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The Long Shadow by Loretta Proctor


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The Tuscan Secret


Angela Petch - 2019
    Fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and The Letter by Kathryn Hughes will be captivated. ‘Anna, I kept a diary during the war. I have so much to tell you… And now you have this box containing my scribblings. My memory pearls. This diary is my inheritance to you. Your loving Mamma.’ As World War Two shatters Europe, Ines is a young girl caught up in the Italian Resistance. With her brother and best friend sacrificing everything to fight the Nazis, Ines hides deep in the Tuscan mountains, tending the wounds of the fallen fighters – including an escaped British prisoner-of-war who captures her heart. Forty-five years later, an elderly lady in an English nursing home passes away, dreaming of Italy in her dying hours. To her youngest daughter Anna, she leaves a battered box of letters, their pages yellowed with age, and a promise that the truth about what really happened to her in the war lies within. Anna’s English father forbade her from learning her mother’s beautiful language. So to translate the handwritten diaries, she resolves to visit Tuscany for herself. As she explores the sun-kissed olive groves and stunning mountain landscapes of the homeland she’s never known, Anna uncovers a shocking secret about her mother’s past that will uproot everything she’s ever believed. In this small Tuscan community, some wartime secrets were never meant to be uncovered… Readers have fallen in love with The Tuscan Secret: ‘Fantastic read… I loved this book...I would highly recommend.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘Excellent book!... will grab you and hold onto you long after you put it down.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘A feast of a book… transports you to Tuscany.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘This beautifully woven story had me captivated from the start… I could not help but LOVE the descriptions of Tuscany, the countryside, the people and the food.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘I was gripped… The author weaves a magical tale… There is so much beautiful detail in the author's writing, one could almost taste the food, or feel the beauty of the surroundings.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘The story was beautifully told… a wonderful tale of self-discovery… A great read, with characters who will stay with you long after the book is closed.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘This is a beautifully written book… an ending that took me quite by surprise.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars This book was previously published as Tuscan Roots.

Dating a Cougar


Donna McDonald - 2011
    It’s shocking at fifty to find herself wanting a sex life again, and even more shocking to be an older woman attracted to a younger man.Thirty-eight-year-old, medically retired Marine, Casey Carter, is incredibly sexy, but a relationship with the man is totally out of the question. Casey is related to her daughter’s boyfriend. The last thing Alexa needs is another talk-show worthy drama in her already complicated life, no matter how well Casey kisses.ABOUT THE NEVER TOO LATE SERIES:Tired of younger heroines and heroes getting all the action? How about something different? The Never Too Late series is a collection of six sexy, romantic comedies about finding love and romance after turning 40 and 50.These contemporary romances are intentionally heavy on humor and light on tears. The heroines are successful in life, but not successful in love, as their friends are quick to point out. The heroes are drool-worthy, confident, and know what it takes to make a woman feel loved and wanted.

The Devil's Fire


Matt Tomerlin - 2011
    So far their journey has been uneventful, even boring. But when ruthless pirates suddenly storm the ship to plunder her husband's riches, Katherine is one of the treasures they steal, sparking a bloody chain of events that will alter the course of piracy in the Caribbean forever. Whisked aboard a fearsome brigantine named "Harbinger", she must contend with an ambitious pirate captain who wants her for his own, a sadistic quartermaster who firmly believes that women bring bad luck upon a ship, and a crew full of lustful miscreants. With no means of escape on the horizon, she quickly befriends a dashing young deckhand and a cowardly surgeon. As Katherine grows accustomed to life among pirates, she finds it increasingly difficult to resist her attraction to their wayward lifestyle and the thrill of high-seas adventure. But the memory of her dead husband weighs heavily on her conscience, and her rising guilt may prove to be the ultimate undoing of her kidnappers. Pirate lovers will find no shortage of treachery, cutlass duels, ship battles, buried treasure and much, much more.

