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As one of New York's top sex therapists, Dr. Morgan Snow sees everything from the abused to the depraved. The Butterfield Institute is the sanctuary where she tries to heal these battered souls.
The Scarlet Society is a secret club of twelve powerful and sexually adventurous women. But when a photograph of the body of one of the men they're recruited to dominate -- strapped to a gurney, the number 1 inked on the sole of his foot -- is sent to the New York Times, they are shocked and frightened. Unable to cope with the tragedy, the women turn to Dr. Morgan Snow. But what starts out as grief counseling quickly becomes a murder investigation, with any one of the twelve women a potential suspect.
The case leads Detective Noah Jordan -- a man with whom Morgan has shared a brief, intense connection -- to her office. He fears the number on the man's foot hints that the killings have just begun. With her hands tied by her professional duty, Morgan is dangerously close to the demons in her own mind -- and the flesh-and-blood killer.
As one of New York's top sex therapists, Dr. Morgan Snow sees everything from the abused to the depraved. The Butterfield Institute is the sanctuary where she tries to heal these battered souls.
The Scarlet Society is a secret club of twelve powerful and sexually adventurous women. But when a photograph of the body of one of the men they're recruited to dominate -- strapped to a gurney, the number 1 inked on the sole of his foot -- is sent to the New York Times, they are shocked and frightened. Unable to cope with the tragedy, the women turn to Dr. Morgan Snow. But what starts out as grief counseling quickly becomes a murder investigation, with any one of the twelve women a potential suspect.
The case leads Detective Noah Jordan -- a man with whom Morgan has shared a brief, intense connection -- to her office. He fears the number on the man's foot hints that the killings have just begun. With her hands tied by her professional duty, Morgan is dangerously close to the demons in her own mind -- and the flesh-and-blood killer.
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Tessa Monroe knows how to do exactly two things: climb her way up the corporate ladder and cheer up her best friend Christian Douglas, the main man in her life since paste was a snack. With the exception of a Ring Pop proposal and a pool-side kiss in college, not much has changed between them in 25 years. Now that they’re all grown up, the two friends find themselves headed down two different paths: Tessa looking for her dream job and Christian looking for his dream girl.
Luckily for Christian, Tessa knows just the girl who’ll mend his heart after a bad breakup. But when things between Christian and his new girl Savannah start to get serious, Tessa isn’t feeling the pride and happiness she expected… In fact, there’s something weird in her heart that she can’t quite name.
With no plans for romance or marriage, Tessa isn’t prepared to confront her true feelings for Christian. After all they’ve been through together, can she risk her heart, his happiness, and their friendship by telling him the truth? OR does she run away from the romance that began in the third grade?
Friendship and romance combine with messy results, but A Previous Engagement celebrates the humor of real-life love in a story that resonates as honest from beginning to end.
Tessa Monroe knows how to do exactly two things: climb her way up the corporate ladder and cheer up her best friend Christian Douglas, the main man in her life since paste was a snack. With the exception of a Ring Pop proposal and a pool-side kiss in college, not much has changed between them in 25 years. Now that they’re all grown up, the two friends find themselves headed down two different paths: Tessa looking for her dream job and Christian looking for his dream girl.
Luckily for Christian, Tessa knows just the girl who’ll mend his heart after a bad breakup. But when things between Christian and his new girl Savannah start to get serious, Tessa isn’t feeling the pride and happiness she expected… In fact, there’s something weird in her heart that she can’t quite name.
With no plans for romance or marriage, Tessa isn’t prepared to confront her true feelings for Christian. After all they’ve been through together, can she risk her heart, his happiness, and their friendship by telling him the truth? OR does she run away from the romance that began in the third grade?
Friendship and romance combine with messy results, but A Previous Engagement celebrates the humor of real-life love in a story that resonates as honest from beginning to end.
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When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.
Amazon.com Review: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground. Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber
When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.
