It started as playful, if barbed, banter before rising to a fateful wager with a most notorious rake—the Captain of the Guard, Jalal al-Khoury—who may have finally met his match in a lovely, if haughty, handmaiden, Despina. But she, too, seems to have met her match in the handsome Jalal. What begins as a tempestuous battle of will and wit in short order becomes a passionate affair spurred on by tragedy of the worst kind.

In the little city of Flint, MI, the good die young and the people left standing are the grimiest of characters. With reign over the city's drug trade, Benjamin Atkins made sure that his precious daughter, Raven, was secluded from the grit that the city had to offer. But when Raven's young heart gets claimed by Mizan, a stick-up kid in search of a come-up, there's nothing Benjamin can do about losing her to the streets. She chooses love over loyalty and runs off with Mizan, but her new role as wifey soon proves to be more than she can handle. Puppy love always feels right, but things turn stale, and she soon finds that everyone she loves has disappeared. All she has is Mizan, but when hugs and kisses turn to bloody lips and black eyes, she realizes that Mizan is not who she thought he was. Raven becomes desperate for a way out, but this time, Daddy can't save her. Every time she finds the courage to leave, fear convinces her to stay. Like a moth to a flame, Raven is drawn to Mizan, even though she knows he'll be the death of her. When the hood life she chose becomes unbearable and the only way out is in a coffin, what will she do?

Instant New York Times Bestseller The much anticipated sequel to the breathtaking The Wrath and the Dawn, lauded by Publishers Weekly as "a potent page-turner of intrigue and romance." I am surrounded on all sides by a desert. A guest, in a prison of sand and sun. My family is here. And I do not know whom I can trust. In a land on the brink of war, Shahrzad has been torn from the love of her husband Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan. She once believed him a monster, but his secrets revealed a man tormented by guilt and a powerful curse—one that might keep them apart forever. Reunited with her family, who have taken refuge with enemies of Khalid, and Tariq, her childhood sweetheart, she should be happy. But Tariq now commands forces set on destroying Khalid's empire. Shahrzad is almost a prisoner caught between loyalties to people she loves. But she refuses to be a pawn and devises a plan. While her father, Jahandar, continues to play with magical forces he doesn't yet understand, Shahrzad tries to uncover powers that may lie dormant within her. With the help of a tattered old carpet and a tempestuous but sage young man, Shahrzad will attempt to break the curse and reunite with her one true love.

'A startling novel of ferocious psychological acumen, which, to my mind, deserves a large, international readership... very much a book for our times' Siri Hustvedt, from the introduction 'A literary giant in Sweden, Dagerman conjures a Strindbergian atmosphere of shadowy menace in his brief, intense novel, A Moth to a Flame... This moody, death-haunted novel is well worth reading' Evening Standard In 1940s Stockholm, a young man named Bengt falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers that his father had a mistress. Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother's memory, but he soon finds himself drawn into a fevered and forbidden affair with the very woman he set out to destroy . . . Written in a taut, restrained style, A Moth to a Flame is an intense exploration of heartache and fury, desperation and illicit passion. Set against a backdrop of the moody streets of Stockholm and the Hitchcockian shadows in the woods and waters of Sweden's remote islands, this is a psychological masterpiece by one of Sweden's greatest writers. 'Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion' Graham Greene 'Dagerman can evoke such emotion in a single sentence' Colm Tóibín 'There are some writers (Kafka and Lorca immediately spring to mind) who come to enjoy the status of saint; their lives and deaths constitute statements about existence and its proper priorities. A saint of this type is the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman' Times Literary Supplement 'This searing tale of bereavement and loathing feels all too relevant today' Guardian

