Love Beyond The Footlights

Nicoles story tells of her climb to stardom from her student days at drama school, her first job, working for the National Theatre, a Broadway run, marriage and divorce. When her beloved Michael deserts her, her entire career is in jeopardy as she struggles to come to terms with the effect her career is having on her private life.

Michael Fowler is doing his best not to fall in love with Steve Lopes, a piano player with eyes as green as willow shoots and hair the color of polished chestnuts. Love is just not in the cards for an actor whose career is on the rise, and who has just landed the triple part in Shakespear´s "Hamlet;" the role that Shakespear himself is likely to have played. But Steve is really hard to get out of his head, and, he fears, his heart. Then there is the fact that Steve wants him to do an ´environmental´ performance, playing his non-existant cousin Toby in order to solve some long-term family problems. Steve was raised by his beloved Aunt Minerva who, it appears, has imaginary relatives as well as real ones. And the real ones want to get their hands on her money. To top it off, there is a serial killer who has been murdering Gay men, and the killer has Michael at the head of his hit list. Set in the 1980s in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Mason Powell´s Gay romantic crime novel is a tightly plotted tale of murder and madness, of theater and people whose lives put the theater to shame. It is also a tour of places as they were and characters as they are likely to remain in California: a state which holds its zanies to be its greatest natural resource. "If you love a good love story, you will love this novel. If you love a good mystery, you will keep turning the pages. If you loved "Tales of the City," you will want to return to the golden days of the 80s in San Francisco with this book." ---Diana L. Paxson Author of "Priestess of Avalon"

A wonderful variety of compellingly original vampire stories, many of them wholly unexpected, from award-winning, New York Times bestselling authors. There are typical vampires who would be right at home in a horror story or a gothic romance; historical vampires; contemporary, gritty, urban vampires; fang-in-cheek comedy; boy-meets-girl sweetheart stories (if a little bloodier!); and erotic tales of inhuman passions and midnight pleasures. Look out, too, for stand-alone stories relating to existing series and characters of contributing authors, or stories which develop more fully characters who have only walk-on parts in those authors' longer fiction. Includes writing by big-name authors such as Jennifer Ashley, Kim Harrison writing as Dawn Cook, Caitlin Kittredge, Diane Whiteside and Eileen Wilks.

"Bob Basso is the poignant and rivetingly funny voice of the sixty-plus generation yearning to recapture the simplicity and wholesome values of a fading past. His tenth book, a compilation of short stories, Searching For Hula Love Under A Blue Papaya Moon, is pure soul food."--William LeClaire, Editor, New Books Weekly (Editor's Choice Award) If you're over fifty, or hope one day to reach it, then you'll recognize the common struggle to rise above modern absurdity and find refuge in your own history. Some tales are autobiographical, verbatim true, others more or less true. Deciphering which is which is part of the fun. An aging historian loses self-importance encountering France's greatest living myth ("The Legend of Mr. Beaumarchaise"); the frustration of sex after sixty combines with disgust of all things politically correct ("White Man's Rage"); an ironic farewell to heroes ("Forty-Two Minutes With The Boys of Pearl"); an eccentric Nobel Prize poetess burns her books and looks to her garden for salvation ("Yard Work"); and magic, myth and an epic journey backward to recapture meaning at the end of life ("Searching For Hula Love Under A Blue Papaya Moon").

A Love To Last a Lifetime… Seven years ago, Honey Kingston and Matt Logan had a passionate affair that ended abruptly when he left town to join the rodeo. And though the strong-willed beauty tried to forget Matt's warm gaze, she couldn't help but remember their love…each time she looked into her little boy's blue eyes. So when the former rodeo daredevil returned to town, Honey found herself engulfed in a whirlwind of deep-rooted emotions, unable to distance herself from the father her son so deserved. Would too many memories send Honey running—or could they rekindle a flame that once burned so brightly?

St Swithan's Hospital keeps the rooms of its male and female students separate, but love will always find a way. Simon Sparrow chooses the American film star Ann Beverley to lavish his attentions on. But how will he and others ever make the grade with Sir Lancelot bulldozing through the complex web of their emotions?