Genre Literature

Florrie, Daisy and Alison are friends and neighbours, living out their married lives in the quintessential English village of Lower Amblegate, where, it seems, everyone knows everything about everybody. They share laughter and tears and divulge their deepest secrets...but a huge scandal is brewing. As rumours start to circulate, the gossips go into overdrive, rocking marriages and revealing the women have much more in common than just neighbourly bonds....

"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.

Utopia is the name given by Sir Thomas More to an imaginary island in this political work written in 1516. Book I of Utopia, a dialogue, presents a perceptive analysis of contemporary social, economic, and moral ills in England. Book II is a narrative describing a country run according to the ideals of the English humanists, where poverty, crime, injustice, and other ills do not exist.

At first glance I probably seem like any good-looking guy in their late twenties. I have an obscene amount of confidence, a tattooed body sculpted by the Nordic gods, and I love the ladies as much as they love me. But I'm not the average single guy. I'm Crown Prince Magnus of Norway, and my latest scandal just landed my entire royal family in hot water. Now the only way the monarchy can save face is for me to smarten up - publicly. If I don't, I'll no longer be heir apparent to the throne. So it's either I abdicate my future role as King, or I get married.

In this series finale by Lauraine Snelling, Astrid Bjorklund is trying to stop the epidemic ravaging South Dakota’s Red Bud Indian Reservation. Tribal elders remain suspicious of her until some begin to recover. Although Joshua Landsverk longs to fix his broken relationship with Astrid, he opposes her present work but won’t tell her why. Yet when a surprising act of kindness brings healing to the painful wrong inflicted years ago, will it be enough to rekindle their love?

Shoeless Joe, the soul-stirring novel on which the movie Field of Dreams is based, is more than just another baseball story. Kinsella captures the spiritual dimension that baseball represents for its most determined devotees in this tale of love and the power of dreams to make people come alive.

After another scandal sends me packing to play hockey in Philadelphia, my new agent wants me to clean up my act. Charlotte says I party harder than I play. And she's right. So, she offers to help me get my life and career back on track if I move in with her. I thought I could make it through one week without wanting my agent. But I was wrong. As we grow closer, we push the limits and test her rule about dating clients. To keep Charlotte from losing her job, we have to keep our relationship a secret. But can our love survive once it turns into my next scandal?

Liz Chambers is a devoted mother who works for a successful law firm. She has two children, a husband and a blossoming career. But behind closed doors, Liz is harbouring a secret that could destroy her life. Then the unthinkable happens, and in a frenzied attack, her young son is snatched from the home of the childminder charged with looking after him. As Liz’s life unfolds, it becomes clear that someone is out for revenge. Desperate to get her baby boy back, Liz must work out who is responsible for his kidnap and why.

The Duke of Riverton has chosen his future wife with the same logic he uses to make every decision. However, his perfect bride eludes his suit, while the beautiful Isabella Berkeley seems to be everywhere. When the time comes, will Griffith and Isabella be able to set aside their pride and initial notions to embrace their very own happily-ever-after?

Rostislav Grokhotov, an ordinary clerk working for a privately-owned company, just wanted to earn some extra money in the game. He had no specific plans for his new character. Little did he know that his new nickname Rosgard would become the game's next greatest legend. Even the game's Creche zone may contain items of interest if you're observant enough. Rosgard's find didn't just change his own life drastically - it enveloped an entire game world in turmoil to boot! The adventuring player becomes a valued prize for Waldyra's leading clans. Our hero has to conceal his real name.

Nicole Krauss' first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and her short fiction has been collected in Best American Short Stories. Now The History of Love proves Krauss is among our finest and freshest literary voices.

Eighteen years ago, Tess McPhail left her tiny hometown of Wintergreen, Missouri, for the bright lights of Nashville and never looked back. Now, one of country music's biggest stars, "Mac" is a hardworking woman with little time for a personal life - until her sister insists she come home to help care for their widowed mother. The welcome Mac receives is less than warm, especially from her former next-door neighbor Kenny Kronek. With a teenage daughter to raise, the handsome divorce refuses to give Mac the time of day.

When Felix lands a job taking care of a man recovering from severe injuries, he thinks his life may have just turned around. Anything has to be better than the place he's leaving. There's something about Lane that draws Felix to him and makes him question if this place could finally become a home for him. But when someone begins stalking Felix, he is left to question who Lane is and what actually happened to him. Together, Felix and Lane will be forced to see just how far they will go to protect each other.

The severed head marked by a distinctive tattoo on its cheek should have been a Guild case, but dark instincts honed over hundreds of years of life compel the vampire Dmitri to take control. There is something twisted about this death, something that whispers of centuries long past... but Dmitri's need to discover the truth is nothing to the vicious strength of his response to the hunter assigned to decipher the tattoo.

Six years after entering the NHL, I still can't let go of my past that haunts me every day. But everything changes when I meet a feisty sports reporter who challenges me at every turn. I should leave Kennedy alone and spare her the drama that comes with my life outside the rink. But I can't keep my hands off her. So, we make a deal. She wants an exclusive interview that could expose my secrets to the world, secrets that are not just mine. When I'd agreed to the interview, I had every intention for it to end with her in my bed.

It's been over a decade since Nora left her hometown of Scupper Island, Maine, and very seldom looked back. She's carved out a successful life in Boston, where no one knows her as the awkward girl with the delinquent sister and the dad who left, but a not-as-dramatic-as-it-sounds brush with death has her taking stock of her life. Inspired to reconnect with her prickly mother and snarky teenage niece, Nora returns home for the summer, where she's forced to face the people she's spent the last ten years trying to avoid.

In the wilds of Mongolia, a research satellite has crashed, triggering an explosive search for its valuable cargo: a code-black physics project connected to the study of dark energy — and a shocking image of the eastern seaboard of the United States in utter ruin. At the Vatican, a package arrives containing two strange artifacts: a skull scrawled with ancient Aramaic and a tome bound in human skin. DNA evidence reveals that both came from the same body: the long dead Mongol king Genghis Khan.

No one tells tales of the frontier better than Louis L'Amour, who portrays the human side of westward expansion - the good and the bad - before the days of law and order. Collected here are seven stories penned by America's favorite Western author.

A young gunslinger is changed for the better by meeting a beautiful woman. A classic range-war Western, this novel features that powerful, romantic, strangely compelling vision of the American West for which L'Amour's fiction is known. In the author's words, "It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes."

About the best that can be said of wealthy Maggie Baird is that inside her middle-aged body, there still beats the heart of a beautiful tart. So when her car catches fire with Maggie in it, there are five likely suspects right on the premises of her luxurious Highlands cottage. Lochdubh police constable Hamish Macbeth has to question Maggie's timid niece and four former lovers, one of whom Maggie had intended to pick for her husband. All five are equally poor - with ample motive and opportunity to monkey with Maggie's car.