“Charming. . . . A moving testament to the diversity and depths of love.” —Publishers Weekly You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be swept away—in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. Here are 175 true stories—honest, funny, tender and wise—each as moving as a lyric poem, all told in no more than one hundred words. An electrician lights up a woman’s life, a sister longs for her homeless brother, strangers dream of what might have been. Love lost, found and reclaimed. Love that’s romantic, familial, platonic and unexpected. Most of all, these stories celebrate love as it exists in real life: a silly remark that leads to a lifetime together, a father who struggles to remember his son, ordinary moments that burn bright.

Dr. RomanceTM's Guide to Finding Love Today Muffinhaven Press 2018, ISBN-13: 978-1722976415 ISBN-10: 1722976411 "I learned so many skills from reading this Guide. When I went out this weekend I was SO aware of going out to have a good time instead of going out in hopes of 'meeting someone.' Hung out with friends, did the things I like to do, stayed up late, went out to breakfast and best of all no expectations other than to have a good time. And I did!" - Scott Whether you are dating as an adult, a single parent, a widow/er or a senior and have experienced loss, or even if you have given up on relationships, or been single for a while, or are new to dating, this guide will tell you what you need to know to draw on your own life experience and knowhow and apply those skills to the dating process. - If you are single as a result of a divorce or an acrimonious breakup, you can learn to avoid repeating old mistakes. - As a single parent, you'll learn how to balance dating and children. - If you're dating a single parent, you'll learn the best ways to cope with the complicated dynamics. - If you've lost a beloved spouse or partner; here's how to complete your healing and move on into a comfortable connection with new people. - If you fear you're too old to find love today, this guide will help you find appropriate, comfortable and fun ways to open up to new experiences with old friends and new connections. - If you have survived difficult relationship experiences and given up on relationships altogether, I'll show you how to come out of isolation and make a new, much more successful start. - If you have been single for a while, the information, facts and guidelines here can get you past your fear and into a more satisfying social life. Dr. RomanceTM's Guide to Finding Love Today covers all the basic information you need to know to successfully re-start dating. You'll find timely, helpful for a single person dating today. What you can learn from this book: What to do with the baggage from your past How to find the right kind of person to date Dating safety and etiquette How to handle friends, roommates, parents, and children What to do if it becomes a relationship What to do if it doesn't work out What to do the night before What to do the morning after What to say in person, by text or email, or on the phone How to handle social media How dating sites work; and how to use them

The #1 New York Times Bestseller “An engaging look at the often head-scratching, frequently infuriating mating behaviors that shape our love lives.” —Refinery 29 A hilarious, thoughtful, and in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance from Aziz Ansari, the star of Master of None and one of this generation’s sharpest comedic voices At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.

“Brilliant, hilarious, and oh-so-romantic.” —BuzzFeed “Swoony, steamy.” —Entertainment Weekly The Hating Game meets Booksmart by way of Morgan Matson in this unforgettable romantic comedy about two rival overachievers whose relationship completely transforms over the course of twenty-four hours. Today, she hates him. It’s the last day of senior year. Rowan Roth and Neil McNair have been bitter rivals for all of high school, clashing on test scores, student council elections, and even gym class pull-up contests. While Rowan, who secretly wants to write romance novels, is anxious about the future, she’d love to beat her infuriating nemesis one last time. Tonight, she puts up with him. When Neil is named valedictorian, Rowan has only one chance at victory: Howl, a senior class game that takes them all over Seattle, a farewell tour of the city she loves. But after learning a group of seniors is out to get them, she and Neil reluctantly decide to team up until they’re the last players left—and then they’ll destroy each other. As Rowan spends more time with Neil, she realizes he’s much more than the awkward linguistics nerd she’s sparred with for the past four years. And, perhaps, this boy she claims to despise might actually be the boy of her dreams. Tomorrow…maybe she’s already fallen for him.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick “There is so much to relate to and throughout the novel, there is a sharp feminist edge. Loved this one, and you will too.”—New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay The New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding Date serves up a novel about what happens when a public proposal doesn't turn into a happy ending, thanks to a woman who knows exactly how to make one on her own... When someone asks you to spend your life with him, it shouldn't come as a surprise—or happen in front of 45,000 people. When freelance writer Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, his man bun, and his bros, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn't the hard part—they've only been dating for five months, and he can’t even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans... At the game with his sister, Carlos Ibarra comes to Nik’s rescue and rushes her away from a camera crew. He’s even there for her when the video goes viral and Nik’s social media blows up—in a bad way. Nik knows that in the wilds of LA, a handsome doctor like Carlos can't be looking for anything serious, so she embarks on an epic rebound with him, filled with food, fun, and fantastic sex. But when their glorified hookups start breaking the rules, one of them has to be smart enough to put on the brakes...

