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The man asked me to valet his damn car.

Look, I left LA for a reason. I've had my fill of big Hollywood stars and their even bigger egos. I want something genuine. Something real. And it doesn't get any realer than being the new sheriff of Aster Valley, Colorado.

That is, until entitled Finn Heller appears on the scene, handing me the keys to his convertible like I'm his personal servant.

The former child star and wannabe action hero is the hottest thing I've ever seen. He's also a snarky party animal with legions of adoring fans and attitude for days.

Or so I thought.

The longer the film crew stays in town, the more I begin to wonder if Finn is hiding his true self, one that's as beautiful inside as out. He's a star alright, but the kind that shines bright enough to light up the night sky... the kind I want to make a wish on.

A wish Finn will find a way to make things work with me, even if it means his next role is my very own leading man.

Julian:

I've been in love with my best friend since forever. Okay, fine. Like, kindergarten. It started out platonic, obviously, but then became... nope. Still platonic. The problem is that Parker Ellis has been straight since forever. And that makes it difficult to convince him the two of us are meant to be together.

And now there's no point. All is lost. He's gone and gotten engaged to his high-school sweetheart which means I have to grin and bear it while pretending to be the happy, supportive best man while he prepares to commit his life to a woman I can't even fault. She's great. We've all been friends forever. I know he'll be happy with Erin, just not... just not as happy as he could be with me.

Parker:

I'll admit. Sometimes I press the easy button. Like when Julian Thick had offered me half his sandwich back in grade school after noticing I didn't have any food. Or when I'd needed a date to homecoming in tenth grade and Erin told me she was it. Or when I'd used the one thing that came easy to me, skiing, to get my college tuition paid for. Or when Erin had showed back up in my life six months ago and told it was time to marry and start a family...

But for the first time in my life I'm facing something that's not at all easy. It's my wedding weekend and I've just been left at the altar. Not only that, but when my best friend whisks me away to drown my sorrows in a snowy cabin in Aster Valley, I accidentally discover Julian's been keeping secrets. Big secrets.

The kind of secrets that lead to hot experimental kisses in front of a blazing fire, tentative physical exploration in a way I'd never imagined before, and the kind of intimate, true confessions I'd never even dreamed of between me and the one person who's always been my true home.

But after twenty-plus years of thinking of Jules as my friend without benefits, is it truly possible to change who we are to each other? There's no easy button this time, but I'm willing to do the work. I only wonder if Julian is ready to trust I really mean it.

The Marians aren't the only ones finding their happy ever after! In this collection of four short stories, some of our beloved secondary characters from the Made Marian series steal the show and find a love of their own. These stories range from 7k to 10k words and feature plenty of laughs, Marian cameos, and love. A suggested reading order can be found in the Look Inside, but you do not need to have read any other Made Marian novel to enjoy these stories. Please be aware that two of these stories can also be found in the Made Marian Collection bundle.

Brad's Story: When Brad opens his Vegas hotel room door to find a hot police officer waiting on the other side, he assumes crazy Aunt Tilly has sent him a strip-o-gram. But instead of getting naked, Detective Gorgeous pulls out his cuffs. Turns out, the badge and uniform aren't just props, this cop is the real deal.

Beck's Story: After touring around the world, sleeping with fans after sold-out concerts, Beck is still unsatisfied in the bedroom. Men, women, men and women? He doesn't know quite what he's looking for when he enters an exclusive club to find some company for the night. But two sexy strangers begin dancing with him at the same time, and Beck finally begins to realize that it might not be variety he's after, but just the right set of lips whispering sexy words into his ear.

Keller's Story: After telling Tilly to back off her attempt at setting him up, Keller catches sight of the nude model for the old lady's art class. Did he speak too soon? Meanwhile, stand-in model Eli is regretting his decision to strip down for a group of senior citizens, but then meets the manager of the vineyard and realizes being naked might not be so bad after all. Especially when things get wet... like really very wet... with hoses.

Josh's Story: After moving from Denali, Alaska, to San Francisco in order to branch out, Josh hosts a big poker night for the Marians and his co-workers at the National Park Service. Little does he know, his own true love may not be someone new after all. Eight years ago, Cyrus Dimakos had to leave the love of his life to take care of his great-grandmother on a remote island in Greece. A family obligation may have kept Cyrus's body away from Josh all this time, but his heart never left him. Could it be that The One That Got Away is finally back for good?

It all started with an audition. Whit Harrison was nervous enough, but to have some guy barge into the room when he was trying to try out for a solo in the community choir did not make things any better. Instead of being annoyed with the intruder, however, Whit is quite fascinated with him.He doesn't have to wait to meet Brock Evans, a fellow music lover who is quite adept with the guitar. Soon, the two men find themselves facing intense feelings for one another, but Brock hasn't told Whit everything about his past. As he finds himself falling deeper and deeper in love, the level of fear increases as he tries to find a way to come clean without losing Whit forever.

