Third book in the Honor Series. US Secret Service Agent Cameron Roberts has more than one secret that could destroy her career, not the least of which is that she’s in love with the president’s daughter. Blair Powell, the first daughter, returns the feeling despite her ambivalence about Cam’s role as her security chief, particularly in the aftermath of an assassination attempt that nearly cost Cam her life. In this third book of the Honor series, Blair and Cam struggle to protect their relationship from intensified media exposure even as they are unwillingly drawn into a shadowy conspiracy that puts Cam’s career and the president’s political future at risk. When Cam's previous lover resurfaces to offer support and solace, the president's daughter and her security chief are faced with difficult choices as they battle a tangled web of Washington intrigue for...love and honor

An inventive, thought-provoking and characteristically bold collection of short fiction and essays from Hanif Kureishi, centered around the vexed relationship between love and hate. In the story of a Pakistani woman who has begun a new life in Paris, an essay about the writing of Kureishi's acclaimed film Le Week-End, and an account of Kafka's relationship with his father, readers will find Kureishi also exploring the topics that he continues to make new, and make his own: growing up and growing old; betrayal and loyalty; imagination and repression; marriage and fatherhood. The collection ends with a bravura piece of very personal reportage about the conman who stole Kureishi's life savings — a man who provoked both admiration and disgust, obsession and revulsion, love and hate

Lucy Spenser, the Miss Lonely hearts of a chic counter-cultural magazine, finds her unflappable Vermont life completely upended by her teenaged soap-opera-star niece, Nicole, and her hangers-on

The soul always comes home… Ice queen Anastazia “Taz” Proctor is an aloof attorney, a “fixer.” Hunky Matthias Hawthorne wants her for more than just an employee…much more. Will she believe him when he reveals their shared secret—that they’re vampires, but that it’s not the way Hollywood portrays them? Maybe not, but with someone out to kill her, she might not have a choice. She also can’t ignore what her body tells her about her handsome boss. An escape with Matthias to the safe refuge of Yellowstone National Park leads Taz to discoveries about her lineage and what she can do with her newly awakened powers. Even more disturbing is her unexplainable attraction to Matthias’s handsome cousin, Rafael. Time grows short as a traitor in their midst makes another attempt on Taz’s life. Will she and Matthias survive when they’re caught in a vicious showdown between Love and Brimstone?

The narrator of Ivan Klima's novel has temporarily abandoned his work-in-progress — an essay on Kafka — and exchanged his writer's pen for the orange vest of a Prague road-sweeper. As he works, he meditates on Czechoslovakia, on Kafka, on life, on art and, obsessively, on his passionate and adulterous love affair with the sculptress Daria. Gradually he admits the impossibility of being at once an honest writer and an honest lover, and with that agonizing discovery comes a moment of choice

From an internationally acclaimed Czech writer comes a shrewd, humane, and poignant novel, set in Prague before the Velvet Revolution, whose perceptions about love, conscience, and betrayal cut to the bone of life in both totalitarian and democratic societies. "A chilling story from the underground."-The New York Times

Boone Adams met Jennifer Grayle when they were both eighteen and lost her when they were both twenty-two. His life from that point was a steady descent through the circles of American culture until he hit bottom in Los Angeles ten years later. Now he has nothing left but his love for Jennifer, a love that has remained unsullied and still, the eye at the center of his hurricane, his only stay against confusion. It saves him. Slowly, with agonizing effort, he comes back — across the country, across the years, across the despair that nearly destroyed him, sustained only by his determination to get Jennifer back. Love and Glory is a story of love and commitment and regeneration, told in the language of our time and set among the artifacts of recent American culture. In prose that often soars Love and Glory speaks not only of desolation but of possibility. It speaks not only of Boone and Jennifer but of America, and it hints, obliquely, that perhaps we are not merely “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

