Fresh off her freshman year of college, Emelina De Sota returns home for the summer. Normally coming home wouldn't be a problem but skeletons quickly start coming out of the closet faster than Em can shove them back in. It doesn't help matters when her overprotective big brother is the boss of the local Spanish Thorns. He puts her so far out of reach that she's comfortable with it at first. But when temptation is placed just down the hall from her, Em finds slipping back into old habits is easier than she originally thought. As her world rapidly starts to turn upside down, will Em choose to risk everything for a chance at the possibility of real love or will she stick with her guns and stay with her family, with what's safe? Book One in the Spanish Thorns Series ~ * ~ This story has a little bit of everything including the following in no particular order: romance, action, drug use, Adele, alcohol consumption, sex scenes, food, death threats, gang violence, street racing, bathroom breaks, medical problems, blood, singular point of view, kissing, cussing, guns, orange juice, and tattoos. This story is rated R. I struggled with this for a while, considering rating it PG-13 and placing the rather "graphic" scenes in a separate book but I believe it would take away from the story. My characters are considered adults in the eyes of the law and society and therefore do 'adult' things. For the most part, the story will be PG-13 but because I wouldn't split it, it's earned an R rating. Hope you understand.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Phoenix Knight is one of the last remaining guardians in Braskey. Born to keep peace and defend the weak, Phoenix has spent her sixteen years hidden away with an adoptive family that is nowhere near as simple as it seems. Hiding away has her itching to embrace her true identity as a guardian, but when tragedy strikes, she'll be forced down a path she never thought to take. Armed with her wit and a heart full of hope, Phoenix will set out to change everything: from the lowest serving girl right up to the king who sits on the throne. Before she can face the king and his dark sorceress, Phoenix will have to get past a former friend and now her greatest enemy. The strongest leader ever to rise in the King's Army. Commander Eric Lee.

Seventeen-year-old April Parker wakes up in an underground facility, a shock bracelet on her wrist and a five-day countdown on the clock. Dozens of other teens share her inexplicable fate, but their unseen captors never intervene no matter how brutal conditions become. When the ruthless - and unnervingly magnetic - Marcus seizes control, April's trauma-forged instinct is to lay low. But protecting her friends drives her to bargain with the boy she should fear most - a boy whose reality fractures with every tick. Then the countdown ends, and the real terror begins. Powers ignite. Alliances shatter. And predators are born. And with a saboteur among them determined to keep the doors closed forever, escaping what comes next may be the only way to survive it.

Shawna Roberts is the girl that every guy turns to when they need a fake date, a fake girlfriend, a fake fling to make some other girl jealous, a fake couple photo to send to their parents... Shawna's pretty much seen it all. But no matter what they pay her for, everything she does has one common factor: it's all fake. That doesn't make being their paid girl much easier, though. Adam Ferrell is the campus heartthrob with the appearance of a god, an ego the size of Canada, and worshiped by everyone to monumentally ridiculous proportions. In Shawna's mind, it's a miracle his head fits through his shirt every morning. Yet despite their instant dislike for one another, Adam and Shawna each need what the other can offer. When Adam unexpectedly pushes into Shawna's life with a business deal, she's torn between her feelings and her sense of duty, which protects a secret she has kept for years, from even those closest to her. And as the two begrudgingly get to know each other, masks start slipping and secrets come spilling out, forcing each of them to confront some of their darkest moments and deepest fears.

Bree and Eve share one body, but they are two girls as different as day and night. Eve is secretive and unpredictable. Bree withholds nothing from her other half. Eve prefers to create resolution through violence. Bree can barely stand the sight of blood. But one goal unites them: desire to be safe from the Trackers who hunt their kind. And for years they wander from city to city, in search of freedom and the little brother Bree believes is still alive. When Bree meets Daniel, a young man with dangerous connections and a penchant for taking in strays, including her, she finds it hard to move on. But the secret she hides risks doing more than driving them apart. It might just turn them into enemies. There's also Tristan, a boy with secrets of his own-secrets that help Eve. As her strength grows and Bree struggles to keep up, the two girls are pitted against each other in a battle over the body they share. And with the Trackers closer than ever to finding them, there's a chance neither of them will make it out alive.