Four, Ever, and the rest of the Blackwood Keep crew are back in this second installment! THE FLAME Here lies Louchana Valentine. She was a homeless, orphaned virgin. I never cared what my gravestone would say until I landed in deep with a powerful gangster. Lucky for me, my best friend happens to be ruthless too. I should feel guilty that he's forced to turn on the man who's been a father to him. Except I've always known that Wren's soul wasn't as black as he claimed. He was good.He was beautiful.He was mine.He just didn't know it yet. And with Wren keeping me safe, I've got time left to rewrite the end of my story. But if he has his way, virgin is already carved in stone. THE MOTH I've never known anyone as alluring as Lou. Or as frustrating. Since the night she saved my life and stole my wallet for her troubles, I couldn't stay away. She became my onus.My light.My...anyway. With nowhere to run, I'm forced to trust someone I never expected. At least with Lou safe in Blackwood Keep--far away from me--I'll die with my conscience intact. Because she no longer looks at me with friendship in her eyes. Those iridescent blues shine with a different need entirely, and I've never been able to deny her. Alternate Cover Edition. The Moth and the Flame is an interconnected standalone and book two of the When Rivals Play series. It's recommended you start with The Peer and the Puppet. Content suitable for ages 18+.

Angst! Adrenaline! Sexy times! The Peer and the Puppet had me salivating for MORE! My favorite since Fear Me. -- Tijan, NYT Bestselling author THE PUPPET Borrow the bike. Win the race. Collect the cash. It should've been an easy job. Ran out of town with a broken leg and a lawsuit, my mother's latest flame swoops in like a knight in gilded armor. Blackwood Keep is a place I don't belong, and I'm not the only one who knows. To the boy across the hall, my savior's only son, I'm a stray looking for a bone. He's lord of the manor. King of the academy. And number one on my shit list. THE PEER I have no intentions of becoming a happy family with the social climber and her wild daughter. A bottle of Jameson and a cracked skull gets my problem shipped to reform school, but I didn't bank on her returning. Four's out to get even, and she almost had the perfect plan: expose the privileged kid moonlighting as a gangbanger. She's smart, but she'll have to be smarter. Sending her away won't be good enough this time. I'm going to have to tame the little troublemaker. To the girl across the hall, the one without a name, I'm nothing without my silver spoon. She's lady of the trailer park. Queen of the swamps. And my new favorite pastime. Alternate Cover Edition. The Peer and the Puppet is an interconnected standalone and book one of the When Rivals Play series. Content suitable for 18+.

I was almost killed by a delusional murderer five months ago. Since then, the recurring nightmares, creepy hallucinations and overpowering fear are gone. That's good, right? I mean, no one in their right minds wants to feel like that. I am starting to wonder if I'm in my right mind anymore... When a lady in my neighborhood died, I couldn't help but stick my nose in, to see what happened. I should just get on with things-I've got some new friends, and a cool boy named Chris has taken an interest in me. Everyone is telling me to just leave this weird murder alone. But I can't stop myself. The more I find out about her death, the more twisted everything is. I think there's a predator in Narrowdale. And now it's hunting me...What have I gotten myself into?

"[This] is a book of great richness, beauty and power and thus very difficult to do justice to in a brief review. . . . The violence is sometimes unbearable, the language rarely less than superb. Dillard's description of the moth's death makes Virginia Woolf's go dim and Edwardian. . . . Nature seen so clear and hard that the eyes tear. . . . A rare and precious book." — Frederick Buechner, New York Times Book Review A profound book about the natural world—both its beauty and its cruelty—from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard In 1975 Dillard took up residence on an island in Puget Sound, in a wooden room furnished with "one enormous window, one cat, one spider, and one person." For the next two years she asked herself questions about time, reality, sacrifice, death, and the will of God. In Holy the Firm, she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, about a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, about a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things—rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire. Here is a lyrical gift to any reader who has ever wondered how best to live with grace and wonder in the natural world.

Mills & Boon proudly presents THE SARA CRAVEN COLLECTION. Sara’s powerful and passionate romances have captivated and thrilled readers all over the world for five decades making her an international bestseller.