Emily and Einstein


Linda Francis Lee - 2010
    But he needed one…Emily and her husband Sandy Portman seemed to live a gracious if busy life in an old-world, Upper West Side apartment in the famous Dakota building.  But one night on the way to meet Emily, Sandy dies in a tragic accident.  The funeral isn't even over before Emily learns she is on the verge of being evicted from their apartment.  But worse than the possibility of losing her home, Emily is stunned when she discovers that her marriage was made up of lies.  Suddenly Emily is forced on a journey to find out who her husband really was . . . all the while feeling that somehow he isn't really gone.  Angry, hurt, and sometimes betrayed by loving memories of the man she lost, Emily finds comfort in a scruffy dog named Einstein.  But is Einstein's seemingly odd determination that she save herself enough to make Emily confront her own past?  Can he help her find a future—even after she meets a new man?

The State We're In


Adele Parks - 2013
    In the time it takes to fly from London to Chicago, each finds something in the other that they didn't even realise they needed.Their pasts are such that they can never make one another happy and it's when they get off the plane, that their true journey begins...

The Things We Wish Were True


Marybeth Mayhew Whalen - 2016
    But behind the white picket fences lies a web of secrets that reach from house to house.Up and down the streets, neighbors quietly bear the weight of their own pasts—until an accident at the community pool upsets the delicate equilibrium. And when tragic circumstances compel a woman to return to Sycamore Glen after years of self-imposed banishment, the tangle of the neighbors’ intertwined lives begins to unravel.During the course of a sweltering summer, long-buried secrets are revealed, and the neighbors learn that it’s impossible to really know those closest to us. But is it impossible to love and forgive them?

The Fortune Quilt


Lani Diane Rich - 2007
    And it does. She loses her job and her best friend (who proclaims his unrequited love for her). And her mother, who deserted the family seventeen years ago, returns, sending Carly into a serious tilt. Convinced it's the quilt's fault, Carly races down to the small artists' community of Bilby, Arizona, to confront its maker, and ends up renting a cabin from her. Carly even starts to enjoy her reimagined life, until her old life comes calling. Now Carly has to decide what parts of each world she wants to patchwork in...and how much she's willing to leave to fate.

Someone Else's Love Story


Joshilyn Jackson - 2013
    She’s got enough complications without getting caught in the middle of a stick-up in a gas station mini-mart and falling in love with a great wall of a man named William Ashe, who willingly steps between the armed robber and her son.Shandi doesn’t know that her blond god Thor has his own complications. When he looked down the barrel of that gun he believed it was destiny: It’s been one year to the day since a tragic act of physics shattered his universe. But William doesn’t define destiny the way other people do. A brilliant geneticist who believes in science and numbers, destiny to him is about choice.Now, he and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies head on, in a funny, charming, and poignant novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and forgiveness,; about a virgin birth, a sacrifice, and a resurrection; about falling in love, and learning that things aren’t always what they seem—or what we hope they will be. It’s a novel about discovering what we want and ultimately finding what we need

I'm Fine and Neither Are You


Camille Pagán - 2019
    Mother. Breadwinner. Penelope Ruiz-Kar is doing it all—and barely keeping it together. Meanwhile, her best friend, Jenny Sweet, appears to be sailing through life. As close as the two women are, Jenny’s passionate marriage, pristine house, and ultra-polite child stand in stark contrast to Penelope’s underemployed husband, Sanjay, their unruly brood, and the daily grind she calls a career.Then a shocking tragedy reveals that Jenny’s life is far from perfect. Reeling, Penelope vows to stop keeping the peace and finally deal with the issues in her relationship. So she and Sanjay agree to a radical proposal: both will write a list of changes they want each other to make—then commit to complete and total honesty.What seems like a smart idea quickly spirals out of control, revealing new rifts and even deeper secrets. As Penelope stares down the possible implosion of her marriage, she must ask herself: When it comes to love, is honesty really the best policy?