Ian Taggart and the whole McKay-Taggart Security team return in Love and Let Die.  A Tragic Love Story  Charlotte Dennis’s mission was clear: distract and misdirect CIA operative Ian Taggart by any means necessary. If she failed, she would never see her sister again. With her training, it should have been simple, but after one night in Ian’s arms, she knew that saving her sister would mean losing the man of her dreams. Ian was tracking a terrorist when he met the beautiful American daughter of a Russian mobster. His instincts told him Charlotte was trouble, but his body craved her like a drug and his heart would not be denied. She took his ring and his collar. For once he was truly happy. But as he closed in on his target, her betrayal cost him his mission while her sacrifice saved his life. As she died in his arms, Ian vowed he would never love again.  A Dangerous Reunion  For six years, Charlotte has thought of nothing but returning to her husband, her Master. Working in the shadows, she has devoted herself to earning a chance to reclaim her place in Ian’s life. But forgiveness isn’t a part of Ian’s vocabulary. Nothing is more important to Ian Taggart than his new mission. But the information he needs is firmly in the hands of the woman who betrayed him. To catch his most dangerous prey, Ian will have to let Charlotte back into his life. As the hunt takes them to some of the world’s most exotic locations, the danger grows and their passion reignites.  Will Ian forgive his wayward submissive…or lose her again?

From the acclaimed author of 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain', this is a collection of interconnected stories set in contemporary India. The stories are linked by a single narrator, an elusive civil servant who recounts the stories in a smoky Bombay bar

A new book of linked stories by the author of the National Book Award finalist The Lazarus Project. Aleksandar Hemon earned his reputation- and his MacArthur "genius grant"-for his short stories, and he returns to the form with a powerful collection of linked stories that stands with The Lazarus Project as the best work of his celebrated career. A few of the stories have never been published before; the others have appeared in The New Yorker, and several of those have also been included in The Best American Short Stories. All are infused with the dazzling, astonishingly creative prose and the remarkable, haunting autobiographical elements that have distinguished Hemon as one of the most original and illustrious voices of our time. What links the stories in Love and Obstacles is the narrator, a young man who-like Hemon himself-was raised in Yugoslavia and immigrated to the United States. The stories of Love and Obstacles are about that coming of age and the complications-the obstacles-of growing up in a Communist but cosmopolitan country, and the disintegration of that country and the consequent uprooting and move to America in young adulthood. But because it's Aleksandar Hemon, the stories extend far beyond the immigrant experience; each one is punctuated with unexpected humor and spins out in fabulist, exhilarating directions, ultimately building to an insightful, often heartbreaking conclusion. Woven together, these stories comprise a book that is, genuinely, as cohesive and powerful as any fiction- achingly human, charming, and inviting

Society has strict rules about proper decorum, courtship,romantic etiquette, and bedchamber behavior. But rules are made to be broken…

From America's master storyteller and writer of historical fiction comes the continuing saga of two families — the Hazards and the Mains. From the first shots at Fort Sumter, both families are divided against each other — and themselves. Some would experience the horrors of war on the front lines on some of the bloodiest battlefields of the Civil War... Some would give their lives for their beliefs... But all would be caught in the triumph and tragedy of a conflict that destroyed a country's innocence — and forged a nation

Another short story collection from this master of the form. Some of the stories included veer closely into prose poem territory

[Menage Amour: Erotic Futuristic Menage a Quatre Romance, M/M/M/F with various combination of M/M, M/F, M/M/F, M/M/M, monogamous polyamory] Dr. Emilia Hypatia is recently-graduated and looking for adventure. She's an Alpha-ranked healer, has a degree in psychology, and empath training. Fresh out of a bad relationship with a cheating ex, her five-year assignment to the Deep Space Mission Corps vessel, Tamora Bight, seems ideal. Especially when she meets the three handsome crewmen she'll spend her time caring for--in more ways than one. First Officer Caphis Bates is playful and rowdy. Mate Ford Caliban is her intellectual and emotional partner. But it's Captain Aaron Lucio who is an enigma; passionate, with a deeply wounded and carefully guarded soul. While sharing their communal bed is a scorchingly sensual experience, Emi soon learns the three men suffer a shared grief, their "crew story." She patiently works to unlock their secret past, but space exploration is cold--and cruel. Will time run out for all of them before she can heal their hearts?

