Olly Ray

Aria Lang has spent her whole life bleeding for the ice. But at Northridge Rink, figure skaters don't matter, hockey does. Her practice slots are disappearing, her scholarship hopes are dying, and the Eastern Showcase is only eleven weeks away. Without a pairs partner, she's finished. Cole Brennan is the hockey team's brutal enforcer, one more fight away from losing everything. He's cold, arrogant, and the last person Aria wants to share oxygen with... let alone the 5 a.m. ice the rink manager forces them to split. She hates him. He wants nothing to do with her. Until the morning Aria falls, and Cole catches her like he was born to do it. Because the town's most feared hockey player has a secret: before the tragedy that destroyed his family, Cole used to skate pairs. And his body still remembers every lift, every count, every touch. Desperate, Aria makes him an offer he can't refuse. He'll be her partner for the showcase. She'll help him clean up his image for the scouts. No one ever has to know. But secrets this big don't stay buried. And when a blackmail video threatens to destroy Cole's future, their fragile deal turns into something far more dangerous. They were supposed to stay on their own sides of the ice. Instead, they're falling hard. One wrong move and they'll both lose everything. Including each other.

Elara spent three years invisible in her marriage to billionaire Damien Cross. When he hands her divorce papers, she disappears without a fight. Six months later, an accident steals Damien's memory of the past five years. He doesn't remember his ex-wife, but he can't stop searching for the woman with sad eyes who haunts his dreams. When he finds Elara thriving in Seattle, she refuses to let him back in. But this Damien is nothing like the cold husband she remembers, and as he uncovers their past, devastating secrets emerge. Can you forgive someone who doesn't remember breaking you?

I thought having one reckless night of revenge sex with a gorgeous stranger seemed like the perfect way for me to break out of my "good girl" mold. I was wrong. ​I ran before he could even know my name, promising myself it would stay a secret. A mistake buried so deep that neither my overprotective brother nor my boyfriend would ever find out. Then I walked onto campus for my first day of college... and came face to face with the last person I ever wanted to see. The stranger wasn't a stranger after all. He was the star captain of the hockey team and My brother's best friend. In other words...I was fucked. Literally.

"Do I seem like an idiot to you princess?" he sassed taking another agonizinly slow step towards me. "N-no" I stuttered out a blabbering mess, unable to think straight with his sudden closeness. "Do I have to show who you belong to again Bella?" "I-don't know" I whispered out too far gone within the eyes of the silver eyed God like boy standing before me. "Then why do you defy me princess, or is it that you want me to punish you?" I was trapped within his beautiful orbs unable to register the utter madness he just voiced, the word fell off my lips almost breathless begging for him to take me. "Yes" His lips curved to the side showing his God forbidden mischievous smirk of his. I had just now registered the consequences of my stupidity.

Tessa is the picture perfect student with good grades, flawless attendance and a charming smile. With one year left to graduate high school and a bucket list imposed by her best friend, her goal is pretty much the same with an extra addition--tick off every item on the cursed bucket list. But trouble comes knocking in the form of blue eyes, muscled body and an ego the size of her head. What happens when the school's bad boy, Benjamin notices her in a boxing ring?

Eighteen days after giving up on Brendan Maynard, Jayde Rosario cut off her waist-length hair and called her father, announcing her decision to move to California and attend UC Berkeley. Her father, surprised, asked about the sudden change, reminding her how she' d always insisted on staying with Brendan. Jayde forced a laugh, revealing the painful truth: Brendan was getting married, and she, his stepsister, could no longer cling to him. That night, she tried to tell Brendan about her college acceptance, but his fiancée, Chloie Ellis, interrupted with a bubbly call, and Brendan' s tender words to Chloie twisted a knife in Jayde' s heart. She remembered how his tenderness used to be hers alone, how he had protected her, and how she had poured out her heart to him in a diary and a love letter, only for him to explode, tearing the letter and yelling, "I'm your brother!" He had stormed out, leaving her to painstakingly tape the shredded pieces back together. Her love, however, didn't die, not even when he brought Chloie home and told her to call her "sister-in-law." Now, she understood. She had to put that fire out herself. She had to dig Brendan out of her heart.

It is not to be understood that all statements here made are either ascertained facts or universally admitted conjectures. The introduction is intended merely to put those who are not scholars, and probably have not books of reference at hand, in a position to approach the translation at as little disadvantage as may be. Accordingly, we give the account that commends itself to us, without discussion or reference to authorities. Those who would like a more complete idea of Lucian should read Croiset's Essai sur la vie et les oeuvres de Lucien, on which the first two sections of this introduction are very largely based. The only objections to the book (if they are objections) are that it is in French, and of 400 octavo pages. It is eminently readable. With the exception of a very small number of statements, of which the truth is by no means certain, all that we know of Lucian is derived from his own writings. And any reader who prefers to have his facts at first rather than at second hand can consequently get them by reading certain of his pieces, and making the natural deductions from them. Those that contain biographical matter are, in the order corresponding to the periods of his life on which they throw light, The Vision, Demosthenes, Nigrinus, The Portrait-study and Defence (in which Lucian is Lycinus), The Way to write History, The double ndictment (in which he is The Syrian), The Fisher (Parrhesiades), Swans and Amber, Alexander, Hermotimus_ (Lycinus), Menippus and Icaromenippus (in which Menippus represents him), A literary Prometheus, Herodotus, Zeuxis, Harmonides, The Scythian, The Death of Peregrine, The Book-fancier, Demonax, The Rhetorician's Vade mecum, Dionysus, Heracles, A Slip of the Tongue, Apology for 'The dependent Scholar.'_ Of these The Vision is a direct piece of autobiography; there is intentional but veiled autobiography in several of the other pieces; in others again conclusions can be drawn from comparison of his statements with facts known from external sources. Lucian lived from about 125 to about 200 A.D., under the Roman Emperors Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Commodus, and perhaps Pertinax. He was a Syrian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates, of parents to whom it was of importance that he should earn his living without spending much time or money on education. His maternal uncle being a statuary, he was apprenticed to him, having shown an aptitude for modelling in the wax that he surreptitiously scraped from his school writing-tablets. The apprenticeship lasted one day. It is clear that he was impulsive all through life; and when his uncle corrected him with a stick for breaking a piece of marble, he ran off home, disposed already to think he had had enough of statuary. His mother took his part, and he made up his mind by the aid of a vision that came to him the same night.

