After


Book Description

Experience the internet's most talked-about book, now a major motion picture, from Anna Todd, the writer Cosmopolitan called “the biggest literary phenomenon of her generation.” There was the time before Tessa met Hardin, and then there’s everything AFTER...Life will never be the same. #Hessa Tessa is a good girl with a sweet, reliable boyfriend back home. She’s got direction, ambition, and a mother who’s intent on keeping her that way. But she’s barely moved into her freshman dorm when she runs into Hardin. With his tousled brown hair, cocky British accent, and tattoos, Hardin is cute and different from what she’s used to. But he’s also rude—to the point of cruelty, even. For all his attitude, Tessa should hate Hardin. And she does—until she finds herself alone with him in his room. Something about his dark mood grabs her, and when they kiss it ignites within her a passion she’s never known before. He'll call her beautiful, then insist he isn’t the one for her and disappear again and again. Despite the reckless way he treats her, Tessa is compelled to dig deeper and find the real Hardin beneath all his lies. He pushes her away again and again, yet every time she pushes back, he only pulls her in deeper. Tessa already has the perfect boyfriend. So why is she trying so hard to overcome her own hurt pride and Hardin's prejudice about nice girls like her? Unless...could this be love?




Happily Ever After


Book Description

"Find your one true love and live happily ever after." The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney's princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.




Romancing the Beat


Book Description

What makes a romance novel a romance? How do you write a kissing book?Writing a well-structured romance isn't the same as writing any other genre-something the popular novel and screenwriting guides don't address. The romance arc is made up of its own story beats, and the external plot and theme need to be braided to the romance arc-not the other way around.Told in conversational (and often irreverent) prose, Romancing the Beat can be read like you are sitting down to coffee with romance editor and author Gwen Hayes while she explains story structure. The way she does with her clients. Some of whom are regular inhabitants of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.Romancing the Beat is a recipe, not a rigid system. The beats don't care if you plot or outline before you write, or if you pants your way through the drafts and do a "beat check" when you're revising. Pantsers and plotters are both welcome. So sit down, grab a cuppa, and let's talk about kissing books.




After Care


Book Description

Breast cancer survivor Edie Williams is ready to live. Divorced. Mother of two. She's planned the vacation of a lifetime for a reboot, only to encounter an awakening adventure-Tommy Carrigan. Manager of the band Collision, Tommy Carrigan has his plate full. Independent. Carefree. He's on an annual holiday with his band family, when the unexpected happens-Edie Williams. Love might be just what the doctor prescribed, but can it survive the world of rock-n-roll? +++ If you enjoyed The Sex Education of M.E., you'll love After Care, another romance for the over-forty from L.B. Dunbar. Continue the adventure previously published in Love Notes, the newsletter of L.B. Dunbar.




You're Not what I Expected


Book Description

Combining research and clinical theory with actual case histories, this book reveals how couples can enhance their communication skills and learn how to make deeper commitments via the revolutionary new method of dialogue therapy--a form of conversation that involves having and maintaining one's own point of view while understanding another's.




When We Dare: Small town, grumpy brother's best friend, firefighter romance


Book Description

A brand new, swoony small town firefighter series from USA Today Bestselling Author J.H. Croix! What could go wrong when my brother’s best friend becomes my roommate? I’m about to find out. When I met Hudson Fox, I drove over his crutches. Way to go, girl. My hormones think this hotshot firefighter is all that and then some. My hormones have a terrible track record. They are cheering for Hudson, but my brain knows better. I’m a smart woman with plans and none of them involve romance. Until I move into my new place and Hudson is my roommate. Complete with Butter, his cat. Hudson isn’t just easy on the eyes, he’s everything I didn’t know I wanted, including a little grumpy with a protective streak bigger than Alaska. We both have our reasons for avoiding romance, but when he proposes a with benefits arrangement, I can’t even think over the sound of my hormones screaming for joy. When my messy past catches up to me and I discover Hudson is my brother’s best friend, well, things get even messier. Hudson is keeping his own secrets. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Until my heart wants more. Hudson & Stella’s story is perfect for readers who love: protective firefighters, slow burn, roommates, brother’s best friend, messy secrets, chemistry on the rampage, small town shenanigans, emotional romance with a dash of angst, oodles of steam and swoon, and a cinnamon roll hero who will protect the woman he loves with everything he has. *A full-length, standalone romance.




