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Two worlds. One heart. Twelve hours. Bianca Maria Curtis is at the brink of losing it all when she meets Eric at a bar in Manhattan. Eric, as it turns out, is the famous Korean drama celebrity Park Hyun Min, and he’s in town for one night to escape the pressures of fame. From walking along Fifth Avenue to eating ice cream at Serendipity to sharing tender moments on top of the Empire State building, sparks fly as Bianca and Eric spend twelve magical hours far away from their respective lives. In that time, they talk about the big stuff: love, life, and happiness, and the freedom they both seek to fully exist and not merely survive. But real life is more than just a few exhilarating stolen moments in time. As the clock strikes the twelfth hour, Bianca returns back to the life she detests to face a tragedy that will test her strength and resolve—and the only thing she has to keep going is the memory of a man she loves in secret from a world away. Pub Date: April 18, 2023 Author: Maan Gabriel -
Tzippy is a wealthy widow, feisty, determined, vain and living in Florida. Her three children will be visiting for Tzippy’s 80th birthday celebration and will be bringing with them the old wounds that Tzippy did more than her fair share to inflict. As her birthday approaches, the death of a close friend as well as the aches, pains and daily indignities of aging are preying on her mind. Tzippy wonders how she will be remembered? Her relationship with her children is not good, particularly with Shari, her youngest and most screwed up. Shari is a problem drinker and still plagued by the eating disorder she’s had since adolescence. She always blamed her mother for her problems and lately Tzippy has had the uncomfortable feeling Shari may be right. On the day of the party, on edge and anxious, Tzippy decides on a shopping trip to Saks which is always her quick fix, and while there, sees a brooch she wants, but not enough to pay for it. It finds its way into her purse and as she is making her get away—unlike the other times—she is caught and hauled off to the police station. Now that Tzippy is turning 80, there is not an infinite amount of time left. Will She be able to repair the damage that has taken a lifetime to create? Author: Patricia Striar Rohner Publication Date: October 18, 2016 -
A collection of sixty-four black-and-white photographs and sixty-two poems, Unfolding in Light offers a vision of hands as images, symbols, and archetypes, allowing the numinous to shine through the mundane. Sisters Joan Scott and Claire Scott provides an intimate pause that gives the reader a quiet moment to reflect on the meaning of everyday hands: an ill child’s hands; a dying woman’s hands; hands of lovers, young and old; hands at work, at play, in pain, in prayer, and in love. Author: Joan and Claire Scott Publication Date: November 17, 2015 -
Dr. Pepper Hunt and Detective Beau Antelope team up again to investigate a tragic murder/suicide in a prominent ranch family in the small town of Farson, Wyoming. As they explore events leading up to the night of the disturbing crime they are drawn into the dark heart of a troubled family touched by a legacy of trauma. Author: J. L. Doucette Publication Date: November 23, 2021 -
Jaded New York City Public Defender Liana Cohen would give anything to have one client in whom she can believe. Dozens of hardened criminals and repeat offenders have chipped away at her faith in both herself and the system. Her boyfriend Jakob’s high-powered law firm colleagues see her do-gooder job as a joke, which only adds to the increasing strain in their relationship. Enter imprisoned felon Danny Shea, whose unforgivable crime would raise a moral conflict in an attorney at the height of her idealism―and that hasn't been Liana in quite a while. But Danny's astonishing blend of good looks, intelligence, and vulnerability intrigues Liana. Could he be the client she’s been longing for―the wrongly accused in need of a second chance? Is he innocent? As their attorney-client relationship transforms into something less than arm’s length, Liana is forced to confront fundamental questions of truth, faith, and love―and to decide who she wants to be. Author: Reyna Marder Gentin Publication Date: November 13, 2018 -
