While fishing from his grandparents’ dock, the dead body of a beloved neighbor floats to the water’s surface—a loss that shakes this Jewish community and reveals cracks in what appeared to be a perfect middle-class existence. Haunted by the sight of the woman’s corpse, Ben stubbornly searches for clues to her death, infuriating friends and family who view his unwelcome investigation as a threat to the comfortable lives they’ve built. As Ben’s suspicions mount, he’s forced to confront the terrifying possibility that his close-knit community is not what it seems to be—that, beneath a façade of prosperity and contentment, darker forces may be at work.In The Boy and the Lake, Adam Pelzman has crafted a riveting coming-of-age story and a mystery rich in historical detail, exploring an insular world where the desperate quest for the American dream threatens to destroy both a family and a way of life.

    Marcus knows he resembles his distant cousin, realises he must be a constant reminder of her husband - so perhaps his absence for months while he settles the affairs in the West Indies is for the best. Passion flares between them on his return but he cannot persuade Marissa to marry him. Does she still cling to the memory of her late husband or is something more sinister behind her reluctance? Marcus's wayward young sister, the arrival in England of his former lover and the threats of Marissa's father make Marcus's search for the truth, and Marissa's struggle to trust, that much more difficult - but when their relationship reaches a crisis that trust is all they have.

    It is October in the year 1675. New England trader, Tobias Hopkins, arrives in Jamaica to discover the truth about his missing father. It transpires that, not only has the man been dead for six years, but he has left Toby with a half-brother and the clue to an inheritance which promises to change the course of their lives. However, Toby's inquiries have attracted the attention of others who will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. Will the cryptic message written by his father lead him to a promised fortune, or will it lead him into the hands of those who aim to destroy him? Haunted by nightmares from his past, Toby continues with his quest. But who can he trust? His faithful associate, John? the astute businesswoman Elizabeth? or Magdalena, mother of his half-brother Eduardo? Some of those around him are not what they seem to be, and it soon becomes clear that Toby and those closest to him are in imminent danger. His quest leads him to the Island of Nevis where he reaps the fruits of his search. All appears well until he travels to Virginia. It is only at this point that Tobias Hopkins is forced to face the consequence of his actions.

    The novel begins as ?The Great War? is coming to an end. As Robert Parker?s body is lowered into the grave, Herman Camm introduces himself to the mourning family. He is a beady-eyed, small-framed, well-dressed man with a mysterious stare?and he is about to drastically change the lives of three women: Mae Lou Parker; her daughter, Carrie; and Pearl Brown. On Christmas Eve in Jefferson County, Virginia, trouble arrives when Carrie reveals a disturbing secret that will haunt and change their lives forever. Mae Lou is fed up with Herman spending time with other women and she goes to confront him. Everybody wants a part of him, including Willie; however, the tables are slightly turned when Willie ends up with a gun pointing directly at him. All of the stories converge when Herman is found dead from a shotgun wound. There are many people Herman has offended. And all three women are suspects in his murder. An investigation is launched. But no one really cares, including the police. Blackberry Days of Summer is a brilliantly crafted story of family secrets, complexity and the courage of forgiveness.

    Don't miss this exciting action adventure western from America's great western storyteller, Gary McCarthy!

    In order to save her farm, she sends for a mail-order husband. U.S. Marshal Jude Malstrom is a loner dedicated to his work, but when a dying man asks him to deliver a letter, he reluctantly carries out the task. When nature unleashes her fury, Jude and Anne Marie find themselves in each other's company for longer than they wish. Can they see beyond obligation and find an unlikely love?

    He had his ranch, a good-sized herd, and a healthy bank account. He thought he had finally added the last, most important part of the dream when Hannah Jacobsen, recent widow and mother of two, moved in with her sister in the neighboring ranch. But the reason she had become a widow would turn into a harrowing race across two counties, sometimes as the pursuer and other times as the pursued.

    The plot is complicated by her falling in love with her old playmate, who owns the estate where the ruins were discovered, before her fiance joins her in England to find out exactly where HE stands. The characters are well-defined and interesting, and the story wraps up well and very satisfactorily.

    A novel tells the story of a man who leads an ordinary, uneventful life, until overnight he becomes the trustee of his 10-year-old niece, and involved in the search for some missing money.

