The lovely heiress to an olive oil empire, Donna Miro is gravely worried about her best friend, Lorna, who seems to be missing. Having traveled to New York to find the missing Lorna, Donna finds herself trapped in the city's seedy underbelly - until an unexpected man comes to her aid. Father Luke Trudeau, the most unusual priest she has ever met, has the mouth of a sailor and the brawn to go with it. Luke offers Donna help, and he seems to know things about the city - and the dangerous people in it - that might lead them to Lorna.

In a small, sunny Florida town, theater is thriving. At twenty-four, Miss Victoria Langley is an illustrious leading lady and the one who acts as den mother to the theater staff. She’s also the mother of a charming toddler, who she is determined will never learn the identity of his father - actor Brant Wicker. Life has been good to her and her young son, but everything changes when Victoria learns that Brant is returning to town to star opposite her in Othello. She will stop at nothing to keep Brant in the dark about their son, but what will she do when he steals her heart yet again?

Salvage diver Roc Trellyn has just hauled up the biggest catch of his career. But the creature in his net isn’t a prize fish - or a mermaid. It's Melinda Davenport, his ex-wife. Except they're still married - just a little glitch they both seem to have overlooked. What is she doing on the high seas? Has she come to spy and make sure she gets her cut of the bounty?

Leo has two priorities: putting down new roots and making up for his mistakes. He doesn't have time for a blind date with his new neighbor. Until he finds out she's the woman he let slip away… but never forgot. Cassie has finally paid her debts and is living the life she's always wanted. Her new neighbor sounds like he could be Mr. Right. Only, he turns out to be the man who promised her the world, then disappeared without a trace. In another time and another place, he was a playboy who made her believe in miracles. Now, he's a danger to everything she's worked hard for.

Christmas has never brought out the best in the MacDougal family. Still, year after year, they gather together in the Blue Ridge Mountains to try to make the season merry and bright. But this year is an especially strained one, with Shayne’s impending divorce, Morwenna’s slavish devotion to work and Bobby’s reluctance to face what life has to offer. They’ve never felt less like a family. Then, in the midst of a snowy sibling shouting match, a mysterious stranger appears.

Centuries ago, by a scaffold in Manhattan, rose petals drifted gently to the ground like snow on a wintry Massachusetts night. Melody Tarleton is driving home for Christmas when a man - clad in Revolutionary War-era costume - appears out of nowhere, right in the path of her car. Shaken, she takes the injured stranger in, listening with concern to Jake Mallory's fantastic claim that he's a Patriot soldier, sentenced to death by British authorities. The last thing he remembers is the tug of the noose.

With a megahit on Broadway, a gorgeous wife, and a legion of adoring fans, Justin Magnasun has the world at his feet - but it all comes crashing down one snowy night that ends in a brutal murder. Now the world-famous playwright lives a solitary life in the New England countryside, far from the relentless glare of the spotlight. Until Boston reporter Kristin Kennedy shows up.

For more than a century, Maggie Montgomery has hidden her true nature from the humans around her. But when Lieutenant Sean Canady follows a trail of blood from a drained corpse to the door of her New Orleans boutique, the ethereal beauty realizes the comfortable life she’s made for herself is once again in danger.... Despite her fears that her secrets are no longer safe, it’s the past that could ultimately be Maggie’s undoing. Sean Canady, a Civil War hero, was the love of her life.

It's a pub in lower Manhattan, run by the Finnegan family for generations and now owned by Kieran and her three brothers. Kieran Finnegan, who still works there whenever she can, has become a criminal psychologist - a fitting reaction, perhaps, to her less-than-lawful past. Meanwhile, New York's Diamond District has been hit by a rash of thefts. No one's been killed - until now.

It was stolen from a New Orleans grave - the centuries-old bust of an evil man, a demonic man. It’s an object desired by collectors - and by those with wickedness in their hearts. One day, its current owner shows up at Danni Cafferty’s antiques shop on Royal Street, the shop she inherited from her father. But before Danni can buy the statue, it disappears, the owner is found dead…and Danni discovers that she’s inherited much more than she realized. In the store is a book filled with secret writing: instructions for defeating evil entities.

Aidan Flynn, a private investigator and eldest of the Flynn brothers, scoffs at the haunted-house rumors - especially since Kendall Montgomery, a tarot card reader who has been living in the mansion, is the one to tell him the tale of a woman in white. But when he finds a human bone on the grounds and another by the river, Aidan delves into the dark history of the Flynn plantation.

After ten years away, Jonas Concannon is back in Randolph, Vermont, and the only thing rivaling the beauty of the peaceful, snow-laden village is Bridget O'Shea. She was once his first love. Today, she's a single mother with plenty to keep her busy-like making sure little Molly's Christmas is as merry as possible. But amid the holiday bustle, Bridget can't deny the heartwarming feeling she gets when she learns that Jonas hasn't given up on their long-ago love. If they can recapture the magic of the past, Jonas, Bridget, and Molly may receive a gift greater than anything under the tree.

