspect. Forced to work together, they dig deep into the town’s scandals to uncover the truth. But Kell has a secret of her own…

    Todd Gilbert and Jodie Brett are in a bad place in their relationship. They've been together for twenty-eight years, and with no children to worry about there has been little to disrupt their affluent Chicago lifestyle. But there has also been little to hold it together, and beneath the surface lie ever-widening cracks. HE is a committed cheater. SHE lives and breathes denial. HE exists in dual worlds. SHE likes to settle scores. HE decides to play for keeps. SHE has nothing left to lose. When it becomes clear that their precarious world could disintegrate at any moment, Jodie knows she stands to lose everything. It's only now she will discover just how much she's truly capable of...

    But as the city is thrown into confusion, a different kind of electricity sparks…A first meeting. Long-time friends. Bitter exes. And maybe the beginning of something new.When the lights go out, people reveal hidden truths. Love blossoms, friendship transforms, and new possibilities take flight.Beloved authors—Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon—celebrate the beauty of six couples and the unforgettable magic that can be found on a sweltering starry night in the city.

    Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.

    He’s dazzled by what they’ve accomplished, and they seem to think he has the potential to be as successful as they are. They invite him for a weekend away from it all—no wives, no cell phones, no talk of business. But far from home and cut off from everyone he loves, he discovers a disturbing secret that challenges some of his deepest convictions…Martin finds out that his glittering new friends are part of a secret society dedicated to the preservation of the institution of slavery—but this time around, the black men are called “Master.” Joining them seems to guarantee a future without limits; rebuking them almost certainly guarantees his death. Trapped inside a picture-perfect, make-believe world that is home to a frightening reality, Martin must find a way out that will allow him to stay alive without becoming the very thing he hates.A novel of rage and compassion, good and evil, trust and betrayal, Forty Acres is the thought-provoking story of one man’s desperate attempt to escape the clutches of a terrifying new moral order.