Book picks similar to
Pohutukawa Highway by Tammy Robinson
fiction
new-zealand
romance
family-relationships
The Nantucket Beachfront Inn: Sconset Beach Book One
Ainsley Keaton - 2022
Unemployable at her age, and broken-hearted by a husband who left her in the lurch, she desperately needs a Plan B. Her prayers are answered when a wealthy benefactor wills her a large house in the 'Sconset Beach area of Nantucket. She heads out to the picturesque New England island with her two best friends, Luna and Mila, going along for the ride.One catch...her estranged daughter also lives there. Charlotte Killeen, Ava's daughter, is battling a crisis of her own. Her new husband, Matthew, wants a divorce, even though the couple have a newborn baby. Charlotte needs her mother more than ever, but the two have never seen eye to eye. Her marriage on the rocks and with few prospects for income, Charlotte is near the end of her rope. Then a life-threatening illness brings into focus what's important after all.Ava's other daughter, Samantha, also lives on Nantucket Island, with her best friend and roommate, Grayson. Samantha suffers from a lack of direction in her life, and longs to meet a rich prince charming who will sweep her off her feet. When she meets the man of her dreams, she's leaving behind the one man who loves her unconditionally - Grayson.Jackson, Ava's son, is an aspiring actor in Hollywood. Everything has always come easy to him, that is until Willow, Matthew's cousin, shows up. Free-spirited Willow is just the kind of girl to break Jackson's heart, which is difficult to do, as Jackson is always the heartbreaker.And speaking of Willow...she's a feminist island witch and artist. She and Jackson have been through many, many lifetimes together. Yet, Willow wants nothing to do with Jackson in this lifetime. She has no desire to give up even an ounce of her power, not even for her soul mate. Willow also is hiding a devastating secret from Jackson. A secret that is guaranteed to upend his life for good.Mila, Ava's best friend, is battling a devastating illness, information that she hasn't shared with Ava and Luna. She never wants to be a burden, so she just doesn't ask for help. But she's going to need all the support she can get. She finds this support in a very surprising place, and, in doing so, gets closer to her own destiny.Ava busies herself with fixing up her beautiful new beach home, so that she can open up a bed and breakfast. Contractor Deacon Cromwell, whom Ava hires to do the renovation, is the man who might thaw Ava's cold heart, if only she'll let him. However, he's almost 20 years her junior and, Ava believes, out of her league. Can Ava overcome her insecurities and allow herself to love again?In this feel-good beach read with a touch of magick, Ava and her friends and family will become your best friends. Come and share their joys and heartbreaks, their tragedies and triumphs. For fans of Susan Mallery, Jude Devereaux Nantucket Bride series and Elin Hilderbrand!
We Never Asked for Wings
Vanessa Diffenbaugh - 2015
For fourteen years, Letty Espinosa has worked three jobs around San Francisco to make ends meet while her mother raised her children—Alex, now fifteen, and Luna, six—in their tiny apartment on a forgotten spit of wetlands near the bay. But now Letty’s parents are returning to Mexico, and Letty must step up and become a mother for the first time in her life. Navigating this new terrain is challenging for Letty, especially as Luna desperately misses her grandparents and Alex, who is falling in love with a classmate, is unwilling to give his mother a chance. Letty comes up with a plan to help the family escape the dangerous neighborhood and heartbreaking injustice that have marked their lives, but one wrong move could jeopardize everything she’s worked for and her family’s fragile hopes for the future. Vanessa Diffenbaugh blends gorgeous prose with compelling themes of motherhood, undocumented immigration, and the American Dream in a powerful and prescient story about family.
Reservations
Richard Paolinelli - 2015
Three tribal leaders have been murdered - murdered in a fashion that suggests the deeds were carried out by COYOTE, a legendary supernatural evil trickster feared by many Native Americans. The tribal president contacts an old friend in the FBI for assistance in solving the crimes and preventing more murders. Star agent, Jack Del Rio, is dispatched to New Mexico where he finds a situation tangled in political intrigue. Jack must work his way through those issues on his way to solving the mystery. Sparks fly as Navajo police officer Lucy Chee is assigned to assist him in his quest. Question is can Del Rio and Chee solve the mystery and find the killer before he strikes again? Because the killer is on the hunt and he has his sights on Del Rio himself.
