They spend the summer together, exploring the island’s sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters, and, for the first time in her life, Ella feels truly free.But the outbreak of war casts everything in a new light. Ella is forced to return to Scotland, where she volunteers for the war effort alongside the dashing Angus. In this new world, Ella feels herself drifting further and further from who she was on the Île de Ré. Can she ever find her way back? And does she want to?From the windswept Île de Ré to the rugged hills of Scotland, Sea of Memories is a spellbinding journey about the power of memory, love and second chances.

    Jolene is half of P.G. County’s number-two couple–and she desperately wants what she doesn’t have: namely Barbara’s husband. Pearl owns a hair salon and lives on the outskirts of the posh community with her son, Kenyatta. She’s not only juggling a growing business and a bad divorce, but now she’s has to cope with Kenyatta’s less-than-ideal girlfriend. Candice is white and liberal, but her daughter’s new beau tests her beliefs–and opens a can of worms she never knew existed. Lee is a runaway teen, a girl whose only connection to her father is an old photo and the belief that he’s well-off and waiting for her in . . . P.G. COUNTYFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

    An invalid mother whose health continues to fail. A son banished from home. Thirty-three-year-old Addie Coulter is certain life can't get any worse. But after a series of tragedies and losses that challenge her will and test her faith, Addie is forced to leave the only home she's ever known and travel with her daughter to live with her brother and sister-in-law in Golden Meadow. It is here, on the road to recovery, that she meets the dashing Hiram Graham and begins to believe it's possible to love again. Set during a time when life itself was filled with strife and hardship, author Ramona Bridges weaves an unforgettable story about unfailing love, deceit, and forgiveness in her debut novel, Sweet By and By. When the revealing of a horrible secret and the arrival of a dangerous criminal threatens to disrupt everything Addie's built and destroy her chance at true love, she's left with only one option: trust in her Savior to bring her safely to the other side. With a cast of characters that will capture your imagination and your heart, Sweet By and By celebrates God's promise of faith and hope amidst life's inevitable disappointments.

    She phones Nona, the mother she had all but written off, asking if she can come home for a while.When Shay was growing up, Nona was either drunk, hungover, or out with her latest low-life guy. So Shay barely recognizes the new Nona, now sober and with a positive outlook on life, a love of gardening, and a toddler named Sunny. Though reconciliation seems a hard proposition for Shay, something unmistakable is taking root inside her, waiting to blossom like the morning glories opening up in Nona’s garden sanctuary.Soon Shay finds herself facing exciting possibilities and even her first real romantic relationship. But when an unexpected crisis hits, even the wise words and soulful melodies of Nina Simone may not be enough for solace. Shay begins to realize that, like orange mint and honey, sometimes life tastes better when bitter is followed by sweet.

    Now available in mass market paperback for the first time, this novel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author takes readers on an unforgettable journey into a harrowing world where forbidden passions have catastrophic consequences.

    Georgia Young's wonderful life--great friends, family, and successful career--aren't enough to keep her from feeling stuck and restless. When she decides to make some major changes in her life, including quitting her job as an optometrist and moving house, she finds herself on a wild journey that may or may not include a second chance at love. Georgia’s bravery reminds us that it’s never too late to become the person you want to be, and that taking chances, with your life and your heart, are always worthwhile. Big-hearted, genuine, and universal, shows what can happen when you face your fears, take a chance, and open yourself up to life, love, and the possibility of a new direction.

    The crew, however, isn’t content to sit out the war. With help from unexpected sources—a naval attaché with the British Embassy and a courageous American reporter and her photographer sidekick—they overcome their captors, regain control of the "Eagle," and escape. The German’s are convinced the "Eagle's" crew has no stomach for a fight and will seek refuge in Sweden. But the Poles have something else in mind—join up with the British Fleet and continue fighting against their homeland's Nazi conquerors. They face stiff odds. The "Eagle" has little food and water, few torpedoes, and no sea charts. And before she can rendezvous with the British somewhere in the North Sea, she must traverse the Baltic, which has become little more than a Nazi-controlled lake. This story is inspired by the exploits of the Polish submarine, "Orzel," during the early weeks of World War II. Winston Churchill called her escape from the Nazis “an epic.”

    Jones, a prodigy of the short story, returns to the form that first won him praise in this new collection of stories, All Aunt Hagar's Children. Here he turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them in the city, people who in Jones's masterful hands emerge as fully human and morally complex. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw behind them and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

