How far would you be willing to go to help make someone’s Christmas magical? Would you risk being put on Santa’s Naughty list forever? Would you step into a magic portal, not knowing where it goes or what’s on the other side? Are you willing to give up family and friends, including your BFF and a boy you just figured out you really like to follow in your famous grandfather’s footsteps? That’s the situation Joni, a mischievous elf from Christmas Town, is about to face. She has a secret dream. If she is successful, not only will she make one little girl’s Christmas the most magical ever, but she will also achieve her lifelong quest for adventure. She’s in a race against time. Will she be able to put all the clues together and figure out how to make her dream and Elizabeth’s come true? Or will she wind up on the Naughty list forever and be the reason Elizabeth stops believing in Santa? Joni wants nothing more than to be on the Nice list. She struggles with the whole naughty-and-nice thing. Sometime it seems like things start out as nice but, depending on the outcome, could be perceived as naughty. How can something be both naughty and nice at the same time? Her parents say, “Do as I say and not as I do.” But what does that really mean? I invite you to join Joni on her quest to find the answers to all these questions. Along the way, she will discover that sometimes you just have to risk it all. For if it’s the right thing to do, then “it is better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all!” That’s her story, and she’s sticking to it, LOL.

HO-HO-HOLD ME! At the age of thirty-one, Brooke Bailey still believed in Santa Claus. She was determined to spread joy throughout her apartment building…whether a certain neighbor wanted it or not. Indeed, for Dr. Duncan Cox, Christmas was his least favorite time of year—and his busiest. Around the emergency room at Mercy Hospital, he was fondly referred to as the Grinch. Still, to help his best buddy woo Brooke, he secretly filled her stocking with twelve gifts, for the twelve days of Christmas. Lo and behold, Duncan enjoyed her joy! Could the Grinch and Santa's Little Helper end up together in a passionate love affair? Only in the season of miracles…

Three romances from three of Urban Literature's best known authors. In Sealed with a Kiss by Celeste O. Norfleet, small-town boy Dean Everett struggles to go back to his high school girlfriend having been away and made it big in the tech world. In Mistletoe Lane by Regina Hart, Benjamin Brooks' marriage is ending due to his wife having had an affair. Sad though he may be, Benjamin is readying himself to launch back onto the dating scene. Though details of Deborah Fletcher Mello's contribution are yet to be announced, it is bound to be both sexy and sensational too.

News flash: My uptight landlord is infuriating… I hate him almost as much as those perfectly pressed dress shirts he wears… and the fact I want to rip them off. Not reading the lease agreement before signing was an oversight, but now I’ve got it memorized. And I’m going to use it to my advantage while staying within the bounds of my contract. Barely. Charlie can’t stand all my decorative little touches, so what if the gnomes are a little vulgar? But declaring war with him is better than the alternative… ending up in bed with him. Note to self: Never let my mother choose a tenant for my house… Evie might be a librarian but she’s anything but quiet. In fact, she’s the complete opposite. My outspoken new tenant seems to get off on pushing me out of my comfort zone… finding ALL my buttons. And I’d be crazy to think that these sparks flying between us won’t fizzle out. We’re nothing alike. We’re all wrong for each other. So why can’t I keep my hands to myself? Opposites definitely attract in this hilarious enemies to lovers romantic comedy!

Eleven-year-old Nolitye's granny used to say: if you mess with a woman, you mess with a stone. When Nolitye finds a magical stone on the dusty streets of Phola, her granny's words take on a new meaning. Along with her two friend - the somewhat pampered Bheki, and Four Eyes, a reformed member of the Spoilers gang led by Rotten Nellie - Nolitye puts the powers of the stone to good use: for the first time the threesome can stand up to the Spoilers; Nolitye can save the life of Rex, the leader of a pack of talking township mutts; and dare to look scary MaMtonga with her living brown-and-green snake necklace in the eye. But soon Nolitye finds out that the purplish-blue magic stone is but five stones needed to put right things that started to go wrong the day her father died in a mining accident when she was five years old. Or so she was told by her mother... By merging a cast of characters straight out of African myth folklore with everyday township life, K. Sello Duiker created a magical world and a truly wondrous quest, a timeless tale that will appeal to an ageless audience.

This book challenges understandings of child labor by tracing how law altered the meanings of work for young people in the United States.

A collection of humorous newspaper columns originally published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.