These are the books I have read since Sunday….

The Smart One and the Pretty One – Claire LaZebnik

Smart, successful Ava Nikerson is closing in on thirty and has barely had a date since law school. When a family crisis brings her prodigal little sister Lauren back to Los Angeles, Lauren stumbles across a forgotten document – a contract their parents jokingly drawn up years ago betrothing Ava to their friends’ son. Fustrated and embarrassed by Ava’s constant lectures abut financial responsibility (all because she’s in a little debt. Okay, a lot of debt), Lauren decides to do some sisterly interfering of her own and tracks down her sister’s childhood fiance. When she finds him, the highly inappropriate, twice-divorced, but incredibly charming Russell Markowitz is all too happy to reenter the Nikerson sisters’ lives. And always-accountable Ava will soon realise just how binding a contract can be…

Never After – Laurell K. Hamilton

The bonds of love…the bonds of matrimony…the bonds between husband and wife…Some bonds are meant to be broken. Here, for the first time ever, are four stories based on the classic idea of the “Faerie Tale Wedding” – except this time the damsels aren’t the ones in distress. #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton spins a story of a princess who decides to take her own destiny in hand and rescue a pampered Prince Charming from an evil sorceress in “Can He Bake a Cherry Pie”. A selkie on the run from a century-old broken marriage arrangement has finally found true love – only to have the darkness from her past return to threaten both her and her dearly beloved in New York Times bestselling author Yasmin Galenorn’s “The Shadow of Mist”. New York Times bestselling author Marjorie M. Liu tells the tale of a young princess who escapes a betrothal to a warlord by entering a magical forest. But when an evil queen sends her on a questto “The Tangleroot Palace”, she faces dangers more perilous than marriage. When a princess refuses her boring betrothed, the king holds a competition to see who will win his daughter’s hand. But in matters of the heart, is a winner truely worthy – or can a loser offer even more in international bestselling author Sharon Shinn’s “The Wrong Bridegroom”