Mae longs for magic of her own and to have a place among the Prosper family, where her best friend, Coco, will see her as an equal, and her crush, Miles, will finally see her. Now that she’s eighteen, Mae knows her time with the Prospers may soon come to an end.But tonight is First Night, when the Prospers and their high-society friends return to the island to celebrate the night Lord Prosper first harnessed the island’s magic and started producing aether – a magical fuel source that has revolutionized the world. With everyone returning to the island, Mae finally has the chance to go after what she’s always wanted.When the spirits start inexplicably dying, Mae starts to realize that things aren’t what they seem. And Ivo, the reclusive, mysterious heir to the Prosper magic, may hold all the answers – including a secret about Mae’s past that she doesn’t remember. As Mae and her friends begin to unravel the mysteries of the island, and the Prospers’ magic, Mae starts to question the truth of what her world was built on.Forbidden magic, a family secret, and a night to reveal it all...

    The gossip comes to an abrupt halt when five-year-old Billy Barnes goes missing on his walk home from kindergarten. Billy’s mother, Rachel, blames herself for being at work and letting her only child walk alone. Cassidy, Billy’s teenage babysitter, was also late to arrive on the afternoon he disappeared and blames herself for his disappearance. As the clock ticks down, police are unable to find any trace of Billy, forcing Rachel to ponder the enemies she’s made in their well-off suburb. Could it be one of her neighbors who stole her son? Would they abduct Billy to hurt her? How easy would it be to take a child while the parents or nannies are distracted? When another child goes missing, the town is put under a microscope as the police try to get to the bottom of the disappearances. Will they be able to find the two children, or will it be too late? What secrets lie at the heart of this tragedy, and how far will one go to keep those dangerous secrets buried?

    Smart, funny, and profound, she has loyal friends, a mother with whom she’s unusually close, a father she’s never met, devoted grandparents, and a crush on a boy named Jack. Maddy also has cancer. Living in the shadow of uncertainty, she is forced to grow up fast. All the Water in the World is the story of a family doing its best when faced with the worst. Told in the alternating voices of Maddy and her mother, Eve, the narrative moves between the family’s lake house in Pennsylvania; their home in Washington, DC; and London, where Maddy’s father, Antonio, lives. Hungry for experience, Maddy seeks out her first romantic relationship, finds solace in music and art, and tracks down Antonio. She continually tests the depths and limits of her closeness with her mother, while Eve has to come to terms with the daughter she only partly knows, in a world she can’t control. With unforgettable voices that range from tender to funny, despairing to defiant, this novel illuminates the transformative power of love, humor, and hope.

    or the cursed.SLATEI didn’t mean to steal the Bloodstone from the De Morel’s crypt. Scratch that, I did mean to steal it. Until I realized it was a curse-magnet that only comes off if I, along with a jolly trio, successfully defeat four curses.If any of us fail, I’m dead.I’ve never been a glass half-empty sort of person, but my glass looks in dire need of a refill right about now.The only highlight of this wicked treasure hunt: feisty, entitled Cadence de Morel.CADENCEI was raised on tales of magic, in a small town reputed to be the birthplace of French witchcraft.Did I believe all the stories I heard? Absolutely not. I mean, if magic existed, Maman wouldn’t have died, and Papa wouldn’t be stuck in a wheelchair, right?Wrong.The night Slate Ardoin waltzes into my life, wearing a ring he stole from my mother’s grave, I call him a monster.But then I meet real ones, and Slate, well . . . he becomes something else to me.Something frustrating to live with but impossible to live without.Something I will fight for, no matter the cost.*Warning: profuse cursing (and not just the magical kind).

    But when her beloved grandmother passes away and she loses her job at the local library, Jess' life is turned upside down.Determined to pick up the pieces, Jess decides it's time for a new beginning. Unable to part with her grandmother's cherished books, she packs them all up and moves to a tiny cottage in the English countryside. To her surprise, Jess discovers that she's now the owner of an old red phone box that was left on the property. Missing her job at the local library, Jess decides to give back to her new community--using her grandmother's collection to turn the ordinary phone box into the littlest library in England.It's not long before the books are borrowed and begin to work their literary magic--bringing the villagers together... and managing to draw Jess' grumpy but handsome neighbor out of his shell.Maybe it's finally time for Jess to follow her heart, let go of her old life, and make the village her home? But will she be able to take the leap?

    I had a three-day notice to pay rent or quit. The ad was the answer to my problem. Someone needed a party hostess for 24 hours on a private island. With my catering experience and model looks, I could get the gig. But when I set eyes on the man about to fly me to the island, I realized I might have made a mistake. The tall, older, arrogant stranger didn’t just undress me with his eyes, he used me right there on the pavement. Deviant desires seemed to radiate from him. He pulled a black leather dog collar out of his pocket. “Wait. You have to sign this before we do anything. Read it.” He handed me a contract. The wind swept a bottle down the runway and blew my skirt up. It was hard to read with his dark eyes looking right through my underwear and into my secret places. “This is a mistake. I didn’t know the ad meant —.” “You thought you were going to serve canapes on a tray?” He chuckled. “No, Brittani. You’re the main course.” His eyes worked me over again. “And you’re perfect.” He handed me a pen that probably cost more than my laptop. “Just sign at the bottom of the page. Full disclosure, full consent. That’s the way I do business.” “Can I leave?” “Of course you can leave. If you leave now. But you don’t get paid if you leave. Once we get to the island, you’re ours for 24-hours.” He tapped the contract with his long finger. “When your service is over, I transfer $10,000 to your account and send you home.” “$10,000?” I choked on it. That was more than generous. I scanned the contract again. It had long, dense paragraphs of disclaimers and waivers but not much in the way of details. “I’ll be — okay — when it’s over?” “You’ll be okay.” He smiled. I liked his smile. I needed the money. I signed. He put the collar around my neck and buckled it. If you like dark short erotica, kinky alpha billionaires — and no-entrances-barred hard-and-unprotected group interracial action with a white woman at the center, you'll love Q. Zayne's creamy story about Brittani’s scary-hot visit to The Billionaire’s Club. Click Buy and get the adventure! All characters are 18+ and readers should be, too, due to language and sexual content. If you're over 21, enjoy the dash of interracial BMWW romance sparked amid all the juicy action. :)

