In this classic tale from New York Times bestselling author Linda Goodnight, revisita hero with big dreams and the girl next door who's always been there for him… Doing the right thing always came easily to firefighter Zak Ashford. So he can't refuse totake in the dying wife he thought divorced him long ago—or to watch over her threetroubled children. The only person Zak can turn to is Jilly Fairmont, the pretty girl nextdoor who helps him and the children through their loss. And not just because she secretlycares for Zak. Yet it isn't long before Zak realizes what this honest, compassionate womanmeans to him, too. With big dreams at stake, Zak suddenly finds himself reconsidering thefuture he always thought he wanted. A future that will be nothing unless Jilly agrees toshare it with him…

He was a dangerously seductive stranger . . . Jon Sandell. Confident, controlled, a man with many secrets—and one remarkable power: the ability to read a woman's mind, to touch her soul, to know her every waking desire. Who rocked her world . . . Now he's on a vital mission: to rescue a woman who doesn't even know she's in danger from the ruthless agents who wish her harm. But who will protect her from him? With breathless intrigue . . . Alone in her ivy-covered cottage, Elizabeth Ramsey welcomes Jon's sudden appearance, for he is a link to the husband she loved and tragically lost. Until this mesmerizing stranger reveals his true intentions: to lure her from her ordered home and into his violent, passionate, precarious world. . . . And desperate desire. . . . Soon, alone in a secluded mountain lodge, Elizabeth will walk a glittering tightrope between fear and fascination, unable to tell friend from foe, lover from enemy. Caught in a sensual game of love and lies, she must find the truth before she loses her life.

The Last Bridge Is Home resonates with familial love and compassion of place. Rodd Whelpley dives into what is often unsaid but still heard, through music, through undertones of conversation. He builds for us a bridge to tandem our love and grief, what we remember and how we move forward. This collection is a testament to inevitable change, moments when "you look down, unsure the water will still be there" and find your strength. Whelpley holds out a hand and offers us an intimate lens of late 1970s Ohio, of family, and ultimately of how our relationships sustain us. -Madeleine Corley, Managing Editor, Barren Magazine In The Last Bridge Is Home, Rodd Whelpley gives us an intimate portrait of changing and complicated family relationships: how they bubble up, transform us, and never fully leave us. The poems dance in and out of childhood, adult, and familial fears and pains, tracing a life in a way that shows just how present memory, forgetting, and loss can be. -Bess Cooley, Winner of the 2017 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, Co-Founder and Editor of Peatsmoke The beauty of Rodd Whelpley's writing makes me want to sit with his poems. Their resonance makes me want to understand why they touch me. Their brevity fools me into thinking that they are simple, and then I embark on an experience that becomes more layered with each read. For Whelpley, it is in our nature to cling, to grieve, and, for whatever reason, we resist the calm. Our world is both immediate and distant. We drift and we land. We commune, and then we are other. We perceive both beauty and fury and remain powerless in the face of each. -Ariana D. Den Bleyker, Publisher, ELJ Editions, Ltd.