[BookStrand Contemporary Romantic Suspense, HEA] When Finn Doyle won the heart of beautiful socialite Ivy Morgan, he was certain that his happy ending was within his grasp, but Ivy's father, a powerful judge, had other plans. Blackmailed into abandoning Ivy, Finn vows that one day he will return to make things right. Eight years later, Finn, now a successful businessman, is prepared to make good on his promise, but to do so he must confront more than the web of lies Judge Morgan spun for his daughter. Ivy is harboring a secret of her own, and when Finn learns the truth, it will change his world forever. Ivy has spent the past eight years determined to forget all about Finn, the man who seduced her and then sold her out. When her father suffers a stroke, she returns to her ancestral home to find Finn waiting for her. But although her body yearns for his, Ivy is determined to protect her heart--and her son--from Finn. A BookStrand Mainstream Romance

In this enchanting debut novel, Galen Beckett weaves a dazzling spell of adventure and suspense, evoking a world of high magick and genteel society—a world where one young woman discovers that her modest life is far more extraordinary than she ever imagined. Of the three Lockwell sisters—romantic Lily, prophetic Rose, and studious Ivy—all agree that it’s the eldest, the book-loving Ivy, who has held the family together ever since their father’s retreat into his silent vigil in the library upstairs. Everyone blames Mr. Lockwell’s malady on his magickal studies, but Ivy alone still believes—both in magic and in its power to bring her father back. But there are others in the world who believe in magick as well. Over the years, Ivy has glimpsed them—the strangers in black topcoats and hats who appear at the door, strangers of whom their mother will never speak. Ivy once thought them secret benefactors, but now she’s not so certain. After tragedy strikes, Ivy takes a job with the reclusive Mr. Quent in a desperate effort to preserve her family. It’s only then that she discovers the fate she shares with a jaded young nobleman named Dashton Rafferdy, his ambitious friend Eldyn Garritt, and a secret society of highwaymen, revolutionaries, illusionists, and spies who populate the island nation of Altania. For there is far more to Altania than meets the eye and more to magick than mere fashion. And in the act of saving her father, Ivy will determine whether the world faces a new dawn—or an everlasting night. . . .

In the game of love, someone's about to score. The bare fact is: Ivy Hall isn't good at covering bare facts. Her dream job as a rookie sportswriter for the Austin Globe loses its glitter when a locker room fiasco gets her demoted from a major sports beat. Worse, senior sportswriter Rick Scott witnessed her humiliation. When she regains her mojo by writing a popular sports column about coaching a girls' soccer team, Rick starts coaching a girls' team, too. Is this a challenge? Is he rubbing dirt in her wounds? Trying to make her look bad again and get her fired? Rick's definitely got a game plan, but it's about winning her over. She likes to compete, and so does he. But falling in love is one sport they can both win.

We all have our secrets, big and small. Some are harmless, others not so much. Sixteen-year-old Ivy Towers is the undisputed queen of keeping secrets. So far she’s been able to keep them under wraps. But times are changing . When a figure from the past rocks her world, Ivy makes it her mission to keep her demons at bay and she’ll go to any lengths to do that. Through a whirlwind of school, family and romance, Ivy must remember her main priority: don’t get exposed for what she truly is.

A state university professor in Florida, having been denied tenure and frustrated with the declining quality of higher education, tries to bring constructive change to the educational system. He kidnaps his university president and demands that Florida's deteriorating state university system implement a series of changes to raise its level of quality. A strict deadline for passage of reform legislation is given as the professor threatens to "execute" his hostage if his proposals are not implemented...immediately. Officials delay proceedings as the deadline nears. Law enforcement efforts cannot locate the professor or his hostage. The story unveils the nation's decaying higher education system as it sinks gradually into a morass of obeisance to political correctness and affirmative action. The professor tries to curb his frustration at so much waste of human talent by people in the system who care little or nothing for true educational excellence...a term that has become meaningless. George Orwell's doublespeak, as portrayed in his 1984 novel, has arrived and is thriving in the universities of the land. The story's conclusion is dramatic and unexpected. The book is a thoughtful narrative told by a university professor who uses reality-based fiction to provide this wake-up call for Americans...to heed, or to ignore at their peril.

Can You Ever Escape Your Past? At eighteen, popular Ivy Griffith likes nothing better than getting stoned with her boyfriend, Pete, and his basketball buddies–until one afternoon when a nightmare unfolds. Ivy watches in horror as her boyfriend and his friends murder a teammate and bury his body in a remote location. The four friends make a pact to keep the killing quiet, and Ivy flees her parents’ Colorado home for college and never looks back. Now, after ten years of numbing her guilt with drugs, she’s finally clean. The single mom of a seven-year-old son, Montana, Ivy returns home to the tiny town of Jacob’s Ear, hoping for courage to reveal the shocking truth of her past and be rid of this baggage forever. But when disaster strikes at her high school reunion, she’s the only one left alive who witnessed that fateful night so long ago…Or is she? Who else could’ve known about the pact and who would want Pete and his co-conspirators dead? As the investigation heats up and the death toll rises, Ivy is forced to decide if confessing the truth is really worth risking her own life.

In jazz circles, players and listeners with “big ears” hear and engage complexity in the moment, as it unfolds. Taking gender as part of the intricate, unpredictable action in jazz culture, this interdisciplinary collection explores the terrain opened up by listening, with big ears, for gender in jazz. Essays range from a reflection on the female boogie-woogie pianists who played at Café Society in New York during the 1930s and 1940s to interpretations of how the jazzman is represented in Dorothy Baker’s novel Young Man with a Horn (1938) and Michael Curtiz’s film adaptation (1950). Taken together, the essays enrich the field of jazz studies by showing how gender dynamics have shaped the production, reception, and criticism of jazz culture. Scholars of music, ethnomusicology, American studies, literature, anthropology, and cultural studies approach the question of gender in jazz from multiple perspectives. One contributor scrutinizes the tendency of jazz historiography to treat singing as subordinate to the predominantly male domain of instrumental music, while another reflects on her doubly inappropriate position as a female trumpet player and a white jazz musician and scholar. Other essays explore the composer George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept as a critique of mid-twentieth-century discourses of embodiment, madness, and black masculinity; performances of “female hysteria” by Les Diaboliques, a feminist improvising trio; and the BBC radio broadcasts of Ivy Benson and Her Ladies’ Dance Orchestra during the Second World War. By incorporating gender analysis into jazz studies, Big Ears transforms ideas of who counts as a subject of study and even of what counts as jazz. Contributors: Christina Baade, Jayna Brown, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Monica Hairston, Kristin McGee, Tracy McMullen, Ingrid Monson, Lara Pellegrinelli, Eric Porter, Nichole T. Rustin, Ursel Schlicht, Julie Dawn Smith, Jeffrey Taylor, Sherrie Tucker, João H. Costa Vargas