After being cheated on yet again, full-figured Alice O'Brien resolves to enjoy men sexually, refusing to involve her heart. When she tumbles down a rabbit hole, she lands in a beautiful, erotic world, surrounded by gorgeous men who relish her voluptuous curves… Men who want to tie her up and play sex games-talk about a dream come true! Only King Jarronn deliberately lured Alice to his kingdom to be his mate. He has every intention of capturing her for himself and making her his Queen of Hearts. Views: 63
Once a year, the town of Ravenscroft celebrates the winter solstice by watching the Oak King symbolically slay the Holly King to ensure the death of winter. To most people, it's a pagan ritual that has lost all meaning in the modern world, harmless fun during the week of Christmas. To the coven who founded the town, it's a magic so important they entrusted it to the two strongest witches in generations.Will Battle and Chester Sibley are opposites in every way, or so Ravenscroft residents insist. Quiet, polite Will is the town's beloved adopted son, popular and admired. Defiant, outspoken Chester is disliked and avoided despite being a direct descendant of the town's founders. It's no wonder Will is the embodiment of spring and life as the Oak King and Chester was given the cold, dark Season of Holly. No one in town seems to realize their nice, well-mannered Oak King has iron at his core and their fearsome Holly King only wants to make people happy. Perhaps that's also why not even... Views: 63
SUMMARY: Two hundred years after the Forbidding was broken, Santhenar is locked in war with the lyrinx - intelligent, winged predators who will do anything to gain their own world. Despite the development of battle clankers and mastery of the crystals that power them, humanity is losing. Tiaan, a lonely crystal worker in a clanker manufactory, is experimenting with an entirely new kind of crystal when she begins to have extraordinary visions. The crystal has woken her latent talent for geomancy, the most powerful of all the Secret Arts - and the most perilous. Falsely accused of sabotage by her rival, Irisis, Tiaan flees for her life. Struggling to control her talent and hunted by the lyrinx, Tiaan follows her visions all the way to Tirthrax, greatest peak on all the Three Worlds, where a nightmare awaits her . Find out more about this title and others at www.orbitbooks.co.uk Views: 63
Book DescriptionCLASSIC LOUIS L'AMOUR Here is a passel of stories by the supreme master of the western tale, Louis L'Amour. Forgotten for almost forty years, they were penned at the outset of L'Amour's career, when he was writing for the late, lamented pulp magazines. Though he would gain his greatest success with the novel, this volume reveals him to have been an equally accomplished practitioner of short story and novelette. If you are already a Louis L'Amour fan, stories like "Lit a Shuck for Texas," "Desert Death Song," "Blood of Ryan," and "Law of the Desert Born" will confirm your opinion of the master's abilities; and if you are not yet a fan, these stories will make you one. When Louis L’Amour writes of the West, he knows it intimately, having worked extensively throughout the region in a variety of jobs Las a young man in the 1920s-30s. There he met, and learned from, the last of the gunfighters and cowtown sheriffs from the days of the Old West, when the Daltons and the Earps still rode. But the first tales of the frontier he heard were at his parents’ knees, for one of his grandfathers had been scalped by the Sioux. With this background, it’s little wonder that he became one of the supreme tellers of authentic tales of Western action and bravery. A must read!About The AuthorOur foremost storyteller of the Old West, Louis L'Amour has thrilled a nation by bringing to vivid life the brave men and women who settled the American frontier. L'Amour is the only author to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. There are more than 2.2 million copies of L'Amour dramatizations in BDD Audio print. Views: 63
Award-winning author Alissa York’s first novel is a haunting and masterful exploration of how passions of the spirit and the flesh can overwhelm us, and even come to inhabit the ground beneath our feet. Divided into two parts, Mercy pairs a single year in the past with a single night in the present, as they unfold in the town of Mercy, Manitoba, and in the neighbouring black spruce bog.In 1948, a dedicated priest named August Day arrives in Mercy to take over from Father Rock, who has passed away. Although Father Day is young, the bishop has seen fit to let him take over the parish, and August feels he is fulfilling his years of devotion, study and struggle -- at last being able to serve God as alter Christus, or another Christ. The first service he is to perform in his new church is the marriage of Thomas Rose, the town butcher, to Mathilda Nickels, the orphaned niece of the church housekeeper.Thomas Rose is a good man who waited years to express his love for Mathilda. And when Mathilda accepted his proposal, he was sure that their life together would bring them both joy, though in truth he knew little about his betrothed. Mathilda grew up in a Catholic orphanage and has since been living with her aunt Vera at St. Mary’s; she has not explored the world beyond the realm of her religious devotion, and approaches her wedding day with a mix of fear and dread. But when her eyes meet those of Father Day at the ceremony, Thomas seems to dissolve beside her and she feels physical passion for the first time in her life. As of that moment, August and Mathilda will only have eyes, and hearts, for each other.Over the coming weeks, the young bride spends more and more time at St. Mary’s, caring for her ailing aunt and taking over the woman’s cleaning duties, but also savouring her brief moments with Father Day. Her