Caitlyn Sullivan had come from a long line of Hollywood royalty, stretching back to her Irish immigrant great-grandfather. At nine, she was already a star - yet still an innocent child who loved to play hide-and-seek with her cousins at the family home in Big Sur. It was during one of those games that she disappeared. Some may have considered her a pampered princess, but Cate was in fact a smart, scrappy fighter, and she managed to escape her abductors. Callan Cooper was shocked to find the bloodied, exhausted girl huddled in his house.

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul.

Christmas has never brought out the best in the MacDougal family. Still, year after year, they gather together in the Blue Ridge Mountains to try to make the season merry and bright. But this year is an especially strained one, with Shayne’s impending divorce, Morwenna’s slavish devotion to work and Bobby’s reluctance to face what life has to offer. They’ve never felt less like a family. Then, in the midst of a snowy sibling shouting match, a mysterious stranger appears.

Centuries ago, by a scaffold in Manhattan, rose petals drifted gently to the ground like snow on a wintry Massachusetts night. Melody Tarleton is driving home for Christmas when a man - clad in Revolutionary War-era costume - appears out of nowhere, right in the path of her car. Shaken, she takes the injured stranger in, listening with concern to Jake Mallory's fantastic claim that he's a Patriot soldier, sentenced to death by British authorities. The last thing he remembers is the tug of the noose.

Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn't have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They're both plagued with faulty genes - he has bipolar disorder and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy's 21st birthday, sparks fly, and there's no denying their chemistry. Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work-and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty.

Something dark and dangerous had long shadowed Skye Dearborn’s life. She had seen the fear of it in her mother’s eyes. It was there, locked in her memories of blood spilling across a gleaming floor. In the sound of her own screams. And in the terror she’d felt the night her mother disappeared. Then fortune smiled on Skye. With help she was able to put the horror behind her and look to the future. But now that same fortune is leading her into the arms of danger - and back into the nightmare of her past. For the evil that has haunted her dreams has a human form....

"Something is murdering my men." Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore - who just happens to be Jewish - to shed some light on the mysterious happenings.

That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…and for Heather Andrews, security manager at Timberwoods Mall, undoubtedly the busiest. But this Christmas, Heather has more to contend with than frazzled parents and disgruntled Santas. Angela Steinhart, a young woman who designed the mall’s spectacular holiday displays, has had a premonition that tragedy will strike on Christmas Eve. And Angela’s visions have a habit of coming true. Heather would love to dismiss the warning as holiday stress.

In her career as a photojournalist, free-spirited Jessie Ryder has seen the world through her camera lens. But she's never traveled far enough to escape a painful moment that has haunted her for the past 16 years: the day she gave her baby daughter away. Now, facing a life-altering crisis, she's decided to fix the broken pieces of her heart and seek out Lila, even if it means she has to upset the world of Lila's adoptive mother...her very own sister, Luz.

When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost.

Three angels - Gabriel, the warrior; Ivy, the healer; and Bethany, the youngest and most human - are sent by Heaven to bring good to a world falling under the influence of darkness. They work hard to conceal their luminous glow, superhuman powers, and, most dangerous of all, their wings, all the while avoiding all human attachments. Then Bethany meets Xavier Woods, and neither of them is able to resist the attraction between them.

A thousand years ago, a brutal warrior roamed the Russian steppes, and struck a menacing bargain. For the ability to change at will into a cold-hearted predator, Konstantine promised his soul - and the souls of his descendants - to the devil. One day a dangerous prophecy reveals the truth: one family has been chosen to battle the darkness - or face damnation.

Wanted: Single mom seeks billionaire's pocketbook to fund dying son's research cure. Will seduce if necessary. Blackmail is not out of the question. Miracles welcome.

M.J., her partner Gilley, and their client, the wealthy, de-lish Dr. Steven Sable, are at his family's lodge, where his grandfather allegedly jumped to his death from the roof-although Sable says it was foul play. But the patriarch's isn't the only ghost around. The place is lousy with souls, all with something to get off their ghoulish chests. Now M.J. will have to quell the clamor-and listen for a voice with the answers...

Beneath his controlled demeanor, attorney John O’Rourke is a man in turmoil. Since the death of his wife, he has been juggling the rigors of a controversial capital murder case and the demands of raising two children. As 11-year-old Maggie and 14-year-old Teddy long for the past, they must also contend with the hostility that swirls around them since their father took on the defense of a despised killer - including a brick through their window one autumn morning.

Alyssa's modeling career came to an abrupt end when her manager boyfriend emptied her bank account and ruined her professional reputation. Now she's heading to a new town in Montana to rebuild her life - if she can even get there (stupid delayed planes!). But things are looking up when she's upgraded to first class, and a mysterious stranger sits down next to her. Jackson Whitman doesn't believe in love or commitment or forever - not since he lost his wife and daughter.

Erin McCabe is taking the trip of a lifetime to Soviet Russia. Before she even crosses the border, she has a series of run-ins with the ruggedly handsome American diplomat Jarod Steele. But how coincidental are these encounters? In a flash, Erin finds herself at the center of a wild spy plot, where truth is indistinguishable from falsehood, and the difference between good guys and bad guys is impossible to tell.