The Radicality of Love


Book Description

What would happen if we could stroll through the revolutionary history of the 20th century and, without any fear of the possible responses, ask the main protagonists - from Lenin to Che Guevara, from Alexandra Kollontai to Ulrike Meinhof - seemingly naïve questions about love? Although all important political and social changes of the 20th century included heated debates on the role of love, it seems that in the 21st century of new technologies of the self (Grindr, Tinder, online dating, etc.) we are faced with a hyperinflation of sex, not love. By going back to the sexual revolution of the October Revolution and its subsequent repression, to Che's dilemma between love and revolutionary commitment and to the period of '68 (from communes to terrorism) and its commodification in late capitalism, the Croatian philosopher Srecko Horvat gives a possible answer to the question of why it is that the most radical revolutionaries like Lenin or Che were scared of the radicality of love. What is so radical about a seemingly conservative notion of love and why is it anything but conservative? This short book is a modest contribution to the current upheavals around the world - from Tahrir to Taksim, from Occupy Wall Street to Hong Kong, from Athens to Sarajevo - in which the question of love is curiously, surprisingly, absent.




Trapped by Desire


Book Description

EXCERPT "It's just sex." Karen said. "Will you stop trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill!" "I would if you didn't have that humongous smile glued to your mug," her best friend Angelika shot back. "I've never known you to do 'just sex.' Be careful Kare," Angelika said, turning serious as she used Karen's nickname. "You don't do 'to-go' sex.' Your heart always gets involved and that's what scares me about this. I don't want to see you hurt again." After her last relationship ended in heartbreak, Karen had taken a year's sabbatical from dating and reassessed her priorities. Her professional life was budding, but she was lonely. So she decided to focus on what she could control – her business – and not wait for a committed relationship to blossom before she had some fun. Meeting Kamar seemed to solidify that she'd made the right decision. They hit it off immediately and she headed straight down the 'bad girl' path, forging a physical connection before thought was given to any type of emotional bond. Could her bad girl behavior lead to a lasting relationship? ****** "Te quiero mucho," Kamar said in his native Spanish, "I have since the first time I laid eyes on you." "I want you too Kamar," was all Karen could muster in response. Kamar lowered his head and took Karen's lips firmly in his. He didn't want to scare her, but God he'd waited so long to claim those soft, pillowy clouds that he deepened the kiss much quicker than he wanted to. To his surprise, Karen responded with equal pent-up ardor. Wrapping her hands around his neck, she pressed closer into his long, lean frame, reveling in the corded strength of his body. Barely realizing what he was doing, Kamar scooped Karen up effortlessly in his arms and walked down the long hallway to his bedroom. Because he travelled so much and had a hard time sleeping with any kind of light, the room was dark – so dark that it was hard to see anything at all. Eyes closed, Karen didn't notice because her lips were still fully exploring Kamar's. Only when he lowered her to the bed did she realize that they'd left the living room and were in his bedroom. In one effortless move, Kamar hit a switch on the bedside table and flooded the room with soft lamp light. He froze when he looked at Karen. She was stunningly beautiful – her skin glowed luminously in the dimmed lighting. Not sure how to react to his gaze, Karen lay still beneath him, her eyes pleading for an explanation. "A dios mio, estan muy hermosa," he whispered. Although her Spanish was limited, she understood enough to know that he was telling her how beautiful she was. With this, she immediately relaxed. "Thank you," she whispered and reached up to brazenly pull his lips back to hers. She was overwhelmed by her need for him and while she could never be so bold as to express it in words, she'd let her body tell him everything he needed to know. ****** Karen looked at herself squarely in the bathroom mirror the next morning. "What have I done?" she chastised herself. 'To go' sex, as her friend Angelika had put it, definitely wasn't her style. But two mojitos and one sangria later and she'd given in to the desire Kamar had awakened in her. Could the chemistry they shared in bed translate into a successful relationship out of bed? Or was she so "Trapped by Desire" that she was setting herself up for heartbreak all over again? ### Relevant Search Terms: african american romance, contemporary romance, interracial romance, multiracial romance, bwwm romance, multicultural romance, short romance, steamy romance




