I’d always been told I had thunder thighs. Chunky, thick, beautiful – I embraced my curves just waiting for the right thunder god to come along and rock my world. Then Gunnar Larsson strode his tall, blonde, Viking butt through my bar doors. My thighs awaited his plunder. Walking into Ella Bronze’s bar was the best decision I’d made all year. Fuck, all decade. The gorgeous bombshell had curves for days – the kind that made me drool. There was no way this seductive siren was escaping. Looked like it was time to do what my ancestors did best – take what I wanted.
Honey: For years my momma’s been at me to lose some extra pounds. To shape up, slim down and look like the pageant queen she’d always wished me to be. But everyone knows the best part of the muffin is the top – and baby, I’m delicious as I am. I hadn’t planned on running into my high school crush at a Halloween party while dressed as a cupcake. One glance and I was ready for my high school crush to take a bite. Pity Sheriff Tristan Rodriguez avoided baked goods like the plague. Tristan: Returning to the small town I’d left behind hadn’t exactly been in my life plan. Also… Read more.
Emily: The doctors told me I have amnesia. They’ve said it’s a result of the concussion I sustained on New Year’s Eve, but I know the truth. I’ve been transported to a parallel universe, it’s the only plausible explanation as to why I’m now living five years in the future where I’ve morphed into some kind of body-conscious diet addict who has a better relationship with my mother-in-law than my husband. Or should I say, ex-husband. How is it that Calvin Jameson and I have gone from hopelessly devoted to separated and on the cusp of divorce? I can’t remember, but I’m damned sure I’m going… Read more.
In her brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge.
SElla Moore was the most popular girl in school…and also the most hated. When she’s murdered at her own party, there are too many suspects to count–and too many people who think she deserved it. The police’s prime suspect is the new girl, Dawn Foster. She was the last to hand Ella a drink on the night Ella died. Plus, all of Ella’s friends with a motive for wanting her dead are more than willing to implicate Dawn. But Dawn refuses to go down without a fight. She’s determined to clear her name. As she delves deeper into th… Read more.
Magnolia “Maggie” Hagen is determined to be in the spotlight…if she can just get over her stage fright. This summer, though, she has big plans to finally attend Camp Rising Star, the famous performing arts camp she’s been dying to go to for three whole summers. But on the last day of school, her parents break the news: Maggie isn’t going to Camp Rising Star. She’s being shipped off to fat camp—and not just any fat camp. She’s going to Camp Sylvania, run by world-famous wellness influencer Sylvia Sylvania, who is known for her soon-to-be patented Scarlet Diet…. Read more.
Cassie, Em and Lydia are best friends in Year 10 at Ashbury High. Ashbury students claim that all the kids at downtown Brookfield High are drug-dealers and psychopaths. Their English teacher, encouraging the Adventure of the Scary and the New and the Joy of the Envelope, starts a Pen-Pal Project. The hilarious letters between the girls and three unknown Brookfield boys lead to an escalation of the war between the schools, to secret romance, and to Cassie learning to face the dark fears that she hides from her friends.
High school senior Cookie Vonn’s post-graduation dreams include getting out of Phoenix, attending Parsons and becoming the next great fashion designer. But in the world of fashion, being fat is a cardinal sin. It doesn’t help that she’s constantly compared to her supermodel mother—and named after a dessert. Thanks to her job at a fashion blog, Cookie scores a trip to New York to pitch her portfolio and appeal for a scholarship, but her plans are put on standby when she’s declared too fat to fly. Forced to turn to her BFF for cash, Cookie buys a second seat on the plane. She… Read more.
It’s been a decade since Merritt Valentine’s peak as a celebrated singer-songwriter… and her subsequent career-ending mental breakdown. Since then, she’s abandoned the glitz of Los Angeles to move in with her sister, Olivia, in the sleepy Colorado ski town of Crested Peak, hoping to heal her lingering emotional wounds of the spotlight. Life in Crested Peak would be uncomplicated if not for Merritt’s inconvenient crush on the local contractor and handyman, Nikolaos Petrakis. Niko is disarmingly handsome and too kind-hearted to ever be right for the complex and prickly… Read more.
Protagonist in recovery for substance and alcohol addictions after an attempted suicide by overdose in the past, including on-page & recounted drug use & abuse and alcohol consumption & abuse
Unplanned teen pregnancy recounted & mentions of a pregnant secondary character
Shelly Laurenston turns up the heat with two sizzling novellas. In “Christmas Pride”: How come all the good-looking ones are insane? That’s what runs through NYPD cop Desiree “Dez” MacDermot’s mind the minute she hooks up again with her childhood buddy, Mace Llewellyn. It isn’t just the way he stares at her with those too-sexy gold eyes, as if he could devour her on the spot. Or the six-four, built-like-a-Navy-SEAL bod-o-death. It isn’t even that he sniffs her neck and purrs, making her entire body tingle. It’s more about that disconcerting, shifting-from-man-to-lion… Read more.