The romantic lives of emerging adults are often baffling and contradictory. While they prize committed and authentic relationships, they appear to be reluctant participants. They prefer to foster ambiguity in their romantic relationships, even as they value honesty and clarity. There is, at once, a valuing of long-term as well as a decentering of romantic relationships. Although our current understanding is incomplete, this text grapples with these perplexing questions. In attempting to understand emerging adults and their romantic lives, researchers must consider the challenging economic conditions in which today's emerging adults find themselves. With an emphasis on commitment and sacrifice and their centrality to one's readiness for a long-term relationship, this book reviews the main milestones in transitioning from an "I" identity to a "we" identity and discusses the concepts of choice and risk. Further, the book examines structures such as asymmetrically committed relationships, cohabitation, and marriage through the lens of commitment, risk, and risk avoidance. Probing extensively into the romantic lives of emerging adults -- their attitudes, values and expectations -- this text examines some of the developmental and contextual realities against which romantic attachment must be viewed. Critical topics such as casual and sexual experiences and relationships, integration of work and love, breakups, marriage, going solo, and social media and its influences are considered. The commonality and the individuality of the emerging adults presented throughout this text contribute to a rich understanding of emerging adults and how they live and love.

Romance Writing explores the changing nature of both the romance genre and the discourse of romantic love from the seventeenth century to the present day. Indeed, it is one of the first studies to approach romantic love as both genre and discourse in more than sixty years. Faced with the challenge of writing a cultural history for what is commonly understood to be one of lifes most universal, a-historical and cross-cultural phenomena, Lynne Pearce has invoked the concept of the gift to calculate loves added value at different cultural/historical moments. Building upon those philosophical traditions which have argued for the powerfully transformative nature of romantic love, Pearce shows how in the history of literature lovers have utilized its spark to change not only themselves, but also their worlds, through acts of creativity and heroism. The gift of love ranges from the simple gift of a name in the seventeenth century, through notions of immortality, self-sacrifice and selfhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through to the liberating temporal and spatial dislocations of the postmodern age. The opening chapter, The Alchemy of Love, also undertakes an in-depth engagement of the changing nature, and meaning, of romantic love. Providing a judicious blend of close reading and cultural history, Romance Writing will be essential reading for undergraduate students as well as postgraduates and scholars working in the field, while also offering much of interest to the general reader.

Read this steamy mafia series by dark romance author Ivy Thorn. For fans of dark romance authors Rina Kent, Naomi West, and Brook Wilder... Efrem is older and a deadly criminal—everything my parents despise—but he’s all I want. I gave up everything to be with him. My parents are strangers to me now. But if that was the price of dating Efrem. I would gladly pay it. Efrem said he loves me, that he would do anything for me. But he betrayed me. And his betrayal cost me dearly. In an instant, I see New York’s dark underbelly for the ugly hell it is. However I’m determined to make things right, to protect the people I love and reform the bonds I so carelessly broke. But everything’s different now. I can no longer trust the people closest to me. And nothing is as it seems. Am I too late to redeem my terrible mistakes? And now that I know the stakes, what will my vow of sin truly cost me? Sinner's Vow is the first installment of the Vow of Sin series. The reading order is as follows: Sinner's Obsession, Sinner's Vow, and Sinner's Revenge. The series is complete!

I was ready to propose and I got upstaged by a snake. Not a real one. My bandmate. A case of mistaken identity almost derailed my proposal to Amy, but in the end, love prevailed. And my hand hurts from the punch, but it was worth it. She’s worth it. But I really need an ice pack now. Though a kiss from Amy and that yes are even better. Random Acts of Yes is a short story in the Random Acts world, with drummer Sam Hinton proposing to his longtime girlfriend, Amy. Enjoy this short, sweet, and a little steamy peek at the gang as the Random series continues. Topics: contemporary romance, romantic comedy, new adult romance, rockstar romance, rock star romance, coming of age romance, erotic romance, seductive story, hot romance, women's fiction, women's romance, bbw romance, college romance, contemporary woman julia kent, julia kent romance **This story originally appeared in the LOL vol. 2 boxed set** The book was originally published as Randomly Ever After: Sam and Amy

“Her energy level is higher than a charged particle.” —People “Her manner is down-to-earth and reassuring.... She tries to make people feel better, value themselves, trust their instincts.” —Ladies’ Home Journal In today’s world of instant gratification people have lost the knack for keeping romance alive. Rather than take the time to rekindle the flame that once burned so brightly, we let the fire die out, thinking we’ll find something more lasting with someone else. Often, the result is that we find ourselves repeating the same pattern over and over again or giving up on romance altogether. But true romance never really dies it only goes into hibernation, waiting for somebody to wake it up. Are you bored with your relationship? Does your love life seem routine? Don’t throw in the towel! Let “Americas star sexologist” (TV Guide), Dr. Ruth Westheimer shows you how to inspire a romantic Renaissance in your relationship. With the help of self-exams and easy exercises, she shows you how to: Rate the romance in your relationship Renew respect and commitment Spice up your sex life Find time for Romance in everyday situations Plan a romantic getaway Full of straight-talk about real-life relationship issues and peppered with helpful and inspiring anecdotes from her years couples counseling, Rekindling Romance For Dummies helps you: Find the sources of stress in your relationship and address them constructively Discover the importance of communication in overcoming potential sore spots Understand the roles that conflict and mutual respect play in a successful relationship Use proven techniques for strengthening your relationship, including renewal ceremonies, romantic escapes, and more Overcome boredom and insecurity in the bedroom and supercharge your sex-life together, well into your golden years Work through common stresses that can afflict romance, including financial conflict, pregnancy, and childrearing Recognize how common medical problems can impact the state of your relationship and know when to seek professional help Don’t let a good thing fade away. Let Dr. Ruth show you how to “embrace the art of romance” and keep the fire burning in your relationship.