Seventeen-year-old poet Truth Bangura begins senior year unsure of life after graduation, but when she learns she’s pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, she makes one decision she is sure about—an abortion. When Truth performs a poem about her decision and her emotionally turbulent home life, the performance is recorded and posted online for everyone to see—including her mother.
There might be no such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong…unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth… Read more.
Widow Mimi lives on idyllic Mackinac Island where cars are not allowed and a Gibson with three onions at the witching hour is compulsory. Her granddaughter, Addie, is getting over the heartbreak of her fiancé, Brian, dumping her and cutting her out of the deal for the brilliantly successful video game, Murderscape, they invented together (with Addie doing most of the heavy lifting). When Mimi gets an invitation from local socialite Jane Ireland–a seventysomething narcissist who is having an affair with her son-in-law–to a charity auction, it is the perfect excuse to get… Read more.
Lorna’s world is small but safe. She loves her daughter, and the two of them is all that matters. But after nearly twenty years, she and Ella are suddenly leaving London for the Isle of Kip, the tiny remote Scottish island where Lorna grew up. Alice’s world is tiny but full. She loves the community on Kip, her yoga classes drawing women across the tiny island together. Now Lorna’s arrival might help their family finally mend itself – even if forgiveness means returning to the past… So with two decades, hundreds of miles and a lifetime’s worth of secrets between Lorna and the island, can coming home mean starting again?
Tam Doan dumped her boyfriend after he threw away her gourmet cheese. Sure, it’s a little more complicated than that, but the point is, he had it coming. Newly single and unemployed, Tam calls up her best friend from high school and utters the emergency code word—goldfish. Next thing she knows, she’s on a plane back home. Josh O’Malley was a troubled, unconfident teenager. Now he’s the successful owner of a multimillion-dollar ghost kitchen. Tam, his high school BFF and fellow member of the Nerd … Read more.
In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months the trio are producing their best ever work, but soon a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy begins to burn out of control, threatening their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives…
I’m not supposed to feel this way… I never wanted to disappear more than while around my family. Briar Lane, the girl only useful for one thing: my surname. A business handshake and pawn to be traded. My father’s chess piece shuffled between empires. That was my life back in L.A. but all it took was finding the dirty secret stuffed in a jacket pocket, and my entire world unraveled. So, I fled to the one place I knew they could never find me. Crimson Ridge. Arriving in this snowy, harsh world, I thought I’d be starting over on my own, but it turns out I couldn’t have been… Read more.
Her life is like a prison cell. A self-made, to-hell-with-the-free-world existence that locks from the inside. Stop judging. Her agoraphobia doesn’t define her. It simply keeps her safe. He belongs in a prison cell. The 6×8, make-me-your-bitch variety that locks from the outside. But he’s free. To hunt. To take. To break. And he just found a sexy new toy. Capturing her is the easy part. Her fucked-up mind, however, makes him question everything he does next. But he’s a determined bastard. If all goes his way, this will hurt like hell.
Psychiatric institutionalisation of a parent mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Drug abuse recounted (protagonists)
Death of a mother from an overdose recounted
Murder by gun violence mentioned (secondary character)
Kidnapping (on-page)
Context : The male protagonist kidnaps, rapes, and abuses the female protagonist, his love interest. He is a former stalker and sex trafficker who has raped others in the past. He has a child with a different secondary character who was forcibly taken away. The female protagonist is divorced.
Wade Ashby is a closed book. With the weight of the family business on his shoulders, and his ongoing battle to escape a failed marriage, he only has time for one looking after his ranch. Life has dealt Ivy Spencer some tough blows. So when the opportunity to work on the Silver Pines ranch presents itself, she grabs it by the horns. Nothing will stand in the way of her dream of training a racehorse on route to the Kentucky Derby. Wade might be determined to keep his heart under lock and key, but Ivy’s constant presence soon ignites a passion he thought he’d lost long ago… Read more.
Jane is unhappy. A struggling midlist writer whose novels barely command four figures, she feels trapped in an underwhelming marriage, just scraping by to pay a crippling Bay Area mortgage for a house–a life–she’s never really wanted. There’s only ever been one person she cared about, one person who truly understood her: Thalia. Jane’s best and only friend nearly a decade ago during their Creative Writing days at Oxford. It was the only good year of Jane’s life–cobblestones and books and damp English air, heady wine and sweet cider and Thalia, endless Thalia. But then one night ruined everything. The blood-soaked night…. Read more.