The Courage Tree


Diane Chamberlain - 2001
    Which is why her mother, Janine, reluctantly agreed to let her go on the weekend camping trip with her Brownie troop. But when Janine arrives to pick up Sophie after the trip, her daughter is not among the others. Somehow, along the forested route from West Virginia, Sophie has disappeared.Sophie is no ordinary 8 year old. She suffers from a rare disease, and Janine has recently enrolled her in an experimental treatment as a last effort to save her life - despite the vehement objections of her ex-husband, Joe, who believes conventional medicine is the only route to take. The only person to support Janine in her decision is Lucas Trowell, someone familiar with the herbs used in the treatment. Lucas has been encouraging Janine to keep Sophie in the program, and, indeed, the little girl has been showing remarkable improvement. All her mother's instincts tell Janine that Sophie is alive, but time is running out. Without her treatment, it's only a matter of days before Sophie's illness will claim her life. As Janine, Joe and Lucas embark on a desperate search to find Sophie, envy and suspicion grow between the two men, casting doubts on each other's true motives for helping Janine.Deep in the forest, another drama unfolds. Sophie has found refuge in a remote cabin inhabited by a woman who wants nothing to do with the little girl. She's desperate to help her own daughter, who has been wrongly imprisoned for murder and who, after escaping, is on her way to join her mother. Sophie's arrival puts in jeopardy her daughter's future, but the mysterious woman is as determined to save her daughter as Janine is to save Sophie.Only one of them can succeed.

First Sight


Danielle Steel - 2012
     FIRST SIGHT   New York. London. Milan. Paris. Fashion Week in all four cities. A month of endless interviews, parties, and unflagging work and attention to detail at the semiannual ready to wear fashion shows—the famous prêt-à-porter. At the center of the storm and avalanche of work is American Timmie O’Neill, whose renowned line, Timmie O, is the embodiment of casual chic, in fashion and for the home. She has created a business that inspires, fills, and consumes her life.   With an unerring instinct for what the next trend will be, an innate genius for business, tireless labor, and sheer fearlessness, starting from nothing, over two decades Timmie has built an international empire that has brought her enormous satisfaction and success. In a world where humility and compassion are all too rare, her humor, kindness, integrity, and creativity are inspirational. Yet as blessed as she feels by her success, Timmie harbors the private wounds of a devastating childhood and past tragedy. She is too smart, too experienced, and too hurt to want much in her personal life beyond a succession of convenient, very limited relationships. Always willing to take risks in business, she never risks her heart.   But despite her well-ordered and highly controlled world, it turns out that Timmie O’Neill is not immune to magic when it strikes. And it strikes in Paris during Paris Fashion Week, when an intriguing Frenchman comes into her life when she gets sick. At first, Timmie and Jean-Charles Vernier are only patient and physician. They become confidants and friends, corresponding at a safe distance between Paris and Los Angeles once she goes home. There is every reason why they must remain apart. But neither can deny their growing friendship and the electricity that sparks whenever they meet.  First Sight is as complex and compelling as modern life itself. Careers, families, histories, losses, duty, obligation, and fear of losing control and getting hurt. It is a tale of daring to take risks, and losing control just enough to have a life, when the opportunity presents itself. When two very different worlds and strong-willed people collide, everything changes in an instant, as they confront the age-old question of whether to lay oneself bare and risk intimacy—or not. Are they brave enough to face what comes next? And will they do it together or apart?

The Only Way Is Up


Carole Matthews - 2010
    Then Laurence loses his job, and their house and all their belongings are repossessed. With nowhere else to go, the family move into a flea-ridden council house on a notoriously rough estate and start to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. But will Lily's dream of returning to a world of luxury ever come true - or have her priorities changed? For with the help of new friends, a little luck and a lot of determination she's about to learn what really matters.

A Country Christmas


Miss Read - 2006
    Miss Read's wonderfully festive collection of Christmas stories is packed with entertaining characters and enchanting tales.

Tempting Fate


Jane Green - 2014
    They have two teenaged daughters. They have built a life together. Forty-three year old Gabby is the last person to have an affair. She can't relate to the way her friends desperately try to cling to the beauty and allure of their younger years…And yet, she too knows her youth is quickly slipping away. She could never imagine how good it would feel to have a handsome younger man show interest in her--until the night it happens. Matt makes Gabby feel sparkling, fascinating, alive--something she hasn't felt in years. What begins as a long-distance friendship soon develops into an emotional affair as Gabby discovers her limits and boundaries are not where she expects them to be. Intoxicated, Gabby has no choice but to step ever deeper into the allure of attraction and attention, never foreseeing the life-changing consequences that lie ahead. If she makes one wrong move she could lose everything--and find out what really matters most.A heartfelt and complex story, Tempting Fate will have readers gripped until they reach the very last page, and thinking about the characters long after they put the book down.