Kaida thought forever was the deal with her boyfriend, Liam, the captain of the Runners Hockey Team, until he broke up with her and reunited with his childhood lover, who had returned after several years of being away. Heartbroken and angry, Kaida decided to make her ex-boyfriend jealous by kissing her best friend's older brother, Maverick. Unfortunately, she reignited the flame he'd been trying to quench for years. Now, there was no turning back and no quenching the obsessive flame burning inside Maverick for her. After some time, Liam realized he truly loved Kaida and wanted her back, but Maverick wasn't letting her go. Kaida was his now, and he would go to the end of the earth for her sake. What began as revenge against her ex turned into something twisted and dark: something beyond words and certainly beyond obsession.

Thanksgiving weekend was just around the corner, and as an intern ranger, I was preparing for what my supervisor, Mark Thorne, called a "mandatory exploratory survey" to Devil's Gulch. But this seemingly routine assignment was a meticulously planned death trap, set by the man I worked for and the sister I loved. The rock bit into my back, a sharp pain, then nothing as my climbing rope went slack, sabotaged, as I plummeted into the cold darkness of the crevasse. Mark's chilling, empty smile was the last thing I saw above me on the narrow ledge, my sister Emily looking away, silent, complicit, as I fought for air. Killed. By my own supervisor and the only family I had left, betrayed for reasons I couldn't comprehend as my life vanished in an instant. Then I jolted awake, not in a freezing abyss, but in my familiar bunk, the comforting scent of pine from my cheap park-issued mattress filling the air. My heart hammered against my ribs as I touched my face, my arms, realizing there were no broken bones, no blood. The calendar on the wall screamed at me: three days before that fateful Thanksgiving trip to Devil's Gulch. I was alive. It was a memory, vivid, terrifying, but now it was also a warning. A second chance. This time, I wouldn't be the naive one; I would protect myself first, and if I could, protect my sister from him and from herself. I could still stop this. And I would.

My deskmate, Elara Vance, was a walking contradiction: weaving grand tales of designer clothes and exotic family trips to Zurich, yet she dressed in rags and carried the undeniable scent of neglect. I' d silently endured her outlandish fantasies and the awkward pity they stirred, until one tension-filled day, my patience completely snapped, and I brutally screamed across the crowded school hallway, "What is it, Elara? Are your parents dead or something?" The raw grief that instantly crumpled her face, followed by the shock of her fist connecting with my jaw, silenced the entire room, but the real storm was yet to come. Weeks later, news tore through our high school: Elara Vance, the girl everyone mocked, had mysteriously secured a full-ride scholarship to Yale, a feat that struck everyone, especially the popular clique, as utterly impossible. The internet exploded, fueled by vicious social media posts from school bullies, rapidly branding her a "Yale Scammer" and launching a horrifying campaign of doxxing and vile harassment that escalated far beyond high school cruelty, becoming a public digital execution. But as the online mob screamed for her digital demise, I was haunted by the memory of her tear-streaked face and that primal, anguished cry that day in the hallway: "They're heroes!" That desperate, defiant plea didn't fit the narrative of the pathetic liar I believed her to be, leaving me with a chilling, unsettling confusion. A sickening wave of guilt began to consume me, the realization hitting hard that I had played a part in unleashing this brutal, unprovoked attack on her. I knew then, with a desperate urgency that superseded everything else, that I had to find Elara Vance and finally unearth the true, devastating story behind her lies and the mysterious heroism of her parents.

Katherine Tynan was born on January 23rd 1859 into a large farming family in Clondalkin, County Dublin, and educated at a convent school in Drogheda. In her early years she suffered from eye ulcers, which left her somewhat myopic. She first began to have her poems published in 1878. A great friend to Gerard Manley Hopkins and to WB Yeats (who it is rumoured proposed marriage but was rejected). With Yeats to encourage her, her poetry blossomed and she was equally supportive of his. She married fellow writer and barrister Henry Albert Hinkson in 1898. They moved to England where she bore and began to raise 5 children although two were to tragically die in infancy. In 1912 they returned to Claremorris, County Mayo when her husband was appointed magistrate there from 1912 until 1919. Sadly her husband died that year but Katherine continued to write. Her output was prolific, some sources have her as the author of almost a 100 novels, many volumes of poetry, short stories, biography and many volumes which she edited. Katherine died on April 2nd 1931 and she is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

A young and innocent girl, bullied and shamed for her complexion, fell in love with a newly admitted classmate in high school. A twist- she had a best friend since kindergarten who always had her back and stood for her against all odds until his feelings grew stronger than friendship. She got close to her crush and they became tight friends than ever, causing jealousy among the girls, especially the most popular ones. It finally reached the night before prom when she found out she was being played by the new student. He always led her on since he was dared. Her best friend saw the signs and warned her before then but she turned a blind eye. Shattered and heartbroken, she needed a shoulder to rest on and her best friend came through still something usual happened. What could it be?