When a series of dramatic events brings a strange man to her door, Mary emerges from the comfortable isolation that she knows to follow her dreams in Boston. Those desires do not come without sacrifice and hard choices. When her past comes back to haunt her, Mary must decide whether there is room for both her aspirations and her heart—or if she must surrender one to have the other.

    But now Jen's life seems to be crumbling around her. Her husband Adam is suddenly without a job, her sister is moving far away, and people increasingly describe her two-year-old daughter as a difficult child. This is not the way Jen dreamed parenthood would be, especially with her youngest daughter.In the middle of each night, Kaye wakes up screaming. Human interactions and parental guidance have little meaning for her. Jen makes jokes about Kaye's public behavior to push away the pain. Marie, her four-year-old daughter, wants to know, "Why won't Kaye play with me?" Then Jen's new visiting teacher asks if Kaye is autistic. In Faraway Child, Amy Maida Wadsworth shares her most personal novel to date with a story about a family who faces shattered expectations, and then learns to reach out to family, ward members, and to God.

    It’s an era of breadlines, bank runs, and impossible choices. For struggling reporter Ellis Reed, the gut-wrenching scene evokes memories of his family’s dark past. He snaps a photograph of the children, not meant for publication. But when the image leads to his big break, the consequences are devastating in ways he never imagined.Haunted by secrets of her own, secretary Lillian Palmer sees more in the picture than a good story and is soon drawn into the fray. Together, the two set out to right a wrongdoing and mend a fractured family, at the risk of everything they value. Inspired by an actual newspaper photo that stunned readers across the nation, this touching novel explores the tale within the frame and behind the lens—a journey of ambition, love, and the far-reaching effects of our actions.

    Medallion.Story summary: Something is odd about Grace. She has mismatched eyes, one dark and one light. She thinks she's seen God. When her mother dies, she begins to get letters from her, as if from the grave. The letters tell of her mother's life before she married Grace's father, in time, confessing fiercely guarded family secrets. "I wasn't always a Preacher's Wife... I made mistakes along the way."Looking back, as a middle-aged woman, Grace relives those transformative years, coming of age in the 1960s as the daughter of The Reverend Thad Carsten and his much-younger wife, Sharon. When they move to a new neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, Sharon is healthy and Grace takes turmoil in stride: a new school, her backward neighbors, the simmering Vietnam War and political unrest. On the whole, life is sublime-until Sharon gets sick and dies. Then Grace's world turns upside down.Days after Sharon is gone, the letters to her daughter start coming, delivered mysteriously in the dark of night. Grace finds them-addressed to her-and devours every word, desperate to figure out who's delivering them. As she struggles with questions of loss and faith, she begins to butt heads with the preacher, increasingly focused on the mysterious messenger and her mother's letters. The handwritten pages arrive periodically as Grace matures, fostering a strange mother daughter relationship.Early on, the letters offer motherly advice, but increasingly they shift their focus to Sharon's early teens, eventually confessing a forbidden young adult romance. By then, Grace is desperate for the rest of the story, searching everywhere for her mother's writings, until finally there's a breakthrough. When she reads the last of the letters-and an astonishing truth-she embarks on a journey that changes her life and perspective forever.What did Sharon confess in the last letter to her daughter? How does it affect their unusual mother daughter relationship? As Grace runs away to trace her mother's past and teenage romance, what will she find?With its elements of romance and mystery, The God of Sno Cone Blue, sometimes searched as "Snow" Cone Blue is best described as contemporary women's fiction, though its strong central male character also appeals to men. The novel's storyline and mother daughter relationship are fitting Inspirational Fiction, and its passion and coming of age tale are appropriate for teenagers and young adults.* USA Today Bestselling Author Linda Needham on this inspirational fiction story: "The God of Sno Cone Blue is a joyous celebration of a young girl's journey to womanhood. Grace is a modern match for Tom Sawyer, with a grand spirit and enough spunk to weather the heartache of losing her mother at a tender age. Along the way, she gains the wisdom to recognize the breadth of her mother's love through a series of posthumous, sometimes shocking letters delivered in the years that follow. With a driving style and a colorful cast of eccentric characters, author Marcia Coffey Turnquist fiercely delivers equal parts laughter, sorrow and the kind of joy that will stay with you long after you've finished the book."*Author Rod Gramer on this novel fraught with family secrets: "Marcia has created a compelling character in Grace, one whose great personal loss is redeemed by a great personal discovery."*Portland Society Page editor Elisa Klein on the story's mystery and romance: "Surprises abound and the twists and turns kept me flipping pages late into the night as I curled up in my favorite chair to drink it all in."*Award-winning artist D.K. Lubarsky on this coming of age novel: "A masterful storyteller, Turnquist takes you on a magical journey of discovery in this poignant tale of innocence and growing up. The God of Sno Cone Blue is a delightful read."

