In the 1930s, Stalin’s activists marched through the Soviet Union, espousing the greatness of collective farming. It was the first step in creating a man-made famine that, in Ukraine, stole almost 4 million lives. Inspired by the history the world forgot, and the Russian government denies, Erin Litteken reimagines their story. In 1929, Katya is 16 years old, surrounded by family and in love with the boy next door. When Stalin’s activists arrive in her village, it’s just a few, a little pressure to join the collective. But soon neighbors disappear, those who speak out are never seen again and every new day is uncertain.
Resistance has a price, and as desperate hunger grips the countryside, survival seems more a dream than a possibility. But, even in the darkest times, love beckons.
Seventy years later, a young widow discovers her grandmother’s journal, one that will reveal the long-buried secrets of her family’s haunted past.
This is a story of the resilience of the human spirit, the love that sees us through our darkest hours and the true horror of what happened during the Holodomor.
“I never imagined the release of my novel on a past oppression of the Ukrainian people would coincide with such a parallel tragedy.” Erin Litteken
May we never forget, lest history repeat itself.
A share of proceeds will be donated to DEC’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.
A sharp click echoed in the room, and everyone froze. The Russian’s cocked pistol pointed at Tato. “Are you resisting orders? If you are, we will have to label you an enemy of the people. We all know what happens to enemies of the people. I could shoot you right now, and nobody would care.”
Katya’s head buzzed. All the anger she’d felt morphed into sheer terror as she stared at her Tato. His beet-red face glistened with sweat and his hands curled slowly into fists, the anger crackling off him like a hungry fire seeking fuel. If someone didn’t intercede, he would be shot for attempting to murder Prokyp with his bare hands.
Mama, too, saw his inner struggle, for she stepped in front of Tato and spoke calmly. “I apologize for my husband’s behavior. He’s overprotective of his daughters. He didn’t mean what he said. We’ll cooperate, I swear it.”
The Russian smirked and lowered his gun. Dropping Alina’s hand, Katya pulled her father into a hug and spoke in his ear. “Please, Tato, there is no harm done, but we can’t lose you. Please.” She felt the tension lessen from his body, but vibrations of anger still throbbed like the veins on his neck.
Prokyp watched the scene with amusement, then sauntered back over to his cohorts, smiling. The Russian turned to him and asked with complete sincerity, “Have you been offended by this man? What would you like to do, Comrade?”
Prokyp glanced at Tato and then at Alina, who was white as a sheet, but holding her head high as Mama had taught them to. Katya’s legs wobbled, so she locked her knees and held her breath as they waited for this fool to decide the fate of their family.
“I suppose I can overlook it this once, as long as he and his family promise to cooperate fully in the future.” His gaze lingered on Alina. “But we shall have to check back here often to make sure they are behaving.”
Another activist pushed into the house with a large sack of wheat balanced on his shoulder. “I found this, and another just like it, hidden in the barn loft.”
Katya’s heart sank. She’d worried the wheat in the barn wasn’t hidden well enough, but Tato thought it safe out of sight beneath the hay.
“You can’t take that!” Tato shouted. “It’s my seed for planting this fall!”
“This will pay your quota. For now.” The Russian Soviet waved a hand dismissively, as if suddenly bored by them. “Come, we must move to the next house.”
The woman cast an apologetic look toward Mama and hurried behind the men as they left. The door swung wildly in their wake, and none of them moved until Tato strode forward and slammed it shut, though not before Katya saw the activists’ cart stacked high with sacks of grain, just like the ones they’d taken from the barn.
Erin Litteken is a debut novelist with a degree in history and a passion for research. At a young age, she was enthralled by stories of her family’s harrowing experiences in Ukraine before, during and after World War II. She lives in Illinois, USA with her husband and children.
Can the Excel junkie and his new bestie with benefits design a lasting relationship given the right variables, or is their formula for love riddled with miscalculation?
Rita Ryan: What happens when the World’s Hottest Nerd asks you for an extrovert adoption? You friend him, of course. Swapping favors lets you ask him to review your resume and helps you land the interview of your dreams. Maybe you exchange hopes…future plans…kisses. But you definitely don’t give Ed your heart. After all, love was never in the plan.