Can true love prevail over seven long years apart? Wild and youthful Tracy Kuger seduces her father’s bandmate Leif Johnston into a whirlwind affair. But when her controlling family finds out, they pull the lovers apart and whisk Tracy away to Switzerland, never to see Leif again. That is, until seven years later, when a sudden tragedy forces them back into each other’s lives. Is it possible for the past to stay buried?

Their love ended in tragedy years ago. Now, with a little magic, can it be revived? An extraordinary meeting at a pond on a hot summer night brought Serena and Justin together. She was a long-time resident of Salem, he a professor from New York researching witchcraft. Despite having just met, they made love under a witch’s moon as if they had known each other their whole lives.

Felt from a distance, Susan and David’s attraction to each other was powerful, but will their stubborn prejudices solidify their loathing, or give way to passion? Susan Anderson has despised David Lane ever since their first meeting. He enraged her with his verbal barbs and cold contempt; he had no idea who she was, or what her true relationship had been with his father, Peter, who left her his Maine beach house. David assumed Susan was a vulture, preying on his old man for his wealth.

When Brittany Martin’s aunt was killed and her savings stolen, investigators lost the suspects in Costa del Sol, a region known for harboring thieves and modern day pirates. Brokenhearted and furious, Brittany is determined to track the suspects herself, and has zeroed in on a man she considers to be the prime suspect: Flynn Colby. Handsome and wealthy, Flynn moves about the world like the wind - but with no clear income to fund his adventures. And Brittany knows she’s in way over her head, playing the role of a socialite in the privileged world of playboys.

Ann and Jon Marcel are a rare case; five years after their divorce, they're good friends, and Ann has come to love Jon's hometown of New Orleans. Until the day Jon staggers through her door covered in blood and mumbling, "I didn't do it." Jon is charged with murdering a stripper, and in order to save him, Ann will have to dive into the sordid New Orleans underworld, looking for clues in erotic clubs and seamy jazz spots.

When her friend disappears, and the cops seem uninterested in following up the case, a glamorous young woman starts her own investigation. With the help of an autistic child and her ex-lover, she digs deeper into the missing woman's affairs - especially her job as a criminal defense attorney.

Days before starting a history-making excavation in a remote sector of the Valley of the Kings, Dr. Alexandria Randall’s father, a fellow Egyptologist, goes missing. Alex will stop at nothing to find her father—a gargantuan task in an ancient land where she doesn’t make the rules—even if she’s also a target. Alex must swallow her pride and ask for protection from an arrogant journalist named Dan. To find her father, Alex must play Dan’s wife—a ruse that both find insufferable.

In a small, sunny Florida town, theater is thriving. At twenty-four, Miss Victoria Langley is an illustrious leading lady and the one who acts as den mother to the theater staff. She’s also the mother of a charming toddler, who she is determined will never learn the identity of his father - actor Brant Wicker. Life has been good to her and her young son, but everything changes when Victoria learns that Brant is returning to town to star opposite her in Othello. She will stop at nothing to keep Brant in the dark about their son, but what will she do when he steals her heart yet again?

Can two people stay loyal to each other against all odds? The night before thirty-two-year-old Kim Trent moves in with Keith Norman, her world turns upside down. After twelve difficult years raising her twin boys alone, Susan's former husband Brian, the man the military had told her was dead, suddenly reappears, ready to resume their life together. Now, Keith and Brian are demanding that Kim make a choice, but she needs time, and time is running out...

Jessy Sparhawk has seen firsthand how gambling can ruin people's lives. But one night, desperate for money, she places the bet that will change her life forever. Just as she's collecting her winnings, a man stumbles through the crowd, a knife protruding from his back, and crashes into her, pinning her to the craps table.

How long will Katrina be able to fight off love when a dark stranger learns all of her innermost fantasies? Katrina Denver's life changes when she gets mixed up in a top-secret, classified Navy project led by the ruggedly handsome Mike Taylor. The project involves a drug that causes people to live out their deepest fantasies and Mike is responsible for testing the drug's effect on wildlife. When Katrina is inadvertently exposed to the potent drug, it's only a matter of time before Mike becomes the object of her most secret desires…

With a megahit on Broadway, a gorgeous wife, and a legion of adoring fans, Justin Magnasun has the world at his feet - but it all comes crashing down one snowy night that ends in a brutal murder. Now the world-famous playwright lives a solitary life in the New England countryside, far from the relentless glare of the spotlight. Until Boston reporter Kristin Kennedy shows up.

After the death of her rock star husband, Richard, Leigh swore off musicians. When Derek, her husband’s best friend, summons her to his Star Island estate in the Florida Keys, it is with trepidation that she makes the trip. Leigh and Derek never got along, and their bitterness toward each other has lasted beyond her husband’s death.

After the untimely death of her husband, Blair Morgan leaves her privileged life - against the wishes of her father - to work with the poor in Central America. Focused on helping the people of this war-torn region, she's uneasy when journalist Craig Taylor suddenly appears. Blair is determined to keep her true identity a secret, but finds herself confiding in brave and confident Craig. He has an agenda of his own, and when he finally puts his plans into action, both he and Claire must scramble to save their lives - and their hearts.