He was a loner, a drifter...and the only man who could save a little girl's life. But to do that J. D. Cade would have to reveal a secret he'd kept for over twenty-five years--the secret that he was still alive. J.D. certainly hadn't planned on staying in Whitehorn. But soon he was renewing old friendships--and forging a tempting new one. Vibrant and tender, Dr. Carey Hall didn't know who J.D. was, but she seemed ready to care for him. What would happen when she discovered J.D. was really Whitehorn's nearly forgotten golden boy--and she'd fallen prey to another Kincaid?

His final mission may be the most dangerous of all…to her heart. Autumn Messina has finally put herself first and achieved her dream of becoming a teacher. She’s only sorry it’s come at the expense of having to sell the once thriving Messina Farm. Autumn loves her father and the farm, but she can’t do it all, and her brother has no plans to move back home. And then her brother’s best friend saunters back into her life even more handsome than she remembers and arrogantly full of plans and answers to questions she no longer wants to ask. After exiting his special forces unit to return home to Last Stand, Sam Russell feels duty bound to help his best friend’s struggling family farm. He’s not expecting such fierce resistance in the form of a still-angry Autumn, who’s become even more beautiful and tempting in his years away. Autumn doesn’t want his help, but Sam has never given up so easily. And what starts off as just doing his duty quickly becomes something much more personal.

Six months ago, being snowed in at Christmas with the amazing woman he met on R & R at Fort Riley would have been a dream come true, yet now, as a blizzard swirls outside Beth Tate's house, Captain Chris Walker knows he shouldn't be there. Blinded in combat and emotionally scarred, he never wanted Beth to know the man he's become—but stranded by the storm, he had no one else to call. Hurt and bewildered when Chris abruptly ended his faithful contact from Afghanistan, Beth tried to put him and their whirlwind romance out of her mind and prepared for a quiet holiday alone—until the phone rang. Now that he's here, she's more confused than ever, torn between love for the man she once knew and anger at the one who broke her heart. A life with Beth was everything Chris wanted, but the wounds of battle are nothing compared to the agony of heartbreak. It will take more than mistletoe, but perhaps this holiday season Chris will find his way home. 33,000 words

Sometimes it takes more than water to put out a fire Daredevil Cassidy Grace tried for years to get Parker Hansen’s attention. It finally happened- the night before she left for basic training. Parker has always wondered what would have happened if he’d made a move sooner. Caught up in the ins and outs of fighting fires and working a ranch with his cousins, he didn’t have much time to think about it. But now that Cassidy’s back, a messed up combat veteran and the newest member of Prairie’s fire brigade, he’s thinking about it. A lot. But Cassidy is fighting more than just fires. Her nights are tortured with visions from her experience as a combat helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. Her days are haunted by Parker offering something she thinks she’s not worthy to have. Only love can quench this fire When Cassidy volunteers for a dangerous hotshot mission in the wilds of Colorado, Parker insists on going with her. As they travel together into a life-threatening situation, will their love combust like the trees that surround them? And in the battlefield of a forest fire, will Cassidy be brave enough to fight for the one thing that will snuff out the fires that rage within her?

What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized. “Fascinating, often ingenious... A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.” —Times Literary Supplement “Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and...against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature... [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.” —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

The ancient cento-genre was prone to be used on all kinds of subjects. New texts were created out of the classical epics. Empress Eudocia followed this practice and composed the story of Jesus in lines lifted almost verbatim from Homer’s epics. Jesus and his relevance to her audience is thus presented within the confines of style and vocabulary offered by the Iliad and Odyssey. The lines picked to convey her theology are often clustered around key Homeric motifs or type scenes, such as warfare, homecoming, feast, reconciliation, hospitality. Jesus waging war against all evil and Hades in particular runs throughout this Homeric and simultaneously biblical epic. The story starts in the Old Testament which is conceived as a divine counsel on Mt. Olympus where a plan to save sinful humanity is presented. The narrative then follows the biographic lines of the canonical gospels, with John’s Gospel holding pride of place in the way she renders and interprets the Jesus-story. The story told suspends both the geography and time of Jesus. Eudocia preaches the story she tells. She emerges in this poem as one of the most, if not the most prolific female theologian and preacher in the first Christian centuries.

He’s looking for a second chance Reeling from his best friend’s suicide, former Army Ranger Sterling Walker returns home to Prairie to be foreman at the brand-new Resolution Ranch. His focus should be on putting his life back together—not on the high school frenemy he used to love to hate. But the gorgeous and glaring Emma Sinclaire is just as sassy and smart as he remembers—and Sterling can’t resist a challenge. Especially when it involves Emma. This time, he won’t give up until she says “Yes” Sterling is the last person Emma wants to see when she returns to Prairie. Once upon a time, she might have crushed on the town golden boy, but she can’t forget the night her nemesis took things too far. And while Sterling is as handsome and cocky as ever, she’s not falling for his charms a second time. Their old rivalry rears its ugly head when Emma & Sterling are forced to team up on a fundraiser for the ranch. Only this time, hot kisses and even hotter nights make things much, much more complicated. But there’s no way Sterling’s backing down, not when the stakes are so high - even though he’ll have to face down and slay his worst demons in order to win Emma’s heart for good.