The young Dragon warrior Hitomi seeks revenge against the slayer of her brother. In the ensuing duels, she loses her hand and becomes a pawn of the evil empress. Hitomi must battle her own wicked captors, and she and all of the armies of Rokugan converge on the capital city to liberate it from the Shadlowlands forces that have taken it over.

The proposal: Get together whenever their heavy travel schedules overlapNatalie Holcomb's impulsive--and uncharacteristic--night of steamy sex with a gorgeous stranger was supposed to be a onetime-only affair. But straitlaced Natalie is determined to play by the rules and get more of what her body is craving...The ground rules: Keep the relationship strictly sexualJake Lannister may live in another town, but after his incredible night with Natalie he just can't say goodbye. But when Jake's lust turns into something more, he's faced with an unfamiliar problem--honor his rules and ignore his building emotions, or give up sex this good and risk losing what he has with Natalie?

The first humans still hunt their children across the stars. Dave Hutchinson brings far future science fiction on a grand scale in Acadie.The Colony left Earth to find their utopia—a home on a new planet where their leader could fully explore the colonists' genetic potential, unfettered by their homeworld's restrictions. They settled a new paradise, and have been evolving and adapting for centuries.Earth has other plans.The original humans have been tracking their descendants across the stars, bent on their annihilation. They won't stop until the new humans have been destroyed, their experimentation wiped out of the human gene pool.Can't anyone let go of a grudge anymore?At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Whitey was on him like a lean panther, swinging the pistol like a club at the back of the boy's head, catching him a solid blow. The sentry crumpled to his hands and knees, mewing in pain, barely conscious. As Jed kicked the outer door shut, shooting the main bolt across, he heard the sickening crack, like a ripe apple being trodden underfoot, as Whitey swung his gun a second time, smashing the top of the guard's skull to a bloody pulp. Ignoring the body, that lay still twitching at his feet, the albino bent and wiped blood and matted hair from the foresight of his Colt on the fancy waistcoat, adding a macabre layer to the decorations. "Leaves us three," he said ...

Romance/Science Fiction. 27333 words long. First published in 2009, 2009

Chapter 1: A Bad Choice and a Worse One My dad always said that his feet were the only stupid parts of his body. They had walked him into every bad decision he had ever made, so he had to watch them carefully. He repeated that little pearl of wisdom so often that I began to take it literally and stare at my feet when they were moving. I had my eyes on them the afternoon they walked me into my career in agriculture. I blame my feet because I was only thirteen at the time and not exactly in the job market.On that particular day, I was mostly thinking about what I could eat when I got home from school. I was trudging along the dirt lane from the bus stop while my sisters and cousins rushed past me, trying to escape the biting New Mexico wind. The lane's rutted tracks had filled with water from a snowstorm and then frozen into narrow strips of dirty ice. It felt powerful and satisfying to crush the fragile surfaces and watch the underlying brown water ooze around my...

Reminiscent of Bernard Malamudâ€(tm)s The Natural, W. P. Kinsellaâ€(tm)s Shoeless Joe, and the film Field of Dreams, OPENING DAY is a novella with the kind of magic charm that transcends sport and rises to the level of heroic myth. When the owner of a downtrodden team in the AA Mid Florida League discovers that his aging groundskeeper was once a star in the Negro Leagues, a public relations scheme is hatched. But what begins as a stunt leads to an astonishing outcome that no one, least of all Buck Wilson, the unassuming former great, could have predicted.

Ross Marteau is the toast of the international art world for his sensualsculptures of rich and famous women. But when a long-term relationshipbreaks up badly, he retreats to his Texas hometown -- only to have hisnewfound peace of mind permanently, and profoundly, shattered.One afternoon over lunch, Ross is approached by a woman to whom he feelsan irresistible attraction. She introduces herself as Celeste Lacan andasks him to take on a new commission, a sculpture of her younger sister, Leda, promising that the job will present artistic challenges unlike anyhe has encountered before. Though reluctant, Ross can't help but beintrigued: by Celeste herself and by a photo of Leda's face, a portraitof incomparable beauty.When he meets her, Ross is stunned to discover that Leda's body is asstartlingly unique as her face is beautiful. Just as Celeste predicted, he becomes consumed with portraying the duality of her body... and, perhaps, her soul. At the same time, he become...