“Until Death Do Us Part” by Sherrilyn Kenyon Over five hundred years ago, Esperetta's soul was bound to her husband's by dark magic, and when Velkan became a Dark-Hunter, to her horror, she became immortal as well. Now, they must come together to fight an old enemy…and the passion that threatens to consume them once more. “Ride the Night Wind” by L.A. Banks Dark dreams haunt Jose Ciponte, dreams of a woman so beautiful he aches for her-and a deadly enemy who stalks them in the night. And now those dreams have become a reality… “The Gift” by Susan Squires All Major Davis Ware wants to do is propose to the beautiful Emma Fairchild. Instead, he is called back into battle, and a desperate fate. And Emma will venture into hell itself to save him. “The Forgotten One” by Ronda Thompson Lady Anne Baldwin longs to break free from her proper bonds. When she meets the mysterious Merrick, whose eyes glow like a wolf's, she may have found more than she bargained for

The latest short story from New York Times bestselling author Angie Fox. Vampire Princess Katarina Volholme D’Transylvania didn’t kill her stony, passionless husband, but she’s not shedding too many tears, either. That is until her father arranges another marriage for her three days after the funeral. She’s tired of being used, ignored and married off. And so she runs… Royal Bodyguard Fionnlagh MacLaomainn doesn’t know much about the maverick princess on the lamb. He just needs to bring her back in time for the wedding. But when he manages to capture her on the back of his Harley, their wild ride takes them to places neither one of them could have ever imagined. But will a night of forbidden passion be enough to kindle true love?

As a mortal girl dating a vampire, Raven knows that love isn’t always easy. Now that Alexander’s parents have returned to Romania, Raven and her dreamy vampire boyfriend are happy to resume their cryptic romance. But soon another visitor comes knocking: Sebastian, Alexander’s best friend, arrives for a stay at the mansion. At first Raven is wary, and then thrilled – this is the perfect chance to learn more about her darkly handsome boyfriend and his past. Raven has been wondering whether Alexander will ever bite her and make their love immortal, and Sebastian could be her guide to the love habits of Alexander and his kind. But when Sebastian falls for a particular Dullsvillian, will another mortal beat Raven to the bite?

A New York love story as seductively neurotic as the city itself. At thirty-two years old, Lynn Gallagher is one of the five most influential contemporary-art gallery owners in Manhattan. Too bad her face is dead. Not so, says Lynn’s assistant, but that is how it feels when she compares it to her stalker’s face. Alan Morton may be a plump, goofy-looking accountant, but his face glows with life when he peers at Lynn through her gallery window. The difference is that Alan wants something — her — very badly, while Lynn wants nothing at all. So she decides to stalk. The object of her obsession — French attorney Roland Dupont — is chosen at random in a Chelsea bakery. He is attractive, but it is not until he expresses his disinterest in her that Lynn begins to truly desire him. Alan, jealous of Lynn’s newfound hobby, befriends Roland to find out what she sees in him. When Roland learns that he acquired his stalker by happenstance, he decides that he might be interested in Lynn after all. Soon all three are brazenly pursuing each other across the city — from adult education classes in the art of beading to meetings of Stalker’s Anonymous — as they try to figure out what it is that they truly want. The advice of Ray, the homeless psychologist who observes their madcap comings and goings, is not much help at all: “Take a break, an antidepressant. Get hold of yourselves.” A hip and darkly humorous novel about the mysteries of romance, Love Creeps is pure Amanda Filipacchi — funny, wicked, and wise

Вы помните, «КАК ВСЕ БЫЛО»? Помните «любовный треугольник», связавший тихоню-яппи, талантливого неудачника и средней руки художницу-реставратора в удивительную, саркастическую «современную комедию нравов»? Варианта «жили они счастливо и умерли в один день» тут не получается по определению! А что, собственно, получается? «Любовь и так далее»! Роман, о котором лучше всего сказали в «Таймс»: «Потрясающе смешная книга. Умная. И трогательная!» Вудхауз? Вуди Аллен? Нет – Джулиан Барнс в лучшей своей форме!

