Herein lies a raw exploration of duality, darkness, and desire. A collection of sonnets, haikus, and free verse that brings to the surface our fractured pieces and celebrates how the light and the dark blend to make us whole. An invitation to embrace the shadow and give it its rightful place as a part of the self.

According to the FBI, I was considered a serial murderer after three kills. What do they call me after fifty-two? They call me the Silencer. One final bullet would have been all it took to stop me from taking another soul, and I would have been doing Meridian City a service by pulling that trigger. An angel crying for help stopped me, and that night, I took three lives for her. Then three turned into eight. Then eight turned into twenty. Twenty turned into twenty-one. Twenty-one turned into twenty-three.

When my father passed away, I assumed my grieving would be as simple as closing a book and starting another. Only he had other plans. Leaving me his beloved tattoo shop, I’m stuck to figure out what exactly to do with it, all while being constantly reminded of him.

After losing her husband in a tragic accident, Julia Gentry is barely surviving. Raising her young daughter alone takes everything she has—and that’s not enough. She’s barely making ends meet. And then tragedy strikes again. Julia’s only hope lies in the last place she wants to look—in Crew Gentry. Her husband’s brother is broody. Irresponsible. He’s broken her heart more than once and let her down every time she’s needed him.

Everything is going to be perfect. Greyson comes home from deployment to live the life she and her husband Caden dreamed of. He has a surgical residency, and she has a psychiatric practice in the basement of their Manhattan brownstone. Caden loves his wife more than he can measure. But he starts hearing whispers. Someone else loves her. Someone else wants her. There's someone else, and though whoever's behind the whispers will move mountains to have her, Caden will move heaven and earth to keep her.

One look. One touch. One sound of her beautiful voice and I’m hooked. Like a dream I never want to wake up from, she pulls me in and wraps me around her. Consumed. Driven with need. Fueled by an unrelenting desire to make her mine. One night, I take more than she has ever given before, which only leaves me wanting more. Needing more. Craving more. She’s the one I’ve waited for my whole life.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy. His belly full of laughter, his life full of joy. Until one day, something changed; stripped his innocence away. The hole inside making space for the devil to come and play.

Once upon a time… there lived a man with a vengeance-filled heart that held too many secrets and a woman, pure of soul, intent on uncovering them. What they failed to realize is that through the storm their love would create, a legacy would be born.

Calista belongs to me... she just doesn't know it. The first time we met, I wanted her. The next time, I was obsessed. I watched her. I followed her. It only deepened my need to possess her. Once she's mine, I'm never letting her go.

I've always been a tough North Shore girl. Fighting is in my blood, survival in my DNA. But two years ago, Caden King broke me, and he has proof of it. Now he wants to blackmail me into doing a job for him. The kind that puts my chance of escaping the North Shore at risk. The kind that means betraying my own crew.

A dark and twisted maze awaits criminal psychologist London Noble when she falls for her patient, convicted serial killer, Grayson Pierce Sullivan. As she unravels the traps, her sanity tested with each game, she's forced to acknowledge the true evil in the world around her. A buried past is unearthed, and Grayson Sullivan - AKA The Angel of Maine - retaliates against the system who made him, deploying psychological warfare on the woman who initially set him free.

The average song is three and a half minutes long; those three and a half minutes could lead to a slow blink, a glimpse of the past, or catapult the soul into heart-shattering nostalgia. At the height of my career, I had the life I wanted, the life I’d always envisioned. I’d found my tempo, my rhythm. Then I received a phone call that left me off key. You see, my favorite songs had a way of playing simultaneously. I was in love with one man’s beats and another’s lyrics. But when it came to the soundtrack of a life, how could anyone choose a favorite song?

To me, that's all Lucian Aston is—a highly sophisticated, posh Englishman who stars in my daydreams. Mostly because of the way he views me as a loud, boisterous, no-nonsense surgical nurse he's stuck touring London and Paris with up to the day of his groundbreaking surgery. Until then, we've got a lot of downtime to kill. So, it's only natural that I put my best foot forward to get to know him a little better. Problem is Lucian has no intention of taking a single step in his fancy wingtips to meet me halfway. That is until we strike our deal.

I'm addicted to my stalker. He watches me at night, sneaking in through my living room window and making my blood turn to ice. I feel him all around me as chills snake down my spine. Each night he becomes bolder, getting closer and welcoming himself into my bedroom, feeding his addiction.

I see dead people, and not just the men I murdered. I'm in danger of being committed because I can’t tell what’s real from my hallucinations. Everyone thinks I’m crazy when the serial killer I jilted starts haunting my house. He assassinates any man who shows me interest, leaving their body parts under my pillow. During the day, his gaslighting destroys my peace of mind. But at night, he invades my nightmares and makes me crave the depravity.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.

Herein lies a raw exploration of duality, darkness, and desire. A collection of sonnets, haikus, and free verse that brings to the surface our fractured pieces and celebrates how the light and the dark blend to make us whole. An invitation to embrace the shadow and give it its rightful place as a part of the self.

One look. One touch. One sound of her beautiful voice and I’m hooked. Like a dream I never want to wake up from, she pulls me in and wraps me around her. Consumed. Driven with need. Fueled by an unrelenting desire to make her mine. One night, I take more than she has ever given before, which only leaves me wanting more. Needing more. Craving more. She’s the one I’ve waited for my whole life.