    

    Filled with unforgettable characters and grace, it is a timeless celebration of friendship and the strength and solidarity of women."I hope this letter gets to you quickly. We are always waiting, aren't we? Perhaps the greatest gift this war has given us is the anticipation…" It's January 1943 when Rita Vincenzo receives her first letter from Glory Whitehall. Glory is an effervescent young mother, impulsive and free as a bird. Rita is a sensible professor's wife with a love of gardening and a generous, old soul. Glory comes from New England society; Rita lives in Iowa, trying to make ends meet. They have nothing in common except one powerful bond: the men they love are fighting in a war a world away from home. Brought together by an unlikely twist of fate, Glory and Rita begin a remarkable correspondence. The friendship forged by their letters allows them to survive the loneliness and uncertainty of waiting on the home front, and gives them the courage to face the battles raging in their very own backyards. Connected across the country by the lifeline of the written word, each woman finds her life profoundly altered by the other's unwavering support. A collaboration of two authors whose own beautiful story mirrors that on the page, I'll Be Seeing You is a deeply moving union of style and charm. Filled with unforgettable characters and grace, it is a timeless celebration of friendship and the strength and solidarity of women.

    John's. By the Rivers of Brooklyn traces the story of the Evans family across two countries and three generations, exploring the hopes, passions and heartbreaks of those who went away and those who stayed behind. By the Rivers of Brooklyn transforms into fiction the experience of the 75,000 first- and second-generation Newfoundlanders who once lived in Brooklyn, New York - and the experience of Newfoundlanders throughout history who have gone away to find work and prosperity but never stopped dreaming of home.

    But Aurelia leaves Amy with one last gift.A bundle of letters with a coded key. A treasure hunt that only Amy can unlock.A life-changing secret awaits... if only she can reach it.

    In fact, Panning’s last collection of short stories, Super America, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Enter this exciting new novel, the best work yet from a writer whose astute observations of American life are as honest as they are engaging.Butter is a coming of age tale set against the backdrop of small-town Minnesota during the 1970s and told from the perspective of an eleven-year-old girl, Iris, who learns from her parents that she is adopted. The story of Iris’s childhood is at first beguiling and innocent: hers is a world filled with bell-bottoms and Barbie dolls, Shrinky Dinks and Shaun Cassidy records, TV dinners and trips to grandma’s. But as her parents’ marriage starts to unravel, Iris grows more and more observant of disintegration all around her, and the simple cadences of her story quickly attain an unnerving tension as she wavers precariously between girlhood and adolescence. In the end, Iris’s story represents a profound meditation on growing up estranged in small town America—on being an outsider in a world increasingly averse to them. Passionate, lyrical, and disquieting, this intensely moving novel is a rich exploration of a crucial theme in American literature that will confirm Anne Panning’s place as a major figure in the world of contemporary fiction.

    But it is tending her beautiful garden with her handsome young gardener, Rex Kenwright, that ultimately saves Helen from grief. No stranger to bereavement himself, Rex finds comfort in Helen's company but it is seventeen-year-old Chloe who steals his heart.It is the swinging sixties, however, and Chloe has dreams of her own. When she announces that she is pregnant and moving in with her boyfriend, Adam Livingstone, she has no idea of the effect this will have on those she loves. Nor does she anticipate the rocky road to happiness that lies ahead...

