Happy Hour


Michele Scott - 2009
    The ones who laugh with you and cry with you. The ones that will always be there. These are the women of Napa Valley.Jamie is the editor-in-chief of Wine Lover's Magazine, a single mother and caretaker to her senile mother-in-law ~ a woman who thinks her daily caregiver is Dean Martin. Jamie is still recovering, financially and emotionally from the death of her husband several years earlier. And when she finds what could be the key to happiness, can she open the door and let it in? Or will her feelings of guilt and betrayal hold her back?Danielle is a vintner and the divorced mom of two. She's basking in what she knows is going to be a successful launch of her new wines. Wines she created on her own after her divorce. But what she doesn't expect is for her daughter to come home with news that will shock her to her core. Will an old flame help her accept the changes that are coming and find the love she's been missing in her life for so long? Or will a tragedy that no one sees coming change their lives forever?Kat is a sommelier, co-owner of a magnificent restaurant with her chef husband, and mother of a blended family. But is being deeply in love with your husband enough to get them through the teenage years, step-children and exes? And what happens when old faces return and she's faced with the knowledge that not everything is what you thought it was. What happens when she finds she was mad at the wrong person and finds out the "right one" was in the wrong? Can she forgive and move on? Can love overcome everything and truly bring a family together?Alyssa is an artist and gallery owner with a secret of her own. One she was hoping would stay buried deep in her closet. But the time has come for her to put someone else first, to face the past and to deal with her demons. What she never expected to find was love and her "home."No matter what is going on in their own lives, no matter the heartache or joy they're experiencing these four women are always there to love, support and encourage each other.

Revolutionary Road


Richard Yates - 1961
    Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is now about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Make Me Forget


Anna Brooks - 2014
    She knows she’ll see him when she moves back to Wisconsin. She’s planning on it, the connection she still feels to him after all these years is undeniable. But one lie tore them apart years ago, and she’s afraid some mistakes can’t be forgiven.Travis Parker doesn’t like liars. When he was younger, lies burned him in a bad way. It only took one summer with Charlotte’s innocence to know that she was it for him. When he thought he finally had something to look forward to, one misguided lie shattered everything he believed.Now, Char’s back, but she’s not the same girl he once knew.Make Me Forget is the first book in a series of second chance romances featuring the most loyal men as they battle their past in order to secure a future with their one true love. Defeat is not an option when their hearts are on the line. Each emotional and angsty story can be read as a standalone.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky


Heidi W. Durrow - 2010
    who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, here is a portrait of a young girl - and society's ideas of race, class, and beauty.

The Color of Heaven


Julianne MacLean - 2011
    When it seems nothing else could possibly go wrong, her car skids off an icy road and plunges into a frozen lake. There, in the cold, dark depths of the water, Sophie experiences something profound and extraordinary--something that unlocks the secrets from her past, and teaches her what it means to truly live"--Publisher description.

Cry of My Heart


Linda Ford - 2006
    She's content running her antique store and caring for her grandmother and sister - at least that's what she tells herself. If the secret desires of her heart go unmet... that's just the way it has to be. Right? Oil & gas negotiator Andrew "Ace" Conners has always planned to be alone. He'll do his duty and settle the affairs of his aunt and then get out of Reliance, Montana. But when his late aunt’s neighbor insists on finding treasures among the estate’s belongings, he can't help falling for the dynamic, compassionate woman, even though he knows she's not for him. When a man from Ace’s past appears seeking retribution, Ace and Nicole must face their biggest fears - together - or lose the love they both long for. Other books in this series:Forever in My Heart Everlasting Love Inheritance of Love

A Fair of the Heart


Donna Marie Rogers - 2011
    When handyman Caleb Hunter stops by for a haircut, he’s like the answer to her prayers—and the attraction is instantaneous. Too bad her troublesome ten-year-old son isn’t quite as thrilled to have Caleb hanging around.Old wounds have kept Caleb from returning to Redemption permanently. When he receives word of his mother’s unexpected death, guilt and regret bring him home again, but will the love of a good woman keep him there? Lauren excites Caleb like no woman ever has, but she’s a package deal, and he’s not sure he’s prepared to take on a ready-made family.

Wind Warrior


Jon Messenger - 2013
    The sleepy town of White Halls harbors a dangerous secret. On a picturesque street, two houses down from a lovely little park, in a quaint little home with a wraparound porch, lives a family that seems rather normal. Sure, their twenty-year-old son, Xander, still lives at home, but he’s going to college and dating the leader of the schools top sorority. It’s all very… normal. However, when a man is miraculously saved from being hit by a bus, Xander’s life turns in to the living embodiment of the tornadoes he can suddenly create with a flick of his wrist. Whether he wants this gift or not, Xander must learn to use his new ‘super power’ quickly if he wants to survive. For his kind is a dying race, and when this sleepy town has a sudden influx of new, blonde, fire wielders, no one is safe, especially Xander. It doesn’t help that one of these blondes happens to be the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. Xander can’t deny the instant connection he feels to her so, when she tries to kill him, it certainly makes things complicated.