For the last seven years, Brand has only longed to make Elsa his mate. After meeting her when she's sixteen and having to wait until she's old enough to claim her, his chance to make her his seems to slip through his fingers. But when the opportunity comes to win her, he acts quickly. Having to deal with her idiot ex-fiance, Elsa is more than happy to see Brand arrive to take her ex's place. She falls hard and fast for Brand, but he comes with a world she doesn't understand a disturbing world that makes it hard to accept the love Brand offers her, no matter how much she wants to

В любви, как в дороге — набирая скорость, не потеряй контроль… Уличные гонки… Гонки — это ее страсть, ее способ самовыражения. Она непобедима и бесстрашна в своем стремлении быть лучшей. Ее зовут Никки, но для своих она «малышка Лулу». Ночью она «Принцесса уличных гонок». Дороги и скорость покоряются ей. Она популярна и недоступна, она легка как ветер и свободна. Но наступает день и легкость уходит. Любовь бывает весьма странной, она бывает к тому, кто не понимает и не признает это чувство. В любви как в гоночном заезде, она свободна и легка, но в миг, если ты потеряешь контроль, то не знаешь, чем это кончится. Дорога бывает гладкая и ровная, но в любой дороге есть свои завороты, ямы и тупики. Так же и в любви, есть радость и есть разочарование. Разочарование в мужчине и неверие в любовь — это как яма. Но затем ты выбираешься, на пути новый разворот…

В любви, как в дороге – набирая скорость не потеряй контроль… Уличные гонки… Гонки – это ее страсть, ее способ самовыражения. Она непобедима и бесстрашна в своем стремлении быть лучшей. Ее зовут Никки, но для своих она «малышка Лулу». Ночью она «Принцесса уличных гонок». Дороги и скорость покоряются ей. Она популярна и недоступна, она легка как ветер и свободна. Но наступает день и легкость уходит. Любовь бывает весьма странной, она бывает к тому, кто не понимает и не признает это чувство. В любви как в гоночном заезде, она свободна и легка, но в миг, если ты потеряешь контроль, то не знаешь чем это кончится. Дорога бывает гладкая и ровная, но в любой дороге есть свои завороты, ямы и тупики. Также и в любви, есть радость и есть разочарование. Разочарование в мужчине и неверие в любовь, это как яма. Но затем ты выбираешься, на пути новый разворот… Written by Rita Volkova Review and edition Julia Mikhutkina Группа в контакте https://vk.com/ritavolkova_group

Дорогие девчонки! Мне очень хочется, чтобы вы узнали себя в героинях моих книг. Они общаются с друзьями и пытаются разобраться в жизни точно так же, как вы. Так же мечтают о любви. Я верю, что вы обязательно встретите ее – любовь, такую же чистую, возвышенную и прекрасную, какую я подарила героиням своих произведений!

Working on behalf of a cunning and mysterious couple, a woman embarks on a haunting search for a stranger (a child? somebody’s lover? a ghost?) and undertakes a perplexing, dangerous, deeply layered, and apparently timeless journey originating on a secluded country estate and leading deep into the erotic center of a transient location in the city. Love Hotel explores a heartbreaking and nightmarish world of unrelenting excess, impossible convergences, undeniable urges, and inexorable loss. Jane Unrue’s writing, beautifully cunning and mysterious itself, twists and turns and lures the reader on with a heightened charged erotic magnetism of its own

This selection of stories, set in mythical times and in 1920s and 1930s London and Paris, reflects Antal Szerb’s love of life and irrepressible irony that has become his trademark: from Szerb’s earliest stories, driven by his intense political and religious idealism, to his later work, marked by the sympathy and humour of Journey by Moonlight and The Queen’s Necklace

[A] giant of modern Chinese literature' – The New York Times "With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature, and now, with these excellent new translations, English readers can discover why she is so revered by Chinese readers everywhere." – Ang Lee Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang's achievement is her short fiction – tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master

