Book picks similar to
Sisters And Strangers by Helen Van Slyke


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Paris for One and Other Stories


Jojo Moyes - 2016
    She's never even been on a romantic weekend away--to anywhere--before. Traveling abroad isn't really her thing. But when Nell's boyfriend fails to show up for their mini-vacation, she has the opportunity to prove everyone--including herself--wrong. Alone in Paris, Nell finds a version of herself she never knew existed: independent and intrepid. Could this turn out to be the most adventurous weekend of her life? Funny, charming, and irresistible, Paris for One is quintessential Jojo Moyes--as are the other stories that round out the collection.

I'm Doin' Me


Anna Black - 2013
    All was well and things were perfect for Tiffany until the day she got the news that her show was going to be cancelled, before going home to catch her man in bed with the hired help. Determined to find a new home for her show and to get over her two-timing ex boyfriend Jeff, she seeks out every network on the roaster, but get's nowhere until she gets interest from TiMax, a cable network ran by Langley Green, father of Tressa Green who happens to be the fiance of Tiffany's old high school crush Kory Banks. The queen of L.A. Tressa, Kory's soon to be bride, not only wants to keep Tiffany and Kory apart, before they jump the broom, she also wants to make sure Tiffany's show never airs on her father's network. Although Kory and Tiffany realize that there is still an attraction for each other, Kory decides to move on with Tressa and Tiffany decides to focus on her career, but love is love and Tressa's schemes and manipulative devices to destroy Tiffany, causes her to lose more than Kory in the end.

The Matchmaker


Elin Hilderbrand - 2014
    Some call her ability mystical, while others - like her husband, celebrated economist John Boxmiller Beech, and her daughter, Agnes, who is clearly engaged to the wrong man - call it meddlesome, but there's no arguing with her results: With 42 happy couples to her credit and all of them still together, Dabney has never been wrong about romance.Never, that is, except in the case of herself and Clendenin Hughes, the green-eyed boy who took her heart with him long ago when he left the island to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist. Now, after spending 27 years on the other side of the world, Clen is back on Nantucket, and Dabney has never felt so confused, or so alive.But when tragedy threatens her own second chance, Dabney must face the choices she's made and share painful secrets with her family. Determined to make use of her gift before it's too late, she sets out to find perfect matches for those she loves most. The Matchmaker is a heartbreaking story about losing and finding love, even as you're running out of time.

The Wife's Tale


Lori Lansens - 2009
    As night turns to day, it becomes frighteningly clear to Mary that he is gone. Through the years, disappointment and worry have brought Mary's life to a standstill, and she has let her universe shrink to the well-worn path from the bedroom to the refrigerator. But her husband's disappearance startles her out of her inertia, and she begins a desperate search. For the first time in her life, she boards a plane and flies across the country to find her lost husband. So used to hiding from the world, Mary finds that in the bright sun and broad vistas of California, she is forced to look up from the pavement. And what she finds fills her with inner strength she's never felt before. Through it all, Mary not only finds kindred spirits, but reunites with a more intimate stranger no longer sequestered by fear and habit: herself.

The Crying Heart Tattoo


David Lozell Martin - 1982
    Beginning their relationship when Sonny is just fourteen and Felicity thirty-four, the couple share a poignant history together that ends only upon Felicity's passing — despite four marriages, numerous obstacles, and enough misadventures to challenge the most loyal of lovers.At once heartbreaking and euphoric, their story mirrors the tale that Felicity has passed down to Sonny, a story uncanny in its similarity to their own: when a prehistoric outcast locates her former tribe, she falls in love with a young boy.A masterful novel first published a quarter of a century ago, The Crying Heart Tattoo keeps the impossible within reach, proving once and for all that the struggle for true love is worth everything.

The Bright Side Of Disaster


Katherine Center - 2006
    Now, very pregnant and not quite married, she actually doesn’t mind that she and her live-in fiancé, Dean, accidentally started their family a little earlier than planned; she’s happy to have so much to look forward to. But Dean–whom Jenny loves enough to overlook his bad facial hair, his smoking habit, and his total commitment to a cheesy cover band–is acting distant, and not in a pre-wedding-jitters kind of way. The night he runs out for cigarettes and just doesn’t come back, he demotes himself from future husband to sperm donor.And the very next day, Jenny goes into labor.In the months that follow, Jenny plunges into a life she never anticipated: single motherhood. At least with the sleep deprivation, sore boobs, and fits of crying (both hers and the baby’s), there’s not much time to dwell on her broken heart. And things start looking up. She learns how to do everything one-handed, makes friends in a mommy group, and even manages to give dating tips to her sweet, clueless father–who’s trying to court her sassy mother again, fifteen years after their divorce. She also gets to know a handsome, helpful neighbor–with a knack for soothing babies–who invites her out dancing. But Dean is never far from Jenny’s thoughts or, it turns out, her doorstep, and in the end Jenny must choose between the old life she thought she wanted and the new life she’s been lucky to find.A spirited debut novel with a terrifically appealing voice, a fantastic sense of humor, and a lot of heart, The Bright Side of Disaster reminds us that sometimes it takes the worst-case scenario to show us the best in everything.From the Hardcover edition.

Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love


Lauren Grodstein - 2004
    Joel Miller, age twenty-eight, stands outside his locked bathroom door. Behind it are his girlfriend Lisa, a Dixie cup, and a pregnancy test. While she stalls for time, Miller is left in his hallway to wonder and wait: for the results of the test, for the pieces of his addled life to come together, for some kind of divine intervention to guide his actions when Lisa finally emerges.Thus begins Lauren Grodstein's beguiling debut novel, a wise, wonderfully assured journey deep into the heart of the commitmentphobic male. Awaiting test results that could determine his future, Miller finds himself replaying all he has seen of love so far. There was his father Stan's awkward balancing act between doting father and failed husband, and his mother Bay's refusal to accept that Stan was never coming back. There was his playboy friend Grant's devastation upon falling for the one woman he couldn't have. And most of all, there was Miller's own prior relationship--with Blair, the aloof beauty he can't stop thinking about, the one who got away. With past and present colliding in his hallway, Miller begins to realize just how little he really knows about intimacy, love and potential fatherhood--and more important, about what he's going to do next.Reproduction is the Flaw of Love fearlessly charts the romantic odyssey of one endearing New York bachelor, and in so doing illuminates some universal truths about family, loyalty, devotion, and love.From the Hardcover edition.

Seduction


Geneva Holliday - 2008
    That is, until Tony wants to pull a scam on the company where she works. In order to keep Mildred signing phony documents, Tony gives Mildred a taste of romance and keeps raising the stakes until he’s eventually forced to propose. But when the big day arrives he skips town with the money he’s stolen.Heartbroken, Mildred takes a trip to Barbados where her “vacation” turns out to be a boot-camp style weight loss clinic! Soon she discovers a goddess that had been hiding beneath her homely exterior. And when she runs into Tony on the island, he doesn’t even recognize the sexy fox standing before him. Little does he know that this fox has a plan for revenge that will leave him whimpering with his tail between his legs for a good, long time.

Lovers And Gamblers ;The Love Killers


Jackie Collins - 2002
    

Caroline's Journal


Katherine Stone - 2006
    Now, finally, Caroline is pregnant. Both Caroline and Jeffrey are thrilled. And, wanting a lasting memory of the happiness she feels, Caroline decides to keep a pregnancy journal, writing to the baby she already loves.Caroline's pregnancy coincides with the trial of Jeffrey's career, the murder of a pregnant woman by her celebrity fianc�. For father-to-be Jeffrey, a man murdering his unborn child is as incomprehensible as it is painful.But there are other dangers for pregnant women and their babies, perils that lurk in silence amid the joy. For Caroline, such perils are medical. Her pregnancy is placing her health -- and even her life -- in jeopardy. But when it comes to a choice between her own life and her baby's, there's never, for Caroline, the slightest doubt.It's a decision of love -- for the baby she cherishes and the husband who loves Caroline more than she believed any man ever could. A man who deserves the chance to become the father he was meant to be.

Rules of Civility


Amor Towles - 2011
    On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.

Esther: The Story of a Woman Who Saved a Nation


Ellen Gunderson Traylor - 1988
    Esther is a story of God's faithfulness to those obedient to His highest purposes; it is a moving monument to faith.

Queen Anne's Lace


Dawn Gardner - 2019
    Lacy starts on a journey to find to find the man that could change her life. As Lacy gets closer to finding the man, circumstances force her to do something that she will regret for the rest of her life. This explosive coming-of-age story set in the late 1970s is full of twists and turns, forgiveness and courage.

Blueprints


Barbara Delinsky - 2015
    Not only do they enjoy their relationship as mother and daughter, they're in business together as the team that fronts the popular home renovation show Gut It! All is well with these two strong women, but when the network tells Caroline that Jamie is to replace her as host, Caroline feels betrayed by her daughter and old in the eyes of the world.Jamie is unsettled by the cast change and devastated by her mother's anger, but she has little time to brood when a tragic accident leaves her two-year-old half-brother in her care. Accustomed to a life of order and precision, Jamie suddenly finds herself out of her depth, grappling with a toddler who misses his parents and a fiancé who doesn't want the child.Amid such devastation, Caroline and Jamie find themselves revising the blueprints they've built their lives around. With loyalties shifting and decisions looming, mother and daughter need each other; but the rift between them is proving difficult to mend. As the women try to remake themselves and rebuild their relationship with each other, they discover that strength and even passion can come from the unlikeliest places. For Caroline, it's an old friend, whose efforts to seduce her awaken desires that have been dormant for so long that she feels foreign to herself. For Jamie, it's a staggering new attraction that allows her to breathe again-and breathe deeply-for the first time in forever.A riveting novel from a master storyteller, Barbara Delinsky's Blueprints reminds us that sometimes love appears when we least expect it, and when we need it most.

The Lake Shore Limited


Sue Miller - 2010
    First among them is Wilhelmina—Billy—Gertz, as small as a child, fiercely independent, powerfully committed to her work as a playwright. The story itself centers on The Lake Shore Limited—a play Billy has written about an imagined terrorist bombing of that train as it pulls into Union Station in Chicago, and about a man waiting to hear the fate of his estranged wife, who is traveling on it. Billy had waited in just such a way on 9/11 to hear whether her lover, Gus, was on one of the planes used in the attack.The novel moves from the snow-filled woods of Vermont to the rainy brick sidewalks of Boston as the lives of the other characters intersect and interweave with Billy’s: Leslie, Gus’s sister, still driven by grief years after her brother’s death; Rafe, the actor who rises to greatness in a performance inspired by a night of incandescent lovemaking; and Sam, a man irresistibly drawn to Billy after he sees the play that so clearly displays the terrible conflicts and ambivalence of her situation.How Billy has come to create the play out of these emotions, how it is then created anew on the stage, how the performance itself touches and changes the other characters’ lives—these form the thread that binds them all together and drives the novel compulsively forward.A powerful love story; a mesmerizing tale of entanglements, connections, and inconsolable losses; a marvelous reflection on the meaning of grace and the uses of sorrow, in life and in art: The Lake Shore Limited is Sue Miller at her dazzling best.