The Game Series, #16 • Standalone • Duet • Book 1 of 2 • Hurt/Comfort • Family • Dom/Dom • Opposites AttractAsh and Nathan’s story begins on a blistering day in Philadelphia, with a rough-around-the-edges scaffolder yelling outside the office of a trauma specialist. Psychology major Nate decides to give this brute a piece of his mind.The friends who told me to move on didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. Moving on wasn’t happening—and I knew that better than anyone after being trapped at the bottom of a heartbreak for an excruciating year now, where I had nothing but crippling anxiety and our memories to torture me. Everything we’d built, the family we’d created, the pictures, that damn National Parks passport, the ring on my finger, echoes of laughter and promises… I’d been there, watching you, being your test subject, as you’d become the rope rigger you were today. With amusement glinting in your eyes, you’d called me the OG bondage bunny. Me, the primal predator, who thought about chasing brats through the woods, your bondage bunny.We’d given each other laugh lines. We’d loved so damn hard. We’d stood in front of our friends and family and vowed to fight for us forever.Almost twenty years together. Four beautiful children.What the hell happened, Nate?You didn’t have to tell me. I already knew. I was a coward. I’d let my fears hold us back.The question now was if I still stood a chance, because…frankly, living without you was impossible.I’d do anything to get you back.The Game Series is a BDSM series where romance meets the reality of kink. Sometimes we fall for someone we don’t match with, sometimes vanilla business gets in the way of kinky pleasure, and sometimes we have to compromise and push ourselves to overcome trauma and insecurities. No matter what, one thing is certain. This is not a perfect world—and maybe that’s why the happily ever after feels so good.

The Cruel Prince meets Ninth House in this dangerously romantic dark academia fantasy, where a lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister. It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family. Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad. To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs. When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.

In this stellar debut fantasy, a trickster Fox god challenges an underachieving acolyte to save herself by saving her own ancestors. But are Nesi and her new friends from the past prepared to defeat the ferocious Wolfhounds of Zemin? “If you love my worlds, you’re going to love Cahill’s: stunning imagination, daring premises, and deep character dives. A new author to watch.” —N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth series [STARRED REVIEW] “A marvelous and heartbreaking tale.” —Library Journal Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks. In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin. Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

The apocalypse will be televised! A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe. Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style. You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big. You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

It’s time to score. Zak When you fight for so long, sometimes it’s just easier to give in. I want to give in to the god before me. Sent to me from the heavens, Owen is the very definition of divine perfection. But he doesn’t know my truth. If he did, he’d know that I don’t belong in his world. The shame of seeing the disgust on his face when he figures it out keeps me running from him. Even though fate or destiny or something cruel keeps throwing us together. Maybe he’s the motivation I need to get my shit in order. But can I do it before he figures out I’m nothing but a street rat? Owen The person who was made for me turns up at the New Year’s Eve party I didn’t want to go to. We’ve been serendipitously thrown together a handful of times since and though I know Zak wants me, he keeps walking out my door and refusing to call. I can’t figure out why and it’s driving me insane. When I can’t take it anymore, I chance him thinking that I’m a stalker and show up at the address I dropped him off at last. Zak doesn’t live there but I finally learn his secret. Now all I have to do is figure out how to convince Zak that I’ll give him the world if he’ll let me. Should be as easy as winning that elusive Stanley Cup. ***

Winner of the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction! Benjamin Alire Sáenz's stories reveal how all borders—real, imagined, sexual, human, the line between dark and light, addict and straight—entangle those who live on either side. Take, for instance, the Kentucky Club on Avenida Juárez two blocks south of the Rio Grande. It's a touchstone for each of Sáenz's stories. His characters walk by, they might go in for a drink or to score, or they might just stay there for a while and let their story be told. Sáenz knows that the Kentucky Club, like special watering holes in all cities, is the contrary to borders. It welcomes Spanish and English, Mexicans and gringos, poor and rich, gay and straight, drug addicts and drunks, laughter and sadness, and even despair. It's a place of rich history and good drinks and cold beer and a long polished mahogany bar. Some days it smells like piss. "I'm going home to the other side." That's a strange statement, but you hear it all the time at the Kentucky Club. Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a highly regarded writer of fiction, poetry, and children's literature. Like these stories, his writing crosses borders and lands in our collective psyche. Poets & Writers Magazine named him one of the fifty most inspiring writers in the world. He's been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN Center's prestigious award for young adult fiction. Sáenz is the chair of the creative writing department of University of Texas at El Paso. Awards:PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionLambda Literary AwardSouthwest Book Award

"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole." As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them. In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

Carter Morgan III hates everything about South Carolina University except for one thing: hockey. As the starting netminder for the team, he lives for those moments when he can step onto the ice and between the pipes. Unfortunately, his time at school and on the team is slowly coming to an end; although he’d love nothing more than to pursue a career in the NHL, he knows better than to get his hopes up. Zeke Cassidy needs a place to live. When he answers an advertisement for a roommate, he’s not sure what he is expecting except that it isn’t Carter Morgan III. Carter is unfriendly, aloof, and they have nothing in common; even so, the pair hit it off immediately and become friends. Carter knows Zeke isn’t interested in being anything beyond friends and roommates. Unfortunately, knowing this doesn’t stop him from hoping for more, no matter how much he tries to convince himself it’s impossible.