[A] giant of modern Chinese literature' – The New York Times "With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature, and now, with these excellent new translations, English readers can discover why she is so revered by Chinese readers everywhere." – Ang Lee Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang's achievement is her short fiction – tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master

Number one bestselling author Janet Evanovich teams up with award-winning author Dorien Kelly to deliver a sparkling novel of romantic suspense, small-town antics, secretive sabotage, and lots and lots of beer Kate Appleton needs a job. Her husband has left her, she's been fired from her position as a magazine editor, and the only place she wants to go is to her parents' summer house, The Nutshell, in Keene's Harbor, Michigan. Kate's plan is to turn The Nutshell into a Bed and Breakfast. Problem is, she needs cash, and the only job she can land is less than savory Matt Culhane wants Kate to spy on his brewery employees. Someone has been sabotaging his company, and Kate is just new enough in town that she can insert herself into Culhane's business and snoop around for him. If Kate finds the culprit, Matt will pay her a $20,000 bonus. Needless to say, Kate is highly motivated. But several problems present themselves. Kate despises beer. No one seems to trust her. And she is falling hard for her boss. Can these two smoke out a saboteur, save Kate's family home, and keep a killer from closing in.all while resisting their undeniable attraction to one another? Filled with humor, heart, and loveable characters, Love in a Nutshell is delicious fun

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My name is Lily Gilmore, and I was supposed to be getting married today. That was until I found my fiancé having sex with my sister in the church moments before I was supposed to walk down the aisle. I grew up with a father who was a womanizer and cheated on my mother every moment he had the chance. He would even stoop as low as to take me and my sister with him on his trysts when we were younger. Cheating was all I grew up with, and I vowed never to live the life my mother did. After finding my fiancé and my sister together, I moved from Seattle to Santa Monica to start a new life of independence and to focus on my passion for photography, man-free. My name is Luke Matthews. About a year ago, I lost the love of my life, my fiancé, in a tragic car accident. There are no words that can describe how I’ve felt the past year. My life and all my dreams had died with her in the accident. I exist, and I play my guitar to try and ease the pain. My love was taken away, and I will never get that back. What happens when the lives of two people who no longer believe in love are suddenly changed by fate?

Lions, rabbits, monkeys, pheasants — all have shared the spotlight and tabloid headlines with famous men and women. Sharon Stone’s husband’s run-in with a Komodo dragon, Thomas Edison’s filming of an elephant’s electrocution and David Hasselhoff’s dogwalker all find a home in Love in Infant Monkeys. At the rare intersections of wilderness and celebrity, Lydia Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with pop icons and the culture of human self-worship. In much fiction, animals exist as author stand-ins — or even more reductively as symbols of good and evil. In Millet’s ruthless, lucid prose — each story based on a news item, biography, or other fact-based account of a celebrity-animal relationship — animals are as complex and rich as our imaginings of them. In these spiraling fictional riffs and flounces on real life, animals show up their humans as bloated with foolishness and yet curiously vulnerable — as in a tour-de-force, Kabbalah-infused interior monologue by Madonna after she shoots a pheasant on her English estate

Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She'd been left to die in a field on the day she was born, abandoned in the tall brown grass that covers the highlands of Zimbabwe in the dry season. After a near-death hospital stay, and under strict doctor's orders, the ailing child was entrusted to the care of Tucker and Vita. Within weeks Chipo, the girl-child whose name means gift, would come to mean everything to them. Still an active correspondent, Tucker crisscrossed the continent, filing stories about the uprisings in the Congo, the civil war in Sierra Leone, and the postgenocidal conflict in Rwanda. He witnessed heartbreaking scenes of devastation and violence, steeling him further to take a personal role in helping anywhere he could. At home in Harare, Vita was nursing Chipo back to health. Soon she and Tucker decided to alter their lives forever – they would adopt Chipo. That decision challenged an unspoken social norm – that foreigners should never adopt Zimbabwean children. Raised in rural Mississippi in the sixties and seventies, Tucker was familiar with the mores associated with and dictated by race. His wife, a savvy black woman whose father escaped the Jim Crow South for a new life in the industrial North, would not be deterred in her resolve to welcome Chipo into their loving family. As if their situation wasn't tenuous enough, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was stirring up national fervor against foreigners, especially journalists, abroad and at home. At its peak, his antagonizing branded all foreign journalists personae non grata. For Tucker, the only full-time American correspondent in Zimbabwe, the declaration was a direct threat to his life and his wife's safety, and an ultimatum to their decision to adopt the child who had already become their only daughter. Against a background of war, terrorism, disease, and unbearable uncertainty about the future, Chipo's story emerges as an inspiring testament to the miracles that love – and dogged determination – can sometimes achieve. Gripping, heartbreaking, and triumphant, this family memoir will resonate throughout the ages

