Austin is tall. He’s cute, funny as heck, and so far he’s behaving like the perfect gentleman. A hopeless romantic, he keeps calling Bethany up. He’s obviously in love with her, but he’s also too shy to ask—but Bethany has a plan. The stakes are very high when love is in the cards. A short story.

For travel escort Emily Andrew and her fellow Iowans, aloha means 'hello' to all the sun, surf, and scrumptious cuisine their Hawaiian cruise has to offer. But for Professor Dorian Smoker, a renowned expert on the legendary Captain Cook, aloha also means 'good-bye' - as in 'man overboard.' Sure, it could have been an accident. But Emily wonders if some guest with a grudge might have knocked off the opinionated professor. Or maybe it had something to do with that missing journal Nana's friend lent him - the one with the mysterious treasure map. Emily figures the map is probably a fake. But when another copy turns up, she and her friends take off, rafting down rivers and plunging through jungles to find the treasure themselves. Unfortunately, Professor Smoker's killer just might have the same idea. And this tropical heat wave could quickly turn into a crime wave...

WARRIOR WITH A CAUSEHeld captive in a Malaysian prison, Brian Welkins was ready to make his escape, when a beautiful wrench was thrown in his plans: hostage Audrey Benedict. And now, honor demanded that he rescue them both....Once free, though, it took all the cunning and skills Brian had to outmaneuver the deadly guerrillas on their trail. But leaving Audrey behind, to become the lone pawn in a dangerous conspiracy, was not an option. For being with her made Brian remember what it felt like to be human, and alive. Still, would their hazardous run through the jungle lead them home...or into the arms of an unknown—and unseen—enemy?

With Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team spread thin on assignment everywhere, from the remote dairy county of Northwest Vermont to the slums of Newark, NJ, they're pushed to their absolute limit when a string of serial arsons across the Green Mountain State evolve into the most shocking series of murders the bucolic region has ever known.

Warlord Daish Kheda has been building political alliances, working to consolidate power over his new realm. Although he has saved his people from the twin evils of wizardry and dragons, he feels tainted by association with forbidden magic and fears he may bring great ill-fortune to his people. So Kheda resolves to once more join his Northern wizard allies in the hope of removing the dragon threat once and for all, and to seek whatever purification he can find. Only time can tell whether he will be condemned for his actions, or whether magic is less a sin than he was brought up to believe ...He tells his son in secret that he may not return, and sets his face to the future.

Eithne is the keeper of secrets in her family: when her sister Beatrice disappeared from her home in the dark woods of Co. Meath, it was 13-year-old Eithne who uncovered the forlorn evidence of her life: a string of pearls, a scarf, a pink beret, a compact and her beloved sketchbook. Their mother, Sarah, was so grief-stricken that she did not speak for six years, and her father, Joe, sank further into drink-filled rage. Now, as an adult, Eithne is an artist, and tries to remember her sister in her prints of the dark wooded bogs behind her house: 'I print my landscapes, but they are no longer just that. Objects enter their arenas, all hidden in the woods- by the lough, under the Aspen trees- a string of pearls, a compact, a hat, a sketchbook...' For there was something else about Beatrice that was rarely spoken in the household, a dark, guilty secret that her disappearance only made worse. Something about Beatrice's birth and an Englishman, covered forever by Sarah's shame and...

This is a Novella approximately 34,713 words. If you do not enjoy shorter works you may not want to make this purchase ( You should though! ) Meet the Pussy Pounders, Adam,Sean,Cortez and their female friend and confidante Antoinette. This group of four were thrown away and thrown together. Property of the foster care system but through every struggle they had has children during the worst time of

Richard Russo has celebrated Monica Wood's fiction as 'thoroughly captivating...warm and wise and beautifully written,' and Andre Dubus III praised it as 'luminous and graceful...entertaining yet transcendent.' Any Bitter Thing, Wood's brilliant new novel, is her breakout book, a timely, gripping, and compassionate tale of family, faith, and deeply hidden truths. One of its greatest strengths is its continuous ability to defy expectations. It's not what you think. It is worse. Lizzy Mitchell was raised from the age of two by her uncle, a Catholic priest. When she was nine, he was falsely accused of improprieties with her and dismissed from his church, and she was sent away to boarding school. Now thirty years old and in a failing marriage, she is nearly killed in a traffic accident. What she discovers when she sets out to find the truths surrounding the accident—and about the accusations that led to her uncle's death—does more than change her life. With deft...

Jake Kimball lures Kat McBride with a dream she believed lost forever, and tempts her with the chance to change her bad luck.