Beloved Author Lori Wick's Timeless Classics Return Over twenty years after their initial release, two of bestselling author Lori Wick's timeless classics, The Princess (over 275,000 copies sold worldwide) and Sophie's Heart (over 350,000 copies sold worldwide), return in an exclusive ebook-only bundle. Sophie’s Heart is one of the most beloved and heartwarming Christian novels of all time. New immigrant Sophie feels lost in the big city, until the day she unexpectedly walks into the lives of Alec and his three children. As Alec seeks to put his life back together after the tragic death of his wife and the children’s mother, Sophie finds herself keeping house for him and serving his family. But can Sophie find peace in her new job, and will God use her gentle spirit to help heal Alec's broken heart? The Princess welcomes you to the land and romance of Pendaran! To uphold the kingdom’s tradition, Shelby Parker and widowed Prince Nikolai have agreed to an arranged marriage. But while Nikolai is a perfect gentleman in public, privately he remains distant, leaving Shelby wondering what is truly in his heart. Will the prince ever love her as he did his first wife? More importantly, can the faith they share overcome the barriers between them? Enjoy this 2-in-1 ebook bundle of Lori Wick’s sweet novels of hope, faith, and learning to love again!

Everyone needs to be rescued sometimes. Everyone but Hannah Montgomery, that is. She just needs a vacation. Three weeks Down Under, a vacation in New Zealand to sort out her life, figure out what she wants, seems just right. Oh, and to relax. She should definitely put that on the agenda. She certainly isn't looking for a sexy fling with a professional rugby player, no matter how attractive he is. Hannah doesn't do casual. But maybe just this once ... As much as he's shared with Hannah, Drew Callahan has kept one very big secret. He's the captain of New Zealand's All Blacks rugby team, and the most famous rugby player on earth. And learning the truth, now that she's back home again, has made Hannah warier than ever. Drew knows that she's right for him. But how can he convince her to let down her guard enough to explore what they could have together? Go Down Under in this steamy New Zealand sports romance. Fans of Jill Shalvis, Catherine Bybee, and Kristin Higgins will enjoy this book.

Kate Lamonica travels to New Zealand to escape a stalker ex-boyfriend and live with her friend Hannah while she puts her life back together. She didn't count on falling for Koti James, a showboating rugby player of Maori descent.

An impossible situation drives Samantha Delafield to commit a desperate act and forces the orphaned beauty to flee her world of privilege. But her fate takes a shocking turn when she is arrested for petty thievery and shackled to a dangerous criminal. Nicholas Brogan is a man tormented by his past as England's most notorious pirate. Now a blackmailer's threats have drawn him out of seclusion--and into the hands of the British magistrates. Manacles bind him to a beautiful young hellion who enflames Nicholas with passions he has struggled to suppress--tempting him to care, to want, to feel. And now Nicholas and Samantha must escape together, for their destinies are linked by chains far stronger than the iron that holds them captive ... and only love can set their imprisoned hearts free.

Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text. Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television. "We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect. The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance. These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination. In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.

Hide and seek is a lot less fun in an alien prison where the winner gets... me.Rian: I'm not a stranger to being behind bars, but this prison leaves a lot to be desired. There are zero communal showers, minimal locking cells, and the other prisoners are extremely hostile. That could be because they are aliens and this is a prison in another galaxy. Add in the fact that I'm a human female, and my life span has just dropped some serious time. I'm about to go down fighting when a scary blue alien with spikes decides he's my rescuer. Except he doesn't seem happy about my presence and, well, join the club, buddy.Mikko: After spending a third of my life in the Pit, I returned for some payback but instead find a human female fighting for her life. She's small, snarly, and irritatingly beautiful. When a coveted reward is offered to the prisoners for our capture, the game changes. My enemies thought I was unpredictable with anger issues before? They haven't seen anything yet. I'll escape again with my female, and then the real payback begins.Mikko is a SciFi Alien Warrior Romance featuring a prickly, snarky hero with a heart of gold and a heroine who loves as hard as she fights.

Fake dating my sworn enemy to make my ex so jealous he can't see straight? Worth it. Silas and I agree on one thing, and one thing only: my ruthless, heartless, narcissistic jerk of an ex-fiance needs to be taken down a notch. So we do what anyone would do: we pretend to be a couple. Even though Silas and I are polar opposites. Silas is a loud, cheerful, over the top showboat. He’s his hometown’s golden boy, the Marine who came back to rescue kittens from trees and walk old ladies across the street. And me? I'm the awkward new girl who freezes up around strangers and can’t make small talk to save my life. It shouldn’t work. We can barely have a conversation without arguing. There's no way we should be friends, let alone dating, except... Everyone believes it. Especially my ex. Now I'm having way too many real fantasies about the man who gets on my last nerve. My fake boyfriend is starting to feel a whole lot like a real one. The kisses feel real. The way he protects me feels real. The night we spend together in a hotel bed feels very real. This was supposed to be fake, but I think I might have fooled myself most of all. The One Month Boyfriend is the first book in the Wildwood Society series, and can be read as a total standalone. It's for fans of high heat enemies-to-lovers romantic comedies, and features two enemies who fake date for revenge, a quirky, charming small town, a former military cinnamon roll hero, a grumpy heroine who's charmed despite herself, anxiety and PTSD representation, and plenty of steamy scene. Of course, there's an HEA. This series is for fans of Kathyrn Nolan, Elizabeth O'Roark, Kate Canterbary, and Melanie Harlow.