    In this stunning debut novel, Jenoyne Adams, a PEN Center USA West Emerging Voices Fellow, displays a rare talent for a first-time author: the skill and courage to write about some of the most controversial issues today in an absorbing and compulsively readable manner. Mingus Browning is a successful, young, beautiful lawyer whose life is falling apart. After a thirty-five-year marriage, Mingus's African-American father has suddenly left her Irish mother for a black woman. A daddy's girl, Mingus is torn between the father she has always been closer to, the mother she may have to defend in divorce proceedings, and a sister hell-bent on winning their lifelong sibling rivalry. Mingus is caught in middle of the three, a woman alone, and, in turn, realizes that she has probably always felt more comfortable that way because she is part of no one group, let alone a united family. Juggling her parents' grief with her own proves to be too much for Mingus as she stumbles from one questionable relationship to another, further complicating her life.After years of isolating herself from those who have tried to care for her, Mingus finally meets someone who rips through her protective defenses and exposes her need to be loved. Eric Simms, a smooth-talking television producer, is through playing dating games and is looking for love for real this time. With Eric, Mingus finally learns to forget the fear of a broken heart and opens herself completely. That is, until word starts circulating that her new love has his secrets as well, and suddenly what was a perfect relationship begins to look like yet another minefield of hurt, as Mingus is forced to choose between her man, her sister, and the truth.After facing a long, sad string of heartaches and betrayals, Mingus finally reaches the point in her life where she realizes who she is, what she wants, and how she doesn't need another man to get it. Marked by raw images and poetic prose, Jenoyne Adams's affecting first novel candidly explores the bonds of family, faith, and finding someone to love when you can't even find someone to trust.

    The war is nearly over, and in the lull before the Allied troops move further north to capture Florence Tom forges a friendship with the Parini family - and in particular with the eldest daughter, Giuliana. When the war ends he chooses to stay in Italy, planning to build a life with the woman with whom he has fallen deeply in love, but in the chaotic, tragic fallout of the end of the Second World War his hopes are dashed. Fifty years later Isabel Wainwright, Tom's daughter, sets off for Petriano herself, to attend a ceremony naming a piazza in her father's honour. But Isabel isn't so much going to represent her father as to try and find him - for she and her mother have heard nothing of him since, nearly twenty years earlier, he went out one day and never returned. She doesn't even know whether her father is dead or alive, but hopes that by discovering something of his past, she can build a picture of the man she hardly knew.

    When Henry dies soon after, she uncovers the long-hidden music manuscript. She becomes determined to discover what it is and to return it to its rightful owner, a journey that will challenge her preconceptions about herself and her family’s history—and also offer her an opportunity to finally make peace with the past.In Berlin, Germany, in 1783, amid the city’s glittering salons where aristocrats and commoners, Christians and Jews, mingle freely despite simmering anti-Semitism, Sara Itzig Levy, a renowned musician, conceals the manuscript of an anti-Jewish cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, an unsettling gift to her from Bach’s son, her teacher. This work and its disturbing message will haunt Sara and her family for generations to come.Interweaving the stories of Susanna and Sara, and their families, And After the Fire traverses over two hundred years of history, from the eighteenth century through the Holocaust and into today, seamlessly melding past and present, real and imagined. Lauren Belfer’s deeply researched, evocative, and compelling narrative resonates with emotion and immediacy.

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    I just didn’t expect to get so many.When Juanita Lewis arrived in Paper Moon, Montana, courtesy of a Greyhound bus, she was just looking for a brief respite. Instead, she found a home, friends, and a man to love. But this leave-your-attitude-by-the-door woman made a promise to herself–one that she intends to keep. Now that she’s got a place to come back to, Juanita wants to see the world.A trip out West with her eccentric trucker friend, Peaches, leads to a cooking stint at a new age spa for skinny celebrities. Crazy, but its here that Juanita decides to take her talent for cooking to a new level . . . and make it her dream. She also learns something about life: It does turn out the way you planned it–just be ready to change the plan a few times along the way.Just as Juanita’s journey begins, she’s called back to Paper Moon, having inherited an old, slightly haunted B&B, as well as a mountain of decisions. There’s her self-centered, irresponsible daughter, insisting that she get some sense and come back home to Columbus, and a son who’s doing things Juanita can’t bear to think about. So how does a middle-aged black woman from the projects follow her heart when it’s heading in so many different directions? By asking the right questions, then listening with her soul.

    For speaking a few innocuous words in French to a white woman, Armstrong is killed. And the precariously balanced world and its determined people--white and black--are changed, then and forever, by the horror of poverty, the legacy of justice, and the singular gift of love's power to heal.

    Lucy is thirty-five, single, and in great shape thanks to her career as a fitness manager for a string of Texas health clubs. Adel is the vice president for human resources at American Oil, pulling in a six-figure salary and annual bonuses. Unfortunately, neither is happy.Lucy struggles with her emotional and spiritual dreams. Her boyfriend Spencer, a basic kind of guy who loves his mama, sports, fried chicken, and Lucy in that order doesn't seem to measure up. So she decides to get out of her rut with a Sexy Soul Psychic named Kuba. Self-assured and sensitive, Kuba seems to know exactly what women want. Or does he?Adel struggles with a husband, Thad, who refuses to grow up and a job that is less than satisfying despite its financial gains. She is eventually forced to reexamine her faith as she searches for a life that brings her closer to happiness and fulfillment.Filled with the humor, passion, and pathos of modern relationships, Colored Sugar Water tells the story of two women who discover the power of their unique spiritual gifts. It further establishes Venise Berry as one of the freshest, wittiest, and wisest writers on today's fiction scene -- as New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey wrote, "magnificient and honest, Venise Berry's writing comes from her soul."