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Two years after her husband’s death, Sarah Woodward moves her boys away from their fast paced life in suburban Atlanta to small town Hailey, Colorado. But Sarah doesn’t know a Colorado Senator has earmarked her ranch for purchase and he’ll do anything to get it. Unwilling to sell, she dismisses his continued offers and moves ahead by improving the land with the help of a sexy stranger. A.J. Dodge is a man with a past. He’s returned to his hometown ready to set down roots and make things right with his family and whatever anyone else thinks he doesn’t give a damn. Until his old friend Tommy Thornton asks a favor, a favor he can’t refuse, and Dodge becomes involved with the beautiful widow Sarah Woodward. She’s alone with her young sons on a dilapidated ranch she’s determined to get up and running with or without his help. Under pressure to deliver the Woodward ranch to a land developer with shady connections, the senator sets in motion a dangerous plot to convince Sarah to sell. Dodge will risk everything to protect Sarah and the boys including his heart.
Two years after her husband’s death, Sarah Woodward moves her boys away from their fast paced life in suburban Atlanta to small town Hailey, Colorado. But Sarah doesn’t know a Colorado Senator has earmarked her ranch for purchase and he’ll do anything to get it. Unwilling to sell, she dismisses his continued offers and moves ahead by improving the land with the help of a sexy stranger. A.J. Dodge is a man with a past. He’s returned to his hometown ready to set down roots and make things right with his family and whatever anyone else thinks he doesn’t give a damn. Until his old friend Tommy Thornton asks a favor, a favor he can’t refuse, and Dodge becomes involved with the beautiful widow Sarah Woodward. She’s alone with her young sons on a dilapidated ranch she’s determined to get up and running with or without his help. Under pressure to deliver the Woodward ranch to a land developer with shady connections, the senator sets in motion a dangerous plot to convince Sarah to sell. Dodge will risk everything to protect Sarah and the boys including his heart.
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GED instructor Kendra Clayton’s high school days were nothing to brag about. So she’s not too thrilled when on top of having to take a class to renew her teaching certificate or be fired, she gets roped into serving on her high school’s reunion committee.
Spending time with her former classmates is even less fun than having a root canal. Then to make matters worse, Kendra and the other committee members start receiving strange messages and having freak accidents. When one of the accidents results in a death, Kendra is convinced it’s murder. Unfortunately, neither the reunion committee nor the police take her seriously.
To try and prevent another death—and to keep from worrying about all the time her sweetie, Carl, has been spending with his scheming ex-wife—Kendra digs into the lives of her fellow committee members and uncovers enough secrets, lies, and betrayal to make her head spin. When a second murder occurs, Kendra realizes she needs to watch her back in her search for the truth before a killer turns her into another buried secret.
GED instructor Kendra Clayton’s high school days were nothing to brag about. So she’s not too thrilled when on top of having to take a class to renew her teaching certificate or be fired, she gets roped into serving on her high school’s reunion committee.
Spending time with her former classmates is even less fun than having a root canal. Then to make matters worse, Kendra and the other committee members start receiving strange messages and having freak accidents. When one of the accidents results in a death, Kendra is convinced it’s murder. Unfortunately, neither the reunion committee nor the police take her seriously.
To try and prevent another death—and to keep from worrying about all the time her sweetie, Carl, has been spending with his scheming ex-wife—Kendra digs into the lives of her fellow committee members and uncovers enough secrets, lies, and betrayal to make her head spin. When a second murder occurs, Kendra realizes she needs to watch her back in her search for the truth before a killer turns her into another buried secret.
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"A funny, fast-paced, clever, and unusual mystery that will have readers clamoring for more. Sheer delight." --Carolyn Hart
"A thoroughly delightful debut. Bright, breezy, and witty. I couldn't put it down."--Tamar Myers
The truth about what happened in 1949 went to Paul Fischer's grave... Too bad his body didn't!