“A great adventure. So outrageous and so real, one is left speechless.” —Chicago Sun Times In Walker Percy’s future America, the country is on the brink of disaster. With citizens violently polarized along racial, political, and social lines, and a fifteen-year war still raging abroad, America is crumbling quickly into ruin. The country’s one remaining hope is Dr. Thomas More, whose “lapsometer” is capable of diagnosing the spiritual afflictions — anxiety, depression, alienation — driving everyone’s destructive and disastrous behavior. But such a potent machine has its pitfalls. As Dr. More soon learns, in the wrong hands, the powerful lapsometer could lead to open warfare, pushing America into anarchy at full-speed

When it comes to love, one woman is scaling back her expectations… Tully Sullivan is just like any other suburban mom-except she's just woken up in a strange place surrounded by strange people who keep insisting that they're dragons-and that she's one too

Новый рассказ о похождениях Майкла Дуридомова - в стиле интерактивного постмодернизма. Майкл стал писателем, слава накрыла его волной: Стокгольм, Монте-Карло - Dream City... море, девушки, шампанское, Lamborghini Diablo. Но это еще не все... далеко не все... 

National Book Award finalist Amy Bloom has written a tale of growing up that is sharp and funny, rueful and uncompromisingly real. A chubby girl with smudged pink harlequin glasses and a habit of stealing Heath Bars from the local five-and-dime, Elizabeth Taube is the only child of parents whose indifference to her is the one sure thing in her life. When her search for love and attention leads her into the arms of her junior-high-school English teacher, things begin to get complicated. And even her friend Mrs. Hill, a nearly blind, elderly black woman, can't protect her when real love-exhilarating, passionate, heartbreaking-enters her life in the gorgeous shape of Huddie Lester. With her finely honed style and her unflinching sensibility, Bloom shows us how profoundly the forces of love and desire can shape a life

HE’S USED TO GETTING WHAT HE WANTS… A former football star and one of Chicago’s top prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cade Morgan will do anything to nail a corrupt state senator, which means he needs Brooke Parker’s help. As general counsel for a restaurant company, she can get a bug to the senator’s table at one of her five-star restaurants so the FBI can eavesdrop on him. All Cade has to do is convince Brooke to cooperate—and he’s not afraid to use a little charm, or the power of his office, to do just that. AND WHAT HE WANTS IS HER. A savvy businesswoman, Brooke knows she needs to play ball with the U.S. Attorney’s office—even if it means working with Cade. No doubt there’s a sizzling attraction beneath all their sarcastic quips, but Brooke is determined to keep things casual. Cade agrees—until a surprising turn of events throws his life into turmoil, and he realizes that he wants more than just a good time from the one woman with whom he could fall terrifyingly, irresistibly in love

Vivid, powerful stories of contemporary Nigeria, from a talented young author. * One of the Millions's Most Anticipated Books of 2013 * When it comes to love, things are not always what they seem. In contemporary Lagos, a young boy may pose as a woman online, and a maid may be suspected of sleeping with her employer and yet still become a young wife’s confidante. Men and women can be objects of fantasy, the subject of beery soliloquies. They can be trophies or status symbols. Or they can be overwhelming in their need. In these wide-ranging stories, A. Igoni Barrett roams the streets with people from all stations of life. A man with acute halitosis navigates the chaos of the Lagos bus system. A minor policeman, full of the authority and corruption of his uniform, beats his wife. A family’s fortunes fall from love and wealth to infidelity and poverty as poor choices unfurl over three generations. With humor and tenderness, Barrett introduces us to an utterly modern Nigeria, where desire is a means to an end, and love is a power as real as money