A Cure For Hunger: Benjamin Carpenter is a practicing witch from an ancient clan. Thomas Nighthawk is his lover, a 300-year-old vampire who longs to be human. The two of them have been together for eight years and love each other deeply. Unfortunately, their physical love is hampered by the instinctive bloodlust in Thomas's psyche, where the approach of orgasm unleashes the demon within. When Benjamin hears about someone who has developed a cure that carves out the demon while preserving the man, he knows he needs to do whatever it takes to get the magic potion to bring his beloved new life. However, the cure-keeper does not want to be found, and other forces of darkness want to keep the cure from spreading. Will Benjamin's quest to bring Thomas back to life actually get them both killed? A Cure For Hunger II: Howl of the Wendigo Change can be good, except if you're a powerful witch like Benjamin Carpenter. The code of the Itzhak clan, intertwined with the Moonbeam caste of magicians, dictates witches will inherit one, and only one, power from each parent. However, a harrowing night in the woods near Sedona causes Benjamin to manifest another power his mother had, the power of teleportation, creating concern that his destiny might be taking a turn for the worse. However, Benjamin's new power is the least of everyone's problems after one of his closest friends, Ivan Salazar, starts developing a carnivorous, insatiable hunger and turns into a rare creature-the wendigo. As the monster starts to consume his body and attempts to destroy his soul, it will take the unrequited love for another man to keep the wendigo at bay. The second book in the A Cure for Hunger trilogy welcomes back 300-year-old vampire Thomas Nighthawk, the beautiful gypsy shopkeeper Kenda Ravenwood, and werewolf Todd Kesseldorf. With Benjamin, these denizens of the supernatural will have to figure out who is causing Ivan's frightening transformation while trying to avoid the vicious attacks of an extremist bounty hunter. A Cure For Hunger III: Darkling in Abeyance Benjamin Carpenter would do anything for the people he cares about. He risked his life to find a cure for vampirism to make his lover mortal. He penetrated the veil of darkness to rescue his best friend when he transformed into a wendigo. Now Benjamin's the one who needs help. An ancient prophecy claims that he has been ordained to bring about the end times, an act he couldn't begin to imagine himself capable of. However, he is developing new powers at an alarming rate, and the forces of both good and evil are rising up to lay claim to him, not caring about the path of destruction they create in the process. With time literally ticking away until the apocalypse arrives, Benjamin's friends-vampire lover Thomas Nighthawk, gypsy practitioner Kenda Ravenwood and comic book store owner Ivan Salazar-are ready to do whatever it takes to keep the end times at bay, but are they prepared to kill him to prevent him from fulfilling his destiny as the Bringer of Darkness?

Change can be good, except if you're a powerful witch like Benjamin Carpenter. The code of the Itzhak clan, intertwined with the Moonbeam caste of magicians, dictates witches will inherit one, and only one, power from each parent. However, a harrowing night in the woods near Sedona causes Benjamin to manifest another power his mother had, the power of teleportation, creating concern that his destiny might be taking a turn for the worse.

However, Benjamin's new power is the least of everyone's problems after one of his closest friends, Ivan Salazar, starts developing a carnivorous, insatiable hunger and turns into a rare creature-the wendigo. As the monster starts to consume his body and attempts to destroy his soul, it will take the unrequited love for another man to keep the wendigo at bay.

The second book in the A Cure for Hunger trilogy welcomes back 300-year-old vampire Thomas Nighthawk, the beautiful gypsy shopkeeper Kenda Ravenwood, and werewolf Todd Kesseldorf. With Benjamin, these denizens of the supernatural will have to figure out who is causing Ivan's frightening transformation while trying to avoid the vicious attacks of an extremist bounty hunter.

The village of Gresham is hosting a frybread contest where area tribes compete for bragging rights by showing who can make the tastiest piece of golden bread. The Menominee, Stockbridge-Munsee and Ho-Chunk tribes take part in the contest each year to commemorate Native American Heritage Month and honor the women in the three tribes. However, turmoil boils over when the committee organizing all the festivities opens up the contest to other tribes, non-natives and even men.The tenuous situation gets worse when the gentle Timothy Lockhart is found dead, leading tribal leaders to point fingers at each other and at certain residents of Gresham. To add insult to injury, most of the contestants also received threatening messages prior to the first murder, creating the fear that someone else could be next.Is it one of the contestants? One of the protesters who believe making frybread is a tradition forced on natives by white men? Zachary Gagewood knows he has no time to lose, especially when the killer sends him a note, vowing that Timothy is only the first to die...

