Book picks similar to
Flowers in December by Jane Suen


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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?

The Lesser Bohemians


Eimear McBride - 2016
    She struggles to fit in—she’s young and unexotic, a naive new girl—but soon she forges friendships and finds a place for herself in the big city.Then she meets an attractive older man. He’s an established actor, 20 years older, and the inevitable clamorous relationship that ensues is one that will change her forever.A redemptive, captivating story of passion and innocence set across the bedsits of mid-1990s London, McBride holds new love under her fierce gaze, giving us all a chance to remember what it’s like to fall hard for another.

Carolina Booty


T. Lynn Ocean - 2014
    She loves everything about the big city including her power-packed days and party-filled nights. But life as she knows it comes to a screetching halt when the boss puts her in charge of the firm’s annual pro bono project, which is to revitalize a small town. Unfortunately, Rumton, South Carolina doesn’t have a mall or nightclub, much less a nail salon. For that matter, there’s no hotel, either. Jaxie ends up rooming with an old man in an even older house that he shares with a dog and a thieving raccoon. Just when Jaxie thinks that she’s landed in a dreadfully uneventful place, things heat up pretty fast -- there's much more to Rumton than meets the eye. Sexy men. A sinister plot to steal from the town. A raging wind storm. Quirky townspeople. And loads of astonishing pirate history. It all adds up to some major Carolina booty! “Ocean’s latest is delightful and entertaining.” –Romantic Times BOOKreviews

The Bette Davis Club


Jane Lotter - 2013
    Spending three decades in love with a wonderful but unattainable man is pretty high up on her list of missteps, as is a long line of unsuccessful love affairs accompanied by a seemingly endless supply of delicious cocktails.When the young bride flees—taking with her a family heirloom and leaving behind six hundred bewildered guests—her mother offers Margo fifty grand to retrieve her spoiled brat of a daughter and the invaluable property she stole. So, together with the bride’s jilted and justifiably crabby fiancé, Margo sets out in a borrowed 1955 red MG on a cross-country chase. Along the way, none of what she discovers will be quite what she expected. But it might be exactly what she’s been seeking all along.From acclaimed humor writer Jane Lotter comes this madcap, laugh-out-loud adventure, The Bette Davis Club. Revised edition: This edition of The Bette Davis Club includes editorial revisions.

Tackling Summer


Kayla Dawn Thomas - 2017
    Her plans are derailed when she comes across a bottomed out sports car on a remote country road. When she discovers her father has brought on her university’s hotshot football star as summer help, she is furious. There’s no place for a lazy, city boy on the Double O.Maddox Warren has been banished to the middle of nowhere, sentenced to manual labor on a cattle ranch. As star of the Doumit University football team, this is unacceptable, but his coach is determined to boost his work ethic. Maddox can shut up and do his time, or he can kiss his football career goodbye. Determined to muscle his way through, his frustrations grow when he meets the bossy, cranky rancher’s daughter.The two battle their way through tractor driving and horseback riding lessons; both determined to conquer the other and to reclaim summer. In the process Maddox and Chanel discover there’s more to the other than either of them expected.

Up to Snow Good


Kelly Collins - 2020
    Lauren must ask for help. Unfortunately, the only person who might be able to save her is a childhood sweetheart. How can she trust the man on the wrong side of the blood feud to secure her family’s legacy, when she couldn't trust him with her heart?Torn between Lauren and his father, Max walked away from an impossible choice. Misunderstandings and duplicity have kept him away. The safest thing for Lauren was to leave her alone. But with his father out to crush the last remaining Matthews and a centuries-old feud about to boil over, Max will move heaven and earth to help her, even if it means choosing love over family. With all the harm Max’s family has caused, can Lauren box up and bury the past to have a dream Christmas with Max? Or, will she need a Christmas miracle? Up to Snow Good is not your typical small-town, holiday romance. Angst and treachery hide in every corner. It’s a holiday Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending.