Parker “Kong” King is the number one tennis player in the world with a real talent for getting women in her bed. To prepare herself for the one title she’s never won—and avoid the press and her ex—she retreats to a secluded home in Press Cove, Alabama. There she’ll also be safe from the Soldiers of God who’ve threatened to kill her for what they see as her depraved lifestyle. Commercial pilot Captain Sydney Parish loves the order that comes from a well-constructed plan for everything, her only failure being her personal life. She hopes a vacation will help heal her bruised heart, but soon finds that might not be possible when she discovers she’s one house over from Parker King. When Parker and Sydney meet, sparks fly, but not from attraction. They have the summer to see if they have a love match, or will the Soldiers of God kill their chance for a relationship?

How far does she have to go to get his attention? Another girl's arms? Melina Wenham is worried and frustrated. Lately, her boyfriend of six months seems to have lost interest in her. Yes, she knows he's stressed about his big project at work, but jeez, it seems like he'd rather go solo than have sex with her. Sexy lingerie, a Brazilian...nothing seems to get his attention. Gavin's frustrated too. He's under enough pressure at work, without feeling more from Melina every time he gets home. Another night, another party, and Gavin is off talking to the boys. Feeling ignored yet again, Melina confides her troubles to an acquaintance, Abby, who suggests shaking him up by flirting with another guy. Hmm. Not a bad idea, except there are no flirt-worthy guys at this party. Then Abby suggests a different tack--flirt with her. Could a little girl-on-girl tango be the match that reignites romance with Gavin? There's only one way to find out...(

From "5 Under 35" honoree and Rona Jaffe Award-winner comes an urgent, intensely visceral debut novel about a young waitress whose downward spiral is narrated in electric prose. Marie, a young single mother, lands a job at an upscale Dallas steakhouse. She is preternaturally attuned to the appetites of her patrons, but quickly learns to hide her private struggle behind an easy smile and a crisp white apron. In a world of long hours and late nights, where everything runs on a currency of favors, cash and cachet, Marie gives in to brutally self-destructive impulses. She loses herself in a tangle of bodies and the kind of coke that 'napalms your emotional synapses.' But obliteration — not pleasure — is her goal. Pulsing with fierce, almost feral energy, Love Me Back is an unapologetic portrait of a woman cutting a precarious path through early adulthood

A run-down Victorian to renovate, a past to leave behind--who has time for romance...or murder? Patricia Amble, Tish to her friends, has gotten her life together. She's renovating an old, rambling Victorian house in a small town outside of Detroit, and the fixer-upper should net her a big profit when she resells. Romance is right next door, with two attractive neighbors vying for her affection. But even their persistent attentions can't dispel the sense of unease Tish feels. Voices whisper out of nowhere . . . and something odd is going on in the basement. Soon, Tish begins to question her decision to buy the old house. When a dead body turns up her own dark secrets make her a prime suspect in the current chaos. And is either of her attractive neighbors really who he says he is? What is going on just under the surface of this sleepy small town?

This time, it’s all abouthisultimate fantasy. If she has the nerve… The sequel to Love Me. In a bid for her boyfriend’s undivided attention, Melina indulged in a flirtation that led to an unexpected—and incredibly sexy—threesome. Now, months later and on their way to the altar, she and Gavin don’t talk much about that night. Except his confession that in his threesome fantasies, the two women are focused entirely on his pleasure. Melina is a little uncomfortable about that—and more uncomfortable about the wild and wicked bachelor party his buddies have planned for him. She’s no prude, but the idea of him being uh…attended to by unknown women is driving her crazy. Gavin agrees to a compromise, but it leaves her with a lingering feeling of guilt. How to make it up to him? She has an idea…but does she have the nerve?