Shilo David, still stinging from the lengthy and bitter breakup with a previous lover, flees to the quiet woods in Eagle River, Wisconsin. There, he hopes to find solace amongst the color of the trees and foliage, and possibly rediscover his inspiration and creative spark. He winds up finding much more.

Jeffrey Layton, who has lived in Eagle River for many years, is also on the rebound after losing a boyfriend. However, his mate was taken from him by cancer. Jeffrey's apprehensive about leaping into another relationship for fear his next true love will also be snatched from his grasp. Then he meets Shilo.

Together, the two learn love is an emotion to be embraced, not spurned, and it's possible to find the person you're meant to be with, even when the cards are stacked against you. Shilo learns it's sometimes necessary to kiss a few toads before you find your prince, while Jeffrey discovers he has it in him to love another while still caring for those who have left. In this tale, love has no boundaries, and not even the changing hues of the leaves in the forest can compete with true happiness.

Rory Woodward thought he would never set foot in Eagle River again. He left years ago to get away from his family, the Redstones. Now, with word that his grandmother is dying, he must leave his peaceful life as an author in San Francisco to come home and pay his respects. To do so, though, he must confront an overbearing mother, a viciously greedy sister, and the rest of his kin, who are all eager to take the Redstone reputation for benevolence and shove it in the coffin with matriarch Winifred Redstone.

Staber Montana never enjoyed the life of leisure the Redstones have. He has spent most of his life fending for himself while dealing with his drug-abusing, overpossessive mother and alcoholic brother. He has never kept a healthy relationship because his mother would scare away potential mates. More than anything, he wishes he could escape his life.

Rory and Staber may come from two different lives and backgrounds while growing up in the same town, but their paths are about to cross at the most wonderful time of the year. They find themselves drawing closer, but they need to find a way to keep their overwhelming pasts at bay long enough to see if they can create their own Merry Christmas, perhaps the first of many.

Gresham is growing and coming into its own as a tourist destination. The addition of several new restaurants has prompted the village board chairwoman, Felicia Bellwether, to create a new event-Dine Out and Shop in Gresham-that will turn Main Street into a gigantic outdoor cafe for several nights and give visitors a chance to sample the many tastes of the community, from Sigrid's German and Italian fare to the Turkish cuisine from On the Mediterranean to Native American frybread and other dishes.However, like many well-laid plans in the village of less than six hundred, the event turns competitive, with some restaurateurs taking aim at others with words and deeds. Before the knives can come out, though, a beloved religious leader's expiration date is pushed up at the first night of Dine Out and Shop, leading to fingerpointing and fear that home cooking might be a safer meal choice than Gresham's cuisine.Zachary Gagewood, the local bookstore owner and designated community sleuth, knows he needs to find out who poisoned the meal, but with his pending nuptials to his fiance, Newell Krueger, and the threat of Newell's sister stopping the wedding, will he be able to track down the killer before other victims fall face-first into their meal?

Trent Iverson has led an interesting life, finding himself not one but two men to call his own. He criss-crosses the United States with his husbands as they hunt the strange and bizarre creatures that lurk unseen, but he feels like he hasn't experienced as much life as he desires. Things change when he learns that his grandmother has passed away, and she has willed her home and possessions in Three Lakes, Wisconsin, to him.

Not long after he arrives with his husbands, Luke Anderson and Adam Hatathli, the trio discover a potential new creature they must hunt down. The people who live in northern Wisconsin talk about a whimsical creature called the hodag. However, some of the locals believe that the mythical monster has gone from simple mischief-maker to ravenous killer, and they want Luke and Adam to destroy the hodag before anyone else winds up dead.

While Luke and Adam roam the forests in pursuit of the hodag, Trent is going through his grandmother's belongings and discovers that she was a very powerful witch that has descended from a strong family line of witches. He also discovers that he has inherited his grandmother's powers in addition to her possessions. His newfound abilities put a crimp in both his relationship with his husbands and their ability to track down the hodag as he learns a shocking revelation.

Adam Potter returned to Cargo City wanting to start a new life after recovering from a bad break up with his cheating ex-boyfriend. Adam bought a three-story building opening his own detective agency. Hiring a flirtatious college student for an assistant. Adam's first case, fell from a tree. Patrick Valdez is a blue blood aristocrat who loves to Cosplay, but also has a stalker who hides behind masks. He wants to get away from his devious boyfriend who's blackmailing him. A person wearing a Harlequin mask swirls chaos their way when he displaces Patrick's abuser and chases him through the graveyard into a tree. Adam manages to save Patrick but never thought he would have to deal with his ex-boyfriend and new lover again. The detectives believe Patrick is the manipulator behind the Harlequin.Adam must race to prove the police wrong and clear Patrick's name and stop the Harlequin before he becomes his next victim.