Ed Delancey: How do you handle it when your scheme to make new friends lands you with the woman of your dreams? You hang on and enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts. The saucy grad student may know how to push your buttons, reveling in bringing you to the brink, but her job search makes her strictly off-limits. Hiring her is out of the question. Ditto, giving her your love.
Amelia Simone is a reader turned writer based in the Pacific Northwest. Along with caring for her young family and enjoying food and wine adventures with her husband, she spends a lot of time in the backyard gardening and reading during her free time. (If you plant enough stuff, no one notices if you accidentally kill off half.)
When the weather cooperates, you can find her on her deck sipping coffee and writing her next book. Amelia believes that everyone has a little frog in ‘em, and a little royalty too. She enjoys writing light, hopeful romance about everyday people with the banter and teasing that make life fun. When the real world gets to be too much, she moves on to the sci-fi world she created for a little paranormal relief.
Title: Rival Radio Author: Kathryn Nolan Genre: Contemporary Romance
These two on-air enemies can’t stop rubbing each other the wrong way in the booth…and the right way in bed.
Theo
Whoever said “keep your enemies close” never had to share a small, dark sound booth with her. Daria Stone is the infuriating host of “Choosing Yourself.” The name is almost as ridiculous as the concept. Permanently single? Please. The woman’s made a career out of rejecting everything I stand for.
I’m looking for the one. The right woman who’s ready for marriage and a lifetime together. Not some sultry, stubborn vixen who makes my life a living hell and insists a husband can be replaced by a curated collection of bedroom toys. And I know she’s wearing those skin-tight leather pants just to annoy me.
Daria
Dr. Theo Chadwick is a professional pain in my…workplace. Sure—on the outside, the man is gorgeous. But he’s also obsessed with finding his better half and getting his radio show, “True Romance,” syndicated so he can give false hope to lovelorn listeners everywhere.
He keeps pushing my buttons with his arrogant “expertise” about how wrong I am. I just want to see him snap. Maybe that’s how I ended up here, pinned against a wall with my legs wrapped around his waist…whoops…
Can these enemies put their feud on hold and play nice in a shared timeslot to save their popular beach town radio station? Or will their sparks burn everything to the ground?
Author’s Note: One-click if you love forced proximity, breakroom bickering, “we’re just getting it out of our system” one-night stands, a rag-tag crew of DJs, and beachy, retro boardwalk magic.
Kathryn Nolan is an adventurous hippie chick and loves to write steamy romance. Her books are filled with slow-burn sexual tension, memorable characters, tons of heart — and are often set in wild and beautiful locations.
Kathryn started her writing career in elementary school, writing about Star Wars and Harry Potter and inventing love stories in her many journals. She blames her obsession with slow-burn on her similar obsession for The X-Files.
Kathryn is a wanderer at heart, and loves to spend her free time hiking, camping, and traveling in her camper van (“Van Morrison”) with her cute, nerdy husband and Walter, their rescue pup. Kathryn is a Philly girl who just moved back home after spending more than 8 years living in Northern California — and six months traveling across the country in her camper van.
My new boss is my best friend’s older brother and the golden boy of Paradise Shores.
Me? I’m the misfit single mom who never wanted to fit in…
Being forced to move back to my hometown after a decade away is embarrassing, but I’ll do anything to protect my little girl.
I’ll even wait tables at the elite Yacht Club… now owned by the boy I once had a huge crush on. He’s grown up and claimed his rightful place as King of Paradise Shores.
Parker Marchand was a star athlete and professional sailor who never looked at me twice. He’s strong and steady, everything my abusive ex wasn’t, but I’m a struggling single mom and professional screw-up. What could we possibly have in common?
But Parker doesn’t believe in no win situations. He wants to be my knight in shining armor.
His plan: Charm my daughter. Take me sailing. Out to dinner…and into his bed.
Make me forget everyone but him.
The man I’ve always wanted is within reach, but I’ve been burned too many times to trust again. Parker has a brilliant future and I’m running from my past.