Florence Gordon


Brian Morton - 2014
    Meet Florence Gordon: blunt, brilliant, cantankerous and passionate, feminist icon to young women, invisible and underappreciated by most everyone else. At seventy-five, Florence has earned her right to set down the burdens of family and work and shape her legacy at long last. But just as she is beginning to write her long-deferred memoir, her son Daniel returns to New York from Seattle with his wife and daughter, and they embroil Florence in their dramas, clouding the clarity of her days with the frustrations of middle-age and the confusions of youth. And then there is her left foot, which is starting to drag. With searing wit, sophisticated intelligence, and a tender respect for humanity in all its flaws, Brian Morton introduces a constellation of unforgettable characters. Chief among them, Florence, who can humble the fools surrounding her with one barbed line, but who eventually finds there are realities even she cannot outsmart.

Touchdown


Ashlyn Hope - 2017
    Especially relationships. On most days, Pro feels like she can't get a win. She's all alone in the big city and fighting to keep her business afloat while trying to find love, and none of these things are going her way. But Pro finally catches a break right before she was going to throw in the towel. She takes herself out to bask in her small success, but her celebration gets sacked when she catches her new guy out on the town with another girl! Hurt, upset, and a hot mess, this is when Pro bumps into David. Kind, considerate, and absolutely massive, David plays for a local professional football team. Nicknamed "Meat Mountain," he's huge everywhere and has rich brown eyes, a chiseled face, and a heart of gold. It looks like Pro is finally going to score and land the man of her dreams. Will this be one for the win column? Or will Pro need to go back to the playbook and start from scratch?

The Song of Hartgrove Hall


Natasha Solomons - 2015
    Candles flicker, a gramophone scratches out a tune as guests dance and sip champagne— for one night Hartgrove Hall relives better days. Harry Fox-Talbot and his brothers have returned from the war determined to save their once grand home from ruin. But the arrival of beautiful wartime singer Edie Rose tangles the threads of love and duty, and leads to a devastating betrayal.   Fifty years later, now a celebrated composer, Fox reels from the death of his adored wife, Edie. Until his connection with his four-year old grandson - a piano prodigy – propels him back into life, and ultimately to confront his past. An enthralling novel about love and treachery, joy after grief, and a man forced to ask: is it ever too late to seek forgiveness?

The Bells


Richard Harvell - 2010
    Though there was never any doubt that my seed had come from another man, Moses Froben, Lo Svizzero, called me “son.” And I called him “father.” On the rare occasions when someone dared to ask for clarification, he simply laughed as though the questioner were obtuse. “Of course he’s not my son!” he would say. “Don’t be ridiculous.” But whenever I myself gained the courage to ask him further of our past, he just looked sadly at me. “Please, Nicolai,” he would say after a moment, as though we had made a pact I had forgotten. With time, I came to understand I would never know the secrets of my birth, for my father was the only one who knew these secrets, and he would take them to his grave. The celebrated opera singer Lo Svizzero was born in a belfry high in the Swiss Alps where his mother served as the keeper of the loudest and most beautiful bells in the land. Shaped by the bells’ glorious music, as a boy he possessed an extraordinary gift for sound. But when his preternatural hearing was discovered—along with its power to expose the sins of the church—young Moses Froben was cast out of his village with only his ears to guide him in a world fraught with danger.  Rescued from certain death by two traveling monks, he finds refuge at the vast and powerful Abbey of St. Gall. There, his ears lead him through the ancient stone hallways and past the monks’ cells into the choir, where he aches to join the singers in their strange and enchanting song. Suddenly Moses knows his true gift, his purpose. Like his mother’s bells, he rings with sound and soon, he becomes the protégé of the Abbey’s brilliant yet repulsive choirmaster, Ulrich.  But it is this gift that will cause Moses’ greatest misfortune: determined to preserve his brilliant pupil’s voice, Ulrich has Moses castrated. Now a young man, he will forever sing with the exquisite voice of an angel—a musico—yet castration is an abomination in the Swiss Confederation, and so he must hide his shameful condition from his friends and even from the girl he has come to love. When his saviors are exiled and his beloved leaves St. Gall for an arranged marriage in Vienna, he decides he can deny the truth no longer and he follows her—to sumptuous Vienna, to the former monks who saved his life, to an apprenticeship at one of Europe’s greatest theaters, and to the premiere of one of history’s most beloved operas.  In this confessional letter to his son, Moses recounts how his gift for sound led him on an astonishing journey to Europe’s celebrated opera houses and reveals the secret that has long shadowed his fame: How did Moses Froben, world renowned musico, come to raise a son who by all rights he never could have sired?  Like the voice of Lo Svizzero, The Bells is a sublime debut novel that rings with passion, courage, and beauty.