Advertising copywriter Leigh Koslow doesn't pack heat--just a few extra pounds. And she doesn't go looking for trouble. When she moved into her cousin Cara's refurbished Victorian house, she wasn't planning on discovering a corpse--certainly not one that had been embalmed ten years before. But as anyone in the small Pittsburgh borough of Avalon could tell her, her cousin's house has a history attached. A history dating back to two mysterious deaths in the summer of 1949.
Someone wants Leigh and Cara out of the house--someone who has something to hide. But that someone doesn't know Leigh's impetuous cousin, and when Cara digs her heels in, Leigh looks to her old college chum, local policewoman Maura Polanski, for help. But the answers the trio find only point to more questions. Were the scandalous deaths of fifty years ago really an accident and a suicide? Or were they murder?
The nearer the women get to the truth, the more desperate someone becomes. Because some secrets are better off kept. Especially when they hit close to home!
Originally published in mass market paperback by NAL/Penguin, Putnam, Inc. in 1999. Large-Print Edition published by Thorndike, 2002.
"A funny, fast-paced, clever, and unusual mystery that will have readers clamoring for more. Sheer delight." --Carolyn Hart
"A thoroughly delightful debut. Bright, breezy, and witty. I couldn't put it down."--Tamar Myers
The truth about what happened in 1949 went to Paul Fischer's grave... Too bad his body didn't!
Advertising copywriter Leigh Koslow doesn't pack heat--just a few extra pounds. And she doesn't go looking for trouble. When she moved into her cousin Cara's refurbished Victorian house, she wasn't planning on discovering a corpse--certainly not one that had been embalmed ten years before. But as anyone in the small Pittsburgh borough of Avalon could tell her, her cousin's house has a history attached. A history dating back to two mysterious deaths in the summer of 1949.
Someone wants Leigh and Cara out of the house--someone who has something to hide. But that someone doesn't know Leigh's impetuous cousin, and when Cara digs her heels in, Leigh looks to her old college chum, local policewoman Maura Polanski, for help. But the answers the trio find only point to more questions. Were the scandalous deaths of fifty years ago really an accident and a suicide? Or were they murder?
The nearer the women get to the truth, the more desperate someone becomes. Because some secrets are better off kept. Especially when they hit close to home!
Originally published in mass market paperback by NAL/Penguin, Putnam, Inc. in 1999. Large-Print Edition published by Thorndike, 2002.
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As one of New York's top sex therapists, Dr. Morgan Snow sees everything from the abused to the depraved. The Butterfield Institute is the sanctuary where she tries to heal these battered souls.
The Scarlet Society is a secret club of twelve powerful and sexually adventurous women. But when a photograph of the body of one of the men they're recruited to dominate -- strapped to a gurney, the number 1 inked on the sole of his foot -- is sent to the New York Times, they are shocked and frightened. Unable to cope with the tragedy, the women turn to Dr. Morgan Snow. But what starts out as grief counseling quickly becomes a murder investigation, with any one of the twelve women a potential suspect.
The case leads Detective Noah Jordan -- a man with whom Morgan has shared a brief, intense connection -- to her office. He fears the number on the man's foot hints that the killings have just begun. With her hands tied by her professional duty, Morgan is dangerously close to the demons in her own mind -- and the flesh-and-blood killer.
As one of New York's top sex therapists, Dr. Morgan Snow sees everything from the abused to the depraved. The Butterfield Institute is the sanctuary where she tries to heal these battered souls.
The Scarlet Society is a secret club of twelve powerful and sexually adventurous women. But when a photograph of the body of one of the men they're recruited to dominate -- strapped to a gurney, the number 1 inked on the sole of his foot -- is sent to the New York Times, they are shocked and frightened. Unable to cope with the tragedy, the women turn to Dr. Morgan Snow. But what starts out as grief counseling quickly becomes a murder investigation, with any one of the twelve women a potential suspect.
The case leads Detective Noah Jordan -- a man with whom Morgan has shared a brief, intense connection -- to her office. He fears the number on the man's foot hints that the killings have just begun. With her hands tied by her professional duty, Morgan is dangerously close to the demons in her own mind -- and the flesh-and-blood killer.
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