Highs in the Low Fifties: How I Stumbled through the Joys of Single Living


Marion Winik - 2005
    Her stories of being single in middle age, marked by stylish writing and stunning candor, left readers bent double with laughter when they appeared in her column, rated "Best of Baltimore" by Baltimore Magazine.Highs in the Low Fifties follows Winik’s attempt to rebuild her world as a once-widowed, once-divorced single mom. With her signature optimism, resilience, and poor judgment, Winik dives into a series of ill-starred romantic experiences. Her clarity about her mistakes and ability to find humor in the darkest moments—in love, and in all parts of life—has won her a growing crowd of devoted followers . . . and a few voyeurs.

Valor's Measure: Based on the heroic Civil War career of Joshua L. Chamberlain


Thomas Wade Oliver - 2013
    From his legendary bayonet charge down the slopes of Little Round Top hill during the Battle of Gettysburg, to the startling calling of Union troops to salute as the defeated Confederate Army surrendered to him at Appomattox, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain redefined the scale of greatness in this country. Wounded six times in battle, twice assumed to be a fatality, the volunteer officer from Maine continued to lead gallantly until the final shot was fired during the Civil War. Valor's Measure tells the death-defying tale of this Medal of Honor hero and captures his spirit as no autobiography can.

Falling Suns


J.A. Corrigan - 2016
    Then his body is discovered. Her cousin Michael is found guilty of his murder and incarcerated in a secure psychiatric unit.Four years later, now divorced and back in the police force, Rachel discovers that Michael is being released to a less secure step-down unit, with his freedom a likely eventuality. Unable to cope with this, she decides upon revenge, assuming a new identity to hunt him down and kill him. However, as she closes in on her target, her friend Jonathan, a journalist, uncovers some unnerving information about her mother and others in her family and begins to suspect that Rachel’s perception of the truth might not be as accurate as she thinks – that she might be about to murder the wrong man…

The Love Children


Marilyn French - 2005
    Jess Leighton, the daughter of a temperamental painter and a proto-feminist Harvard professor, is struggling to make sense of her world amid racial tensions, Vietnam War protests, anti-government rage, her own burgeoning sexuality, and bad relationships. With more options than her mother's generation, but no role model for creating the life she desires, Jess experiments with sex and psychedelic drugs as she searches for happiness on her own terms.In the midst of joining and fleeing a commune, growing organic vegetables, and operating a sustainable restaurant, Jess grapples with the legacy of her mother's generation while building a future for herself, and for the postmodern woman. "French's meticulous and affecting tale of the forging of one woman's conscience encompasses thoughtful portraits of 'love children, ' from peace activists to members of unconventional families, and a forthright critique of the counterculture that puts today's wars, struggles for equality, and environmental troubles into sharp perspective" (Booklist).

Enemy Women


Paulette Jiles - 2002
    For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare that tears apart her family and forces her and her sisters to flee.The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women's prison. But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and vows to return for her when the fighting is over. Before he leaves for battle, he bestows upon her a precious gift: freedom.Now an escaped "enemy woman," Adair must make her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise...seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory.

The Garden of Eden


Eve Adams - 2005
    It's also about the values that keep America together---the simple solutions ordinary people find to keep their small communities strong.Trooper Sam Neely is fresh out of the State Police academy and finds himself assigned to the dullest backwater town he's never heard of. Things heat up quickly in Eden, U.S.A., however, when Ed Harris, the banker, finds his wife in bed with his best friend, Hayden Elkins. Ed picks up a shotgun, escorts them both to the door, and tells friend Hayden, "Guess what? She's yours!""I've got a wife, Ed," says Hayden."Now you have two. . . ."Forced to take his paramour to live under his own roof (after all, they had only intended to share an afternoon of delight, not to leave their spouses), Hayden suddenly finds himself the butt of every joke in town. That's where things start to spin out of control.Before long, Elijah Murphy, the town drunk, and the snooping widow next door, to whom he'd exposed himself, are falling in love; sleazy Sheriff's Deputy Delmar Clay is about to get a butt-full of birdshot for the pictures he's been snapping of young couples getting hot and heavy in parked cars; and the Barrow Boys are out of jail and looking for trouble. Soon, Neely finds that managing the crises in the sticks is a full-time job, and it takes a whole community---from the compassionate local magistrate to the new female preacher---to keep things from exploding big-city style.

Little Bee


Chris Cleave - 2008
    From the author of the international bestseller Incendiary comes a haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers—one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.

Dark Retributions


Jemimah Jonah - 2020
    A paranormal investigator who doubles as a primary suspect…”Among the naked trees whose branches faced heavenwards in despair at the desolation surrounding them lies a woman whose death is violent every bit unnatural.Victoria Brooks - a leading homicide investigator is called for. As she races against time to solve the murders, the body count is on the rise and supernatural elements are at play. Her ability to see the dead causes her to unravel clues that point to her past. Accompanying her in this investigation is Paranormal Investigator Jonathan Steel.

When time almost runs out,Victoria's dark past might be the only way to survive this ordeal.With not-so-human entities at play, will they uncover the secrets behind these mysterious deaths?