Everyone knows knights in shining armor aren’t real, and I’m too old to believe in fairy tales. Even if Parker is making it hard not to…
Olivia is a twenty-something hopeless romantic who loves billionaires heroes despite never having met one. Taking matters into her own hands, she creates them on the page instead. Stern, charming, cold or brooding, so far she’s never met a (fictional) billionaire she didn’t like.
A voracious reader of romance, Olivia picked up the pen a few years back and what followed was a love affair of her own. Now she spends her days grinning at the steamy banter she’s writing or swooning at happily-ever-afters. Or, to be frank, struggling with writing about herself in third person for the purposes of marketing.
She’s been writing contemporary romance novels since 2018.
They’re all exclusively available on Amazon and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.
(Phew. Now I can go back to first-person love stories!)
Tessa’s bestie has been dying for a night of ecstasy with a certain sexy doctor at The Eros Pit. When Tessa winds up with the doctor’s marker at the singles night event, she swaps. There’s no harm in it, not when she knows her best friend will get to have the night of her dreams.
Except Tessa ends up with a Dom she wants nothing to do with – Cooper Livingstone. Danger surrounds him. The sexy alpha is a total badass, fighting wildfires on the front range. He’s potent. Makes her body come alive in ways she has never experienced before. It worries her how much she craves his wicked brand of lovemaking after a single night.
Cooper lives and breathes his daredevil lifestyle. For him, there is nothing like coming up against Mother Nature’s wrath – that is, until Tessa winds up in his bed. Underneath her serene façade lies a feisty, passionate woman who calls to him on an elemental level. After a single night, he yearns to claim the intoxicating submissive. She’s in his blood. He dreams about her taste and her surrender. The need to claim her, make her his in every way, is a hunger he cannot deny. He will do whatever it takes to earn her surrender, and possibly even her love.
But Tessa doesn’t take chances. They’re way too dangerous. She knows far too well how devastating the consequences can be. And submitting to Cooper might just be the biggest risk of all.
Can Cooper convince Tessa to take a chance on him?
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Anya grew up listening to Cardinals baseball and reading anything she could get her hands on. She remembers her mother saying if only she would read the right type of books instead binging her way through the romance aisles at the bookstore, she’d have been a doctor. While Anya never did get that doctorate, she graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri-St. Louis with an M.A. in History. Anya is a bestselling and award-winning author published in multiple fiction genres. She also writes urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and contemporary romance under the name Maggie Mae Gallagher. A total geek at her core, when she is not writing, she adores attending the latest comic con or spending time with her family. She currently lives in the Midwest with her two furry felines.
I know nothing of the Sickness at Eastpoint University. I know only the backroads that slip past the southern beaches and the gators that make their way onto the swamps shores. Until him. Until the killer known as Braxton Smalls finds his way into my stilted trailer on the coast of Port Charlotte.
He came looking for Ace, but he found me instead…
Braxton
I’m a monster. Always have been. Always will be. The only people I’ve ever given a shit about are my boys and their girls. No one hurts my family, and knowing that someone has … and that they’ve gotten away with it plagues me.
Ace Volkov will pay for what he put Avalon through and if I have to use his most precious weakness to draw him out, I will.
She thinks she can bargain for his life with her own, but I mean to show her that there’s nothing I won’t do to see my vengeance through to the end.
Lucy Smoke/Lucinda Dark suffers from severe wanderlust and enjoys people watching to find her next character. Who knows, maybe you’re in one of her stories as well.
Author of new adult, reverse harem, and dark romance, Lucy Smoke/Lucinda Dark switches between subgenres, but focuses the primary themes of her novels on strong heroines and romance. She lives and works in the south with her beloved puppy, Hiro
That had been Buck’s warning to me after he’d caught us in my room that night.
But here I was, one hand on each corner of the towel, pulling it open to make the terry cloth taut.
“Ford.” Indi’s startled gaze locked onto mine. Her full lips parted in surprise. I quickly wrapped the towel back around her and tucked the edges, my fingers brushing over her damp skin just above her breasts.
Not quickly enough, though.
I’d had the misfortune of seeing all of Indi’s glorious and fully naked form before I managed to get her covered again. Except, who was I kidding? There was no universe where seeing Indigo Buchanan naked could be considered a misfortune.
