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Blood is bright crimson. Your lips have turned blue. Best keep both eyes open. Because we are coming for you. - Valentine's Day isn’t all love, fun, and games. Flash horror Valentine's stories from a ton of talented authors. From dark and disturbing, morbid humor, or guts and gore; these stories have it all. How will you celebrate the holidays?

Don’t deny it. Your mind has dwelled for hours on the things you would do if your name was Karma. Malevolence towards those that wronged you festers and there is no relief - until now. Plunge headfirst into these sinister tales where karma finally takes control and vengeance is a dish that is best served hot.

Seamstress Wendy Weatherford is overjoyed when she is offered the chance to be a mail-order bride for one of the men of Paradise Ranch. When she arrives in Haskell, Wyoming, her intended groom takes one look at her and refuses to go through with the wedding. He wasn't expecting his bride to be a former slave. Abandoned at the altar and alone on the frontier, Wendy doesn't know where to turn.

Since her husband's murder two years earlier, life hasn't been easy for Elle Harrison. Now, at the start of a new school year, the second grade teacher is determined to move on. She's selling her house and delving into new experiences, like learning trapeze.Just before the first day of school, Elle learns that a former student, Ty Evans, has been released from juvenile detention where he served time for killing his abusive father.

Olivia Walters is heading west along the Oregon Trail to escape a disastrous offer of marriage, but when gambler Charlie Garrett wins her hand in marriage in a poker game, she finds herself in exactly the situation she hoped to avoid. She is a woman of honor and determined to make the best of it, especially when her roguish new husband proves to be charming and seductive. But things aren't what they seem.

Libby Chance Sims was orphaned, along with her siblings, at an early age, traveled west on the Oregon Trail, and thought she had her fairytale ending when she met and married a good man at trail's end. But 10 years later, when her husband is killed in a logging accident, her life takes a horrific turn at the hands of unscrupulous "family friend", Hector. Fearing for herself and the lives of her two boys, she flees Oregon for Haskell, Wyoming and her family. But has she run far enough to escape her past?

Estelle Ripley is not who she says she is. Running from the past she's left behind on a Georgia plantation, she's taken a job in a wagon train heading to new horizons along the Oregon Trail. If she can just keep her head down, do her job, and keep any of her new friends from discovering her secret, she'll be fine. After all, people don't ask questions on the frontier.

Lucy Haskell has a passion for danger and isn't afraid to let everyone know it. The Oregon Trail is the perfect way for her to travel home to her father's ranch in Wyoming, and to meet new friends and talk their ears off along the way. But Lucy's talking and risk-taking masks a darker fear - that no one could possibly love or even like a woman as unconventional as her.

Young widow Alice Porter, never thought she would fall in love again, and that her family's journey along the Oregon Trail was the end of her story. Rugged militiaman, Jarvis Flint, never thought he would fall in love in the first place, even though he is determined to be a man of honor and to do his duty. But sometimes the things you never think will happen are the ones that hit you when you aren't looking.

Katie Boyle has known Aiden Murphy her whole life. Everyone expects them to marry someday, but as much as she cares for her lifelong friend, Katie wants more from life. She craves adventure and excitement, and doesn't want to give in to the obvious choice. Heading west along the Oregon Trail is, in her mind, the beginning of the new life she has always wanted, and she intends to embrace it.

Emma Sutton fell in love with Dr. Dean Meyers on the very first day of their journey west on the Oregon Trail. Dean is handsome, caring, and noble. If only she could tell him! But between her crippling shyness and the marital machinations of her mother, she despairs of ever being able to say what's in her heart. When a sudden injury puts her in Dean's hands, literally and figuratively, she hopes she might just have a chance with him...until a ghost from Dean's past comes between them.

Callie Lewis is alone on the Oregon Trail. After her brother's death, she has been left to fend for herself on a journey she never wanted to take. Her only hope for safety and a life at the end of the road is to become a trail bride and wed grieving widower John Rye. But John is harboring secrets that could end their hasty marriage before it has a chance to begin.

Luke Chance has always been considered the life of the party, the bad-boy troublemaker, known more for his winning smile and entertaining exploits than his character. But in his heart, Luke knows it's time to be a man. While others laugh at his antics, he longs for respect and the chance to prove he can be a leader. The first step toward becoming a leader is to send for a mail-order bride from Hurst Home. Eden Gardner is more than ready to leave her shady past and her even shadier family behind for a normal life.

The last thing Jo Burkhart ever thought she'd do was have a one night stand. But when a little harmless, coffee shop flirting with high-powered Broadway and television director Benjamin Paul leads to a steamy proposition, how could a romance novelist like Jo resist? The last thing Ben Paul needed was to fall in love. But when he lands in bed with a down-to-earth, genuine Jo - a woman who doesn't want anything from him but an afternoon of passion - his heart gets carried away. He can't let it end with one night.

Jenny Young fulfilled every girl's most sizzling fantasy the night she ended up with mega movie star, Simon Mercer, in her bed. It was hot, it was intimate, and it was the stuff of dreams.

When a fire destroys the factory where Willow Miller works, her only choice for a secure future comes through becoming a mail-order bride to ex-Amish Amos Stoltzfus and moving to her ancestral home of Pennsylvania. Hope carries her forward into a new life, but guilt over her part in the fire that destroyed the factory threatens to hold her back.

Elle Harrison is back! She and her pals Jen, Becky, and Susan travel to Mexico where Jen has arranged cosmetic surgery, after which she will recover in a plush hotel suite. But more is going on at the hotel than tummy tucks. Soon after they arrive, Elle sees the woman in the suite next door fall from her sixth floor balcony. When the room is later occupied by another patient, Elle finds her brutally mutilated body on that same balcony. Police question Elle as the last person to see these women alive.

This magical fantastical story is about a house for sale which, when cleared, reveals cracks in the walls and ground floor which cannot be explained. We find that underneath the house is a lake inhabited by a sea dragon, Zadie, and her friends and slaves. She has a Tall Ship, and she yearns to return to warmer times and Utopia. Her slaves are "fish people" who have to live partly in the water below and partly in the house, which they enter via the cracks.

In order to avoid getting stuck in an emotionally abusive relationship, you'll first need to identify the signs of emotional abuse. This book will help you see the red flags, and to get out of potential relationships where emotional abuse is at play.

This is the story of a girl who grows up running on the back roads of the Midwest and winds up taking the long way home. How does this pretty, educated, organically grown girl become an outcast in her own country? Set against the backdrops of the competitive University of Michigan, the vast Front Range of Colorado, the concrete jungle of Los Angeles, and a small backwoods home town in Michigan, this story winds its way through untrammeled wilderness as the search for belonging unfolds.