A dead mentor. A new boss. What else could go wrong? Lillian Booth is pushed to her limits when she’s assigned the worst yet most important case of her career. Trying to disbar a lawyer who abused his clients for years behind closed doors.But after a series of sinister events, she’s forced to co-counsel with Henry Alton, a man who detested her beloved and now-deceased mentor.Lillian and Henry have one goal. To win.But Lillian fears failure if she and Henry can’t get along. And to get along requires her to uncover the origin of Henry’s hatred.Then survival becomes more important as a mysterious attacker targets them as the case races toward a possibly deadly conclusion. A Devilish Punishment is the first book in the Devil Springs Cozy Mysteries Series.

    

    At four am she starts work at Earthly Delights, her bakery in Calico Alley.But one morning Corinna receives a threatening note saying "The wages of sin is death" and finds a syringe in her cat's paw. A blue-faced junkie has collapsed in the dark alley and a mysterious man with beautiful eyes appears with a plan for Corinna and her bread. Then it is Goths, dead drug addicts, witchcraft, a homeless boy and a missing girl and it seems she will never get those muffins cooked in time.With flair, chutzpah and a talent for kneading, Corinna Chapman will find out who exactly is threatening her life and bake some beautiful bread.

    Single, thirty and living on a farm in a small Western Australian town, she’s sick of being treated like a kitchen slave by her brother and father. Ten years ago, her mother died of breast cancer, and Faith has been treading water ever since. She wants to get her hands dirty on the family farm. She wants to prove to herself that she’s done something worthwhile with her life. And she wants to find a man...For as long as he can remember, Daniel ‘Monty’ Montgomery has been Faith’s best friend. When he was ten, his parents sold the family property and moved to Perth, and ever since, Monty’s dreamed of having his own farm. So for the last ten years, he’s been back on the land, working odd jobs and saving every dollar to put toward his dream. Now he finally has the deposit. But there’s still something missing...So when Faith embarks on a mission to raise money for a charity close to her heart, and Monty’s dream property comes on the market, things seem like they are falling into place for them both. Until a drunken night out ends with them sleeping together. Suddenly, the best friends are faced with a new load of challenges...Monty and Faith are both ready to find a life partner and settle down, but have they both been looking in all the wrong places?

    Three days. Can one weekend away change your life? The unputdownable new drama by one of Australia’s most beloved storytellers.Coming together for a writing workshop with bestselling author Jan Goldstein, four strangers converge upon a luxury forest retreat. But along with their notepads and laptops, each of the participants has brought some emotional baggage.Beth is a solo parent and busy career woman haunted by a tragic car accident. Simone, the youngest at 26, is a successful Instagram star but she’s hiding behind a facade. Jamie is the only man. He’s a handsome personal trainer – but he looks out of place with a pen in his hand. Finally, Alice is a wife and mum recovering from postnatal depression. She and Jamie soon realise they are not such perfect strangers after all.Only one thing is for sure: on this creative getaway, nothing will go according to script.

    . .When single mum Olivia uproots her young son Darcy from their life in Tasmania for a new start in the English Cotswolds, she isn't exactly expecting a bed of roses - but nor is she prepared for the challenges that life in the picturesque village throws her way.The Renaissance Project hopes to bring the dwindling community back to life - to welcome migrants from around the world and to boost the failing economy - but not everyone is so pleased about the initiative.For cake maker Olivia, it's a chance for Darcy to finally meet his Norwegian father, and for her to trace the last blurry lines on what remains of her family tree. It's also an opportunity to move on from the traumatic event that tore her loved ones apart.After seven years on her own, she has all but given up on romance, until life dishes up some delicious new options she didn't even know she was craving.An uplifting and heartwarming story about the moments that change your life forever, human kindness and being true to yourself.

    Then a storm changes everything. With a car on the blink and a hurricane barreling towards her, she must find her way to safety. When her high school friend, the sweet but nerdy Gene Blackwell, finds her stranded in front of her feed store, she can barely believe this hunk is the guy she used to know. But how could she ever be enough for someone as brilliant as Gene?Gene has a happy life in Atlanta--far away from the bullies that used to taunt him and the love for Lacey that he never let show. But when he rescues Lacey from the storm, he soon discovers his infatuation is not as dead as he thinks. Lacey will never see him as anything but Eugene the nerd. Can he make it through the night without turning back into the kid who forever obsessed over someone he could never have?

    Margie is prickly, demanding and a stickler for convention. Stella has exciting dreams for the future. Margie has only bitter memories of the past. When Margie needs help recovering from a major operation, Stella offers her a place to stay. With no other options, Margie returns to the family farm where for decades, until Stella's arrival, she was the one in charge. Margie has never made life easy for her daughter-in-law, and that's not going to change now she's been made a guest in her former home. But as the dry summer turns to a beautiful autumn, the two women gradually form an unlikely bond, as the ambitions, secrets, and tragedies that have shaped their lives are slowly uncovered...

