Rigg is well trained at keeping secrets. Only his father knows the truth about Rigg’s strange talent for seeing the paths of people’s pasts. But when his father dies, Rigg is stunned to learn just how many secrets Father had kept from him - secrets about Rigg’s own past, his identity, and his destiny. And when Rigg discovers that he has the power not only to see the past, but also to change it, his future suddenly becomes anything but certain.

Arthur lives with his father, a fallen but proud former noble, in Border Village #49, along with the other good folks condemned to toil in service to the Baron. But Arthur has an edge: a stolen heart card that secretly fell into his possession, thanks to a dragon. It’s a priceless source of power for the Baron and the tyrant will kill to get it back. Invaluable, too, to a young man of spellcasting ambitions.

While listening to several short stories, you will come across a series of emotions, highlights, and communication differences that will set these tales apart from others, still allowing you to bask of the generous light of the genre you are attached to.

I wouldn't say these short stories are steamy hot in a sexual sense, but the romantic scenes are definitely filled with some flirting, sexual tension, and suggestive, humorous comments. As the author tried to keep it all clean to target a specific audience, you'll find that even the most trivial circumstances can create the most interesting and fun love stories. Fighting, miscommunication, awkwardness, and status add to the mixture, as the characters mingle and sometimes remain single.

In exchange for help escaping her long and wrongful imprisonment, embittered magical healer Blackthorn has vowed to set aside her bid for vengeance against the man who destroyed all that she once held dear. Followed by a former prison mate, a silent hulk of a man named Grim, she travels north to Dalriada. There she'll live on the fringe of a mysterious forest, duty bound for seven years to assist anyone who asks for her help. Oran, crown prince of Dalriada, has waited anxiously for the arrival of his future bride, Lady Flidais.

In publishing-speak, here's what we at the LQ office sometimes describe as the Queer lovechild of Sholem Aleichem and Philip Roth: Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.

Isekaied into a level 86 Necromancer-King's body, I leave his life of war behind in favor of peace in the idyllic Borderlands. Upon meeting the elven maiden Narya Summerdew and a razor-toothed half-elven child, the three of us form an unlikely improvised family in the hopes of remaining anonymous. As we embrace the eccentric community of Gelderham, we find happiness in simplicity…But my past casts shadows on our growing bonds. How will Narya react when she learns her new husband was once the evil king set on destroying her people?

Strong-willed and full of hope, Leo strives to learn more of the magic he has read so much about. He's heard of invisible links in his world, and hidden rifts to other realms filled with creatures and stones of power. But Leo's family is stuck in an impoverished city. He performs backbreaking farm work beside his older brother, a rebellious and cunning thief, but nonetheless a brother whom Leo would trust with his life. Leo believes everything will change for the better when he begins work as a bookbinder and finally leaves the dreadful farm.

Three years ago, Ylfing watched his master-Chant tear a nation apart with nothing but the words on his tongue. Now Ylfing is all alone in a new realm, brokenhearted and grieving - but a Chant in his own right, employed as a translator to a wealthy merchant of luxury goods, Sterre de Waeyer. But Ylfing has been struggling to come to terms with what his master did, with the audiences he's been alienated from, and with the stories he can no longer trust himself to tell. That is, until Ylfing's employer finds out what he is, what he does, and what he knows.

Abandoned at birth and raised to be an assassin by the mysterious Diyu Brotherhood, Danzen has had enough of the life of a contract killer. But escaping his past is as impossible as running from his inner demons....In the remote and mystical Suja Valley, the farthest corner of the known world, it’s only a matter of time before trouble comes hunting him...or he spills a drop of his own blood.

Danger is never far from Audra’s family farm in Lithuania. She always avoids the occupying Russian Cossack soldiers, who insist that everyone must become Russian - they have banned Lithuanian books, religion, culture, and even the language. But Audra knows her parents are involved in something secret and perilous. When Cossacks arrive abruptly at their door, Audra’s parents insist that she flee, taking with her an important package and instructions for where to deliver it. But escape means abandoning her parents to a terrible fate.

From the author of The Lost Girls of Paris comes a riveting tale of courage and unlikely friendship during World War II - now a New York Times best seller.

In 1954, in a remote South American village, a four-year-old girl was abducted and then abandoned deep in the Colombian rainforest. So begins the incredible true story of Marina Chapman, who went on to spend several years alone in the jungle, her only family a troop of capuchin monkeys. Using instinct to guide her, she copied everything they did and soon learned to fend for herself. At around 10 years old, a completely feral Marina was returned to civilisation by hunters, who sold her as a slave to a brothel. Beaten daily and groomed to be a prostitute, she escaped - to live the perilous existence of a Colombian city street kid.

Hetty Rhodes and her husband, Benjy, were Conductors on the Underground Railroad, ferrying dozens of slaves to freedom with daring, cunning, and magic that draws its power from the constellations. With the war over, those skills find new purpose as they solve mysteries and murders that White authorities would otherwise ignore. In the heart of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward, everyone knows that when there’s a strange death or magical curses causing trouble, Hetty and Benjy are the only ones who can solve the case.

They call him the Blackspine. The one rebel the Councilate couldn’t kill, even as they crushed his people. The one beggar no gang would touch, for fear of his power. If only they knew. Tai Kulga has survived this long by fighting against his power and the madness that comes with it. The last time he gave in, it killed his best friend - so every day he doesn’t is a victory, now.