Showing results by author "Ruby" in All Categories

Twelve humans are left stranded on a wintry alien planet. I'm one of them. Yay, me. In order to survive, we have to take on a symbiont that wants to rewire our bodies to live in this brutal place. I like to call it a cootie. And my cootie's a jerk, because it also thinks I'm the mate to the biggest, surliest alien of the group.

Life on a farm planet at the edge of the universe can be dangerous for a human woman alone. That's why I need a husband. Any husband. Unfortunately, all the men I approach keep running off. So I hire a bounty hunter to kidnap me someone capable and strong, someone who will scare off the creeps who are trying to move in on my territory. It'll be a marriage of convenience only. I should have been a little more specific about who I wanted, though....

Would life be better without alcohol? It’s the nagging question more and more of us are finding harder to ignore, whether we have a “problem” with alcohol or not. After all, we yoga. We green juice. We meditate. We self-care. And yet, come the end of a long work day, the start of a weekend...

This workbook is a guide on how to drop anchor when life, and the world around you, gets too daunting. It's filled with exercises and information for when you're suddenly forced to confront the hard truths or as I like to call them, the BIG SIX realities - difficult emotions, uncertainty, loneliness, change, dissatisfaction and death. It isn't just about how to get through a pandemic.... Or the post-pandemic fall-out. It is a WAKE-UP call. One that will increase your awareness of every moment through mindfulness.

"Resonance" is supposed to be a dream - that's when your soulmate is chosen for you. And everyone on the ice planet has hooked up with a big, hunky soulmate of their own...except me. So do I want a mate? Heck, yeah. More than anything, all I've ever wanted is to be loved by someone.

Resonance. It's a given on the ice planet, forced upon you by the parasitic symbiont called the "khui". With resonance, a guy and a girl are paired up because they'll make great babies. It's a survival mechanism necessary for this sparsely populated world we're stranded on. Everyone expects resonance to happen when 20 newcomers are dropped onto the frosty world. I doubt anyone expects the gorgeous golden god named Ashtar to resonate to someone like me, though. But resonance seems to think we'd be great together. And Ashtar does, too.

Mercedes Midnight is a reaper in debt with exactly one year left before hell comes to collect. Lucy Corvine, the devil’s daughter and revered professor, is imprisoned by a contract she never agreed to. For nine long years, Midnight scoured graveyards and grimoires for a loophole, while Lucy wore a gilded smile and dreamed of revolt… Until a chance encounter sparks a pact neither of them can afford to break.

The ice planet has given me a second lease on life, so I'm thrilled to be here. Sure, there's no cheeseburgers, but I'm healthy and ready to be a productive member of the small tribe. What I didn't anticipate was that there'd be a savage stranger waiting nearby, watching me. And when he takes me captive, the unthinkable happens . . . I resonate to him. Resonance means mating and children . . . but I don't know if this guy's ever been around anyone before. He's truly a barbarian in all ways, right down to clubbing me over the head and claiming me as his own.

Brought to you by Penguin. Dear Reader, Checking into a mental clinic wasn't exactly on my radar in 2022. Writing about it wasn't either. But here we are. I spent a lifetime trying to create a 'front' to give everyone the illusion that all is well. It wasn't, and it isn't. Now I look back and I...

I might be the only unmated female in my tribe, but it doesn't mean I've given my heart. I'm waiting. I want resonance, and I won't settle for anything less. But when an alien ship lands and a handsome stranger steps out, I know he's the one. His name's Mardok, and he's fascinatingly different - and distractingly appealing. But Mardok can't stay on the ice planet, and he says he can take me with him.  

It's hard being the most popular girl on the ice planet. The alien men are falling all over themselves to impress me in the hopes that I'll take them to my furs. But they don't know my secrets - none of them do. And they don't realize that behind my smile, I just wish they'd go away. I don't want any of them. I want someone else - someone with a gorgeous blue body, big horns, and the most intense gaze ever. He's the only one that knows the truth. Maybe with him, I can work through my fears of the past...but I'm pretty sure he wants more than just friendship.

Rogue slavers have landed on the ice planet and captured the tribe. The only ones not snatched? Me, a walking human motormouth with no skill except that of incoherent babbling, and Warrek, who's as silent as he is attractive. Two more unlikely people have never been paired together. Saving the others is either going to bring us closer together - or drive us completely apart. I'm pretty sure the feelings I'm having for my alien companion are as unrequited as they are inappropriate, but since we aren't going to make it out alive, what harm is one teeny, tiny kiss?

Valessa is in danger. Her town has been captured by Aventinian raiders, the women taken, and now she's on a ship destined for nowhere good. But when a terrifying, four-armed sea-ogre pirate boards the ships and demands compensation, Valessa's luck changes.

From amnesiac vampire slayers to fallen angels, space vampires to cursed tattoo artists, sleep paralysis demons to ancient wish-granting entities—six stories prove that even monsters deserve a happily ever after. Treat yourself to a collection that's equal parts spooky and steamy.

Life has taught me that I can't trust anyone. Not friends, not family. In the worst, darkest moments, no one can be counted on to have your back. Even a billion miles away from Earth, on a remote icy planet, I still feel alone. The only consolation? I haven't resonated. It's not that I don't want love or children. I just can't trust anyone, even myself.

Lara Bennett is world-famous in Ribbonwood, population 907. She's the woman you don't trust your husband with: a real-life femme fatale. If there's a scandal in town, she's at the center of it, ruining businesses, marriages, and egos everywhere she goes, with her sharp tongue and that body that makes you look twice. Besides… didn't she more or less kill a man?

Someone is illegally stealing humans from their home world and cloning them. For months, we've been hunting this ring of criminals and the end is in sight. I'm separating from my brothers and taking my ship to track down the bad guys. One small problem—Helen insists upon joining me on this dangerous mission. Helen herself is a clone, created to be an object of beauty. She's not safe if she goes with me, as her kind are coveted all across the universe. But she's not interested in staying safe. She's interested in staying at my side . . . and tempting me to kiss her.

Of all the men on the Icehome beach, Thrand's the most competitive and most aggravating. He's cocky. Arrogant. Turns everything into a rivalry. He's a pain in the you know what. He also keeps insisting that I kiss him. After all, I'm the one that told him a kiss didn't mean anything. It shouldn't. A kiss is just a kiss as far as humans are concerned. But Thrand's a clone, a race of people called a'ani, and he's been brought up to play hard and to win. And he wants to win me. But does Thrand want me for the right reasons? Or am I just another conquest? 

White tears possess a potency that is rarely acknowledged or commented upon, but they have long been used as a dangerous and insidious tool against people of colour. Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep 'ownership' of their slaves, through centuries of colonialism, when women offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, in which tears serve as a defense to counter accusations of bias and microaggressions, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women's active participation in campaigns of oppression. 

Evil twins are supposed to be something out of a bad fantasy novel, but not for me. My mirror is a monster. A gaslighting narcissist who framed me for an act of bullying so vicious, our mother threw me out of the house and snatched my inheritance from me on the way out the door.