Strapped

Amber Jones A.K.A Lil Bit was born with the odds totally against her. “A Hard Knock Life” is the best way to describe her childhood years. The verbal, physical and sexual abuse that she endured as a child built a cold brick wall around her tender heart. The death of her mother at an early age leaves her with no guidance in life and she’s forced to navigate through the best way that she knows how.Her life brightens up in her teen-age years when she meets her Prince Charming, Maurice, who steps in and relieves her of all of her misery. Maurice is a cold-hearted Kingpin and leader of the drug organization known in the streets of Newark as The Federation. A strong and powerful leader he is. She learns a great deal from him. He teaches her the code of the streets, the meaning of loyalty, honor, morals and principles. Most importantly he teaches her the true meaning of love.His jealous and controlling demeanor has always been an issue but she somehow managed to live with it because of her love for him. Loving him, as easy as it may be, it’s not at her best interest to do so due to the fact that he’s a married man. For years she’s played number two to his wife but as the years creep by she descends further and further down the list of his multiple women. Finally just as she’s becoming tired of being just another one of his prizes a man that she feels truly loves her enters her life.She’s stuck at the crossroads not knowing whether to continue her and Maurice’s complicated love affair or to cut off their intimate ties and only retain their business affairs. The only problem with that is as much as Maurice has emphasized never mixing business with pleasure when it comes to her he has a problem practicing what he preaches.What’s a girl to do? She finds herself trapped in between unconditional love and the love of money. To make a decision in the name of love could not only affect her luxurious lifestyle, it could also jeopardize her life and the life of her true love.

In the new Blacktop Cowboys® Novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Hillbilly Rockstar strange bedfellows find common ground after the lights go down… Flower child, vegetarian and humanitarian Harlow Pratt and gruff and strapping cattle ranch foreman Hugh Pritchett have been taunting each other for years. Hugh thinks she’s nothing but a spoiled rich girl, and he’s had enough of that life with his ex-wife. Harlow thinks Hugh is an ill-mannered trouble-maker who wouldn't know fun if it bit him on his tight denim-clad butt. When they’re forced together at the Split Rock Ranch and Resort, everything changes. They might be polar opposites, but working out their differences skin to skin, in the dark, seems to help their incompatibility a lot. But when trouble from both their pasts comes calling, Harlow and Hugh have no one else to lean on. Can they trust one another enough to make it through the hard times together… or will their tentative truce fall apart?

The author and his wife travel America in their RV, reporting on earthquakes and tornados, 23 national parks, and many big cities.

Drowning in student loans? Can’t afford to get married, buy a home, have children? Up to your ears in credit card debt? At last, a book for the under-35 generation that explains why it’s not their fault, and what can be done about it. Strapped offers a groundbreaking look at the new obstacle course facing young adults. Getting ahead, argues commentator and policy maven Tamara Draut, is getting harder. A college degree is the new high school diploma–and costs a fortune to obtain. Good jobs are scarcer thanks to stagnant wages and disappearing benefits. And, the cost of everything–starter homes, health coverage, child care–keeps going up. Witty and wise, Strapped brims with ideas for fashioning a new kind of America in which every young person can go to college, buy a home, and start a family. The future starts here.

The much anticipated second installment of the Strapped Trilogy, Strapped Down picks up where the first installment concluded.Eric is not going down without a fight, but Shyla and Taylor are willing to go to equally dark lengths to make him pay for his betrayal. In their quest to seek revenge and find happiness, deeply guarded secrets from their pasts begin to surface, revealing they are linked to each other in ways they could never have imagined.For every secret they uncover, another seems to surface as they find themselves raveled in a web that extends much further than the confines of the darkroom. As Shyla and Taylor become more entwined with each other, she learns that Taylor's dark side is far more dangerous than she believed. Will Shyla continue to follow Taylor into the darkness, or is he far too gone for her light to shine through?