Duke Library Hours Novels & Stories

Alina Hart, a sharp-tongued high school senior, hides behind sarcasm and wit to mask the pain of fractured family life. Shipped off to a prestigious boarding school by a father who no longer sees her, Alina struggles to find her place in a world of strict rules and academic expectations. Enter Professor Cristiano Wright, a 27-year-old literature teacher whose calm demeanor and sharp intellect make him both an enigma and a fascination. Tasked by Alina’s older brother Ethan to keep an eye on her, Wright finds himself drawn to the complexity beneath her rebellious exterior. In the backdrop of Shakespearean sonnets and Romantic poetry, Alina and Wright navigate an increasingly fraught connection. What begins as reluctant mentorship soon transforms into a tangled web of forbidden emotions, unspoken words, and an undeniable pull that neither can ignore. Set against the bustling corridors of an urban high school and the quiet corners of a library filled with unspoken confessions, Silent Flames, Forbidden Paths explores the fine line between admiration and desire, duty and vulnerability. As Alina and Wright grapple with their feelings, they must confront their moral boundaries and the cost of their choices. Can they maintain the lines they’ve drawn, or will their emotions blur them beyond recognition?

I came home a day early from my business trip and hid in the closet to surprise Eric Carter. At seven, he told the housekeeper to cook several dishes. At nine, he told me hoarsely that he had taken a bath and changed the bedsheets in my room. He was sure that I would love it. I did not believe him because I had heard him moaning in bed with Willow Summers for three hours from the closet. Willow Summers was his childhood sweetheart and my sister. I clicked on a webpage from my cell without hesitation. "Miss Summers, your appointment for creating a fake death has been confirmed. Time of Death: One week later Location of Death: The wedding hall on the top floor of the Century Building Cause of Death: Suicide from jumping off a building!"

Three hours after burying her gay husband, Sophia is given an ultimatum: move into her father-in-law's bed or watch her mother die and be raped by the entire mafia. Desperate, she calls the one man dangerous enough to protect her; Cassian Devine, her dead husband's enemy. Cassian offers help with strings attached. He'll give her protection, and money for her mother's care. In exchange, she becomes his completely. His submissive, his pet, his weapon against the man who ruined Cassian’s own family What starts as a transaction becomes something neither expected. But loving a man who believes he's unworthy of love while fighting a crime lord who wants her dead might cost Sophia everything, including her heart.

It happened in Paris, year 2015 when Aemee Harlene Santiago visited there to get some space and to breath some fresh air after her break up with Josiah – her ex-boyfriend. On her last day in Paris she decided to go to club to get some drinks, but someone she didn’t know approached her, it’s Clifford Samonte. In an hours of talking they get along pretty well. Because of so much drinks they had, Aemee had one-night stand with him. After that night she left him, thinking that it’ll be there 1st and last meeting, but Aemee got pregnant, she hid the child from him and doesn’t have any plan to introduce it to Clifford. After how many years, their path crosses again. That starts their roller coaster love story.

Upon hearing about my husband's surgery, I braved a typhoon and torrential rain, driving four hours back to the city. When I arrived at the hospital, my husband, Xander Gray, was lying on the hospital bed, calling out loudly, "I want my wife! Get my wife here!" His buddies around him joked about how his wife had him completely whipped. Everyone said he loved me to death. Blushing, I walked over with a happy smile and held his hand, saying, "I'm here." To my surprise, he shook off my hand in disgust and snarled, "Get lost! You're not my wife! My wife is Beverly Long!"

Her heart is broken at the altar by her lover, amidst the whispers and before the eyes of all. Cecily can't believe this is happening. Waves of shock move through her spine as she hears her lover echo those cold words of rejection. Bruno: " I can't marry you, Cecily. My heart belongs to someone else..." Then came the murmurs, louder this time, and a heartbroken bride struggling to digest this awkward reality, or better still, disappear completely... How could this be? We were just fine a few hours ago, promising each other forever over the phone and countless times in private. Has her lover been swapped or had a total transformation into a stranger she could barely recognize?