Somewhere in Time


Barbara Bretton - 1992
    . . .

On Little Wings


Regina Sirois - 2011
    Jennifer's aunt has thirty seven freckles. And life just stopped making sense for this sixteen-year-old girl from Nebraska. It will take one forbidden journey, an octogenarian movie star, three old pirates, and one scarred genius to put all the pieces back together. If that is even possible. When Jennifer finds a dog-eared photograph of a freckled girl, she never dreams the innocent picture will tear open a gaping wound to her mother's concealed past. Jennifer must leave her home, parents, and best friend in the wheat fields of Nebraska and travel to the rocky shores of Maine to find the aunt she's never met. Her search for the truth is distracted by the strange and hilarious characters she finds in the tight-knit town of Smithport. From the 88 year old movie star who likes to show off her tattoo, to the fishermen who have a passion for rockets, to the aunt who recites poetry in the long, Maine nights, Jennifer is intrigued by the lives swirling around her. In the midst of madness she meets Nathan, the tight-lipped, reluctant prodigy who is surrounded by women who need him to be brother, father, protector, provider, and now, first love. With a restrained, mature, and uncertain voice, Jennifer shares her tale of family, love, loss, truth and beauty. As Jennifer seeks to piece together her mother's shattered story, she inadvertently writes one for herself.

Black Rabbit Hall


Eve Chase - 2015
    Amber Alton knows that the hours pass differently at Black Rabbit Hall, her London family's country estate, where no two clocks read the same. Summers there are perfect, timeless. Not much ever happens. Until, of course, it does. More than three decades later, Lorna is determined to be married within the grand, ivy-covered walls of Pencraw Hall, known as Black Rabbit Hall among the locals. But as she's drawn deeper into the overgrown grounds, half-buried memories of her mother begin to surface and Lorna soon finds herself ensnared within the manor's labyrinthine history, overcome with an insatiable need for answers about her own past and that of the once-happy family whose memory still haunts the estate. Stunning and atmospheric, this debut novel is a thrilling spiral into the hearts of two women separated by decades but inescapably linked by the dark and tangled secrets of Black Rabbit Hall.

Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer


Sena Jeter Naslund - 1999
    Inspired by a brief passage in Moby Dick, it is the story of Una, exiled as a child to live in a lighthouse, removed from the physical and emotional abuse of a religion-mad father. It is the romantic adventure of a young woman setting sail in a cabin boy's disguise to encounter darkness, wonder, and catastrophe; the story of a devoted wife who witnesses her husband's destruction by obsession and madness. Ultimately it is the powerful and moving story of a woman's triumph over tragedy and loss through her courage, creativity, and intelligence.

In the Shadow of Lakecrest


Elizabeth Blackwell - 2017
    Kate Moore is looking for a way out of the poverty and violence of her childhood. When a chance encounter on a transatlantic ocean liner brings her face-to-face with the handsome heir to a Chicago fortune, she thinks she may have found her escape—as long as she can keep her past concealed.After exchanging wedding vows, Kate quickly discovers that something isn’t quite right with her husband—or her new family. As Mrs. Matthew Lemont, she must contend with her husband’s disturbing past, his domineering mother, and his overly close sister. Isolated at Lakecrest, the sprawling, secluded Lemont estate, she searches desperately for clues to Matthew’s terrors, which she suspects stem from the mysterious disappearance of his aunt years before. As Kate stumbles deeper into a maze of family secrets, she begins to question everyone’s sanity—especially her own. But just how far will she go to break free of this family’s twisted past?

The Speed of Light


Elissa Grossell Dickey - 2021
    Diagnosed with MS, she awaits the results of another anxiety-inducing MRI. She’s just walked away from Connor, “a fixer” but possibly the love of her life. And nearing the holidays, the sights and sounds of winter in South Dakota only prick memories of better years gone by. Then, on a December morning at the university where she works, jarring gunshots pierce the halls. In a temporary safe place and terrified, Simone listens and pretends this will all be over soon.As she waits for silence, her mind racing, Simone’s past year comes into focus. Falling in love and missing it. Finding strength in family and enduring friendships. Planning for the future, fearing it, and hoping against hope in dark places. Her life has been changing at the speed of light, and each crossroad brought Simone here, to this day, to endure the things she can’t control and to confront those that she can.

The Engagements


J. Courtney Sullivan - 2013
       Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years, but their son’s messy divorce has put them at rare odds; James, a beleaguered paramedic, has spent most of his marriage haunted by his wife’s family’s expectations; Delphine has thrown caution to the wind and left a peaceful French life for an exciting but rocky romance in America; and Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own. As the stories connect to each other and to Frances’s legacy in surprising ways, The Engagements explores the complicated ins and outs of relationships, then, now, and forever.