marriage remains unconsummated, and her lust for the priest grows to fever pitch, as does his for her -- fuelled not only by the secrets they share in the confessional, but by the fiery text of the Song of Songs. When they do unite, it seems to mark the end of their secret relationship… but the child Mathilda carries away from the encounter assures us their story is not over. Rather, it is yet another thread to add to the tapestry of unspoken stories underpinning Mercy itself, and one that will affect the town’s psyche for decades to come.Half a century later, another sort of preacher comes to Mercy -- a womanizing widower who wants to develop the black spruce bog on the edge of town and build a religious camp. Reverend Carl Mann is fairly confident of success, having taken up with Mayor Lavinia Wylie, but worries about the well-publicized protests of a woman known as Bog Mary, who has lived her entire life in the heart of the bog. He heads off to confront her and ends up lost and hurt, but Mary uses her natural remedies and knowledge to heal not only his wounds but his broken spirit.A dark yet compassionate novel, Mercy rivals the fiction debuts of Anne Michaels, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Alissa York brings to life a tale of misguided love and damaged souls with language of incredible clarity and intensity.From Publishers WeeklyLust and sin grapple with religious piety in this moving, occasionally overwrought novel by Canadian writer York. As August Day's first duty as priest of St. Mary's church in Mercy, Manitoba, in 1948, he marries the kindly but dull town butcher, Thomas Rose, to Mathilda Nickels, the orphaned niece of the church's housekeeper. Immediately overcome by lust for handsome August, virginal Mathilda refuses to consummate her marriage—that is, until she seduces the priest, becomes pregnant with his child and needs to keep Thomas from finding out. York develops this triangular relationship with frequent flashbacks to each protagonist's miserable childhood, alternately focusing on the town drunk, Castor Wylie. The plot can feel schematic, and the grisly denouement of Mathilda and August's sinning is telegraphed early on. But in the novel's second half, set in 2003, readers will find some gripping characters—an autistic child, a woman who lives in a bog, another sinful man of the cloth—that propel the story into new, genuinely surprising territory. York's unflinching but tender eye for the natural world results in graceful ballets of description: butchering techniques have seldom been described in such precise, loving detail, and the flora and fauna of the bog are invested with vibrant individuality. York is a gifted writer whose next novel will no doubt be a more consistent work of emotional power. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistThis debut novel--combining the spirit of Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda laced with the corrosive foreboding of Heidi Julavits' Mineral Palace--marks the arrival of a talented new Canadian writer. In Mercy, Manitoba, an outpost town in the 1940s, the new priest, Father August Day, and the butcher's wife, Mathilda, begin an ill-fated love affair. Father August and Mathilda are dangerously drawn to one another from the moment they lock eyes on her wedding day. The isolation of the community presses down upon them as both the tension of attraction and the fear of discovery mount. In its second half, the novel flashes forward to present-day Mercy, where the past reverberates in unexpected ways. The writing has a trancelike intensity that sets the psychological mood of the characters and the backwater locale. Writing in a confidential voice that sweeps the reader into her character's lives and the dark corners of their minds and actions, York has crafted a beguiling tale of a small town teeming with secrets. Misha StoneCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 63
All she'd wanted for Christmas was to regain the faith she'd had as a child. Spending the holidays alone at a friend's home seemed the perfect answer for forty-something Carissa Whitmore—and what better town than Yuletide to help her find the holiday spirit she sought?But Carissa didn't count on sharing the house with Paul Spencer, her friend's brother, temporarily home from an overseas construction job...or the motherless family who'd been hiding out in the house. Acting as parents brought the former fashion designer and the handsome forty-something engineer together. Could the miracle of love bring the joy of the season back to Carissa...and give her the husband and family she'd always longed for? Views: 63
In a world where the dead routinely return to life, the most shocking mystery is when someone doesn't.Detective Inspector Helen Ogilvy is called to the scene of a murder. A young woman named Trinity Brown has been shot in the chest, and she's stayed dead.The potential end to the zombie affliction should be a huge positive, but for a future UK teetering on the brink of becoming a police state, a country where healthcare has never been so well funded because lower mortality rates equal fewer zombies, the truth behind Trinity Brown's non-resurrection has the potential to cause chaos, which is why a shadowy Government figure has persuaded Helen's boss to keep a lid on what's happened, at least for the moment.Now Helen has two days to solve two mysteries. Who killed Trinity Brown, and why did she stay dead? Views: 62
Technical writer Veronica Talbot has a plan: marry prince charming, get a white picket fence and have 2.7 children. She’s found her prince charming, but the rest of the plan goes awry when a siren from his past crashes their wedding reception. Their young marriage is tested when it comes to light that Rick had a previous life—one of espionage and intrigue that he’d neglected to mention. Views: 62
