New girl Lucy is desperate for friends. She tries out for Beachwood High soccer, but despite her amazingly accurate kick, fails to make the team. When the Coach points out that varsity football is looking for a new kicker, Lucy is skeptical. Football? Isn't that a boys' game? But on the gridiron Lucy discovers that she feels strong; in control for the first time since her mother died. She loves football. She actually wants to play! (She also wants to hang out with super-cute quarterback Ryan Conner. But that's just icing on the cake.)Too bad no one else wants her on the team. Not the boys' coach, not her teammates, and especially not her overprotective dad. Will Lucy cave in to the pressure? Or will she prove she's pretty tough after all?

Charles Larkin is finally happy with his life...for the most part. He's happy with his new summer getaway—a rustic cottage he just bought on a small Wisconsin lake. He's happy that his ex-wife, whom he divorced because he couldn't play straight anymore, has become one of his best friends. He's happy he can breathe again.It's only Kenneth, Charlie's boyfriend of five months, who makes this new life less than completely satisfying. Charlie feels they've never been quite right for each other, and Kenneth cements that conviction when he makes a disturbing confession. Charlie knows their time together is quickly coming to an end. Problem is, Kenneth doesn't know it. And he tends to be rather possessive.Planning to spend a quiet, relaxing two or three weeks at Cloud Lake—fixing up his place, reading, even attempting to overcome his fear of water—Charlie is less than thrilled to discover his next-door neighbor is one hell of a looker. He doesn't need that kind...

After Emery Hazard loses his job as a detective in Saint Louis, he heads back to his hometown—and to the local police force there. Home, though, brings no happy memories, and the ghosts of old pain are very much alive in Wahredua. Hazard's new partner, John-Henry Somerset, had been one of the worst tormentors, and Hazard still wonders what Somerset's role was in the death of Jeff Langham, Hazard's first boyfriend.When a severely burned body is discovered, Hazard finds himself drawn deeper into the case than he expects. Determining the identity of the dead man proves impossible, and solving the murder grows more and more unlikely. But as the city's only gay police officer, Hazard is placed at the center of a growing battle between powerful political forces. To his surprise, Hazards finds an unlikely ally in his partner, the former bully. And as they spend more time together, something starts to happen between them, something that Hazard can't—and doesn't want—to explain.The...