Adam Potter never thought going home for his birthday would be so stressful.After his boyfriend Patrick Valdez destroys his kitchen. Patrick also finds out Adam's assistant Justin Shi has a spare key to Adam's apartment. The weekend before his family Cosplay event. Adam's father (who he calls mom) guilts him to return home for a birthday dinner. He brings Patrick to meet everyone and Justin as well.While giving Patrick and Justin a tour of the town the family holds their events. Patrick discovers a disturbing site.A troublesome neighbor is discovered dead in the town the family owns and Adam's mom becomes a suspect. Dark secrets surface that everyone wished would stay buried.Adam has to find who is framing his mother before he's charged with murder.

Detective Adam Potter can't be happier having Patrick move in with him. But there is a downside. Adam had asked his aristocrat to unpack his bags and boxes and Patrick is accustomed to having servants do everything for him. Patrick Valdez is truly on cloud nine when Adam asked him to move in with him. But he is finding the transition into Adam's world taxing. He misses having other people at his beck and call when he needs something done. Patrick lies to Adam about having a job interview to get out of unpacking. It all backfires when Patrick gets a job in a restaurant and sees his ex-boyfriend having coffee with his father. Wealthy businessman Yuri Jin hires Adam to bodyguard his new lover, Jamie. Adam learns that several attacks on Jamie's life might have something to do with his stepfather from his hometown of WillowMoss. When he goes to investigate the isolated town, he finds a diner filled with beautiful men working there and an unwelcoming sheriff. Patrick wants nothing more than for his parents to accept Adam as his lover. He wants to forget his past mistakes and move on with Adam. Patrick's parents invite Adam to their anniversary party giving Patrick hope. That is until he finds out that Adam's new upscale client is his ex-boyfriend, Yuri Jin. Between the party, bodyguarding, and the creepy WillowMoss investigation, Adam is stretched thin. Will he be able to keep Jamie safe when all the while trying to keep peace at home and impress Patrick's family?

--Awarded the 2014 Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award

"American Honor Killings is a strong addition to any criminology or true crime collection with a side focus on gay issues, very much recommended."--Midwest Book Review

"In the vein of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, McConnell spent years corresponding with murderers, visiting them in prison, and eventually learning that these killers may not actually hate gay men at all." --Out Magazine

In American Honor Killings, straight and gay guys cross paths, and the result is murder. But what really happened? What role did hatred play? What about bullying and abuse? What were the men involved really like, and what was going on between them when the murder occurred? American Honor Killings explores the truth behind squeamish reporting and uninformed political rants of the far right or fringe left. David McConnell, a New York-based novelist, researched cases from small-town Alabama to San Quentin's death row. The book recounts some of the most notorious crimes of our era. Beginning in 1999 and lasting until last year's conviction of a youth in Queens, New York, the book shows how some murderers think they're cleaning up society. Surprisingly, other killings feel almost preordained, not a matter of the victim's personality or actions so much as a twisted display of a young man's will to compete or dominate. We want to think these stories involve simple sexual conflict, either the killer's internal struggle over his own identity or a fatally miscalculated proposition. They're almost never that simple.

Together, the cases form a secret American history of rage and desire. McConnell cuts through cant and political special pleading to turn these cases into enduring literature. In each story, victims, murderers, friends, and relatives come breathtakingly alive. The result is more soulful, more sensitive, more artful than the sort of "true crime" writing the book was modeled on. A wealth of new detail has been woven into old cases, while new cases are plumbed for the first time. The resulting stories play out exactly as they happened, an inexorable sequence of events--grisly, touching, disturbing, sometimes even with moments of levity.

A producer at an advertising firm, whose gender and name are never revealed, recounts a disturbing tale of emotional fixation and eventual rejection by the two key figures in their life, leaving them bereft of self-esteem and violently desperate. The first of these obsessions is a promiscuous yet charismatic underground art star whose psychic power and extreme drug use draw the main character into a disorienting world of gallery openings and sex-fueled parties. The second, a handsome actor narcissistically preoccupied with his budding movie career, offers moments of sex and tenderness punctuated by irrational tirades of anger, before he tires of the main character's overweening love and threatens abandonment.

Both these relationships weave their harrowing stories against a brilliantly evoked background of contemporary Brooklyn and Manhattan, a place where advertising and consumption have even corrupted the language we use to speak about love. At Night Only is a tragedy that could only be written in this new millennium.