My throbbing dick was a testament to that fact.
I’d wanted her when she was eighteen. Lusted after her hot body. Even with a second’s glance, I’d just seen she was still perfect. Her hips had filled out. So had her tits. All woman.
“Sorry,” I said gruffly, not meaning a fucking syllable. But I didn’t let go. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I couldn’t seem to step back. Couldn’t seem to relinquish control of her towel. Or hide my heated gaze. Maybe it was the strawberry scent of her shampoo.
“Don’t—” She licked her lips and glanced at my shirt, at the floor. “Don’t pretend you find me attractive. We both know it’s not true.”
I stilled. Processed. What the actual fuck?
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” My eyes popped wide. “Is that what you think? Seriously?”
She tried to pull back, and I was an even bigger asshole because I kept my fingers curled into the top of her towel. The soft swells of her breasts were against my knuckles.
There was no way I was letting her go now. Not until she knew exactly how far from the truth that statement was.
“Indigo, are you nuts?”
Her nostrils flared like she was about to get pissed off again, but this time I didn’t encourage it. This time I saw the hurt behind her anger, and it seemed important that I correct her notion.
“You’ve been a goddamn torment to me,” I blurted.
She went still and finally lifted her chin, her blue eyes wide on mine.
I saw into them. All the hurt. All the sadness. All the desire.
“You’re… That night… Of course, I find you—” Fuck it. I was never great with words. I had to show her. Make her believe.
My mouth stamped over hers, my tongue swept between her lips. Still holding the front of her towel with one hand, I cradled her head with the other and kissed the hell out of Indigo Buchanan with a full-on, no holds barred assault. Then I changed the angle and kissed her harder. Made her feel all the frustrated, pent-up passion I’d had simmering for her for years.
Years.
“Now, you tell me,” I said, breaking the kiss abruptly, leaving her gasping, her cheeks flushed. My dick was achingly hard as I rolled my hips against her. “Do you think I find you attractive?”
Indi did the worst thing imaginable. She teared up. Then she slapped me.
USA Today Bestselling Author Renee Rose loves a dominant, dirty-talking alpha hero! She’s sold over a million copies of steamy romance with varying levels of kink. Her books have been featured in USA Today’s Happily Ever After and Popsugar. Named Eroticon USA’s Next Top Erotic Author in 2013, she has also won Spunky and Sassy’s Favorite Sci-Fi and Anthology author, and Romance Reviews Best Historical Romance. She’s hit the USA Today list ten times with her Chicago Bratva, Bad Boy Alpha, Wolf Ranch books, and various anthologies.
Vanessa Vale is the USA Today bestselling author of sexy romance novels, including her popular Bridgewater historical romance series and hot contemporary romances. With over one million books sold, Vanessa writes about unapologetic bad boys who don’t just fall in love, they fall hard. Her books are available worldwide in multiple languages in e-book, print, audio and even as an online game. When she’s not writing, Vanessa savors the insanity of raising two boys and figuring out how many meals she can make with a pressure cooker. While she’s not as skilled at social media as her kids, she loves to interact with readers.
Title: Slide Tackled Author: Tonya Clark Genre: Contemporary Sports Romance
The Game: One-on-one. The bet: Loser pays with their heart. After four years of losing herself in a relationship that was all about her ex, Devyn Hansley’s new beginning presents itself when her soccer pro, playboy brother invites her to move in with him.
Devyn’s plan to stay away from relationships is sidelined when she meets the team’s deaf goalkeeper, and her anti-dating rule flies quickly out the window.
Kasen Mickelson know the rules when it comes to dating her best-friends’s sister: stay far, far away. But the wager was her idea–and Devyn doesn’t seem like the type of woman who likes to lose.
USA Today Bestselling Author Tonya Clark, lives in Southern California with her hot firefighter hubby and two amazing daughters. She writes contemporary romance featuring second chance, sports, MC, shifters, suspense, and deaf culture-inspired by her youngest daughter.
When not hiding in the office writing, Tonya has the amazing job of photographing hot cover models, coaching multiple soccer teams, and running her day job.