Elizabeth Tilton, a devout housewife, shares liberal ideals with her husband, Theodore Tilton, and their pastor and close friend Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, both influential reformers of the Reconstruction Era who promote suffrage for women and former slaves and advocate for the spiritual power of love rather than Calvinistic retribution. Elizabeth is torn between admiration for her husband’s stand on women’s rights and resentment of his dominating ways at home. When Theodore justifies his extramarital affairs in terms of the free love doctrine that marriage should not restrict other genuine loves, she becomes closer to Henry, who admires her spiritual gifts—and eventually falls passionately in love with him. Once passion for her pastor undermines the moral certainties of her generation, Elizabeth enters into uncharted emotional and ethical territory. Under what circumstances should she tell the truth? If she does, will she lose her children and her marriage? Will she destroy her own reputation and the career of the reverend who has done much good? Can a woman accustomed to following the leadership of men find her own path and define her own truth? Author: Barbara Southard Publication Date: January 28, 2025 -
Valeria Vose: A Novel takes a reader deep inside the cultural and emotional life of a 1970’s southern woman. Privileged, approaching age forty, her “perfect” life is shattered. Determined to survive, she’s forced to confront all preconceived values and expectations in order to find a path toward creative, spiritual independence and her true identity. Author: Alice Bingham Gorman Publication Date: October 2, 2018 -
Struggling to forget a crumbling marriage, forty-year-old Anna Lucia Lottol comes to Venice to visit an old friend—but instead of finding solace, she is dragged into the police station and accused of murdering a money-laundering count with whom she had a brief affair. A US Treasury officer with brains and athleticism, Anna fights to clear her name in a seductive city full of watery illusions. As she works to pry information from a cast of recalcitrant characters sometimes denying what she sees and hears, she succeeds in unleashing a powerful foe bent on destroying her. Will she save herself and vanquish her enemies, including her darkest fears? A mysterious tapestry of murder, betrayal, and family, Venetian Blood is a story of one woman’s brave quest for the truth —before it’s too late. Author: Christine Evelyn Volker Publication Date: August 8, 2017 -
Greece. Politics. Love. Danger. Reeling from a failed marriage and spurred on by a burgeoning sense of feminism, twenty-five-year-old Kate accepts a position as a speech therapist in a center for children with cerebral palsy in Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1974, and the recent end of Greece’s seven-year dictatorship has ignited a fiery anti-American sentiment within the country. Despite this, as her Greek improves, Kate teaches communication to severely disabled children, creates profound friendships, and finds a home in the ancient and historied city. From a dramatic Christmas pig slaughter to a mesmerizing fire walking ceremony, her world expands rapidly—even more so when she falls in love with Thanasis, a handsome Communist. Through Thanasis, Kate meets people determined to turn a spotlight on their former dictators’ massacre of university students, as well as their record of widespread censorship and torture of dissidents. The more she learns, the more her loyalty to her country and almost everything she was taught in her conservative home state of Texas is challenged. Kate is transformed by her odyssey, but when her very safety is threatened by the politics of her lover, she must choose: risk everything to stay with Thanasis and the Greece that has captured her heart, or remove herself from harm’s way by returning to her homeland? Pub Date: June 13, 2023 Author: Kathryn Crawley -
A riveting journey through sacrifice, resilience, and love in the heart of the Civil War, readers follow Adrien Villere as he fights for love and honor with Terry’s Texas Rangers, while his family copes with hardship and tragedy at home. An epic tale of forbidden love and courage that transcends societal boundaries. Book 2 in the series continues to hook fans of Southern literature or Civil War history—while also having, as the Historical Novel Society North America says, “the potential to be an important part of the canon of LGBTQ+ literature.” Author: Karen Lynne Klink Publication Date: April 9, 2025 -
