Romance Mystery Psychological

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

Life is good for Jesse "The Lord" Ward. Perfect, actually. He still has the charm, he's in great shape, and he still reduces his wife, Ava, to a pool of desire with a mere look. He's in full control, just how he likes it. But Jesse's perfect world falls apart when a terrible accident lands Ava in the hospital with a life-threatening head injury.

Cassie Kramer and her younger sister, Allie, learned the hazards of fame long ago. Together, they'd survived the horror of a crazed fan who nearly killed their mother, former Hollywood actress Jenna Hughes. Still, Cassie moved to LA, urging Allie to follow. As a team, they'd take the town by storm. But Allie, finally free of small-town Oregon, and just that little bit more beautiful, also proved to be more talented - and driven.

The victims are former beauty queens found with a single rose beside their bodies. Lindsay McAllister has seen this signature before, when she was a rookie detective with the Chattanooga PD investigating the death of Judd Walker's wife, a murder that sent the handsome lawyer off the deep end. Now, Lindsay has the brutal task of telling Judd that his wife's killer has struck again, and she's going to need his help to outplay their opponent - because the killer is getting bolder, faster, and more ruthless. The game is escalating, and no one is safe.

From the moment we met, Nicholas Crawford has been an enigma. He’s a man with an unknown past and a mysterious future. He’s a criminal, a liar, a mastermind, and the love of my life. I became a criminal for him. I rescued him. Now, it’s his turn to do something for me. When I discover that everything I believed about my family is a lie, I need his help to uncover the truth. Who am I? Where do I come from? Why is there so much deceit? I’m in a dark place, and I’m all alone. He is the only person who can pull me out of it.

After a heated encounter inside a London hotel room - where he was pursued by three very different women - Gideon finds himself living in a world where there's no one to trust.

Dr. Emory Charbonneau, a pediatrician and marathon runner, disappears on a mountain road in North Carolina. By the time her husband Jeff, miffed over a recent argument, reports her missing, the trail has grown cold. Fog and ice encapsulate the mountainous wilderness. While police suspect Jeff of "instant divorce", Emory, suffering from an unexplained head injury, regains consciousness and finds herself the captive of a man whose violent past is so dark that he won't even tell her his name. She's determined to escape him and willing to take any risks necessary to survive.

Texas mogul Beau Reese is furious. All six feet three obscenely wealthy, good-looking inches of him. His 60-year-old father, Stewart, a former state senator no less, has impregnated a teenager. Barely able to contain his anger, Beau is in for another surprise. It appears that Stewart has moved an entirely different woman into the house. Beau assumes that stunning Cassidy Jones is his father's mistress. At least she's of age. But those concerns take a sudden backseat when he finds Stewart in a pool of blood on the floor of his study - and Cassidy walks in to find Beau with his hand on the murder weapon.

When Claire sees a car full of children careen into a river, she rushes to the rescue. But the driver, a mother named Leah Holloway, prefers to drown. For Claire and her ex, Detective Connor Parks, it doesn't add up. What would motivate a woman with a beautiful family and a successful career to resort to such unspeakable extremes? What Connor finds out confirms Claire's suspicions of something dreadful behind Holloway's picture-perfect facade: a link between the terrified mother and a serial strangler targeting Sacramento soccer moms.

There is something very special about Agnès Morel. A quiet presence in the small French town of Chartres, she can be found cleaning the famed medieval cathedral each morning and doing odd jobs for the townspeople. No one knows where she came from or why. Not Abbé Paul, who discovered her one morning 20 years ago, sleeping on the north porch, and not Alain Fleury, the irreverent young restorer who works alongside her each day - and whose attention she catches with her tawny eyes and elusive manner. She has transformed each of their lives in her own subtle way, yet no one suspects the dark secret Agnès is hiding.

I'd never even kissed a boy the night I met Stone. The night I saw him kill. The night he spared my life. That was only the beginning. He turns up in my car again and again, dangerous and full of raw power. "Drive," he tells me, and I have no choice. He's a criminal with burning green eyes, invading my life and my dreams. The police say he's dangerously obsessed with me, but I'm the one who can't stop thinking about him.

Mayfair Cummings is young, beautiful, and brilliant. But her intelligence makes her the outcast of both the private school she attends and the broken family she hopes to salvage. When she catches the eye of both a popular senior and her handsome English teacher, not even her brilliant mind can help her navigate the explosive new relationships she is forming or a scandal that is brewing....

Betrayed, deceived, broken. They are the only words used to describe who I have become. Make no mistake, I let this happen. But do you want to know the thing about letting someone into your life? It can be undone. Lucas Rossi may think he has won this round. But I have news for him: I’m going to win every other one he sends my way. My heart may be in shackles, but my head has perfect clarity.

When an antique bridal quilt appears under mysterious circumstances at the vintage clothing shop where Rachel Grant works, she is fascinated. She has never been able to resist handmade textiles from the past, for she believes that through the ages women wove protective magic into their fabrics in order to mark the important events of their lives: birth, marriage, and death.

London, 1765. Lady Isabella Gerard, a respectable member of Georgian society, orders her maid to take her new golden gown and destroy it, its shimmering beauty tainted by the actions of her brutal husband the night before. Three months later, Lord Gerard stands at the shoreline of the lake, looking down at a woman wearing the golden gown. As the body slowly rolls over to reveal her face, it’s clear this was not his intended victim…

In this enthralling vampire novel, V.C. Andrews returns to the story of a beautiful girl desperate to escape her secret family legacy - bred to be a lure for unwitting victims of her father's blood appetites. Determined to break free and embrace a life outside the shadows, Lorelei runs away from the only world she's ever known. In a quiet rooming house, she finds refuge among the tenants of elderly Mrs. Winston, and the beginnings of a new love with Liam, her landlady's handsome grandnephew. But Lorelei soon discovers that burying her past is not so easy.

Ben can’t believe his luck when Bella walks into his life, just when he needs her most. Sexy, impulsive and intelligent, Bella is everything he ever wanted. And Bella wants him. All to herself. In fact, Bella decides that everything is better when it is just the two of them, making it harder for Ben’s friends and family to stay in touch. And then a sudden tragedy triggers a chain of events which throws Ben headlong into a nightmare.

FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is just starting a vacation when she gets a call from her friend, psychologist Dr. Gwen Patterson. One of Gwen’s patients is missing on a trip to Connecticut. Can Maggie look into Joan Begley’s disappearance? At first Maggie dismisses Gwen’s concern. But when the body of a woman is discovered in an abandoned rock quarry in Connecticut, Maggie heads to the small town on “unofficial” business. Soon the shocking news surfaces that more bodies have been discovered.

October, 1914. Swedish naval officer Lars Tobiasson-Svartman is charged with a secret mission to take depth readings around the Stockholm archipelago. In the course of his work, he lands on the rocky isle of Halsskär. It seems utterly inhabitable, yet Halsskär is home to the young widow Sara Fredrika. Lars soon learns that Sara, living in near-total isolation, is unaware that the world is at war.

Twenty-eight-year-old Maggie Sparkes arrives in New York City to pack up what's left of her best friend's belongings after a suicide that has left everyone stunned. The police have deemed the evidence conclusive: Celine got into bed, downed a bottle of Xanax and a handle of Maker's Mark, and never woke up. But when Maggie discovers secrets in the childhood lockbox hidden in Celine's apartment, she begins asking questions. Questions about the man Celine fell in love with.