Scandals can be fun to read about in the newspaper, but not if they've happened to YOU. How does a person recover from publicly making such a mess of their life? How do they get past a colossal mistake? And how does their family survive and rebuild? When 18-year-old Amanda Long, ballet student, meets Richard Gessler, the college's benefactor and a high-profile businessman, he offers to take her under his wing and become her mentor. However, in a slow step-by-step seduction, Amanda is drawn further and further into a dangerous dance. The dark romance between the two takes an ugly turn,...

In tough times, even amoebas turn to family... It's late 2008 and everything is just terrible. The Dow is dropping, unemployment is rising, nobody's buying any cars, and even worse than that, the Cates sisters are forced to celebrate Thanksgiving together. Their late father's will leaves everything in his estate to be divided among all family members, but how are they going to split up an eccentric old house between them when the bottom has fallen out of the real estate market? Not only that, but it turns out dear old Dad left behind a few secrets that may come back to haunt them all. The...

In this collection of 36 short stories and essays (and two poems ), Carolyn Steele Agosta writes about relationships - man/woman, mother/daughter, friend/enemy, grandparent/grandchild, stranger to stranger. Indeed, Ms. Agosta's stories are all about relationships and the twisting, turning paths they take. If she ever wrote a story about ax-murderers, they'd be a family of ax-murderers, comparing brands of axes and arguing over who Mother liked best. In After the Wink, a woman who feels she has lost sight of herself contemplates starting an affair with a man who sees her for - not who she is -...