Thanks for the Memories


Cecelia Ahern - 2008
    She knows about tiny cobbled streets in Paris, which she has never visited. And every night she dreams about an unknown little girl with blonde hair.Justin Hitchcock is divorced, lonely and restless. He arrives in Dublin to give a lecture on art and meets an attractive doctor, who persuades him to donate blood. It's the first thing to come straight from his heart in a long time.When Joyce leaves hospital after a terrible accident, with her life and her marriage in pieces, she moves back in with her elderly father. All the while, a strong sense of déjà vu is overwhelming her and she can't figure out why …

Let Me Be the One


Lily Foster - 2014
    Her boyfriend? The guy who came off as sweet and devoted, the life of the party? Try obsessed, out of control and hell-bent on ruining her life.One year later, a new and improved Darcy Donovan is back on campus and she’s got a plan. That plan doesn’t include Tom Farrell, or any other guy for that matter. He’s surfer-boy hot and he talks a good game, but don’t they all?Hell to the yes…She’s back.Going after his friend’s girl is wrong, but Tom is too hung up on Darcy to care. Screw principles, screw ethics, screw the bro code. An hour in her presence would lead the best of men to veer off the high road.And he has his work cut out for him. She still thinks he’s a joke, nothing more than a walking, talking one-night stand. What she doesn’t know is that Tom has spent the past year changing his ways. He’s not all talk, and he’ll do whatever it takes to prove it.But when a menace from Darcy’s past resurfaces and Tom’s past comes back to bite him hard, their one shot at happily ever after may be shot to hell.What you don’t know? Turns out that it can hurt you.Let Me Be the One is the first book in Lily Foster's Let Me series. Gripping and emotional, these stand-alone romances are intended for the 18 and older crowd due to mature language and sexual content.

Follow the Stars Home


Luanne Rice - 2000
    Her stories remind us how precious and fragile life can be—and that we must risk our hearts every day to know happiness. Follow the Stars Home is just such a novel: a story of poignancy and heartbreak, grace and courage.Being a good mother is never simple: each day brings new choices and challenges. For Dianne Robbins, being a devoted single mother has resulted in her greatest joy and her darkest hours. Weeks before her daughter was born, she and her husband, Tim McIntosh, received the news every parent fears. Tim had not reckoned on their child being anything less than perfect, and abruptly fled to a solitary existence on the sea, leaving Dianne with a newborn—almost alone.It was Tim's brother, Alan, the town pediatrician, who stood by Dianne and her exceptional daughter. Throughout years of waiting, watching, and caring, Alan hid his love for his brother's wife. But one of the many hard choices Dianne has made is to close her heart toward any man—especially one named McIntosh. It will take a very special twelve-year-old to remind them all that love comes in many forms and can be received with as much grace as it is given.As lyrical and moving as the poetry of nature, Follow the Stars Home is a miracle of storytelling that will take your breath away. If words alone can dare us to confront our fears and to choose joy over sorrow, then Luanne Rice's magnificent novel is a benediction and a call to celebrate our lives.

Colony


Anne Rivers Siddons - 1992
    Among the patrician men and women who reside in the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an outsider. She, as well as everyone else, is certain she will never fit in. And of course, she doesn't...at first.But over the many summers she spends there, Maude comes to cherish life in the colony, as she does the people who share it with her. There is her husband Peter, consumed with a darkness of spirit; her adored but dangerously fragile children; her domineering mother-in-law, who teaches her that it is the women who possess the strength to keep the colony intact; and Maine native Micah Willis, who is ultimately Maude's truest friend.This brilliant novel, rich with emotion, is filled with appealing, intense, and indomitable characters. Anne Rivers Siddons paints a portrait of a woman determined to preserve the spirit of past generations—and the future of a place where she became who she is...a place called Colony.

Time of My Life


Allison Winn Scotch - 2008
    She’s got the modern-print rugs of Metropolitan Home, the elegant meals from Gourmet, the clutter-free closets out of Real Simple, and the elaborate Easter egg hunts seen in Parents. With her successful investment banker husband behind the wheel and her cherubic eighteen-month-old in the backseat, hers could be the family in the magazines’ glossy Range Rover ads. Yet somehow all of the how-to magazine stories in the world can’t seem to fix her faltering marriage, banish the tedium of days spent changing diapers, or stop her from asking, “What if?” Then one morning Jillian wakes up seven years in the past. Before her daughter was born. Before she married Henry. Suddenly she’s back in her post–grad school Ikea-furnished Manhattan apartment. She’s back in her fast-paced job with the advertising agency. And she’s still with Jackson, the ex-boyfriend and star of her what-if fantasies.Armed with twenty-twenty hindsight, she’s free to choose all over again. She can use the zippy ad campaigns from her future to wow the clients and bosses in her present. She can reconnect with the mother who abandoned her so many years before. She can fix the fights at every juncture that doomed her relationship with Jackson. Or can she? With each new choice setting off a trajectory of unforeseen consequences, Jillian soon realizes that getting to happily ever after is more complicated than changing the lines in her part of the script. Happiness, it turns out, isn’t an either-or proposition. As she closes in on all the things she thought she wanted, Jillian must confront the greatest what-if of all: What if the problem was never Henry or Jackson, but her? Sharp, funny, and heartwarming, Time of My Life will appeal to anyone who has ever wanted to redo the past and will leave readers pondering, “Do we get the reality we deserve?”