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist IndieFab Awards Finalist (Top 15) “Reed’s charming novel stars a neurotic singer with mother issues who has been avoiding auditions and attending frustrating therapy sessions instead. When Cecilia meets a homeless boy on the streets, however, her life takes a risky new direction. A well-written, endearing book that surprises . . . ” —Kirkus Reviews Approaching forty, unemployed but well-off, talented but unknown, functional but depressed, former musical actress Cecilia Morrison reluctantly starts therapy, hoping for a change in her life, but ultimately it's a runaway teenager who cons her out of sixty bucks, not therapy, that gives her the inspiration she's looking for. Author: Mary Hutchings Reed Publication Date: April 23, 2013 -
In 1991, Julia Wilkes, a zealous young reporter, covered the murder of a teenage girl in Fairbanks, Alaska. Julia’s stories relentlessly linked the girl’s boyfriend, Josh Harrison, to the crime—up to the day that the basketball star shot himself in the head. Twenty years later, Julia, now a Seattle journalism professor and syndicated columnist, comes back to Fairbanks on a sabbatical just in time to hear about a serial killer’s confession to the long-ago slaying. With Josh exonerated, Julia is haunted by whether her stories pushed him to end his life—and when a stalker begins to make attempts on her life, the stakes grow even higher. Suspects and motives abound: Julia’s enraged a pro-life group with a recent column; she’s drawn a jealous woman’s wrath; she’s unintentionally drawn the attention of a demented homeless person; and there’s always the possibility that someone from her past has come to collect vengeance for Josh’s death. Author: Patricia Watts Publication Date: March 19, 2013 -
2015 IPPY: Gold: Contemporary Fiction, Winner After her farmhouse in Greenwich, Connecticut is destroyed, Lidia is thankful her teenage twins, Carly and Clarisse, are unharmed and that her friend Polly Niven has taken them in. Lidia, whose husband left her and the girls for another man, lost her job in the financial crisis. She fears more bad news and soon discovers a connection between her and Tina Calderara, the pilot who crashed into her home. In the midst of her troubles, she meets Harry Caligan, the FBI Special Agent assigned to her case. With Harry’s help, Lidia plunges into the family mystery linking her to Tina. Author: Jean P. Moore Publication Date: June 3, 2014 -
Barnaby Brown has had enough of freezing winters, a dead-end job, and his life alone with his parrot. He wants to start anew move to California, and reawaken his lost dream of becoming an artist. Then his car crashes into as now bank nixing his plan of driving West and his beloved parrot flies away, and suddenly California feels very out of reach. After a run-in with a former teaching colleague, Barnaby is shocked into an awareness of how low he has sunk. He vows to make changes, including kicking his drinking habit and settling his debts. With the help of some good friends, Barnaby starts taking steps toward a better life and finds romance and more than a few mysteries to unravel along the way. A heartwarming novel about ordinary people and their hidden talents, Waterbury Winter celebrates the importance of keeping promises and the restorative value of art. Author: Linda Stewart Henley Pub Date: May 3, 2022 -
A dazzling literary romance about a young socialite and a smooth-talking pilot who take a chance on each other against the extreme odds orchestrated by their peers and mother nature. In 1950s New England, being a marriageable young lady means following a certain set of rules. Nineteen-year-old Sabina knows them all too well, thanks to her imposing aunt Poppy, who has already decided how Sabina will spend the season at their summer home in Edgartown, where she’ll go to college in the fall, and the type of young man she’ll eventually marry. But Sabina has other ideas. And the island, it seems, does too. Sabina is about to meet the Vineyard’s most notorious bachelor: charter pilot Colin Hatch. With a cloudy history, a questionable income, and a reputation for charming every available girl at the yacht club, Colin isn’t exactly the traditional match her aunt had in mind. When Sabina takes a chance on him anyway, a complex love triangle emerges, setting Sabina’s summer on an entirely different path—not just for this vacation season, but maybe for the rest of her life. A coming-of-age story woven into a small coastal town’s various dramas, Ways of Virtue is Dirty Dancing meets Jane Austen—complete with a beautiful seaside setting, a high-society wedding in the making, a host of scheming, jealous neighbors, and a once-in-a-lifetime hurricane that’s barreling toward them all. Author:Liz O’Neill Publication Date: September 30, 2025 -
