by Em Brown

4.0 stars – 342 reviews

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

A woman driven to marry out of desperation. A billionaire who cannot stand gold diggers. The heat between them will lead to one or both of them getting burned.

To support her unemployed mother and ailing grandmother, Alena Vetrov pretends to be a mail-order bride for quick and easy money. Only she gets more than she bargained for when she finally meets her fiancé. He’s not at all what she expected of the man she ‘met’ in the chat room, and, oddly, he doesn’t seem especially happy to be marrying her.

Determined to find out who killed his friend, billionaire Chen Lee assumes his friend’s identity to meet with a woman who may be the last link to his deceased friend. As soon as Chen meets Alena, he can tell that she’s hiding something. She claims to be in love, but Chen doesn’t buy it. So he puts her commitment to the test in dark and wicked ways.

Her marriage vows may turn out to be for richer, for poorer…in bondage and submission.

Advisory: This box set of short story episodes is part of a serial. If you’re looking for a wickedly hot Dom to steam things up with, get BOUND TO HIM and start your submission today! But read only if you can take the heat…

by Blair Babylon

4.4 stars – 100 reviews

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

FML. I will never believe anything a man tells me, ever again.
Even if he is a 6-feet-4, hot, ripped, handsome as a movie star, filthy rich billionaire.
I was a good girl with nothing left to lose, literally. My ex-boyfriend had stolen everything except a non-refundable plane ticket to Paris, so I got on the plane without him. After that, it was understandable that when I started drinking, things got a little out of hand.
Luckily, a man intervened. He was so ripped that I could see every thick muscle of his abs, obliques, chest, and arms through the tight tee shirt he was wearing. He towered over the guys who were bothering me, and they backed off.
I took him back to my hotel because I was full of drunken, bad decisions that night.
The last thing I needed was a man who wanted to save me when I was trying to do all the wrong things.

by Nathan Davis

3.7 stars – 9 reviews

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

Dirty sex, tainted drugs and greasy rock n roll are merely the basic necessities of survival for this NYC grunge guitar player. Nate Broder is a functioning drug addict that will do anything to get his band discovered all while trying to keep himself from becoming another homeless statistic. His life as a wanna be rock star is anything but glamorous. Opportunity finally comes knocking but unfortunately for Nate, it arrives all at once forcing him to make the most critical decision of his life. Risking everything is easy when you have nothing to lose. Or is it?

by Susan Kaye Quinn

4.2 stars – 70 reviews

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

Restorative Human Medical Care Unit 7435, sentience level fifty, is happiness level five out of ten to serve and heal the human master it loves. But Unit 7435 finds there is a price to be paid for love… and for failing in its primary mission.

Restore  is a standalone short story that takes place in the world of the Singularity novels.

Start the novel series with The Legacy Human (Singularity 1).

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
The future is… unsettling.

Technology isn’t just racing forward, it’s accelerating. This isn’t just our imagination, it’s a natural consequence of innovation building upon innovation. The gap between what we can imagine and reality shrinks every day. Our relationship with technology is already one of the defining issues of the 21st century. As we integrate it ever-more-intimately into our lives and bodies and brains—as we mold our creations in our own image, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally—our tech will shape us in ways we will barely understand.

The 21st century will challenge us to remember what it means to be only human.

But creating a truly sentient Artificial Intelligence is far more complicated than first dreamed in Asimov’s Bicentennial Man. As we learn more about the three pounds of meat and electricity between our ears, as well as consciousness itself, we are realizing how difficult the job is. In a sense, creating an AI will force us to answer some of the deepest questions humanity has ever asked… about ourselves and our place in the universe.

What does it mean to create intelligence if you intentionally limit it? Is it cruel or compassionate to keep your tech from evolving above a certain sentience level?

by E Ryan Janz

3.7 stars – 70 reviews

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

Private Eye, Joe Nails, has a problem.
In this intelligently written, and darkly comic, anti-noir mystery set in the smoky world of 1958 San Francisco, Joe experiences surrealistic dreams, in which his once best friend pleads for Joe’s help, before turning a gun to his own head and firing. Joe sets out to locate him, only to discover he disappeared weeks before the dreams began.
Joe Nails has a problem all right, an entire shopping list of them, but as he speeds down a tormenting road of murder, confusion, and desperation with no off-ramps, he just may solve a few – providing the fast approaching .357 yearning for another victim allows it.

by Susan Kaye Quinn

4.3 stars – 517 reviews

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

What would you give to live forever? Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender—a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid—after all, they’re smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he’s yearned for within reach… including his beautiful ascender patron. But once Eli arrives at the Games, he finds the ascenders are playing games of their own. Everything he knows about the ascenders and the legacies they keep starts to unravel… until he’s running for his life and wondering who he truly is.

by Susan Kaye Quinn

4.3 stars – 718 reviews

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

Sneaking out of the palace wasn’t one of Aniri’s best ideas. But she’s the Third Daughter of the Queen of Dharia—zero responsibilities and zero royal duties. She’s just the backup daughter, in case her older sisters’ arranged marriages—to take the crown or broker an alliance—don’t quite work out. But once Aniri reaches her 18th birthday, she’ll be truly free… and then she can marry the charming fencing instructor she meets for fevered kisses in the forest.

But then the impossible happens—a marriage proposal. From a barbarian prince in the north, no less. And if Aniri refuses, the threat of their new flying weapon might bring war.

So she agrees to the young prince’s proposal, but only as a subterfuge to spy on him, find the weapon, and hopefully avoid both war and an arranged marriage to a man she doesn’t love. But once she arrives in the sweeping mountains of the north, she discovers the prince has his own secrets… and saving her country may end up breaking her heart.

This Bollywood-style royal romance takes you to an alternate East Indian world filled with skyships, saber duels, and lots of royal intrigue.