While Colonel Tom physically and emotionally batters his family, Ma’am escapes the turmoil with alcohol. Their children, Percy, Sis and Oops, with no adult guidance, learn to sidestep their family minefields alone. Percy longs for a loving relationship with his father but is unwilling to compromise his aspirations of owning a motorcycle repair shop to win his father’s love. Sis wants a strong mother who will stand up to her abusive husband but finds herself in an abusive marriage, as well. Baby Oops escapes the chaos by teaching herself to read at three and retreating to her own world where abuse and parental neglect can’t reach her. Siblings Percy and Sis forge a loving bond that will sustain them through the most poignant and tragic of circumstances. Whether it’s eating an entire chocolate cake in one sitting, playing Cuss Scrabble, double dating to the drive-in movie, or stealing their father’s car to hotrod in the wee hours, the brother and sister find unbridled joy in their friendship, despite the dysfunction swirling around them. Told with captivating grit, humor, and insight, this tale of family discord carries the Albemarles through decades of turbulence until tragedy teaches them to forgive and understand by GETTING THE IMPORTANT THINGS RIGHT.

    I’ll never forget that day. The Vietnam War had ended with the fall of Saigon that April, and the world was mired in one of its worst recessions ever. Unemployment in the United States was nearly nine percent, inflation even higher, and leadership lacking. The Watergate scandal had cast a smear across American politics, resulting in Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 to avoid impeachment, and his successor’s immediately pardoning him to close the book on an unhappy chapter in U.S. history.It was not a good time for anyone and a particularly hard time for the old Victorian town of Cape May. The crown jewel of the New Jersey shore had fallen into neglect and disrepair and was dying a slow death. Once the elegant summer home to presidents and kings, it had become the last refuge of the deposed.That’s where I met Tom Ryan. Tom was a king, or so he would have you believe, but unlike Richard Nixon, when Tom was dethroned, he wasn’t sent home with a slap on the wrist. He was sent to prison. He was a convicted draft dodger, but one of the lucky ones released early by President Ford as part of his mass clemency after Nixon’s pardon. The problem was, Tom had nowhere to go when he got out, so he took the money his dad mailed to him and spent it on a bus ticket to get as far away as possible to a place where nobody cared who he was or what he had done, a place where nobody cared about anything. That place was Cape May.As hard a time as it was for everyone, it was harder for me because that was the day I met Tom Ryan. I should have turned and walked away. I knew it when he first looked at me, but I didn’t, not my first mistake, but one that would make Monday, May 19th, 1975 the hardest day of my life. This is the story of how Tom Ryan and I met and how things never quite work out the way you think. You might find a love story in here somewhere. You might not. You might find a message hidden in one of the nickel pop bottles collected by the beachcombers from some of the most beautiful white sand beaches in the world. You might even find a little mystery, but life is a mystery, isn’t it?

    Their friendship has now lasted thirty-five years. As their birthdays all fall in the same week they long ago made a pact to spend each big decade birthday together. So far they'd managed it. Now as their thirty-ninth birthday looms, Angel, a famous Hollywood actress, announces that this will be her last birthday. Terrified of aging, she absolutely refuses to turn forty. So Lexi, the mother hen of the group and an artist, invites them to Florida for a week-long celebration of this, their last birthday together. Brenda, mother to five grown-up children, flies in from Dublin, eagerly looking forward to her first foreign holiday ever. Mel, however, has to be prised away from New York where she is a successful partner in a law firm - she is a workaholic with no other friends or love in her life. The four come together for the celebration but soon things start to unravel and the week ends disastrously. Lexi is distraught. Can their friendship endure? Only time will tell.

    "It was simple, heartwarming, painful, and lovely, all in perfect doses." -Writer's Digest Nelson writes and readers respond... "A Modern Day To Kill A Mockingbird." "Inspiring. Remarkable." "It touched me in a way that I didn't know books could." "Friendship, heartbreak, life, and death. This novel has it all." "A story bound to make an impact in literary circles." "The characters were so compelling that they literally brought me to tears." "Simply put: brilliant!" "Heartbreaking and beautiful."