Tonya Believes everyone deserves their Happily Ever After!
Hella is one witch who is done with relationships. Having rid herself of a clingy nymph, she’s determined to stay single and savour everything her fae town in Geneva has to offer—with no strings attached. The trouble is, it turns out breaking up with a king isn’t as easy as she’d thought. Her ex just sent a legion to kidnap her and take her to the faerie realm of Lucia.
And he wants to make her his queen.
Grant MacKinnon is one wolf shifter who prefers a quiet life. His home in a glen in Scotland, his small wolf pack, and fine whisky is all he needs. The trouble is, a witch in the fae town in Fort William just cursed him to die if he doesn’t find his fated mate and bring her to her. Now he craves a female he’s never met, one he was convinced didn’t exist, and he refuses to believe she’s really his one true mate… until he sets eyes on the beautiful blue-haired lass.
And his wolf instincts howl that she was made for him.
And when he realises she’s in danger and another male wants her as his queen, MacKinnon will stop at nothing to protect her and claim her as his mate.
She stormed to the chair in the corner of the room, picked up his jeans and turned on him. She glared at him as she threw the jeans, hitting him in the face. He dragged them down, a stupid dumbfounded look on his face.
One that told her he couldn’t see what he had done wrong.
And he couldn’t believe she wasn’t doing as he wanted.
“Get out,” she snapped and flung her arm towards the bedroom door. “And never come back here.”
He growled, “I cannae do that. If I leave, I die.”
Colour her curious.
He pulled down a breath and his lips flattened, and he looked as if he was fighting himself.
When he spoke again, his tone was softer, his brogue less pronounced.
“If you don’t give me release, I die, Hella. You must accept me.” He cast a glance at his hips and then lifted his gaze to lock with hers again. “I’ll be gentle with you, if that’s what you fear.”
Hella rolled her eyes. “I had lion twins splitting me in two the other day. I don’t need a gentle man.”
He growled again, flashing his fangs this time, and tensed as he fisted his clothing. “How many males have ye accepted into your wee body? It matters no’. You’ll bed no more.”
His accent seemed to be an emotional barometer. The more heated he got, the less understandable he became. She was tempted to roll her eyes at him again to see just how deep into his Scottish roots she could push him.
“I’ll do what I want and who I want, and if you try to stop me—” She hesitated as the way he had reacted to the shackles filled her mind. She didn’t want to torment him like that again. Maybe she could try something else.
If he wouldn’t leave, then she would make him.
She pivoted on her heel and swept away from him, her shoulders tipped back and her head held high, the perfect image of a witch one would be wise not to mess with. The wolf’s gaze scalded her back, tracking down to her bottom, and he loosed a low, sexy growl.
Hella refused to let it affect her.
The wolf was about to be shown the door and if he had any sense, he would take the hint and leave her alone. She had her own problems to deal with and every second she wasted on the wolf was a second Ethyrian drew closer to realising she had escaped Lucia.
She hurried down the stairs to her shop.
The wolf followed.
Still naked.
Hella huffed as she glanced at him and he leaned against the wall, folded his arms across his chest and crossed his ankles. Shameless male.
“Put some clothes on,” she snapped and tried to shut him out as she unlocked a case behind the counter and plucked a book from the shelves.
When she turned back towards the counter, her gaze collided with his.
He grinned salaciously at her, irritatingly sure of himself while she was flustered and unsteady, rattled by his presence. “You don’t want that. I can see in your eyes you want me, lass. I can smell that you need your male.”
Hella gagged. “Gross.”
And diligently kept her eyes off the impressive hard-on he was still sporting as he pushed away from the wall and stalked towards her.
He was far too big.
If she did accept him, as he kept putting it, he would split her in two.
She was just considering possible spells that would help her get around that when his knees gave out, he went down hard and clocked his jaw on the edge of the wooden counter.
Ruining his carefully affected image of confidence and swagger.
Hella resisted the urge to peer over the counter and check on him, and continued leafing through the book instead as she dryly said, “Have a nice trip? Send me a postcard next time.”
The wolf’s arm shot up from behind the counter, his hand slammed down onto it and he hauled himself up. He growled as he shook off the blow to his ego but he looked groggy, which worried her.