    Paul: a twentysomething wannabe rock star, back home from New York City, broke and jobless, living with his mother. April: a math teacher with two kids, running her church’s Vacation Bible School, discontent with another summer planning crafts and regurgitating verses. Ben: a boy stuck at VBS, still adjusting to the presence of his foster brother, DeShawn, a quiet, brooding kid from Brooklyn.Over the course of one summer, these characters’ paths will collide in surprising, often hilarious ways. Encompassing questions of identity, religion, race, and family, Another Life is an absorbing and thought-provoking debut about the line we all walk between desire and responsibility.

    . . .Sweet Home, Alaska, was once a thriving, idyllic town, where A Stone's Throw Hardware and Haberdashery and the Sisterhood of the Quilt were the cornerstones of the community. Then, in one fatal moment, two young lives were cut short, and everything changed. Now the Stone family businesses have closed, the diner is in the red, and the population has dwindled to 573.After the tragic accident that took her sister's life, Hope McKnight discovered she was pregnant, and gave up her dreams of college to raise her daughter. When Donovan Stone returns to sell his family's properties and to cut final ties with Sweet Home, he's shocked to find Hope still there--and a single mother. The pull between Hope and Donovan is as powerful as ever. But so are the secrets and lies stemming from that long-ago tragedy. Will they be able to overcome the past, or will the heartbreak of bygone days destroy their love again?

    Moses presents thirteen tales of supernatural horror and everyday woe.

    Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.  Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.

    But the most important invention of all was the one that Miles claimed came from the mind of Thomas Edison himself--a machine that allowed one to speak with loved ones long passed. Smuggled out of Edison's laboratory, the blueprints were passed down to Miles, and he's been using them to protect Eva, her mother, Lily, and her brother, Errol, ever since.Then, one night when a storm is raging and the river is threatening to flood, the machine whirrs to life on its own. Danger, it says. You're in terrible danger. The next thing Eva knows is waking up on the side of the river and seeing her mother's grim face. Eva's father and brother are dead, their house has been washed away and an evil man is searching for them both. They need to hide.Eva changes her name to Necco--a candy she always loved--and tries to put everything in her past behind her as she adapts to her new life off the grid. But when her boyfriend is murdered and her mother disappears, she knows that the past is starting to catch up to her.What really happened the night of the flood? As Necco searches for the truth, her journey unites her with two women who are on desperate quests of their own. And as the trio follows the clues to solving the mystery of Necco's past, they discover that sometimes it's the smallest towns that hold the strangest secrets.

    The world, as we know today, is not the same anymore. Blatant threats of war by ‘world leaders’ is the new normal. Gone are the days when mobilizing armies at borders, or aiming missiles at adversaries, was a rare phenomenon.With every nation or their allies possessing nuclear weapons, victory through conventional means is no longer possible, paving way for covert warfare to emerge as the preferred weapon. New Delhi is an easy target and Doshi, the unassailable supremo of the regime, is on the ‘hit list’. The threat assessment being at an all time high, Ajay Kaamte, the director of SPG (Special Protection Group), is tasked with protecting the PM.Intelligence claims that the PM is susceptible to cyanide attacks and situation is grim, to say the least. Will Doshiji survive to serve another term or will he very soon be having his last chai?

    After four major heartbreaks set her straight, from her father cheating on her mom all the way to Ben Laderman in grad school—who wasn’t actually cheating, but she could have sworn he was, so she reciprocated in kind.Then Ben shows up five years later, working as a policy expert for the most liberal governor in Texas history, just as Lee is trying to get a clean energy bill rolling. Things get complicated—and competitive as Lee and Ben are forced to work together. Tension builds just as old sparks reignite, fanning the flames for a romantic dustup the size of Texas.

    On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And . . . another. Nothing is quite what it seems as the city becomes awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What would normally pass for coincidence becomes something far stranger as the recently engaged Lola must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship but the fact that both her best friend and her former boss, a magazine editor turned mystical guru, might have an unhealthy investment in the outcome. Memories of the past swirl and converge in ways both comic and eerie, as Lola is forced to decide if she will surrender herself to the conspiring of one very contemporary cult.Hilariously insightful and delightfully suspenseful, Cult Classic is an original: a masterfully crafted tale of love, memory, morality, and mind control, as well as a fresh foray into the philosophy of romance. Is it possible to have a happy ending in an age when the past is ever at your fingertips and sanity is for sale? With her gimlet eye, Sloane Crosley spins a wry literary fantasy that is equal parts page-turner and poignant portrayal of alienation.

    Once known as his muse, Sara long ago lost her father to his desire to live the celebrity life.Now TR’s abrasive and unpredictable presence in her home is reopening old wounds—and causing the rift in her already-strained marriage to deepen. As her young son begins bonding with the grandfather he never knew, Sara must decide if she can find it within herself to forgive the man who broke her heart all those years ago. Will she walk away from a chance to rebuild what was lost, or will she find, by bringing her father back to health, that healing can come in many forms?