Intimate love opens us up to suffering, sacrifice, and loss. Is it always worth the risk? Consulting philosophers, writers, and poets who draw insights from material life, Diane Enns shines a light on the limits of erotic love, exploring its paradoxes through personal and philosophical reflections. Situating experience at the center of her inquiry, Enns conducts philosophy "by another name," elaborating the ambiguities and risks of love with visceral clarity. Love in the Dark claims that intimacy must accept risk as long as love does not destroy the self. Erotic love inspires an inexplicable affirmation of another but can erode autonomy and vulnerability. There is a limit to love, and appreciating it requires a rethinking of love's liberal paradigms, which Enns traces back to the hostility toward the body and eros in Christianity and the Western philosophical tradition. Against a legacy of an abstract and sanitized love, Enns recasts erotic attachment as an event linked to conditional circumstances. The value of love lies in its intensity and depth, and its end does not negate love's truth or significance. Writing in a lyrical, genre-defying style, Enns delineates the paradoxes of love in its relations to lust, abuse, suffering, and grief to reach an account faithful to human experience.

A week in the dark has them seeing everything in a new light. Kayla: Accepting help from anyone makes my skin crawl. With my eyes bandaged for a week, I have no choice. When a huge tough guy shows up instead of my usual nurse, I don't know how to act. But he cares for me so sweetly, I could learn to get used to it. Every time he touches me, I feel utterly cherished. Treasured. He's strong, thoughtful, and achingly seductive.I can't wait to see his face. To hopefully be his girlfriend instead of his patient.Liam: Although I can't see her eyes, I fall for Kayla's lovely soul. Her clever, delicate way of viewing the world. (So to speak.)I'd do anything to keep her safe and healthy. And even more to touch her silky skin. Kiss those perfect lips.Even though I know once she looks at me, she'll want to run.All I can do is care for her as long and as much as she'll let me. ***This odd, quiet shy girl / alpha male romance is a standalone novel. No cliffhangers, no cheating, and a sweet HEA.Please look to the left for the "Follow This Author" button for updates!

Two strangers in Paris ...One passionate, earth-shattering kiss.He was the artist upstairswith the tantalizing smile and laughing eyes.He was the devil inviting me to sin,seducing me to dance in the bright moonlight.He was desire and need.When he touched me, my body sang.My soul came alive.But I belonged to another man,and he didn't want to let me go.

A young alchemist turns to dark magic when a deadly plague sweeps through her homeland, in this epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Beth Revis. Seventeen-year-old Nedra Brysstain leaves her home in the rural northern territories of Lunar Island to attend the prestigious Yugen Academy with only one goal in mind: master the trade of medicinal alchemy. A scholarship student matriculating with the children of Lunar Island's wealthiest and most powerful families, Nedra doesn't quite fit in with the other kids at Yugen. Until she meets Greggori "Grey" Astor. Grey is immediately taken by the brilliant and stubborn Nedra, who he notices is especially invested in her studies. And that's for a good reason: a deadly plague has been sweeping through the north, and it's making its way toward the cities. With her family's lives--and the lives of all of Lunar Island's citizens--on the line, Nedra is determined to find a cure for the plague. Grey and Nedra grow close, but as the sickness spreads and the body count rises, Nedra becomes desperate to find a cure. Soon, she finds herself diving into alchemy's most dangerous corners--and when she turns to the most forbidden practice of all, necromancy, even Grey might not be able to pull her from the darkness.

He was everything I should avoid...A silent lion in the dark; watching, studying, devouring me without a single touch.His voice sent shivers up my spine, stopping my heart inside my chest as if he controlled the oxygen it needed to beat.I danced for him, because he demanded it. I lied for him, because he wanted it, even though I knew a single lie could get me killed.He told me I was too pretty for this world, that there were things he could do for me. His eyes, the way they wander over my body, it makes me feel things I never felt before.Feelings that have no place here. Feelings that don't exist in my world.I couldn't ignore what I felt, and decided to risk my life to ask him for help.But I was a fool wishing on fallen stars.When the smoke clears, I'm able to see him for what he truly is...And it's not the hero I wanted him to be.How could I ever find love in the dark?*This is a standalone dark romance, and may contain material that might make some uncomfortable. All The books in the Dark Flower Series can be read on their own, in any order. This book has a guaranteed HEA and is not a cliffhanger.

Although her vast inheritance seemed a blessing, it has become a curse now that Susanna Laven’s mother is determined to marry her against her will to the impoverished Duke of Southampton. What’s worse that as her mother repeatedly and cruelly tells her, she is the family’s “ugly duckling” her only attraction is her fortune! Desperate to escape a loveless marriage, she responds to an advertisement for a reader in French and Italian for a temporarily blind gentleman. Meeting the gentleman, a Mr. Dunblane, who is swathed head to toe in bandages after a terrible motor car accident, she finds him rude and short-tempered, but still accepts and soon finds herself on a luxury train speeding across France on its journey to Florence. There Susanna’s eyes are opened to the glories of Florence – and love! to She had prayed to God to give her love, and in the blossoming relationship with her blind employer, who himself seems entranced by her, she may have found it. But it’s an agony, not a joy – for surely it will end the moment Mr Dunblane’s eyes are healed and he sees that she is not the beauty of his mind’s eye’s vision! Love in the Dark is the story of two people being blind in different ways – and of how love turns an ugly duckling into a swan with her evening knowing!

Colm Tóibín knows the languages of the outsider, the secret keeper, the gay man or woman. He knows the covert and overt language of homosexuality in literature. In Love in a Dark Time, he also describes the solace of finding like-minded companions through reading. Colm Tóibín examines the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential writers of the past two centuries, figures whose homosexuality remained hidden or oblique for much of their lives, either by choice or necessity. The larger world couldn't know about their sexuality, but in their private lives, and in the spirit of their work, the laws of desire defined their expression. This is an intimate encounter with Mann, Baldwin, Bishop, and with the contemporary poets Thom Gunn and Mark Doty. Through their work, Tóibín is able to come to terms with his own inner desires—his interest in secret erotic energy, his admiration for courageous figures, and his abiding fascination with sadness and tragedy. Tóibín looks both at writers forced to disguise their true experience on the page and at readers who find solace and sexual identity by reading between the lines.