Was he telling her the truth about the curse?
Would he really die if she didn’t add him to the tally of notches on her bedpost? She intended to find out the answer to both of those questions.
I’m a NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY and International Best-Selling Author writing passionate paranormal romance books and series for adults.
I love to create detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! All of them alpha as you would expect in paranormal romance, and every book with a guaranteed HAPPILY FOREVER AFTER!
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Fans of paranormal romance books by authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter, Larissa Ione, Kresley Cole and Christine Feehan will love my books too.
Beatrice Callahan loves lists. Sometimes she even makes a to-do list of things she’s already done, just to go check, check, check and feel accomplished. So it’s easy to understand why, when her divorce is finally final and her ex is all moved out, Bea takes a cool, close look at her life…and makes a list.
It’s not exactly a bucket list.
It’s a love list.
Bea loves the outdoors, so she puts visit 10 National Parks on the list.
She loves animals, and on goes get a puppy.
She loves the beach, and she adds take a dream vacation to the list, and decides to do that one first. After all she’s been through and all she’s lost, she needs time to relax, rest, and reset.
On the first day she arrives in Hilton Head Island, she meets Grant Turner, the man whose house she’s renting for her fabulous beach vacation. He’s just there to make sure she settles in properly and has enough towels.
But when Bea asks for recommendations around the island, Grant quickly becomes her tour guide and then a friend and then…more than friends.
Bea turns to her lists when things get confusing and her love list morphs once again… Can she add fall in love at age 45 to the list and check it off?
The front door opened as she stood from the couch. Grant poked his head into the house. “Bea? Oh, there you are.”
“Come in,” she said.
He did, his frown appearing and deepening as he did. “You’re right. The air’s off in here.”
“Yeah.” She ran her hands through her hair, getting a momentary shock over its length. The style was still so new, she’d forgotten she didn’t have any hair to push back. Having Grant in the house brought a new kind of electricity she didn’t quite know how to hold. One couldn’t contain such a strong current anyway, but Bea really wanted to try.
Let him handle the air conditioner first, she told herself as he went through the house and out the back door. She followed him at a safe distance, still getting plenty of musky, male notes of his cologne.
Bea honestly felt like a twenty-year-old meeting the man of her dreams for the first time. The racing pulse, the nervousness in her chest that reached up and clouded her thoughts. Her life had been a whirlwind of fun when she’d first started dating Nort. New places, different friends, a world of possibilities opening before her.
She felt the exact same way now, after a couple of decades of normalcy, with predictable—code for boring—days, generic conversations, and stale kisses. Her children had brought a new challenge every single day, but her romantic relationship had chilled quietly on the back shelf while the kids grew and then moved on.
She hadn’t realized Nort had done the same, and she wondered as she watched Grant kneel in front of the air compressor at the back of the house if anything would’ve been different if she had paid attention to how unromantic their relationship had become.
Maybe he wouldn’t have cheated on you with his secretary, she thought. The oldest situation in all the books and movies she’d watched her whole life had happened to her. She’d never given any thought to how the women in those fictional stories must’ve felt—until she had to deal with the crushing reality herself.
And crush it did. Hopes, dreams, plans, lists.
But she had a new list now, and while she’d only been on Hilton Head Island for just over a day, she felt wildly behind in accomplishing the items her friends had starred for her.
Visit the beach and listen to the ocean.
Fly a kite you don’t think you can control.
She’d listened to the ocean this morning, and the waves whispered things like, Choose to be happy, and Let yourself breathe again. Not only that, but she sure had felt like she could fall in love again that morning, with the sunshine bathing her and her thoughts rumbling around how to text Grant and get another meal with him.
USA Today bestseller Elana Johnson writes adult contemporary beach romance. She is the author of over 130 books across two names, and there’s nothing better than sun, sand, and swoon-worthy kisses! Unless it’s a sweet-and-sexy cowboy – read those under her pen name of Liz Isaacson. Learn more about her sweet beach romances at www.elanajohnson.com. Join her texting group by sending the word SAND to 474747 and get exclusive sales, freebies, and more.