    In desperation, Rose borrows from pagan knowledge and casts a spell.

    To his shock, the child—wrapped in a sweater and wearing a tiny knitted hat—is still alive. To his wife’s shock, Nathan wants to adopt the boy…but the child’s grandmother steps in. Nathan makes her promise, however, that one day she’ll bring the boy to meet him so he can reveal that he was the one who rescued him. Fifteen years later, the widowered Nathan discovers the child abandoned once again—this time at his doorstep. Named Nat, the teenager has grown into a sullen delinquent whose grandmother can no longer tolerate him. Nathan agrees to care for Nat, and the two engage in a battle of wills that pans years. Still, the older man repeatedly assures the youngster that, unlike the rest of the world, he will never abandon him—not even when Nat suffers a trauma that changes both of their lives forever.From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes When I Found You, an exquisite, emotional tale of the unexpected bonds that nothing in life can break.

    The Memory of Butterflies is a poignant story of family and forgiveness--of knowing when to let go and when to hold each other close.Hannah Cooper's daughter is leaving for college soon. The change is bittersweet. A single mother since the age of eighteen, Hannah isn't eager to confront the pain of being alone, but she's determined not to let her own hang-ups keep Ellen from the future she deserves. As Ellen's high school graduation approaches, Hannah decides it's time to return to her roots in Cooper's Hollow along Virginia's beautiful and rustic Cub Creek.With the help of longtime friend Roger Westray, Hannah devotes her energies to building a new house on the site of the old family home, destroyed in a fire more than a decade ago. But Hannah's entire adult life has revolved around one very big secret. And her new beginning comes with unanticipated risks that will cost her far more than she could have imagined--perhaps more than she can survive.When a confrontation forces Hannah to expose her secret, the truth may destroy her beloved daughter. Hannah is prepared to sacrifice everything to protect her family, but can their lives and their bond withstand the seismic shift that's coming?

    They’re the only interracial family in the neighborhood. Lisa is a snarky sculptor. And 13-year-old Logan is gay.After Logan is repeatedly bullied at school, he finds his niche in an unusual place –his twin sister’s Girl Scout troop. When he tries to join, the organization refuses, so the boy sues for gender discrimination and sets off a firestorm of national media coverage. This only makes matters worse between the Logan and his father, a macho firefighter who is already struggling with his son’s sexual orientation.Adding to the strife is Lisa’s increasing distaste for Junta Moms who wish each other “Namaste” while rigging school elections and stealing each other’s husbands.Join the Taylors on their hilarious journey as they face the fight of their lives and,in the process, discover what it means to be a family.

    Some have compared his novels to those of Jonathan Tropper and Nick Hornby, praising his insightful takes on contemporary life and love, his hilariously descriptive language, his Woody Allen-like dialogue and the poignancy of his plots. Now, in “Three and a Half Virgins,” the author of “What’s Wrong With Dorfman” and “Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour,” turns his jaundiced eye to the subjects of lost love, nostalgia, redemption and guilt. It all begins when the wife of our hapless hero (problematically named Jimmy Hendricks) leaves him for the guy who lives in the cul-de-sac at the end of his block. After a mostly unsuccessful but comical attempt at dating, he finds himself revisiting his past. Engulfed by nostalgia, he's suddenly gripped by pleasant memories of three old flames -- Laura, Samantha and Molly -- all of whom happened to have been virgins when he first met each of them twenty years before.But the warm refuge of the past soon gives way to icy reality as he confronts the sobering details of how maliciously he tricked, seduced and broke each of their hearts. Overcome by remorse and tantalized by curiosity, he finds a way to reshape his past by apologizing to each of them for his heartless behavior.How will they react? Which, if any of the virgins will our hero end up with after his quest? The answer will surprise you, as "Three and a Half Virgins" transports readers back and forth through time, and ultimately suggests that the past is not necessarily prologue

