In a hothouse of collegiate sex and ambition, one young woman mysteriously disappears after a wild campus party, and another becomes obsessed with finding her.It’s Halloween, Saturday night, on a pastoral East Coast college campus. Scantily-costumed students ride the fine line between adolescence and adulthood as they prepare for a night of debauchery. Alcohol is flowing. Sex is in the air. Expectations are high as Leda flirts with her thrilling new crush, Ian, and he flirts back. But by the end of the night things will have taken a turn.
When Leda later wakes up in Ian’s room, she is unsure exactly what happened between them. Meanwhile, the young woman that Leda last spoke to upon leaving the party is now missing. As the campus rouses itself to respond to Charlotte’s disappearance, rumors swirl, suspicious facts pile up, and Leda’s obsession with her missing classmate grows. Is it just a coincidence that Leda’s slightly scary new boyfriend and the missing woman used to be a couple? Is Leda herself in danger? Or only in danger of falling in love? How are you supposed to tell the difference, anyway, if you’re a twenty-year-old alone in the world and have never felt any of this before?
As Leda becomes more and more dangerously consumed with the mystery of Charlotte and questions about Ian, her motivations begin to blur. Is Leda looking for Charlotte, or trying to find herself?
“Elaborate storytelling…a more diverse Regency world than is traditionally found. Well-researched, with a fascinating author's note at the end…A historical romance of impressive heft.” – Kirkus Reviews Masterminded by the ton's most clever countess, the secret society The Widow’s Grace helps ill-treated widows regain their reputations, their families, and even find true love again—or perhaps for the very first time. Surviving a shipwreck en route to London from Jamaica was just the start of Jemina St. Maur's nightmare. Suffering from amnesia, she was separated from anyone who might know her, and imprisoned in Bedlam. She was freed only because barrister Daniel Thackery, Lord Ashbrook, was convinced to betray the one thing he holds dear: the law. Desperate to unearth her true identity, Jemina’s only chance is to purloin dangerous secrets with help from The Widow’s Grace—which means staying steps ahead of the formidable Daniel, no matter how strongly she is drawn to him. Married only by proxy, now widowed by shipwreck, Daniel is determined to protect his little stepdaughter, Hope, from his family’s scandalous reputation. That’s why he has dedicated himself not just to the law, but to remaining as proper, upstanding—and boring—as can be. But the closer he becomes to the mysterious, alluring Jemina, the more Daniel is tempted to break the very rule of law to which he's deevoted his life. And as ruthless adversaries close in, will the truth require him, and Jemina, to sacrifice their one chance at happiness?
A rich, bighearted debut that takes us from working-class Staten Island in the wake of the September 11th attacks to moneyed London a decade later, revealing a story of loss, motherhood, and love.As the Twin Towers collapse, Gigi Stanislawski flees her office building and escapes lower Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry. Among the crying, ash-covered, and shoeless passengers, Gigi, unbelievably, finds someone she recognizes–Harry Harrison, a British man and a regular at her favorite coffee shop. Gigi brings Harry to her parents’ house, where they watch the television replay the planes crashing for hours, and she waits for the phone call that will never come: the call from Frankie, her younger brother.Ten years later, Gigi, now a single mother consumed with bills and unfulfilled ambitions, meets Harry, again by chance, and they fall deeply, headlong in love. But their move to London and their new baby–which Gigi hoped would finally release her from the past–leave her feeling isolated, raw, and alone with her grief. As Gigi comes face-to-face with the anguish of her brother’s death and her rage at the unspoken pain of motherhood, she must somehow find the light amid all the darkness. Startlingly honest and shot through with unexpected humor, When I Ran Away is an unforgettable first novel about love–for our partners, our children, our mothers, and ourselves–pushed to its outer limits.
For a young woman who just wants to get her first kiss out of the way, a rugby player seems like the perfect mismatch. But a kiss is never just a kiss…Now that Soraya Nazari has graduated from university, she thinks it’s high time she get some of the life experience she’s still lacking partly due to her strict upbringing–and Magnus Evans seems like the perfect way to get it.Where she’s the somewhat timid, artistic daughter of Iranian immigrants, Magnus is the quintessential British lad. With so little in common, Soraya knows there’s no way she could ever fall for him, so what’s the harm in having a little fun as she navigates who she wants to be in her post-grad life? Besides, the more she discovers about her mother’s past and the strain between her parents, the less appealing marriage becomes.Before long, Soraya begins to realize that there’s much more to Magnus than meets the eye…but could she really have a relationship with him without losing the family that’s already near tatters? Is she more like her mother than she ever would have thought?
From USA Today bestselling author Jen Frederick comes a heart-wrenching yet hopeful romance that shows that the price of belonging is often steeper than expected.
A Korean adoptee, Hara Wilson doesn’t need anyone telling her she looks different from her white parents. She knows. Every time Hara looks in the mirror, she’s reminded that she doesn’t look like anyone else in her family—not her loving mother, Ellen; not her jerk of a father, Pat; and certainly not like Pat’s new wife and new “real” son.
At the age of twenty-five, she thought she had come to terms with it all, but when her father suddenly dies, an offhand comment at his funeral triggers an identity crisis that has her running off to Seoul in search of her roots.