We Never Told is a page-turning novel about a glamorous family in the golden age of Hollywood. Set in suburban New York, it follows Sonya Adler's life from growing up in a "broken home," to the hippie sixties, and into the present with a shocking twist at the end. The story outlines a time when unmarried women were shamed into putting their newborns up for adoption and the consequences which have touched thousands of people. This fast-paced story is not just about sisters keeping a secret but is a heart-wrenching and funny tale about a not often talked-about part of American history: children finding their birth families fifty years later. Author: Diana Altman Publication Date: June 11, 2019 -
In this fast-paced coming-of-age novel we meet Fiona, an art student at a New Jersey college who is brilliant, beautiful, and struggling to find herself. Through her eyes we relive the turbulent culture of sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll, the first draft lottery since World War II, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, the Kent State University shootings, and the harsh realities of war for Americans in their early twenties. Fiona’s best friend, Melissa, is in a dead-end relationship, pregnant, and going nowhere fast. After Melissa’s abortion, Fiona and Melissa spend a week in Florida, where they are introduced to tarot cards and the anti-war movement. Following this experience, Melissa becomes obsessed with the occult; Fiona, though intrigued, approaches the tarot cautiously, with the voice of her conservative Christian mother screaming in her head. After Fiona’s return from Florida, she begins dating Reuben—a journalism major and political activist. Reuben decides to move to Canada to avoid the draft and encourages Fiona to accompany him. But is that really what she wants? Caught between her feelings for Reuben and her own aspirations, Fiona struggles to define herself, her artistic career, and her future. Author: Susen Edwards Publication Date: November 15, 2022 -
Freddie was raised on faith. It’s in her blood. Yet rather than seeking solace from the Almighty when she loses her husband of many years, she enters a state of quiet contemplation—until her daughter, and then her sister, each come home with a host of problems of their own, and her solitude is brought to an end. As Freddie helps her daughter and sister deal with their troubles, her own painful past—a wretched childhood at the hands of an unbalanced, pious mother—begins to occupy her thoughts more than ever, as does Anna, the grandmother she’s always wished she’d known better. Freddie feels that she and Anna are connected, not just through blood but through the raising of difficult daughters, and it’s a kinship that makes her wonder what unseen forces have shaped her life. With all that to hand, a new family crisis rears its head—and it forces Freddie to confront the questions she’s asked so many times: What does it mean to believe in God? And does God even care? Author: Anne Leigh Parrish Publication Date: October 15, 2014 -
When a young girl feels complicit in her own abuse, how does that thwart her attempts to build a happy life as an adult woman? When disturbing memories begin to surface, Marti returns to the small Vermont town she ran away from thirty years ago to face her demons. She drags her unwitting teenage daughter along on the journey—heightening already existing tension between mother and daughter. But Marti is determined to achieve what she’s returned home for: forgiveness for lies told, and revenge for secrets held. Exploring the vast social changes that took place between 1970 and 2000 and turning a critical eye on times before language such as #MeToo helped give voice to these all-too-common occurrences, What Was Lost is a raw, powerful tale of one woman confronting the ghosts of her past. Author: Melissa Connelly Publication Date: October 8, 2024 -
In 1967, Fay Stonewell, a water tank escape artist in Florida, leaves for Vietnam to join the Amazing Humans, a jerry-rigged carnival entertaining the troops, abandoning her teenage, disabled son, Dickie, in the care of an abusive boyfriend. Now forty-years-old, Dickie recalls the chaotic months after Fay left. His troubled home life ends in a surprising act of violence, forcing him to run away first to Manhattan, where he’s taken in by the eccentric artist Laurence Jones and later, by Spin, a gay man struggling with AIDS in a Massachusetts coastal town. Spin may offer Dickie what he’s always wanted: a home without wheels. But the farther Dickie runs, the tighter the past clings to him. Fay faces dangerous threats also. From the night her plane jolts onto a darkened Saigon runway, she confronts every bad decision she’s made as she struggles to return to her son. But the Humans owner is hellbent on keeping her in Vietnam, performing only for war-injured children at a hospital, daily reminders of the son she’s left behind. Ultimately, What We Give, What We Take is a deeply moving story of second chances and rising above family circumstances, however dysfunctional they may be. Author: Randi Triant Pub Date: April 12th, 2022 -