Too Tempting


Bethany Lopez - 2017
    He combined his passion for football with camping and is now the owner of a football camp for teens. His summers are dedicated to spending time with family and teaching his campers about the sport he loves. Zoey Zahn is a quirky, introverted writer and self-proclaimed geek. When she's asked if she’ll accompany her nephew, Christopher, to camp, Zoey agrees, envisioning quiet evenings of writing in the great outdoors. After she stumbles upon Gabe, however, quiet evenings alone are the last thing on her mind. The chemistry between Gabe and Zoey is undeniable, but as camp ends, a brewing storm causes their blooming relationship to fumble. All Gabe knows is that Zoey is Too Tempting to deny, and he's determined to overcome the obstacles between them to be the man she deserves. Too Tempting is the first in an all-new small town romance series by Bethany Lopez. Follow the Lewis cousins of Cherry Springs, the kind of place where there are festivals for every occasion and everyone knows your business, as they learn about love and loss.More Cherry Springs:Too Tempting (The Lewis Cousins, Book 1) Too Complicated (The Lewis Cousins, Book 2)Too Distracting (The Lewis Cousins, Book 3)Too Enchanting (The Lewis Cousins, Book 4)Too Dangerous (The Lewis Cousins, book 5)Too Enticing (A Cherry Springs Novelette)

In Search of a Love Story


Rachel Schurig - 2012
    They’re convinced her bad luck with men is directly related to her life-long lack of interest in all things romantic. When Emily’s latest relationship crashes and burns, she decides to go along with her friends’ plans for a romance research project. Sure, the idea that she’ll have better luck if she learns about the great romances of literature and film seems a little silly, but Emily figures it can’t hurt.In no time at all, Emily finds herself buried under a mountain of romance novels, chick flicks, and sappy love songs, hopeful that her hard work will pay off with true love. When she meets Greg, Ashley and Ryan are convinced she’s found prince charming—after all, he’s rich, handsome, and totally into Emily. What more could she want? And why does it seem that her friend Elliot isn’t exactly happy for her?Faced with misunderstandings, miscommunications, and a seemingly endless string of missteps, she is nevertheless determined to give true love a try. In doing so, Emily will eventually find that true romance, the kind that lasts, has little to do with stereotypes or clichés, and everything to do with finding out what’s in her own heart.

The Invisible Husband of Frick Island


Colleen Oakley - 2021
    Piper Parrish's life on Frick Island—a tiny, remote town smack in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay—is nearly perfect. Well, aside from one pesky detail: Her darling husband, Tom, is dead. When Tom's crab boat capsized and his body wasn't recovered, Piper, rocked to the core, did a most peculiar thing: carried on as if her husband was not only still alive, but right there beside her, cooking him breakfast, walking him to the docks each morning, meeting him for their standard Friday night dinner date at the One-Eyed Crab. And what were the townspeople to do but go along with their beloved widowed Piper? Anders Caldwell’s career is not going well. A young ambitious journalist, he’d rather hoped he’d be a national award-winning podcaster by now, rather than writing fluff pieces for a small town newspaper. But when he gets an assignment to travel to the remote Frick Island and cover their boring annual Cake Walk fundraiser, he stumbles upon a much more fascinating tale: an entire town pretending to see and interact with a man who does not actually exist. Determined it’s the career-making story he’s been needing for his podcast, Anders returns to the island to begin covert research and spend more time with the enigmatic Piper—but he has no idea out of all the lives he’s about to upend, it’s his that will change the most.

American Star


Jackie Collins - 1993
    Sex. Money. Fame. The new Hollywood wives have it all. And if they don’t have it—they want it. And whatever these women want—they get. Ambitious, young, smart, and lethal, the Hollywood wives are back with a vengeance, pushing their way to the forefront. Forget shopping—they’re into achieving everything their famous husbands have and more, and they don’t care how they do it.Three talented, ambitious dreamers have struggled for super-stardom—and lived hard and fast in a mind-bending whirl of parties, drugs, and sex. Now their fates collide at the plush Los Angeles estate of a powerful music industry magnate, where one man’s secret vendetta will trap them in its sudden, murderous heat....Nick and Lauren can never forget each other. Teenage small-town lovers—he from the wrong side of the tracks, she the prettiest girl in town—their love was the town scandal, forbidden, sizzling and unforgettable, ending abruptly in a tragedy that sent them into separate orbits. As Nick and Lauren both rise to fame, haunted by the secret they share, they try to live without each other—only to find they can’t.