Dakota County Library Hours Novels & Stories

Thanks to a car accident, I've suffered from a severe injury in my head, leaving me with one foot in my grave. My husband, Andrew Rollins who's known for being an extremely talented doctor, serves as my primary surgeon. He conducts a surgery on me that lasts for 18 hours straight just so he can wrench my life from Death's cold fingers. But the first thing I do after I wake up is tell him, "Let's get divorced, Andrew." His eyes become bloodshot immediately. "Tess, I just saved your life, and yet the first thing you want is a divorce? Is it because I've been too busy with my work at the hospital that it cuts down on the time I get to spend with you?" I frown deeply. "It's precisely due to the fact that you've saved me that I must file for a divorce. That's the only way I can help you uphold your title as an extremely talented doctor." My older family members are quick to advise me. "Andrew is such an amazing husband. Not only is he a family man, but he also loves you with all his heart. Why must you insist on getting a divorce? Are you tired of living a great life with Andrew?" Whoever has the gall to advise me will receive a rebuttal from me, no questions asked. "If you think he's such a prized man, you can have him after the divorce." Because of that, everyone is pissed at me. "Go ahead with the divorce, then! You'd better not regret your decision in the future!" I mumble under my breath, "Oh, I regret it alright… I regret not divorcing him sooner."

Clara has no idea what she is, and was forbidden by her Alpha and Luna parents to shift with the rest of the pack to protect her secret. After their death, the secret remains but she must protect herself even in her ignorance as to why. She cannot know what she is until she meets her mate.. Once she finds him, her answers are soon to be revealed, putting her and both of their packs in extreme danger.

She’s a princess. She’s a weapon. She’s the illegitimate daughter no one was supposed to need. For millenia, peace between supernatural kingdoms has been maintained by a brutal tradition: the Bride Swap. An elven princess for a foreign king. Ten years of marriage to buy one hundred and ninety years of fragile silence. This year, the elves must give a bride to the werewolves. Princess Alicia Sunblade was never meant to be the chosen one. Wild, sharp-tongued, and dangerously gifted by both the goddess of war and the goddess of love, she lives in quiet exile from a father who rules with manipulation and fear. But when her king threatens the one person she loves most, Alicia is forced into an arranged marriage with Alpha Rocco Silvermane — the powerful, feared King of Wolfsreach. Elves and werewolves are natural enemies. Their borders bleed tension. Their histories drip with blood. Rocco is everything Alicia was raised to despise: dominant, ruthless, physically overwhelming — and politically untouchable. Yet he has his own kingdom to protect, his own factions to appease, and his own reasons for accepting the swap. Two rulers. Two unwilling sacrifices. One treaty balanced on a knife’s edge. But Alicia isn’t a lamb being led to slaughter. She is a strategist. A seductress blessed by divine persuasion. A warrior hiding behind silk and ceremony. If her father thinks he’s sending her away to be controlled, he may have just delivered his greatest weapon straight into enemy hands. Because if Alicia is going to be traded… She won’t just survive the wolves. She might just make their king kneel.

At dinner, my wife's little brother Darren shot me a nasty look. "Other guys hook their wife's brother up with houses and cars. Mine won't shut up about covering a lousy twenty grand. "Wade Watson, transfer your house to me today, or I swear, I'll make my sister divorce you." My hand stalled mid-serve as I placed food on my pregnant wife's plate. That house was all my parents left me. Best school district in the city. Worth over three hundred grand. I looked at Vanessa, waiting for her to back me up. For the baby. She slammed an abortion appointment slip onto the table. "It's because I married a useless guy like you that my brother still isn't married. Wade, you get one choice—the baby or the house."

Claire has had a crushed on her best friend's dad, Rawls, since she was sixteen years old. Now that she is all grown up, she wants it to be so much more. Does she take the chance and tell him how she feels? Or does she just sit in her window and dream about him.

Mayson has come back to her home town to help take care of her dad, who is ill. She left the town of Chance years ago and hadn’t planned on coming back. The first person who had her heart and also broke it lives in Chance. She will do everything in her power to avoid him but will fate step in and give them a second chance.

She loved him in silence for years. Tonight the Alpha would choose his Luna, and Haydee told herself she came only to watch. Then Cole Shade kissed another woman, and the mate bond snapped into place. The whole pack heard her gasp. Cole scented the truth and rejected her anyway, in front of everyone. "A mistake of the Moon Goddess is still a mistake." The rejection nearly killed her. Silvercrest's golden new Luna tried to finish the job, sending warriors into the dark to make sure Haydee never crossed the border alive. She crossed it anyway. And the wolf who caught her was the one creature Silvercrest had taught her to fear: Hunter Grear, the savage Alpha of Nightfall, the enemy whispered about since childhood. Hunter doesn't want her gratitude. He wants to know why a banished orphan carries a crest the world believes it buried eighteen years ago. A black moon, split by silver fire. The Moonborn mark. Proof of who Haydee was always meant to be. Now the man who threw her away wants her again, and the bond in her chest can't tell the difference between love and damage. The Luna who tried to bury her is still hunting the truth. And the rival Alpha who should have killed her is the only one who has ever seen her as worth protecting. Cole rejected his fated mate. He's about to learn what that mate can do. She was nobody. She was never nobody.

I wonder if I will ever be delivered from the hell that I have to live everyday. My dad has been a drunk ever since my mother walked out on us. I was only five when I realized that my dad was not like other dads. I had to clean up his messes. There were time I could not even go to school because I did not have any clothes to wear that fit. I knew that if social services got involved my dad would be angry and take it out on me. Things got worse when my dad became involved with the mafia. It was a way to work off his gambling debts. I was worried that one night he would not come home because he had gotten into deep with the mafia. That fear became a reality when my dad walked in with Joseph Rossi, the largest mafia boss in the state. “Selena, pack your things, you are going to be living with Mr. Rossi from now on.” I did not understand what was going on. “Why dad? I do not understand why I am going to live with him.” Mr. Rossi cleared his throat “You are going to live with me now because I own you. Your dad traded you to me to pay off his gambling debts.” I tried not to cry but I could not stop the tears - my dad sold me; I am now officially in hell.

One night. No names. No consequences — or so she thought. When aviation executive Sienna Hartwell discovers that the stranger she walked away from is her sister's groom, and that a ruthless debt covenant makes her the only woman who can save her family's company, she does the only logical thing: she takes her sister's place at the altar. But marrying Adrian Swift means living inside a contract she didn't fully read, a past she can't outrun, and a husband who has been three steps ahead of her from the very beginning.

She trusted him with the end of the world. He left her for dead in it. When the zombie apocalypse hits, Maya Rodriguez already knows who she's going to survive with — and who she's going to survive for. What she doesn't know is that her boyfriend has other plans. Ones that don't include her. Abandoned, alone, and furious in a world that has just ended, Maya finds herself with an unlikely companion: LUS, a rogue AI life coach who is equal parts infuriating and inexplicably useful, and who may know more about how the outbreak started than he's letting on. Surviving the apocalypse turns out to be the easy part. Because the world Maya's navigating isn't just full of the undead. It's full of engineered soldiers — wolves in human skin, built by the same government programme that unleashed the virus. It's full of men who want to protect her, want to use her, want to earn her, and want to be forgiven by her. And it's full of one specific slow burn she has categorically refused to name. She's not the woman she was before the world ended. She's considerably more dangerous. ***A post-apocalyptic romance about survival, betrayal, rogue AI, and the specific problem of falling in love when everything is already on fire.