Love, Chocolate, and Beer


Violet Duke - 2014
    After moving his chocolate shop, and newly single life, to the quirky town of Cactus Creek, Luke wants nothing more than to devote all his energy into making his business a success—by taking the romance market by storm. But his grand plans get thrown for a loop when he locks horns with the feisty beer-brewing beauty next door who calls his ‘romantic idealism’ a load of fairytale bull. Soon, driving the woman sparking nuts becomes another wickedly fun priority he simply can’t get enough of.In his defense, she’s addictively easy to incite…and plain impossible to resist.Beloved local brewmaster Dani Dobson is beyond riled up. It’s bad enough the new shop owner in town comes locked and loaded with both a distractingly rugged charm and sexy flashing dimples, but the whole only-in-the-movies variety of romance he’s selling—the kind her world has been crushed by before—is really doing a number on her allergy to unrealistic clichés. What’s worse, he’s created an annoyingly clever ad campaign that dubs ‘beer joints’ like hers as the “cave where romance goes to hibernate.” The nerve of that man.Combustible chemistry or not, damn it, this means war. The stakes…very likely, her heart.

What Wild Moonlight


Victoria Lynne - 1998
    Before he knew what hit him, headstrong Katya Alexander swept him into an intrigue of her own. Thinking she was a mere pickpocket--and a ravishing one at that--he made her an offer she couldn't refuse: pose as his mistress and help him retrieve a priceless family scroll. In return, he would offer her his protection. His plan was flawless--until he lost his heart to the beautiful stranger with secrets to burn.What wild desire...Only Katya knew the secret that could destroy them both: an age-old family feud made them mortal enemies. Caught up in the glittering intrigue of Monaco, Katya couldn't tell Nicholas the truth--any more than she could resist his passionate touch or the promise of heaven in his arms....

Holding Out For a Hero


Stacey Joy Netzel - 2011
    Good thing she's a smart girl and a quick learner. When he rescues her from her Good Samaritan act gone bad later that same day, she doesn't make the same mistake twice.

Dragon Rose


Christine Pope - 2012
    Rhianne Menyon has dreams of being a painter, but her world changes forever when a single moment of sacrifice brings her to Black's Keep as the Dragon's latest Bride. As she attempts to adjust to her new life -- and to know something of the monster who is now her husband -- she begins to see that the curse is far crueler than she first believed. Unraveling the mystery of what happened to the Dragon's Brides is only the beginning...

The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock


Jane Riley - 2020
    Is there really room for something as unpredictable as love? Oliver Clock has everything arranged just so. A steady job running the family funeral parlour. A fridge stocked with ready meals. A drawer full of colour-coded socks. A plan (of sorts) to stay trim enough for a standard-sized coffin. And in florist Marie, he’s even found the love of his life—not that she’s aware of it.When a terrible tragedy takes Marie out of his life but leaves him with her private journal, he discovers too late that she secretly loved him back. Faced now with an empty love life, a family funeral business in trouble, a fast-approaching fortieth birthday and a notebook of resolutions he’s never achieved, Oliver resolves to open himself up to love—and all the mess that comes along with it.But, with a habit of burying his feelings, can he learn to embrace his lovability and find the woman who will make him feel whole?

The Sandcastle Girls


Chris Bohjalian - 2012
    When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The year is 1915 and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide. There Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo and travels south into Egypt to join the British army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost. Fast forward to the present day, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents' ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed "The Ottoman Annex," Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura's grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family's history that reveals love, loss - and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

Boxes For Beds


Maryann Miller - 2012
    They don't need the heat, and they have the leverage with the sheriff to make him do whatever they want. It seems like a good move to arrest Leslie Richards, the new woman in town, even though there is only thin circumstantial evidence against her. Better for it to be a stranger taking those babies and not one of their own.Leslie has left New York with her ten-year-old daughter, Mandy, hoping to escape from her past and the ruins of a relationship, only to discover that there is little peace for her in Pine Hollow, Arkansas.