Leaving the Beach: A Woman’s Tale of Music and Mental Illness
Mary Rowen - 2014
Erin is a perfectly flawed heroine.” ~ Semifinalist, 2017 BookLife Prize (10 out of 10 in All 5 Categories Judged)Erin Reardon gets her first kiss from Jim Morrison and loses her virginity to David Bowie. When she flunks out of college, Bruce Springsteen comforts her, and Elvis Costello breaks her heart in Europe. So what happens when she finally meets a rock star in the flesh?Erin’s a lonely misfit with an eating disorder and a wild imagination. She believes she was born to save—and love—at least one tortured musician, and is willing to risk almost everything to fulfill that destiny.“...gracefully grapples with several important issues, including alcohol and drug addiction, loss, grief and sexuality... There are also many entertaining pop-culture references to offset the weighty themes... An intriguing novel that looks at the ways that people cope with the pain in their lives.” ~ Kirkus ReviewsEVOLVED PUBLISHING PRESENTS a newly revised and edited second edition of a critically-acclaimed, award-winning literary/women’s fiction piece sure to compel you to keep those pages turning. [DRM-Free]
Books by Mary Rowen:
Leaving the Beach
Living by Ear (Coming Fall 2019)
It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way (Coming Winter 2019/2020)
More Great Women’s Fiction from Evolved Publishing:
Participant by Carmen Kemp
All the Tomorrows by Nillu Nasser
The “Borderline” Series by Taya DeVere
Yours to Keep or Throw Aside by E.D. Martin
White Chalk by P.K. Tyler
Cassia by Lanette Kauten
One Fake Fiancé (Romeo Family Romance Book 8)
Jennifer Youngblood - 2020
She needs a fiancé pronto. Can the cowboy and the debutante find common ground? Or will their shot at happily-ever-after get stomped to smithereens before it even has a chance to begin?Lucas Romeo has no time for love. He’s been down that road before, and it didn’t end well. When his sister Lexi fixes him up on a blind date with her friend Magnolia, things take a disastrous turn. Lucas has no intention of ever going out with Magnolia again—not if she were the last woman on earth. Forget that she’s stunningly beautiful. She’s also spoiled and entitled, the kind of woman who wouldn’t last a day on a ranch.Then, Magnolia makes Lucas a deal he can’t refuse …
The House
Anjuelle Floyd - 2010
A faithful wife for over three decades, Anna endured Edward's constant absences while traveling on business for his international real estate firm, and his extra-marital affairs.Anna takes Edward to live out his last six, possibly three, months in the house she fought so vigorously to sell. But letting go of someone who has caused so much pain does not come easily.Edward has changed.As their children return home, and say their farewells Anna confronts the challenges that Edward's impending death delivers each of them. Then there is Inman who loves Anna, and provides the one thing Edward denied their marriage—passion and intimacy.Anna must also face the hopes and dreams she abandoned as an art history major turned wife, and mother out of college. In requesting the divorce she had planned to use her proceeds from the sale of the house to move to France. She would study the great art works of Europe, perhaps work as a docent in a Paris museum.News of Edward’s terminal illness provokes Anna to understand the present rooted in the wellspring of the past, and pouring into a future without him. The House shows what happens when we adopt the belief that, All hold regret, and are seeking forgiveness. Our salvation rests in the hands of others—most particularly the ones whom we love most, and who have treated us wrongly.
Daughters-in-Law
Joanna Trollope - 2011
For different reasons, the Brinkleys’ two previous daughters-in-law hadn’t been able to resist Rachel’s maternal control and Anthony’s gentle charm and had settled into their husbands’ family without rocking the boat. But Charlotte—very young, very beautiful, and spoiled—has no intention of falling into step with the Brinkleys and wants to establish her own household. Soon Rachel’s sons begin to think of their own houses as home and of their mother’s house as simply the place where their parents live—a necessary and inevitable shift of loyalties that threatens Rachel’s sense of herself, breaks Anthony’s heart, and causes unexpected consequences in all the marriages. Then a crisis brings these changes to the surface, and everyone has to learn what family love means all over again.
Before I Knew Him
Anna Ralph - 2008
But he doesn’t see much to look forward to. Leo doesn’t fit in. But nothing ever happens to Leo; he never has a story. Then he meets David. Moody, resentful and tough, David is everything Leo is not and an unlikely friendship soon grows between them.Events that summer take a dangerous and disturbing turn, and the results are devastating for both boys and their friendship. In the aftermath, traumatized, they pledge to keep their shared secret, never to meet again, and above all — to forget. But when the terrible truth re-emerges ten years later and forces David and Leo back together, everything and nothing has changed.