The Unremembered Girl


Eliza Maxwell - 2017
    It’s all he can do to keep his compassionate but ailing mother and his stepfather—a fanatical grassroots minister with a bruising rhetoric—from ruin. But they have no idea they’ve become the obsession of the girl in the woods.Abandoned and nearly feral, Eve has been watching them, seduced by the notion of family—something she’s known only in the most brutal sense. Soon she can’t resist the temptation to get close. Where Henry’s mother sees a poor girl in need, his father sees only wickedness. When Henry forges an unexpected bond with Eve, he believes he might be able to save her. He doesn’t know how wrong he is.Eve is about to take charge of her own destiny—and that of Henry’s family. As both their worlds spin violently out of control, Henry must make an impossible choice: protect the broken young woman who’s claimed a piece of his soul, or put everyone he loves at risk in order to do the right thing.

Indiscretion


Charles Dubow - 2012
    Someone who writes it down after it's all over. Why am I the narrator of this story? I am because it is the story of my life—and of the people I love most. . . ."Harry and Madeleine Winslow have been blessed with talent, money, and charm. Harry is a National Book Award–winning author on the cusp of greatness. Madeleine is a woman of sublime beauty and grace whose elemental goodness and serenity belie a privileged upbringing. Bonded by deep devotion, they share a love that is both envied and admired. The Winslows play host to a coterie of close friends and acolytes eager to bask in their golden radiance, whether they are in their bucolic East Hampton cottage, abroad in Rome thanks to Harry's writing grant, or in their comfortable Manhattan brownstone.One weekend at the start of the summer season, Harry and Maddy, who are in their early forties, meet Claire and cannot help but be enchanted by her winsome youth, quiet intelligence, and disarming naivete. Drawn by the Winslows' inscrutable magnetism, Claire eagerly falls into their welcoming orbit. But over the course of the summer, her reverence transforms into a dangerous desire. By Labor Day, it is no longer enough to remain one of their hangers-on.A story of love, lust, deception, and betrayal as seen through the omniscient eyes of Maddy's childhood friend Walter, a narrator akin to Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, Indiscretion is a juicy, richly textured novel filled with fascinating, true-to-life characters—an irresistibly sensual page-turner that explores having it all and the consequences of wanting more.

Serendipity Falls Series - Two Book Set


Patrice Wilton - 2014
    There’s a wedding a month and divorces are non existent. Out-of-towners are flocking in on weekends to visit, and perhaps find love, speculating on whether it’s the natural spring water or something in the air. Whatever it is, they hope to find it. Tara Reynolds is a new pastry chef for the mountain resort, and love is the last thing on her mind when she arrives for the winter, but the handsome Olympian skier who owns a local bar has become quite irresistible. Can the mysterious forces in the town unite this couple who are fighting it every step of the way? WEDDING FEVER Mila O’Reilley owns Wedding Fever, a bridal boutique in Serendipity Falls Mall. She sells more than dresses, she sells dreams along with the belief in happily-ever-after – a sentiment she personally doesn’t share. Chase Carlton is a young news reporter from San Francisco with big ambitions and dreams of his own. They don’t include interviewing the local residents about a love bug in their spring water, or discovering why there’s such a frenzy to rush toward the altar in this small mountain town. Can a jaded bridal consultant and a cynical news reporter uncover the true mystery of Serendipity Falls without being swept away in the madness?

The Gargoyle


Andrew Davidson - 2008
    As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul. A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love.He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

Divorcees.Biz


Eileen Thornton - 2012
    But will this be the answer to their problems? Or the beginning of a whole lot more?And with so many delicious men to choose from,Who will be the first to find their ‘Mr Right’.