At twenty-eight, I held the dubious honor of being the last unmarried socialite on New York's Upper East Side. Everyone around me was growing increasingly anxious about my single status. In my previous life, my mother arranged a matchmaking cocktail party, where I was told to choose a husband from ten handpicked elite bachelors. I bribed the event planner to place Mark West's profile at the very top—and as I had hoped, I chose him. After we married, Mark treated me with what seemed like tender affection. He even bought me an oceanfront villa in the Hamptons, making me believe I had finally found true love. But that illusion shattered the day I was nine months pregnant, just hours away from giving birth. Mark drove a scalpel straight into my abdomen—then, right in front of me, hurled our newborn onto the floor. "If you hadn't forced me into this marriage with your family's power, Sofia wouldn't have been heartbroken enough to go drinking and get drugged and assaulted. This… this is what you owe her!" He tossed the scalpel aside, then calmly let his private doctor pin down my blood-soaked body. I fought through excruciating pain for six agonizing hours, until I finally bled to death. Afterward, Mark dumped my corpse into the Hudson River. But for Sofia, he hosted a grand funeral—funded with my money, under my name—and paraded himself to the world as a grieving, devoted widower. Given a second chance at life, I refused to step foot in that cursed matchmaking event. Instead, I went straight to my mother with a demand: marry me to Robert Black—the most ruthless, cold-blooded titan of Wall Street, whose scarred face was feared by all. In the end, stripped of my financial backing, Mark's hedge fund collapsed. He became a disgraced fraudster, spat on by everyone on Wall Street.

She is the loner, the outcast, and the bully's favorite target at school. When she become a young heiress of a noble house, everyone has to lower their heads in her presence. Now, she's back at school to let her bullies kneel before her! ~~~ After being bullied and an outcast for many years, Sydnee find out that her true mother is a noblewoman and she is a young heiress of a noble house. Her stepfather, the Duke, bring her to his household and train her to become a true heiress. However, her mother seems to dislike her so much and prefers to adore the adopted double-faced girl Catarina. Whatever she'll do, her mother will always be bias towards Catarina, and even support Catarina's plan to take her inheritance and usurp the position of Dukedom's heiress. But she, Sydnee, has promised herself to never back down from the fight to inheritance! Gaining the king's favor? Being a teacher's pet? It's easy to achieve. Even stirring the power factions in the capital is as easy as pie for her! This little white mice is not her opponent at all!

When I first caught Miles cheating on me, I pinned him down at the entrance whenever he came home every day. I would pull down his pants and spray high-concentration alcohol all over his nether regions. He always went along with it with teary eyes because he knew he had been in the wrong. He would only look at me with a pitiful gaze and coax me to stop. One day, he came home two hours late. I became mad when I smelled the perfume on him. I started taking off his belt forcefully and yelled, “Last time, when you had your fun with one woman, you came home half an hour late. “Now you’re two hours late. Talk! Did you sleep with four?” Even though he apologized to me for the twenty-ninth time, I pushed him away repeatedly. He finally raised his hand to show me the IV mark on the back of it. He snapped and screamed at me, “Enough! I was dying with a high fever, yet you haven’t even asked how I’m doing. You just fly off the handle every single day. When are you going to stop? “Fine, I got drunk and slept with someone once. Big deal. You’re not so innocent yourself. “It’s no wonder you got dragged into an alley at sixteen, stripped, and assaulted. Jenna, you’re a paranoid wreck. You may have even deserved it.” The spray bottle shattered at my feet, and the smell of alcohol caught in my throat. I was speechless. I felt exhausted when I saw his disgusted expression. I did not want this broken relationship any longer.

BOOK TWO of COALESCENCE OF THE FIVE: When the line between allies and enemies blurs, a king and queen must trust each other—even when trust seems lost. A rogue pack seems to possess almost impossible knowledge to evade capture as King Alexandar and Queen Lucianne learn a difficult truth - the leader of the rogue pack is bonded to one of their allies. To make matters more difficult, something is stirring in the vampire community. Rumors, reports, whispers of kidnappings and invasions. With threats pushing in from every angle the king and queen must fight to protect their kingdom, their allies, their friends, and even one another. As bonds are forged and broken, the royal pair must face a sinister thought—perhaps the threat looms within their circle. And as their love and trust for another are put to the test, they must remember that dark forces are no match for their bond. But how can anyone fight an unseen threat with the ability to bring the kingdom to its knees? When all seems lost, even a pinprick of light can ignite the fires of hope… *** BOOK ONE: The 5-time Rejected Gamma & the Lycan King BOOK THREE: The Indomitable Huntress & the Hardened Duke