Can secrets and second choices ever lead to love?

After three months in a mail-order marriage, Hannah Wentworth McMurtry is a widow - pregnant, alone, and near death in the Wyoming wilderness. Though she is saved by a man with a face cut from stone, she still grieves the husband who died on their journey west. Hannah needs a husband, but does she dare marry another stranger?

Flint Creed has also lost someone he loved - when the woman he hoped to marry chose his younger brother instead. Now he must find a ranch wife of his own. But every female in the remote Wyoming Territory is too old, too young, or already married . . . until he discovers Hannah on the prairie. Flint doesn't pretend to love her, but he doesn't tell her he loves another woman, either. Hannah doesn't pretend to love him, but she doesn't tell him about the child she carries. Though danger surrounds them on the Wyoming frontier, the greatest threats of all are the secrets within - revelations that could destroy the new life Hannah and Flint have begun to cherish.

From New York Times bestselling author Joan Johnston, a heartwarming story of what it means to risk your whole heart for the one you love...

A lone wolf like Stony Carlton isn't easy to tame. Commitment may be fine for other men, but Stony is a born rambler and refuses to be tied down, even to the right woman. Because how could such a person really exist?

But then he meets the spirited Tess Lowell, a small-town waitress with emotional scars of her own, thanks to an ugly divorce. And, somehow, as the straight-talking redhead slowly earns a place in his heart, he can't help but think about what it might be like to give up his roaming ways...

Prepare for edge-of-your-seat suspense in this Thriller Short.

In this compelling Thriller Short from New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver, the stakes in counterterrorism are raised high. Retired Colonel James J. Peterson – head of a covert, illegal, intelligence-gathering operation known as IAS – is briefed on a national security threat that could unleash a weapon capable of ‘significant damage.’ But what kind of weapon is it? Conventional? A nuke? Or something altogether new? And who’s behind the threat? Al-Qaeda? The Koreans? The Iranians? It’s up to Colonel Peterson’s IAS black site operation to find out who’s behind the threat, and to neutralise the weapon before it’s unleashed on the United States. The problem? He only has four days to do it.

Originally published in THRILLER 2 (2009), edited by No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Clive Cussler.

Miranda Wentworth never imagined becoming a mail-order bride. Now marriage to a stranger is her only hope of finding a home where she and her two younger brothers can escape the brutality of the Chicago orphanage where they live. With any luck, she can even start a family of her own, once the three of them are settled at Jacob Creed's Texas ranch. But Miranda has one gigantic concern: Her husband-to-be knows nothing about the brothers she's bringing along. What if he calls off the deal when he discovers the trick she's played on him?

Jake Creed is hanging on to his Texas ranch by his fingernails. His nemesis, Alexander Blackthorne, is determined to ruin him. Jake will never give up, but he's in desperate trouble. His wife died six months ago in childbirth, along with their stillborn son, and his two-year-old daughter needs a mother. The advertisement Jake wrote never mentioned his daughter - or the fact that he has no intention of consummating his marriage. He's determined never to subject another wife to the burden of pregnancy. But Jake doesn't count on finding his bride so desirable. He doesn't count on aching with need when she joins him in bed. And he never suspected his bride would have plans of her own to seduce him.

When Karl Norwood's mail-order bride meets an untimely demise on the way to the Montana Territory, Hetty Wentworth steps in to take her place. Hetty has no idea how she's going to pretend to be all the things she isn't - including the mother of two kids. She only knows her deception is necessary if she's going to save two orphans from the awful fate she suffered as a child.

Karl smells a rat when a much younger woman than he was expecting arrives with two children who look nothing like her. But his mail-order bride is so beautiful, he doesn't object - until he realizes that his charming new wife has been lying . . . about everything. Can a woman forced to keep secrets and a man hindered by distrust ever hope to find happily ever after in each other's arms?