According to the FBI, I was considered a serial murderer after three kills. What do they call me after fifty-two? They call me the Silencer. One final bullet would have been all it took to stop me from taking another soul, and I would have been doing Meridian City a service by pulling that trigger. An angel crying for help stopped me, and that night, I took three lives for her. Then three turned into eight. Then eight turned into twenty. Twenty turned into twenty-one. Twenty-one turned into twenty-three.

I always knew darkness crept through this city; like a shadow, it never really goes away, always watching, always waiting. People sin and people kill; it's a way of life. I just never expected to be thrown into the middle of a war I had no hope of surviving. Alexander Silver is as brutal as he is beautiful. A devil in disguise. The man destined to end me. I didn't go looking for trouble, and yet it found me, nonetheless. I could either join it or let it crush me.

Meet Ophelia Hart. Lover of classic literature and unicorns. An orphan with nobody in her corner—no family, no friends. But it’s her loneliness that fuels her life’s ambition to become a social worker and help the forgotten children just like her. For a foster kid with only slightly above-average grades, it feels like a pipe dream. Except it seems that someone is looking out for Ophelia after all. When an unexpected opportunity to attend Montridge University arises, she thinks her life is finally taking a turn for the better.

He once swore he’d marry me—but now he’s desperate for my ruin. Caleb Asher has everything he could ever want. He’s rich, hotter than sin, captain of the hockey team and king of the school. My return to Emery-Rose Elite derails him. I am the walking reminder of everything that went wrong in his childhood and mine. While I long to be invisible, to slip through school unnoticed, he forced the opposite. He wants my fear, my fight, my pain, all out in the open.

A dark and twisted maze awaits criminal psychologist London Noble when she falls for her patient, convicted serial killer, Grayson Pierce Sullivan. As she unravels the traps, her sanity tested with each game, she's forced to acknowledge the true evil in the world around her. A buried past is unearthed, and Grayson Sullivan - AKA The Angel of Maine - retaliates against the system who made him, deploying psychological warfare on the woman who initially set him free.

After losing her husband in a tragic accident, Julia Gentry is barely surviving. Raising her young daughter alone takes everything she has—and that’s not enough. She’s barely making ends meet. And then tragedy strikes again. Julia’s only hope lies in the last place she wants to look—in Crew Gentry. Her husband’s brother is broody. Irresponsible. He’s broken her heart more than once and let her down every time she’s needed him.

The Lords own me, and they are never going to let me go. At least, that’s what they tell me. Lord Alaric Cross. Lord Gideon St. Claire. Lord Sterling Beauchamp. Lord Theodore Wolf. Four brooding men who make my worst nightmares seem tame. To the public, they are titled aristocrats with royal lineage. In secret, they make up the Lords of Darkness—an ancient order that rules the underbelly of England with a lethal, iron fist, leaving skeletons in their wake. And as fate would have it, my father was the fifth Lord of Darkness. His sudden death means I am now a Lady of Darkness.

Pretending to date my handsome new housemate was already a bad idea, but then I discover he’s no ordinary guy—he’s a mobster in hiding. And in this story, he’s not the hero, but the wicked villain. Rowan Miller isn’t used to hearing the word “no.” I guess when you’re 6’5, gorgeously tattooed, and sculpted like a Michelangelo masterpiece, women tend to throw themselves at you. But in a small town like Darkwater Hollow, a reputation as a womanizer will catch up with you—and your business—eventually.

Everything is going to be perfect. Greyson comes home from deployment to live the life she and her husband Caden dreamed of. He has a surgical residency, and she has a psychiatric practice in the basement of their Manhattan brownstone. Caden loves his wife more than he can measure. But he starts hearing whispers. Someone else loves her. Someone else wants her. There's someone else, and though whoever's behind the whispers will move mountains to have her, Caden will move heaven and earth to keep her.

Aileana is the king's pet. She has lived her entire life in a tower, waiting for the day she will be forced to marry his son. When that day arrives, she has a plan. Armed with her daggers and desire for freedom, she runs from the king and his deadly power. Xander has spent his entire life on the run. He doesn't need anyone or anything, certainly not a mate. But when his path crosses with a feisty elf, nothing will ever be the same again. He has secrets to keep. She wants to leave Ithenmyr behind and not look back. Fate has other plans for them both.

I'm a lass from London setting my life on track. My past left me trapped inside my mind, screaming. Can you hear it? I thought I'd be this way the rest of my days, then I found my passion. To make the world a better place. This artist is ready for new adventures, only just as things are set in play, they spiral out of control, and the one person who means the most may not survive. As my world careens, strong arms envelop me the same time sweet whispers lend their comfort. Only now monsters lurk within the shadows waiting to strike. Will I come out unscathed?

Torren King is rock-and-roll’s broodiest bachelor. Mysterious, moody, and coveted by nearly everyone. But to me, he’s just the sad boy who set fire to my heart, then reduced me to ashes in the desert. For four sweltering nights, I burned for him, and he conquered my heart one whispered lyric at a time. But on the fifth night, he shattered me in the way only a flawless rock god can: irreparably, and with devastating finesse.

It was supposed to be a simple weekend away to forget the heartache caused by my cheating husband. But the man sitting next to me in 1B has different plans. Cash’s whiskey-colored eyes and easy smile beg me to dance beneath the stars, kiss in the moonlight, and walk hand in hand down the streets of Boston. Unfortunately, life has other plans because I’m still married, and Cash James is the billionaire playboy standing between me and my dream promotion.