"I'M PREGNANT!" Steve Saraceni couldn't believe his ears. The love-'em-and-leave-'em political lobbyist had always managed to come away from his relationships with no hurt feelings and no strings attached. But now, bright, beautiful Michelle Carey was standing in front of him saying words that put fear into his bachelor heart--he was going to be a daddy! At first Steve fought the idea, but soon his pocketful of smooth one-liners started sounding shallow. Michelle made his mind turn to putty and his heart beat faster, and suddenly he realized it was time to reexamine his priorities--fast... nine months fast, to be exact. Now, if he could only convince Michelle that he'd changed his wandering ways.

When Great-Uncle Horace brings back lost and homeless animals from his travels around the globe, it falls to Zoe and her mum, the zoo vet, to settle them into their new home. Zoe's good at this, because she can understand what they say and talk to them, too. But that's a secret. A new baby koala has arrived at the zoo, and he's very clumsy. Zoe is a bit worried he's going to hurt himself. So she comes up with a very cuddly way to keep him safe - a koala sling!

When his next-door neighbors in a quaint New England town suddenly pick up and move to a gated retired community in Florida called The Villages, Andrew Blechman is astonished by their stories, so he goes to investigate. Larger than Manhattan, with a golf course for every day of the month, two downtowns, its own newspaper, radio, and TV station, The Villages is a city of nearly one hundred thousand (and growing) missing only one thing: children.In the critically acclaimed Leisureville, Blechman delves into life in the senior utopia, offering a hilarious firsthand report on everything from ersatz nostalgia to the residents’ surprisingly active sex life. But this is more than just a romp through a retirement paradise; Blechman traces the history of the age-segregated retirement phenomenon, and travels to Arizona to show what has happened to the pioneering developments after decades of segregation. A fascinating blend of serious history, social commentary, and...

“Sometimes Beth floated. Two or three feet off the ground, and not for very long, ten seconds or so.” Gifted eleven-year-old Beth believes she can cure her hydrocephalic playmate Helen if they just chant hard enough. But are their words enough?Hailed as “remarkable and uplifting” by The Globe and Mail and published to equally glowing acclaim around the world, Barbara Gowdy’s groundbreaking collection of stories, We So Seldom Look on Love, pushes past the limits of convention into lives that are fantastic and heartbreakingly real.HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

THE BROODING BACHELORThree marriage proposals and not one walk down the aisle had Hannah Farley swearing off men forever. Until the sexiest stranger Clover, South Carolina, had ever seen turned up. With his black eyes, black T-shirt, black worn jeans and a temper to match, Matthew Granger was an irresistible challenge!But all the man did was stomp around town and ask strange questions. He wanted something--and obviously it wasn't a blushing bride.Of course, Hannah knew there were ways to tempt the truth out of the most secretive of men ....Always a Bridesmaid! -- Five unforgettable couples say "I Do"... with a little help from their friends!

Prize-winning author Benjamin Hale's fiction abounds with a love of language and a wild joy for storytelling. In prose alternately stark, lush and hallucinatory, occasionally nightmarish and often absurd, the seven stories in this collection are suffused with fear and desire, introducing us to a company of indelible characters reeling with love, jealousy, megalomania, and despair.As in his debut novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, the voices in these stories speak from the margins: a dominatrix whose longtime client, a US congressman, drops dead during a tryst in a hotel room; an addict in precarious recovery who lands a job driving a truck full of live squid; a heartbroken performance artist who attempts to eat himself to death as a work of art. From underground radicals hiding in Morocco to an aging hippy in Colorado in the summer before 9/11 to a young drag queen in New York at the cusp of the AIDS crisis, these stories rove freely across time and place,...

Clara I lost Dax Trenton years ago. No one could tell me where he’d gone, or who took him. When my father moved us out to Southern California for a job I figured that would be the end of it. That was until the day before I started college. Dax Trenton was not only standing in my kitchen — but he was living right smack next door. He taunted me with his revolving door of women. He insisted on having me up close and far away. I tried to stay away. But does a moth really stay away from the flame? Even when he does the unthinkable, when Dax pursues — I submit. Dax She doesn’t know I recognize her. I know exactly who that very well-formed woman is that teases and torments me from her next door window. Clara Parker was my breath and everything I’d ever wanted—until she betrayed me. Now I’m out for revenge, and I will have it. All over her very creamy, soft, and supple flesh. What neither of us is expecting is to fall face first in love with one another. Or maybe we were always in love, who the hell knows? I just know that when it’s all laid out, Clara, broken or whole, will be mine. What I didn’t count on was an enemy from both our pasts showing up to break us. 

Turned down for her dream job, large-animal vet Bellamy Haile is determined to drown her sorrows at the bottom of a tequila bottle—and underneath the ripped bod of the gorgeous stranger she just met in the liquor store. She'll have time enough to nurse mild regret later, when she takes over her uncle's small practice in Serenity, Georgia. Settled into an old house bequeathed by her grandmother, Bellamy doesn't expect one of her first vet calls to bring her face-to-face with her one-night stand. Eli Carter happens to live nearby...and he's more than willing to pick up where they left off. As Eli and his family welcome her into their hearts and homes, Bellamy experiences a sort of love and acceptance she's never known. But even hot nights in Eli's bed may not be enough to make her choose small-town Serenity when a second chance at her dream job comes calling. A Romantica® contemporary erotic romance from Ellora's Cave