The Greatest Historical Romance Novels of All Time


Book Description

e-artnow presents to you the collection of the great love stories of the past, the best historical novels in one edition:_x000D_ Uarda: A Romance of Ancient Egypt (Georg Ebers)_x000D_ The New Abelard: Love in the Times of Cathedrals (Robert Williams Buchanan)_x000D_ Hildebrand: The Days of Queen Elizabeth (Anonymous) _x000D_ Love-at-Arms (Rafael Sabatini) _x000D_ The Making Of A Saint (W. Somerset Maugham) _x000D_ The Cloister and the Hearth (Charles Reade) _x000D_ The Princess of Cleves (Madame de La Fayette)_x000D_ The Forest Lovers (Maurice Hewlett) _x000D_ Malcolm (George MacDonald) _x000D_ Scarlet Letter: Love in the Colonial Period (Nathaniel Hawthorne) _x000D_ The Wild Irish Girl (Lady Sydney Morgan) _x000D_ Sophia (Stanley John Weyman) _x000D_ Paul and Virginia (Bernardin de Saint-Pierre) _x000D_ Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Mary Hays) _x000D_ Powder and Patch (Georgette Heyer)_x000D_ The Black Moth: A Romance of the XVIIIth Century (Georgette Heyer)_x000D_ The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (Eliza Haywood)_x000D_ Fantomina (Eliza Haywood)_x000D_ Olinda's Adventures (Catharine Trotter Cockburn)_x000D_ Belinda (Maria Edgeworth)_x000D_ Dangerous Liaisons (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos)_x000D_ Evelina (Fanny Burney)_x000D_ Pamela Trilogy_x000D_ Mary (Mary Wollstonecraft)_x000D_ Jane Austen:_x000D_ Pride & Prejudice_x000D_ Sense & Sensibility_x000D_ Mansfield Park_x000D_ Emma_x000D_ Persuasion_x000D_ Miss Marjoribanks & Phoebe, Junior (Mrs. Olifant)_x000D_ Vanity Fair (Thackeray)_x000D_ Mr. Rowl (D. K. Broster)_x000D_ The Battle of the Strong (Gilbert Parker)_x000D_ Kitty Alone (Sabine Baring-Gould) _x000D_ Sentimental Education (Gustave Flaubert) _x000D_ Lady Anna (Anthony Trollope)_x000D_ The Manoeuvring Mother (Lady Charlotte Bury)_x000D_ Ramona (Helen Hunt Jackson) _x000D_ Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)_x000D_ Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)_x000D_ The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë)_x000D_ The Lady of the Camellias (Alexandre Dumas)_x000D_ The Portrait of a Lady & The Wings of the Dove (Henry James)_x000D_ Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)_x000D_ The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton)_x000D_ Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)_x000D_ Bel Ami (Guy de Maupassant) _x000D_ The Squatter and the Don (María Ruiz de Burton) _x000D_ Maria Chapdelaine (Louis Hémon)_x000D_ The Four Feathers (A. E. W. Mason) _x000D_ The Miranda Trilogy (Grace Livingston Hill)_x000D_ The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)




The Homes of Other Days


Book Description