The Legend of James Grey


Jennifer Moorman - 2016
    Plagued with an everyday existence of past tragedies and regrets, Emma has relinquished her future to her job of sorting books in the library.Her only friend, as it seems, is head librarian, Mordecai Wallach, the sturdy father-figure who tries to right her floundering ship. One night after the library has closed, Emma hears voices coming from the archives section. She finds peculiar visitors who seem all too familiar, and she unexpectedly entangles herself in the long-held secrets of the library’s magic. When Emma must take control of the library in Morty’s absence, she realizes he hasn’t been entirely honest with her. While trying to discover the truth, she comes face-to-face with James Grey, a handsome military man with a history of his own and an irresistible charm. While working to keep the library’s magic from being discovered by the town, Emma struggles not to fall in love with James—the only one who can change the course of her life but whose time is running out. Just how far will the magic take her?

Capturing Angels


V.C. Andrews - 2012
    Andrews, queen of Gothic fiction for twenty-five years, explores a new genre in her women’s fiction debut—available exclusively as an eBook. A young mother struggles to keep her marriage together in the wake of her daughter’s kidnapping…and to keep hope of her return alive. Grace is the doting mother of Mary, an angelic five-year-old who charms everyone around her. But in one tragic moment at a local shopping mall, Grace looks down to discover that Mary is no longer at her side…and can’t be found anywhere. She and her husband wait by the phone for a ransom demand that never comes. For months Grace believes that Mary is somewhere, alive and safe, waiting to come home to her—but as her family and friends give up hope, Grace’s marriage begins to crumble. Only one detective, Sam Abraham, shares her determination to find Mary…but could his motives be less than altruistic?As Sam and Mary work together to track Mary’s disappearance, they discover clues that this was more than a random kidnapping—and that Mary may have been special to more than just her mother…

Angel Falls


Kristin Hannah - 2000
    Doctors tell him not to expect a recovery, but he believes that love can accomplish what medical science cannot. Daily he sits at her bedside, telling her stories of the precious life they have built together, hoping against hope that she will wake up. But then he discovers evidence of his wife’s secret past: a hidden first marriage to movie star Julian True.Desperate to bring Mikaela back at any cost, Liam knows he must turn to Julian for help. But will that choice cost Liam his wife, his family, and everything he holds dear? One of Kristin Hannah’s most moving novels, Angel Falls is a poignant and unforgettable portrait of marriage and commitment, of an ordinary man who dares to risk everything in the name of love.

The Color War


Jodi Picoult - 2013
     Jodi Picoult is one of the most beloved authors of our time. Her many novels, consistently topping both national and international bestseller lists ("Sing You Home," "My Sister’s Keeper," "Nineteen Minutes"), are celebrated for addressing controversial issues with courage, grace, and empathy. In her new Byliner Original, "The Color War," she showcases her versatility and storytelling gifts once again with a moving and revealing portrait of a boy coming of age in an America where the lines between black and white, rich and poor, and insider and outsider too often divide minds and hearts and separate a child from his own sense of promise. All Raymond wants to do is hang out with his best friend, Monroe, but life has other plans. This summer, his mother has decided to send him to Bible camp for inner-city kids. On the bus there, he dreams of the best night of his life, when he and Monroe slipped away from home and jumped the turnstiles to ride the subway to downtown Boston on New Year’s Eve. The elaborate ice sculptures on display thrilled them, especially an angel with outstretched wings that glowed ghostly in the night. Raymond wakes on the bus to what he takes for another angel: Melody, a camp counselor and lifeguard. Like all the staff, she’s white. Pretty, blond, and friendly, she’s the person Raymond most wants to impress during the Color War, the camp’s sports competition, and to whom he confesses his most painful secret, a loss that has made him grow up far too fast and left him wise beyond his mere nine years. Will Raymond manage to connect to Melody—or anyone—when he’s so far from what he’s known and loved? Or will he discover that sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions? A searing look at race and what it means to survive our own color wars.

Gangsters' Wives (Underworld UK)


Tammy Cohen - 2010
    But what lies behind every bad man? Gangsters' Wives tells the side of the story you didn't know - what it's like to live with Britain's most lawless men, from the women who married them. Devoted mum-of-three Judy Marks was imprisoned alongside her husband, notorious drug smuggler Howard Marks; while Flanagan, the first ever Page Three girl, found herself splashed across the papers as the fiancée of legendary East End villain Reggie Kray. Jenny Pinto, wife of gangster Dave Courtney, has given the police keys to their house to stop them breaking down the front door. In ten funny, moving, searingly honest first-person accounts, Gangsters' Wives tells you all you ever wanted to know about the lives and loves of the women who are, quite literally, married to the mob.