    To confront those fears, Valencia’s therapist suggests that she fly somewhere—anywhere—before her upcoming birthday. And as Valencia begins a telephone romance with a man from New York, she suddenly has a destination in mind. There’s only one problem—he might not actually exist.Mrs. Valentine is an eccentric old woman desperate for company, be it from neighbors, telemarketers, or even the funeral director (when you’re her age, you go to a lot of funerals). So she’s thrilled when the new cleaning girl provides a listening ear for her life’s story—a tale of storybook love and incredible adventures around the world with her husband before his mysterious and sudden disappearance.The stories of Valencia and Mrs. Valentine may at first appear to have nothing in common…but then again, nothing in life is as straightforward as it seems.

    Floundering, Moira grabs on to a surprise inheritance, her husband’s childhood home in a Midwestern town she’d never seen and had always thought of as Nowhere. Discovering her husband harbored secrets in the town makes Moira's arrival there anything but a soft landing. When a visit by her stepson and his newshound mother threatens to destroy the social fabric of the tiny town and reveal its heartaches, Moira must choose between her love for her stepson and her desire to protect a place she never expected to call home.

    She’s been written off as a Hollywood casualty by almost everyone, including her own mother. But handsome superstar Spencer Rome has her back. So does an uncompromising stranger determined to start Chase at square one and help her pull her future into focus. If Chase is willing.Life coach Olivia Han is devoted to “adulting” boot camp therapy. It’s not just her professional specialty, though—it’s also one way to avoid focusing on building a life of her own. To escape the pressures of Tinseltown, the two women head to Olivia’s cabin in the wilds of Northern California. There they discover a place in need of TLC. As they work together to rehab the once-charming cabin, they create a refuge where Chase can come to terms with her unsettled past, and where Olivia has an unexpected reckoning with her own troubling history.For two women doing damage control, this is a time for second chances—in life, in finding love, in forgiving family, and in an emerging friendship that might be exactly what each of them needs to heal.

    Her widowed father did his best to raise his baby girl to be a strong-minded business woman. Then she found Tanner. Just when her world seemed perfect, everything turned upside down.Following Tanner’s tragic death, Brooke joins a start-up company that is developing a cure for the disease that killed the love of her life. Just before the treatment is ready to market, the company is gobbled up by a giant conglomerate. She moves to the acquiring company as its youngest VP and becomes enamored with CEO Chase Allman—only to be betrayed by him.Brooke rebounds again and sets out on a personal journey to discover what will truly make her happy. Sparks fly when she and Chase cross paths again in an unlikely way. Now, they need each other to find an abducted child and save thousands of people.

    About the AuthorAuthor of the best-selling Penny Rushmore novels, including “A Sandwich Short of a Picnic”, Felicity Price has also written several other published novels, the John Britten biography “Dare to Dream” and a couple of company histories. Sandwiched (like Felicity's fictional character Penny Rushmore) between the emotional turmoil of elderly parents, teenagers, a demanding career and a badly-behaved spaniel, Felicity similarly tries to juggle with jelly and often feels it slither between her fingers.

    For a while, she found a safe haven in her marriage to bestselling crime novelist Stephen Ludlow—until his car skidded into Echo Bay. But Stephen’s wasn’t the only body pulled from the icy waters that night. When details about a mysterious violet-eyed blonde become public, a media circus ensues, and Christy-Lynn runs again.Desperate for answers, she’s shattered to learn that Stephen and his mistress had a child—a little girl named Iris, who now lives in poverty with her ailing great-grandmother. The thought of Iris abandoned to the foster care system—as Christy-Lynn once was—is unbearable. But she’s spent her whole life running—determined never to be hurt again. Will she finally stand still long enough to open herself up to forgiveness and love?