The Opposite of Everyone
Joshilyn Jackson - 2016
But everything, including Paula's birthname Kali Jai, changed when she told a story of her own - one that landed Kai in prison and Paula in foster care. Separated, each holding her own secrets, the intense bond they once shared was fractured. These days, Paula has reincarnated herself as a tough-as-nails divorce attorney with a successful practice in Atlanta. While she hasn't seen Kai in fifteen years, she's still making payments on that Karmic debt - until the day her last check is returned in the mail, along with a cryptic letter. "I am going on a journey, Kali. I am going back to my beginning; death is not the end. You will be the end. We will meet again, and there will be new stories. You know how Karma works." Then Kai's most treasured secret literally lands on Paula's doorstep, throwing her life into chaos and transforming her from only child to older sister. Desperate to find her mother before it's too late, Paula sets off on a journey of discovery that will take her back to the past and into the deepest recesses of her heart. With the help of her ex-lover Birdwine, an intrepid and emotionally volatile private eye who still carries a torch for her, this brilliant woman, an expert at wrecking families, now has to figure out how to put one back together - her own. The Opposite of Everyone is a story about story itself, how the tales we tell connect us, break us, and define us, and how the endings and beginnings we choose can destroy us ... and make us whole. Laced with sharp humor and poignant insight, it is beloved New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson at her very best.
Picturing Christmas
Jason F. Wright - 2013
With a degree and a dream, she's heading to New York City to start a new job and a new life. She can't wait to experience Rockefeller Center and to take a thousand pictures of her first Christmas in the city.But before she's even on the ground, she loses the job and learns her parents are divorcing.Can Aubrey find her way in an unforgiving city? Can she find love, or at the very least, a real friend? Most importantly, with her first holiday in New York fast approaching, can she create the kind of Christmas she always pictured?
It Takes One to Know One
Isla Dewar - 2018
He didn’t know who he was or where he came from. His mission was to find himself. And when he did, he decided to spend his life finding other lost souls by opening the Be Kindly Missing Persons Bureau.Martha Walters, his assistant, has had her fifteen minutes of almost fame and failed. Now, dealing with her guilt and pain, she lives with her mum and dotes on her young daughter. Charlie appears to be a man who is a loser and dreamer, but, hey, his office is near her house, she can lie in of a morning, take her kid to school and the work isn’t too heart-breaking. Or is it . . . ?
Tilly Trotter: An Omnibus
Catherine Cookson - 1972
It follows the fortunes of a young girl from a small village in Tyneside, to a new life in America as the wife of a wealthy man, only to return and encounter the enmity of her former neighbors and townspeople.
A New Jersey Love Story: Troy & Camilla
Myiesha - 2015
Feeling obligated to her mother, she drops out of school to help take care of her. When she enrolled back into Kean University, she had lost her scholarship and is forced to pay her way through her last year. So she gets a job at Ladies' Oasis working for 32-year-old club owner, Troy Jones.Troy is instantly drawn in by Camilla’s initially soft but spunky personality. But it's the firecracker, "itchy trigger-finger" Camilla that he can’t live without. Troy, a club owner by day and a hitman by night, has some demons of his own that he needs to get rid of before he and Camilla can actually live the happy life that he has planned for them, but getting rid of these demons turns out to be his biggest downfall and it almost leads to him losing it all.
A Homespun Christmas
M.L. Gardner - 2013
It's Christmas 1933 and the hardest year yet of the grinding Depression. While all the couples agree to only do something small for the children, they secretly plot and plan to provide something for the one they love on Christmas morning. While not giving away any spoilers to the unreleased sixth book in the series, 1931 Caleb's Err, A Homespun Christmas features three new characters to enjoy. Two family additions and Jean's new friend. A surprise visit after Christmas dinner brings all the old cast together to celebrate family, friends and the season.
Chances
Jackie Collins - 1981
It plunges you into the reckless, dangerous world of the Santangelo crime family. It introduces you to Gino Santangelo, the street kid who makes it all the way to the top. And then brings you Lucky—his sensual, stunningly beautiful, and passionate daughter; a woman who dares to win her father’s empire for herself; a woman unafraid of taking…CHANCES.