Toni Sands excites with her trademark other-worldly romance. Known for her ability to transport the reader to other times, Toni Sands takes a trip to an Huxley-esque future. Twenty Fourth century Zia lives a pampered life below ground. Her commune controls emotions and reproduction, allowing only gentle petting until she's selected for sex with hunky stud Conall. She visits his strange world where she and her 'wild man' find passion so potent that they yearn to see each other again. A tempestuous second meeting convinces them they belong together but Zia must re-enter her world. A vital discovery prompts her to escape before it's too late, despite risking the commune's fury. Will the prospect of bliss within Conall's arms give Zia the courage to take what she really wants?

Toni Sands excites with her trademark other-worldly romance. Known for her ability to transport the reader to other times, Toni Sands takes a trip to an Huxley-esque future. Twenty Fourth century Zia lives a pampered life below ground. Her commune controls emotions and reproduction, allowing only gentle petting until she’s selected for sex with hunky stud Conall. She visits his strange world where she and her ‘wild man’ find passion so potent that they yearn to see each other again. A tempestuous second meeting convinces them they belong together but Zia must re-enter her world. A vital discovery prompts her to escape before it’s too late, despite risking the commune’s fury. Will the prospect of bliss within Conall’s arms give Zia the courage to take what she really wants?

Why the modern world forgot how to sleep Why is sleep frustrating for so many people? Why do we spend so much time and money managing and medicating it, and training ourselves and our children to do it correctly? In Wild Nights, Benjamin Reiss finds answers in sleep's hidden history -- one that leads to our present, sleep-obsessed society, its tacitly accepted rules, and their troubling consequences. Today we define a good night's sleep very narrowly: eight hours in one shot, sealed off in private bedrooms, children apart from parents. But for most of human history, practically no one slept this way. Tracing sleep's transformation since the dawn of the industrial age, Reiss weaves together insights from literature, social and medical history, and cutting-edge science to show how and why we have tried and failed to tame sleep. In lyrical prose, he leads readers from bedrooms and laboratories to factories and battlefields to Henry David Thoreau's famous cabin at Walden Pond, telling the stories of troubled sleepers, hibernating peasants, sleepwalking preachers, cave-dwelling sleep researchers, slaves who led nighttime uprisings, rebellious workers, spectacularly frazzled parents, and utopian dreamers. We are hardly the first people, Reiss makes clear, to chafe against our modern rules for sleeping. A stirring testament to sleep's diversity, Wild Nights offers a profound reminder that in the vulnerability of slumber we can find our shared humanity. By peeling back the covers of history, Reiss recaptures sleep's mystery and grandeur and offers hope to weary readers: as sleep was transformed once before, so too can it change today.

In thirteenth-century China, a Daoist monk named Gao Daokuan (1195-1277) composed a series of illustrated poems and accompanying verse commentary known as the Daoist Horse Taming Pictures. In this annotated translation and study, Louis Komjathy argues that this virtually unknown text offers unique insights into the transformative effects of Daoist contemplative practice. Taming the Wild Horse examines Gao's illustrated poems in terms of monasticism and contemplative practice, as well as the multivalent meaning of the "horse" in traditional Chinese culture and the consequences for both human and nonhuman animals. The Horse Taming Pictures consist of twelve poems, ten of which are equine-centered. They develop the metaphor of a "wild" or "untamed" horse to represent ordinary consciousness, which must be reined in and harnessed through sustained self-cultivation, especially meditation. The compositions describe stages on the Daoist contemplative path. Komjathy provides opportunities for reflection on contemplative practice in general and Daoist meditation in particular, which may lead to a transpersonal way of perceiving and being.

Death is a way of life outside of the safety of Inner Tulsa, and Jade means to keep flipping Mother Nature off until old age claims her. With one eye always on the sky, the last thing she needs is a pack of bounty hunters out for her living head. With no idea of why anyone would want her, her wits might keep her free, assuming she can resist the charming lures of Sandro, one of the men out to claim her as his own. Left with the choice of being the evening snack of a tornado or taking shelter with the bounty hunter, she does what she does best: she lives on the edge. Striking a bargain with the handsome bounty hunter buys her another day of life, but it also dumps her into the heart of a sinister plot, one meant to enslave the residents of the storm-tossed city—and the others brave and foolish enough to call the Alley home.

Get swept away by daring romance in the first novel in the Claimed by the Highlander series. In the Highlands of Scotland, plays for power are fought without rules, treachery and intrigue hold court, and, in one woman’s heart, danger stirs as relentlessly as passion... Wrongfully accused of murder and left to die in a hellish Highland dungeon, Ana Bisset has lost all hope of freedom. But the beautiful healer’s luck takes an unexpected turn when a hooded stranger appears as her rescuer. After a harrowing escape, Ana settles alone in a quiet village where no one knows her past or her reputation. The last thing she ever expects is to meet her mysterious savior again... Niall MacCurran is no hero, but a warrior on a dangerous mission to expose a threat to the realm. After his decision to free Ana, he now realizes that it is he who needs her help—willing or no—to advance his quest. But his growing feelings for the delicate yet resilient beauty soon jeopardize their safety—and not even Ana’s healing gifts may be enough to protect their love, or their lives.

HawkSix months ago my whole world fell apart. I lost everything I thought I had in the blink of an eye. But none of it was ever mine, not really.Not sure I wanted it to be.There's only one thing I want to be mine now, and it's a woman who didn't bat an eye at taking me down.But being around me isn't safe. King's back with a vengeance, ready to bring the fires of hell down on us for what we did, and his sights are set on what matters to each of us most.For me, that's Shelly.ShellyHawk isn't my normal kind of man. I'm not sure he's anyone's normal kind of man.He's huge. And snarly. And wild.And damned if I can stay away from him.He's probably bad for me and I don't care. I've played it safe my whole life and now I'm ready for a little danger in my days.But the danger surrounding Hawk isn't exactly what I had in mind. Hawk Wild is a suspense-filled MC novel with absolutely NO cheating and a guaranteed HEA.