The Execution


Sharon Cramer - 2012
    A young priest enters the prison cell of a condemned mercenary and is shocked to see the face of this murderer is his own—a mirror image of himself. Unknown to each other until now, the twins form a bond of brotherhood, sealed with their darkest secrets. But with only hours until the execution, the priest begins to question which man should truly be condemned. Should it be the ruthless killer—a boy from an orphanage who suffered the unimaginable—or himself, the man of God whose own tormented desires ended in tragedy? As the sun rises, the young priest knows what he must do. Only one man will die…but two men will be free.

The Two Hotel Francforts


David Leavitt - 2013
    Awaiting safe passage to New York on the SS Manhattan, two couples meet: Pete and Julia Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward and Iris Freleng, sophisticated, independently wealthy, bohemian, and beset by the social and sexual anxieties of their class. As Portugal's neutrality, and the world's future, hang in the balance, the hidden threads in the lives of these four characters—Julia's status as a Jew, Pete and Edward's improbable affair, Iris's increasingly desperate efforts to save her tenuous marriage—begin to come loose. This journey will change their lives irrevocably, as Europe sinks into war.Gorgeously written, sexually and politically charged, David Leavitt's long-awaited new novel is an extraordinary work.

The House of the Wicked


D.M. Mitchell - 2011
    It is an isolated Cornish fishing community, largely untouched by the modern, developing Victorian world, hanging onto its old traditions, superstitions and beliefs – a community that lives with a disturbing secret. So too does Denning. He is a reluctant visitor, and though he is supposedly joining his one-time artist friend Terrance Wilkinson to form an artists’ colony it is circumstances that force him there. Denning is still haunted by the brutal death of a young woman in Brittany, and shouldering guilt for the fact that he covered up for Wilkinson when he suspects the man of having been been involved with the murder. But Porthgarrow is haunted by its own demons and secrets. He learns about the savage murder of a woman by her husband Jowan Connoch thirteen years previously, and of Jowan’s son who has returned to Porthgarrow to uncover the truth and to clear his father’s name. Yet it is far from over. Before long three more people are destined to die in Porthgarrow before the village gives up its sinister secrets, and Stephen Denning will learn of his own family’s mysterious involvement. The house of the Wicked is peopled with larger than life characters – the powerful businessman Gerran Hendra and his beautiful daughter Jenna; the Reverend Biddle who collects photographs of the dead; Benjamin Croker, the journalist; and Tunny, the village wise man and healer. From its atmospheric Gothic undertones to its shocking and unexpected end, ‘The House of the Wicked’ is D. M. Mitchell at his darkest and most imaginative best. Some secrets will not stay buried...

Tendrils of Life: A story of love, loss, and survival in the turmoil of the Korean War


Owen Choi - 2012
    Jimin, a sixteen-year-old boy, aches to return to the safety of his old home on Ockdo (Jade Island), a remote island he'd left years earlier. But only his father, who is absent from home, knows the way.His adversary, a man who's been plotting to wipe out Jimin's family and steal their island, brings a tragedy and tries to eliminate him, forcing him to traverse the war-torn country on foot with his seven-year-old sister to find his father. But the war sweeps across the country multiple times and hinders them from meeting up with their father.Back in Seoul, with Chinese troops (who have invaded the country to prop up the communists) bearing down on them, Jimin is forced to join the army, leaving his sister alone, hungry, and homeless in the cold, bomb-devastated city.With action and suspense, Tendrils of Life is a rich and intriguing upmarket fiction, interwoven with gripping character-oriented narratives and full of visual detail. It's a story of love and hope, greed and revenge, and the quest for survival in the turmoil of war - a depiction of resilience of the human spirit.Note: This is an alternate cover edition for ASIN B008PWSG2O.

Fearless


Tawdra Kandle - 2011
    But there is more to King than meets the eye, and soon Tasmyn’s ability to hear other’s thoughts is the least of her worries. Entangled in a web of first love, quirky and secretive townsfolk, magic and blood rituals, she discovers the town’s secrets aren’t just bizarre, they’re deadly.