Discovering Nowhere


Lisa Bork - 2012
    Floundering, Moira grabs on to a surprise inheritance, her husband’s childhood home in a Midwestern town she’d never seen and had always thought of as Nowhere. Discovering her husband harbored secrets in the town makes Moira's arrival there anything but a soft landing. When a visit by her stepson and his newshound mother threatens to destroy the social fabric of the tiny town and reveal its heartaches, Moira must choose between her love for her stepson and her desire to protect a place she never expected to call home.

The Liverpool Matchgirl


Lyn Andrews - 2018
     Liverpool, 1901. The Tempest family is all but destitute, barely able to put food on the table. When Florrie falls ill with pneumonia and Arthur is imprisoned after a drunken fight, their thirteen-year-old daughter Lizzie finds herself parentless, desperate and alone. Despite her young age, Lizzie has spirit and determination, and she knows that she must find work to keep herself off the streets. In a stroke of luck, she gets a job in the match factory, and foreman George Rutherford takes her under his wing. A new home with the Rutherfords promises a safe haven, but the years ahead will be far from trouble-free. And when Lizzie gives her heart, how can she be sure she has chosen a better man than her own father?

Nobody's Fault


Terry Tyler - 2012
    Adrienne is the love of his life. Nick is the love of her life. Six days after meeting her, Nick leaves home. He has no choice; they can’t live without each other. Nick’s wife Ria and eldest daughter Cat find various ways of working out their anger and resentment, while fifteen year old Tara is caught in the middle. And then there is Nick’s cousin Caroline, with her own axe to grind when it comes to marital affairs… When tragedy strikes, they are all looking for someone to blame. Lonely and trusting Sharon, seeking love and friendship on internet dating and social networking sites, has no suspicion of the part she plays in the drama – or that the people she meets in cyberspace might not be all that they seem…

Last Alive: An Apocalyptic Thriller (Last Days Book 1)


M.C. Magill - 2016
    Without warning, life as we knew it ended.Husband and father Will Carter is an ordinary man plunged into an unthinkable situation. An attack has devastated America and everything changed in an instant. Now the Carters must stay alive and together in the face of an unknown enemy.The Carters embark on a rescue mission in a landscape that is no longer the safe haven they once knew. If they want to survive they'll have to rely on their determination, instincts and their strength as a family. Last Alive book 1 of the Last Days apocalyptic thriller series.

A Disturbance in One Place


Binnie Kirshenbaum - 1994
    Rootless, bouncing from bed to bed, she knows she is pure of heart. If only she could find where her heart got lost. Irreverent and achingly honest, she points to the small but infinitely deep cracks in our masks, drawing the reader into her world of misadventure -- erotic, comic, and deeply unsettling. Juggling four men -- her husband, "the hit man," "the multimedia artist," and "the love of her life" -- she can't decide whether she is out to prove or disprove the Talmudic wisdom: If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

This Little Mommy Stayed Home


Samantha Wilde - 2009
    For new moms, potential moms-to-be, and anyone who just wants to (wisely) live the experience vicariously… New mom Joy McGuire hasn’t changed her sweatpants since her baby was born. Of course she’s crazy about her newborn son; it’s her distracted, work-obsessed husband and his impossible mother she can’t stand. Joy turns to her own mom for support, but she’s too busy planning her fourth wedding to a suspicious self-help guru. Sure, Joy’s a woman on the brink, but it’s nothing a little sleep, sanity, and chocolate can’t fix.Until her old college boyfriend shows up at their ten-year reunion. The one she was still in love with when she married her husband. It must be the lack of sleep, because Joy is starting to think she might have ended up with the wrong man. Not to mention she’s obsessed with her sexy yoga instructor, who might just be interested in her. Joy used to be single, skinny, and able to speak in complete sentences, but who is she now? As she’s trying to figure that out, her husband goes missing….Frank, bawdy, and full of keenly self-aware observations, this novel tells the story of one new mother, three men, one marriage, and the baby love that keeps us up at night

Worlds Collide


Alison Strobel - 2005
    Some Will Change Your Life.While the headlines screamed “Hollywood Heartthrob Marries Girl Next Door,” the public relationship of Jack Harrington and Grace Winslowe never revealed the private struggles that threatened to pull them apart–and when celebrity biographer Jada Eastman starts digging, she discovers that there’s more to this couple than anyone could guess.Their relationship began like a scene from one of Jack’s movies. Leaving behind a dead-end relationship and the bitter Chicago winter, Grace had moved to Southern California to start a new life. Meanwhile, Jack had established himself as an up-and-comer with considerable acting talent, and a private heartache. When a fateful accident pulled the two of them together, they couldn’t avoid their initial attraction or the vast differences in their values and lifestyles.Now, against the backdrop of Beverly Hills and the 24/7 nature of the entertainment world, Jada grapples with her own beliefs as she encounters the spiritual chasm of this famous couple. Can Grace and Jack face the consequences of their own personal histories–and can the biographer avoid being affected? As the three of them examine the couple’s bittersweet story, it becomes clear that everyday decisions can carry lifetime consequences when individual worlds collide.