Lioness Cristabel Hardison will do anything to avoid returning to Kentucky, where her father, the king of their pride, wants to mate her to a male of his choosing. When her roommate has to vacate their condo, Cris seizes the chance to stay with her best friend, Lily, in Ashland, hoping to find a new job and a place to live. Cousins Dylan, Chase, and Hunter Hall have given up hope of ever finding a mate to share. While other lions have found their mates, the cousins believe they might be destined to remain single. But one day, at the town diner, they catch the scent of their mate, and are determined to find her no matter what. When Cris meets her mates, sparks fly instantly, and she becomes the center of their world. However, her father isn't pleased. When he brings an uninvited guest to crash her newfound happiness, Cris realizes that her future—and her mates'—may be in jeopardy. Will Cris and her mates get the happily ever after they all long for, or will her father's schemes tear them apart?

Scarlett Jamison, the daughter of a powerful alpha wolf, knows her freedom is slowly slipping away. As a Breeding Queen, her hereditary destiny is to be given away to a male of her father’s choosing. She’ll have no say in the choice of her mate; her only duty will be to give her future mate as many pups as he wants. What her father doesn’t know, though, is that Scarlett took her best friend Melody’s wedding as an opportunity to spend the night with two amazing male mountain lions. They rocked her world and stole her heart, and then she had to leave them behind and cut all contact. Even though her heart protests that Wesley and Ray Fiero are her truemates, she has no choice but to obey her father…until a certain quirk in her DNA changes everything. Ray and Wesley won’t give up on Scarlett. One night was not nearly enough for them. Finding Scarlett turns out to be easy. Taking her back to Ashland to live happily ever after? Now, that’s going to be dangerous. Ray and Wesley are willing to go to any length to protect Scarlett’s right to choose them no matter the cost, but when an innocent life is on the line, will the payment for her disobedience be blood?

When dragon shifter Eivross refuses his king brother’s call to wage war against another nest, he chooses exile over taking innocent lives. Seeking a new home, he finds refuge in Cider Falls. Diem loves Cider Falls and working in the bookstore, and she’s even happier now that she’s picked up a volunteer job at the school library. When a stranger comes to town, Diem knows he’s her truemate, and not just because he shifts when they meet and rips the front door off its hinges. But Eivross won’t take Diem as his mate because his brother is dangerous and he’s worried she’ll be caught in the crossfire. When a jealous female dragon reveals Eivross's location, his brother arrives with an army, intending to take Diem for his own mate and kill Eivross in the process. Can Eivross keep Diem safe against an angry dragon horde, or will he lose the most important treasure of all?

Scholarly essays on the achievements of female artists working in and inspired by the American South Looking back at her lengthy career just four years before her death, modernist painter Nell Blaine said, "Art is central to my life. Not being able to make or see art would be a major deprivation." The Virginia native's creative path began early, and, during the course of her life, she overcame significant barriers in her quest to make and even see art, including serious vision problems, polio, and paralysis. And then there was her gender. In 1957 Blaine was hailed by Life magazine as someone to watch, profiled alongside four other emerging painters whom the journalist praised "not as notable women artists but as notable artists who happen to be women." In Central to Their Lives, twenty-six noted art historians offer scholarly insight into the achievements of female artists working in and inspired by the American South. Spanning the decades between the late 1890s and early 1960s, this volume examines the complex challenges these artists faced in a traditionally conservative region during a period in which women's social, cultural, and political roles were being redefined and reinterpreted. The presentation—and its companion exhibition—features artists from all of the Southern states, including Dusti Bongé, Anne Goldthwaite, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Ida Kohlmeyer, Loïs Mailou Jones, Alma Thomas, and Helen Turner. These essays examine how the variables of historical gender norms, educational barriers, race, regionalism, sisterhood, suffrage, and modernism mitigated and motivated these women who were seeking expression on canvas or in clay. Whether working from studio space, in spare rooms at home, or on the world stage, these artists made remarkable contributions to the art world while fostering future generations of artists through instruction, incorporating new aesthetics into the fine arts, and challenging the status quo. Sylvia Yount, the Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provides a foreword to the volume. Contributors: Sara C. Arnold Daniel Belasco Lynne Blackman Carolyn J. Brown Erin R. Corrales-Diaz John A. Cuthbert Juilee Decker Nancy M. Doll Jane W. Faquin Elizabeth C. Hamilton Elizabeth S. Hawley Maia Jalenak Karen Towers Klacsmann Sandy McCain Dwight McInvaill Courtney A. McNeil Christopher C. Oliver Julie Pierotti Deborah C. Pollack Robin R. Salmon Mary Louise Soldo Schultz Martha R. Severens Evie Torrono Stephen C. Wicks Kristen Miller Zohn

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The American State Normal School is the first comprehensive history of the state normal schools in the United States. Although nearly two-hundred state colleges and regional universities throughout the U.S. began as 'normal' schools, the institutions themselves have buried their history, and scholars have largely overlooked them. As these institutions later became state colleges and/or regional universities, they distanced themselves from the low status of elementary-literally erasing physical evidence of their normal-school past. In doing so, they buried the rich history of generations of students for whom attending normal school was an enriching, and sometimes life-changing experience. Focusing on these students, the first wave of 'non-traditional' students in higher education, The American State Normal School is a much-needed re-examination of the state normal school.This book was subject of an annual History of Education Society panel for best new books in the field.