    Marston isn’t so sure about this arrangement. Will he finally cave-in…just in time for a Christmas wedding? Greta Samuelson was only fourteen the year Kansas bled, but by the time the Civil War had ended, she was a woman of steel. The war had left only broken pieces of men for single women to comb through, so there wasn’t much for her in Atchison, Kansas. She longs to go west where her brother is. When the wagon train driver arrives in town, he’s got a letter he wants her to see. It’s from a schoolteacher announcing his desire for a wife, primarily asking for a woman of good composure, strong sensibilities and sufficient education to assist him. Greta has not had a great deal of formal education, but she has a good writing hand, and sends back a letter saying she is interested. When Marston first meets Greta, he is disappointed. He had expected a mature, scholarly woman, not a mere slip of a twenty-year-old girl. Greta, however, sets out to prove she is a woman to contend with, even for a thirty-two-year-old teacher. She rolls up her sleeves and takes on the Wild West with as much fortitude as she had shown while living through the Civil War. But can she win Marston’s heart in time to be a Christmas bride? Or will he decide she is too young for him… AUTHOR’S NOTE: Enjoy this clean historical western romance short story! I have plans to turn it into a series to keep you happily reading. Also included are 3 bonus stories! Don’t miss out on this one…it’s one of my best written stories yet!

    Cyril Potter is a secret gambler whose debts have become so crippling that he can see no way out, and he commits suicide. Left to clear the debts, his family are forced to sell everything the own. As daughter Kate labours in a hat-making factory to support the family, she catches the eye of the wealthy factory owner. But tragedy strikes the family once more when unmarried Kate is left pregnant...

    Dust to dust,I find myself saying as my frozen fingers struggle tohold the pen with which I write these words to you, Ashes toashes, I mutter, and nothing but suffering and joyin between. I've had my share. Hot and sharp -- I taste itstill in the blood that fills my mouth when I cough." Miriam is a nineteen-year-old imprisoned in Siberia following the Russian Revolution of 1905. Reaching out to the young daughter whom she gave up at birth, Miriam weaves a haunting tale of life in a small Jewish village during the last days of imperial Russia and of a community caught between the rich yet rigid traditions of the past and the frightening, unfamiliar ways of a society desperately trying to reinvent itself.Rejected by her suicidal mother and abandoned by her father at birth, Miriam is marked as an outcast in her village from the beginning. Reunited with her father when he marries Tsila, a haughty and complex woman whose beauty has been marred by the hand of divine anger, Miriam searches to unveil the secrets of her birth in a place of mystery and superstition, where everyone seems to know the truth that eludes her.Your Mouth Is Lovely moves seamlessly from picturesque but impoverished villages, where fife is ruled by the iron hand of God and the equally powerful grip of Fate, to the slums of teeming Kiev, where a seething anger is about to change the course of Russian history. A story of epic human drama, Your Mouth Is Lovely is a poetic, dreamy novel with a darkly magical sheen.

    "Lost Geography" takes the complexity of migration as its central subject: Why do landscape, work, and family lock some people in place and release others? In settings both rural and urban, these stalwart, tragically dispersed yet resilient people respond not only to new environments and experiences but to the eruption of sudden loss and change.As the settings and characters shift in this wise, resonant book, readers are invited to see how habits of survival translate from one generation to another. How are we like our forebears? How does circumstance make us alter what our heritage has told us is important? With unfailing subtlety and elegance, "Lost Geography" teaches us, in a luminous sequence of intense personal dramas, that what keeps us alive isn't so much our ability to understand the details of our past as having the luck and courage to survive the assaults of both the present and history.

    So this was Butlin's. Whitewashed buildings, bordered by rhododendrons, gave a cheerful feeling to a world still recovering from six years of war. The Skegness holiday camp covered a vast area, much larger than Molly expected to see.'Molly Missons hasn't had the best of times recently. Having lost her parents, now some dubious long-lost family have darkened her door - attempting to steal her home and livelihood... After a horrendous ordeal, Molly applies for a job as a Butlin's Aunty. When she receives news that she has got the job, she immediately leaves her small home town - in search of a new life in Skegness.Molly finds true friendship in Freda, Bunty and Plum. But the biggest shock is discovering that star of the silver screen, Johnny Johnson, is working at Butlin's as head of the entertainment team. Johnny takes an instant liking to Molly and she begins to shed the shackles of her recent traumas. Will Johnny be just the distraction Molly needs - or is he too good be to be true?

    With degrees in both Medicine and Law, at the age of seventeen, Clint still felt empty and dissatisfied. He struck up a bargain with his father, to be allowed four years to go West and see the lands, experience life, then return to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor in the family practice. When he boarded the train west with fifty thousand dollars set up in a bank account, Clint had no way of knowing just how much his life would turn in a completely different way.