From USA TODAY bestselling author Emily McIntire comes an angsty, second chance romance and the first interconnected standalone in The Sugarlake series. Alina Carson meets Chase Adams when she’s eleven years old, after he moves in down the street carrying nothing but a chip on his shoulder and dimples in his cheeks. Immediately she falls, loving him before she even knows what loving is. But becoming best friends with Chase’s little sister means that he’s off-limits, no matter how much their connection screams for something more. Chase never cared much for following the rules. Abandoned by everyone who was supposed to love him, he’s broken and insecure, choosing to push others away before they have a chance to hurt him. But there’s something about the girl with golden hair, and before he can stop himself, he’s sneaking through her window, whispering his deepest secrets beneath her glow ‘n stick stars. As time goes on and they get older, he decides to give their love a chance, no matter what anyone else thinks. But old habits die hard, and when tragedy strikes, Chase is back to doing what he does best. Ruining everything. Chase disappears, and years pass, leaving Alina with no choice but to pick up her broken pieces and move on. Until one day, he’s back. All grown up and taking over his family’s business. When Alina and Chase are thrown together and forced to work in the same building, old feelings resurface, and Alina quickly realizes that Chase is on a mission, determined to right the wrongs of his past. Starting with her. **** *Beneath the Stars is the first interconnected standalone in The Sugarlake series. It contains mature and graphic content. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. Full list of TW can be found on author's website.*

Then, Earth Swallowed Ocean is an intensely dark romance and erotic horror set in post WW2 Appalachia. After a violent tragedy, Sadie makes a deal with the Devil: if she exchanges an evil soul for her own within a month, she can have a second chance at life. Deeply empathetic and jarred by her experience, she makes her way through Appalachia with only her father’s truck and a coffee tin of dollar bills. But she doesn’t need to travel very far to find evil. In fact, he greets her at an isolated gas station off of a rural state highway. Ridge is as beautiful as he is deadly, and Sadie has stumbled into his hunting grounds. Soon they begin a treacherous game of cat-and-mouse (or wolf-and-human) that turns them both feral for one another. When Sadie seeks shelter with none other than Ridge’s veteran older brother Wright, tensions escalate towards explosion. And, frankly, demonic levels of horniness. In this multi-POV story of revenge, lust, family ties, and sacrifice, three characters are pushed to walk the knife’s edge of humanity and hell, of saviors and sinners, of fated and fatal love.