    Iona Grey's prose is warm, evocative, and immediately engaging; her characters become so real you can't bear to let them go.I promised to love you forever, in a time when I didn't know if I'd live to see the start of another week. Now it looks like forever is finally running out. I never stopped loving you. I tried, for the sake of my own sanity, but I never even got close, and I never stopped hoping either.Late on a frozen February evening, a young woman is running through the streets of London. Having fled from her abusive boyfriend and with nowhere to go, Jess stumbles onto a forgotten lane where a small, clearly unlived in old house offers her best chance of shelter for the night. The next morning, a mysterious letter arrives and when she can't help but open it, she finds herself drawn inexorably into the story of two lovers from another time. In London 1942, Stella meets Dan, a US airman, quite by accident, but there is no denying the impossible, unstoppable attraction that draws them together. Dan is a B-17 pilot flying his bomber into Europe from a British airbase; his odds of survival are one in five. In the midst of such uncertainty, the one thing they hold onto is the letters they write to each other. Fate is unkind and they are separated by decades and continents. In the present, Jess becomes determined to find out what happened to them. Her hope—inspired by a love so powerful it spans a lifetime—will lead her to find a startling redemption in her own life in this powerfully moving novel.“A captivating tale of love and love lost.” —Booklist“A wonderful story.” —Rosamunde Pilcher, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Shell Seekers

    It’s 1976, and while the country prepares to celebrate the bicentennial, Daniel Truitt’s family is falling apart. His father, Pete, has been fired from yet another teaching job, and his mother, Valerie, is one step away from leaving for good. But when Pete lucks into a crumbling mansion in the nation’s capital, he makes a bold plan to start a school under his own roof where students and teachers will be equals. Replete with the wry humor, human insight, and cultural resonance that characterizes Shreve’s critically acclaimed fiction, When the White House Was Ours will be a joy to anyone whose family has lived through an idealistic time and ended up in an era of compromise.

    It takes guts, grit, gunslinging--and one hell of a woman . . .MEET TENNESSEE SMITH: SHE SHOOTS FROM THE HIP.There aren't many options for an eighteen-year-old girl in the Old West. Especially an orphan like Tennessee Smith. She can either sell her body in a seedy saloon or take her chances as a mail-order bride. Tennie chooses the latter. Joining a wagonload of women across Indian territory, she arrives in the God-forsaken town of Ring Bit, Texas. Her husband-to-be is surprisingly decent. But after tying the knot in a quickie ceremony, he pops even more surprises on her. First, he introduces Tennie to his three young sons. Then he drops dead on their wedding night . . .Some women would hightail it out of there. Not Tennie. She'll do whatever it takes to save the ranch and raise those boys. Rusty is thirteen, Lucas is ten, and Badger is six. They need a mother. Tennie needs a job. And the town needs a marshal. Sure, the local gamblers, outlaws, and thieves have no use for the law. Then again, they never met a lawman, or woman, like Tennessee Smith . . .

    At the center of the island’s life is a café draped with bougainvillea called the House at the Edge of Night, where over generations the community gathers to gossip and talk. Amedeo Esposito, a foundling from Florence, finds his destiny on the island with his beautiful wife, Pina, whose fierce intelligence, grace, and unwavering love guide her every move. An indiscretion tests their marriage, and their children—three sons and an inquisitive daughter—grow up and struggle with both humanity’s cruelty and its capacity for love and mercy.Spanning nearly a century, through secrets and mysteries, trials and sacrifice, this beautiful and haunting novel follows the lives of the Esposito family and the other islanders who live and love on Castellamare: a cruel count and his bewitching wife, a priest who loves scandal, a prisoner of war turned poet, an outcast girl who becomes a pillar of strength, a wounded English soldier who emerges from the sea. The people of Castellamare are transformed by two world wars and a great recession, by the threat of fascism and their deep bonds of passion and friendship, and by bitter rivalries and the power of forgiveness, in this richly written and powerful novel.Catherine Banner has written an enthralling, character-rich novel, epic in scope but intimate in feeling. At times, the island itself seems alive, a mythical place where the earth heaves with stories—and this magical novel takes you there.

     Mayan legends tell of a location where the secret to surviving the end of the world may be found. One part of that legend is recorded on a stone tablet in the dusty attic of Lord ‘Ratty’ Ballashiels’ crumbling manor. The other twin part disappeared from a Berlin museum when the Nazis took power. When Ratty seems about to sell his tablet to the adopted son of Josef Mengele, his friend, the archaeologist Ruby Towers, is appalled. Soon it is clear that more than archaeology is at stake. The quest to rescue historic Central American artefacts becomes a race to prevent an apocalyptic threat when Ruby discovers that the ancients have set in motion something that will threaten the world today.