    A few years previous, she survived a car accident that shattered her ankle and her first marriage. Now she’s remarried and walking again and life would be perfect—if only she could get pregnant.Fortunately, Gillian’s mother-in-law and one of the Jackson County commissioners from Bend Brook, Nebraska, hatch a plan that will enable Gillian and her husband Clint to afford the next step in fertility treatment: they ask her to become an investigator for the county. Her first assignment is to find the biological parents of the commissioner’s adopted daughter, Caroline. With only one concrete fact to go on—Caroline was left at a Colorado monastery in 1967—Gillian heads for Aspen. Unfortunately, no one at the monastery remembers any such event—or so they say. When one monk goes missing and a woman who’s sleeping in the bed reserved for Gillian is murdered, Gillian has second thoughts. She can’t turn back, though, since most of Bend Brook has taken bets on whether she’ll be able to solve the case.As she uncovers past events that lead to the discovery of Caroline’s true identity, Gillian realizes that sometimes the perfect family might be the one you already have …

    However, his life has not always been a bed of roses. When was just a 12-year-old boy, he saved his best friend from a grisly death at the hands of the outlaw gang that killed her parents. As if that wasn’t enough, his friend was sent away to an orphanage in Denver City and John vowed to one day find the murderers and bring them to justice. Years go by and he works out a plan to shed some blood and take down those who stood in the way of his friend’s happiness. What will John be willing to risk in order to get the revenge he’s been waiting for his whole life?Maggie McDermott is deeply traumatized by the events of that nightmarish night. Having lost all of her childhood memories—even those of her best friend, John, she can’t help but wonder whether she’ll find peace one day. That is until John shows up at her door many years after the haunting event that changed her life. He has become a successful bounty hunter and has a bold plan to recover her childhood memories. His plan involves Maggie joining him on a dangerous mission of vengeance, in order to capture the gang that destroyed her life. Will Maggie find the courage to follow this dangerous prescription to get her childhood memories back?Even though John and Maggie haven’t seen each other for many years, their wild thirst for revenge will take them on a sprawling adventure with gunfire, romance, and a longing for justice. Will John be able to protect the girl from the most infamous outlaw gang in the West? Or will they be forced to abandon all hope for a better life once and for all?

    Estranged from his parents, Daniel is hesitant to revisit their history: long divorced, his mother still maintains the farm having put out her cheating, rakish husband, and even in these later years her anger burns brightly.Daniel arrives at the farm in the heat of his parents’ conflict with Sharen, an alluring tenant and ex-lover of his father now perched on family land. Sharen and her unstable son Reggie complicate an already difficult family dynamic while Daniel has to tend to his mother’s condition, his father’s contentious behavior, and the swell of memory that strikes whenever he visits the farm. As Daniel is increasingly drawn to Sharen, the various tensions across the farm will spark events that cannot help but change them all.

    To dead people.Life gets complicated for Jane and her Death Diva business when she’s hired to liberate a gaudy mermaid brooch from the corpse during a wake—on behalf of the rightful owner, supposedly. Well, a girl’s got to make a living, and this assignment pays better than scattering ashes, placing flowers on graves, or bawling her eyes out as a hired mourner. Unfortunately for Jane, someone else is just as eager to get his hands on that brooch, and he’s even sneakier than she is, not to mention dangerously sexy.Just when she thinks her biggest problem is grand theft mermaid, things take a murderous turn. But hey, when you’ve teamed up with a neurotic seven-pound poodle named Sexy Beast, how can you go wrong?

    Since her heart was broken and her dreams shattered, she’s been ready for a fresh start. Surely she deserves some good luck at last?But Frankie knows what can happen to families when money moves in and is allowed to take over. Fearing she’ll lose the contented—if cash-strapped—life she has built with her husband and their two daughters, she wants to be in control this time.But as money rewrites their life stories and truths emerge among the treasure, both are forced to wonder if their good fortune is just bad luck in disguise…

    It’s beautifully written, mesmerizing and tragic, thought-provoking, and a reaffirmation of faith….I loved this book.”—Shelley Shepard GrayProof of Heaven by Mary Curran Hackett is an astonishing debut—a moving, inspiring, and wise first novel that explores beautifully the meaning of family, faith, and love. The story of a mother’s unshakable belief, a child’s bravery, and a doctor’s dedication to healing, this is extraordinarily compelling contemporary fiction certain to appeal to fans of the acclaimed works of Alice McDermott, Mary Karr, Ann Lamott, and Jodi Picoult; to readers who made the inspirational novel The Shack a phenomenal success; and to all of us with questions of life, death, God, and the afterlife at the forefront of our minds.

    But her real dream is to open her own pastry shop, Sweet's Sweets.Life is a little crazy for Sam right now. At one of her break-in properties a dying woman insists that she take a small wooden box. Sam doesn't realize that the old woman was known locally as a bruja, a witch, until she begins to feel some strange effects from the box, herself.Meanwhile, at another property, she finds an unmarked grave and the authorities come to investigate. The property owner disappeared a few months earlier and Sam wonders--who is the body in the grave? A small mural in the house leads to a connection with a famous artist; a bogus will points to possible fraud; and the handsome deputy investigating the case seems completely enchanted with Sam.While Sam scrambles to fill bakery orders and keep her properties in order, she's equally intrigued with the idea of a new romance. It all makes for a delightful romantic mystery with elements of the paranormal.