Such a Pretty Face


Cathy Lamb - 2010
    Since that day, a new Stevie has emerged, one who walks without wheezing, plants a garden for self-therapy, and builds and paints fantastical wooden chairs. At thirty-five, Stevie is the one thing she never thought she'd be: thin.But for everything that's changed, some things remain the same. Stevie's shyness refuses to melt away. She still can't look her neighbors' gorgeous great-nephew in the eye. The Portland law office where she works remains utterly dysfunctional, as does her family—the aunt, uncle, and cousins who took her in when she was a child. To top it off, her once supportive best friend clearly resents her weight loss.By far the biggest challenge in Stevie's new life lies in figuring out how to define her new self. Collaborating with her cousins to plan her aunt and uncle's problematic fortieth anniversary party, Stevie starts to find some surprising answers—about who she is, who she wants to be, and how the old Stevie evolved in the first place. And with each revelation, she realizes the most important part of her transformation may not be what she's lost, but the courage and confidence she's gathering, day by day.As achingly honest as it is witty, Such A Pretty Face is a richly insightful novel of one woman's search for love, family, and acceptance, of the pain we all carry—and the wonders that can happen when we let it go at last.

Love, Love Me Do


Mark Haysom - 2014
    The year the Beatles first top the charts. The year Martin Luther King has a dream. The year Truman Bird moves his family from their home in Brighton to a dilapidated caravan in the Ashdown Forest - then disappears. Truman's a charmer, a chancer. He is, inevitably, a liar. He's always got away with it, too. But now he's gone a dangerous step too far and only has one day to put things right - before he loses everything. For Truman's wife, Christie, life has not turned out the way she'd imagined. How has she, that young girl of not that many years ago, ended up like this? In a caravan. With three children. And an absent husband. In this most unique, wise and addictive of British debuts, we discover that life has a habit of getting in the way of dreams - but that people find their own extraordinary ways of bouncing back.

The Unfinished Gift


Dan Walsh - 2009
    Walsh lives with his family in the Daytona Beach area. This is his first novel.Can a gift from the past mend a broken heart?Ian Collins is an old man without his son. Patrick Collins is a young boy without his father. On his Christmas list are only three items. He wants the army to find his father. He wants to leave his grandfather's house. And he wants the dusty wooden soldier in Grandfather's attic--the one he is forbidden to touch.Set in December of 1943, The Unfinished Gift is the engaging story of a family in need of forgiveness. With simple grace, it reminds us of the small things that affect powerful change in our hearts--a young boy's prayers, a shoe box of love letters, and even a half-carved soldier, long forgotten. This nostalgic story of reconciliation will touch your heart.

When Lightning Strikes


Brenda Novak - 2012
    And it's up to Gail DeMarco to stop him.Gail DeMarco left Whiskey Creek, California, to make a name for herself in Los Angeles. Her PR firm has accumulated a roster of A-list clients, including the biggest box office hit of all—sexy and unpredictable Simon O'Neal. But Simon, who's just been through a turbulent divorce, is so busy self-destructing he won't listen to anything she says. She drops him from her list—and he retaliates by taking the rest of her clients with him.Desperate to save her company, Gail has to humble herself by making a deal with Simon. The one thing he wants is custody of his son, but that's going to require a whole new image. He needs to marry some squeaky-clean girl who'll drag him off to some small, obscure place like Whiskey Creek….Gail's the only one he can trust. She agrees to become his wife—reluctantly. But she isn't reluctant because he's too hard to like. It's because he's too hard not to love!

Staying at Daisy's


Jill Mansell - 2002
    When she hears who's about to get married there, she isn't worried at all - her friend Tara absolutely promises there won't be any trouble between her and ex-boyfriend Dominic, whom she hasn't seen for years. But Daisy should be worried. Dominic has other ideas. And seeing Tara again sets in motion a chaotic train of events with far-reaching consequences for all concerned. While Daisy spends the ensuing months doing battle with Dev Tyzack (Dominic's so-called best man), Tara battles with her conscience. Meanwhile, Hector's getting up to all sorts with...well, that's the village's best kept secret. And then Barney turns up, with a little something belonging to the husband Daisy's been doing her best to forget. That's the thing about hotels, you never know who you're going to meet. Or whether they're going to stay...