Science Fiction

Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward

Named one of the Best Books of the Century by New York Magazine

Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones, Sing, Unburied, Sing) contends with the deaths of five young men dear to her, and the risk of being a black man in the rural South.

“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” -Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life-to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth-and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Dream Trail by Thomas J. Prestopnik

Eric Travers never imagined taking a three-week hiking trip through the wilderness. At twenty-seven, and several months after an unexpected breakup with his girlfriend, he was comfortably cocooned in his desk job at the Crandall Insurance Agency in Binghamton, NY, biding his time, yearning for spring and waiting for his life to blossom once again.

Then the weird dreams started. Images of lush, tree-covered mountains, ghostly apparitions and shamrocks inscribed with a puzzling symbol began to invade his sleep. He encountered a mysterious trio of fellow hikers and heard a vaguely familiar song from the 1970s playing in the background while walking in long, lazy circles above the treetops. He was driving himself crazy trying to decipher his nighttime visions yet felt drawn to a trail he knew nothing about, though all the while wondering if he was simply going mad.

So, he decided that the only way to solve this mystery was to temporarily leave his job, sling on a backpack and literally follow the trail to wherever it might lead. But after meeting others along the way who shared many aspects of his unusual story, the mystery only deepened as each footstep drew them closer to their destination and to a shadowy figure that suddenly haunted their latest round of dreams while on the trail.

Though he can’t claim to be even a novice backpacker, Thomas J. Prestopnik was easily inspired by others who are and wrote this backpacking novel with a dash of mystery to fulfill his true passion, telling a story. He is also the author of several other novels including “Nicholas Raven and the Wizards’ Web”, a Tolkien-inspired epic fantasy in three volumes.

The Duke’s Swordby C.H. Admirand

Gwendolyn guards her bruised and battered heart like a warrior…Patrick O’Malley has no time for distractions…

The Duke of Wyndmere’s quest to find a nanny for his newborn twins brings yet another applicant to his door. Widowed Gwendolyn Alexander’s reputation precedes her as one of the most sought-after nannies among the ton.

Patrick O’Malley, head of the duke’s personal guard, hopes this latest applicant will meet with the approval of the most difficult members of the duke’s family…his twin babes. Nothing prepares him for the physical reaction that slams into him as the petite woman, dressed in drab peat-brown from head to toe, steps down from the duke’s carriage. Her Irish whiskey-colored eyes hold him captive, while her voluptuous curves have his breath snagging in his lungs as unbidden images slam into him of tangled sheets…flickering firelight, and silky brown tresses spread across the white of his pillow.

Gwendolyn Alexander anticipates her reputation preceding her as she alights from the duke’s carriage. She steps down from the carriage to thank the footman for his assistance, and her gaze collides with an impossibly handsome, broad-shouldered man, garbed in black from head to toe. Desire flickers in eyes the color of polished emeralds, reminding her of Beltane fires, drawing her inexorably toward him.

When Gwendolyn and Patrick find themselves at cross purposes protecting the little ones from threats of kidnapping, they must learn to compromise and work together before the kidnapper strikes again!

Will they walk away or face the fire of desire that threatens to consume them?

The Duke’s Guard
Book 1 – The Duke’s Sword
Book 2 – The Duke’s Protector
Book 3 – The Duke’s Shield
Book 4 – The Duke’s Dragoon
Book 5 – The Duke’s Hammer
Book 6 – The Duke’s Defender
Book 7 – The Duke’s Saber
Book 8 – The Duke’s Enforcer
Book 9 – The Duke’s Mercenary
Book 10 – The Duke’s Rapier
Book 11 – The Duke’s Man-at-Arms
Book 12 – The Duke’s Lance
Book 13 – The Duke’s Champion
Book 14 – The Duke’s Sharpshooter
Book 15 – The Duke’s Cavalier
Book 16 The Duke’s Blade

Kiss da Wolfby Jason Durant

Alien invaders plunge earth into a post-apocalyptic world of shapeshifters and alternate realities. Below the surface of everyday life, humans are being used in dramas that help the alien civilization find a new god for their society. Strange new gods appear on earth.

Young college student Kristen-Kate McCutchan and biomedical engineer Stephen D. Spiros are on separate quests to expose the alien threat. Both are subverted by strange controlling forces and find themselves merging minds with a mysterious other. They team up and try to put a face on this other, the fate of the human race in the balance.

Pride of Lyonsby Jenna Jaxon

Enter the world of the most notorious gambling den in London, where matches are made… unusually. Welcome to the world of THE LYON’S DEN: The Black Widow of Whitehall Connected World, where the underground of Regency London thrives… and loves.

What’s a young lady to do when a powerful lord tries to abscond with her and make her his mistress?

When you’re Miss Honoria Quinn, you leap from his carriage and run like the wind to find some place to hide. Trouble is, Honoria mistakenly chooses The Lyon’s Den, a disreputable gambling house as her sanctuary, a move that ends up with her having to make another choice at the hands of the Den’s match-making proprietor Mrs. Dove-Lyons: wed a complete stranger or become the lord’s mistress.

No good deed goes unpunished…

Thomas, Lord Braeton agrees to attend a wager at The Lyon’s Den only to keep his brother-in-law out of trouble. What he doesn’t count on is becoming embroiled in one of Mrs. Dove-Lyons’s schemes to marry him off. But when he tries to come to the aid of another peer, Thomas finds the only honorable thing he can do to save Miss Quinn’s reputation is put aside his hopes for a love match for himself and instead offer to marry her.

As Thomas and Honoria set out on a wary journey to matrimony, can they learn to live together and hope love will grow between them? Or are they doomed to a loveless marriage of convenience from which one or both will want to escape?

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Curse of Stoneby Veronica Shade

Supposedly, witches can’t kill. But Madison accidentally killed her boyfriend, and now a girl at her witch academy is dead, too.

Madison spent her life avoiding her magical abilities, but when she’s forced to use them to save her best friend from a deadly storm and accidentally kills her boyfriend as a result, she decides she needs to enroll at La Voisin School for Young Witches after all.

She knew starting a year later than her peers would come with its own struggles; she just never expected one of those struggles would be the impossible murder of a classmate. The school is spelled for safety, and witches can’t kill…so how did Giselle end up dead?

Only Giselle and her killer know, and only Madison can find out. Because now, the dead witch is haunting her. Crazy thing is, Giselle’s murder isn’t even the biggest secret this school has.

Just ask the statues.

Fans of Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight and Bella Forrest’s Harley Merlin series will devour Curse of Stone, book one of Veronica Shade’s Academy of the Damned.

Mortality Bites – The COMPLETE Boxed Setby Ramy Vance

Four years ago, the gods left. All of them. Their last message to humanity was, “Thank you for believing in us, but it is not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck.”

Mythical creatures are real, and the world is finding out what life without the gods’ protection looks like.

Discovering that your neighbor was once an evil, blood-sucking fiend tends to bring property values down…

After three hundred years of being a vampire, Katrina Darling has forgotten what it means to be human. One thing she does remember is that friends matter.

Kat’s only real friend has been ritually sacrificed by a serial killer. Kat is sure more death will follow.

She should know. She used to be the monster plunging the blade in.

Now she’s determined to find whoever—or whatever—killed her friend before more victims surface.

But just as the hunt begins, a mysterious young man discovers exactly what she was.

Kat has a decision to make: Run and keep her monstrous past hidden, or avenge her friend and save the city from a merciless serial killer?