In 1947, war bride Ursula arrives in Minneapolis torn between guilt over leaving loved ones behind and her desire to start a new life—and a family—in this promised land. But the American dream proves elusive—she is struck with polio, and then shocked by the sudden death of her GI husband. Without a spouse or the child she so desperately wanted, Ursula must rely on her shrewd survival skills from wartime Berlin, and she takes in a boarder to help make ends meet. She soon falls in love with the Argentinean medical technician living in her spare bedroom, but his devotion to communism troubles her—and when she finds herself pregnant with his child, she is faced with a dilemma: how to reconcile her dream of motherhood with an America that is so different from what she imagined. Pub Date: July 25, 2023 Author: Christine Gallagher Kearney -
Kassie O’Callaghan’s meticulous plans to divorce her emotionally abusive husband, Mike, and move in with Chris, a younger man she met five years ago on a solo vacation in Venice, are disrupted when she finds out Mike has chronic kidney disease—something he’s concealed from her for years. Once again, she postpones her path to freedom—at least, until she pokes around his pajama drawer and discovers his illness is the least of his deceits. But Kassie is no angel, either. As she struggles to justify her own indiscretions, the secret lives she and Mike have led collide head-on, revealing a tangled web of sex, lies, and DNA. Still, mindful of her vows, Kassie commits to helping her husband find an organ donor. In the process, she uncovers a life-changing secret. Problem is, if she reveals it, her own immorality will be exposed, which means she has an impossible decision to make: Whose life will she save—her husband’s or her own? Author: Valerie Taylor Publication Date: September 15, 2020 -
In her second novel, Valerie Taylor—award-winning author of What’s Not Said—gives readers another romantic comedy interwoven with forbidden love, infidelity, and family. With the court date set for her divorce and the future she’d planned with a younger man presumably kaput, Kassie O’Callaghan shifts attention to reviving her stalled marketing career. But that goal gets complicated when she unexpectedly rendezvous with her former lover in Paris. After a chance meeting with a colleague and a stroll along Pont Neuf, Kassie receives two compelling proposals. Can she possibly accept them both? Kassie’s decision process screeches to a halt when her soon-to-be ex-husband has a heart attack, forcing her to fly home to Boston. There, she confronts his conniving and deceitful fiancée—a woman who wants not just a ring on her finger but everything that belongs to Kassie. In the ensuing battle to protect what’s legally and rightfully hers, Kassie discovers that sometimes it’s what’s not true that can set you free. Author: Valarie Taylor Publication Date: August 24, 2021 -
When Diana quit her job and followed her husband to Manila, she believed the move would work for both of them: Jay would finally have his dream job, and she would take time off from her accounting career to start a family. Four years later, however, she’s still not pregnant. Her fertility doctor advises her to relax—an undertaking that is easier said than done in one of the noisiest, most crowded cities in the world. Nevertheless, Diana tries. She takes up yoga and meditation. She buys goldfish. Then one day, while Jay is away on business, a violent coup d’état erupts. The rebels bomb the presidential palace and occupy parts of the city. Clearly, Diana decides, something needs to change. Determined to have a baby while she’s still young enough, she convinces Jay to transfer to the small South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, said to be “the most relaxing place on earth.” It isn’t long before she realizes that the island’s tropical beauty hides dangers and disappointments that will test her courage, her marriage, and her ability to open herself up to new possibilities. Publication Date: April 27, 2021 Author: Nicki Chen
