Breaking All My Rules


Trice Hickman - 2013
    But despite her good fortune, she's still missing someone special to share her life with—until a chance encounter changes everything... Handsome, rugged Jerome Kimbrough is hard to miss among the fellow citizens serving jury duty with Erica. And as the two get know each other over the course of a two week trial, their relationship soon extends beyond the courtroom and into a full-on passionate romance. Although they come from opposite worlds—Jerome is a working class, city sanitation employee—they’re both hard working dreamers with big ambitions. Yet while their differences aren't an issue for them, their friends, family—and Erica's ex-fiancé—disagree. As all involved are forced to confront their hidden stereotypes, can Erica and Jerome endure the challenges in store for them—including a startling secret from their pasts?...

The Interpreter


Suzanne Glass - 2000
    But she can’t forget it. After discovering a potentially revolutionary HIV treatment, a researcher has decided to keep it a secret from the company he works for, indefinitely postponing its trial and release. It is a treatment that could save Dominique’s close friend, but only if it’s available soon. The very next day, unaware of his identity, Dominique meets Nicholas Manzini, the Italian researcher who made the discovery. After a lifetime of digesting, transforming, and then releasing the words of strangers, Dominique slowly begins to develop her own voice while speaking to Nicholas. But he, too, is grappling with his own moral dilemma, one wrapped tightly around HIV treatments and ethics, personal needs and exterior pressures. As they fall completely in love, neither knows what the other is hiding—nor can they foresee what startling surprises await them when all is said and done.

When We Were Young


Richard Roper - 2021
     How do you move forward...when all you want to do is go back?Joel and Theo haven't spoken since the summer they turned sixteen, but that's about to change.From the outside Joel looks like the picture of success: a TV scriptwriter with a smash hit who's still together and in love with his teenage sweetheart, Amber. But he's falling apart at the seams. He's headed home to reconnect with best friend Theo--to get back to the start of it all.Theo has been living in his parents' shed, nursing a broken heart and a wounded ego, convinced life can't get any worse. Then he gets evicted on his 30th birthday. He thinks he's done with the real world - until it shows up on his doorstep...One of them is keeping a secret, and the other is living a lie. But can the promise they once made to walk all 184 miles of the Thames Path help them find their way back to the truth--and to their friendship?

A Gentleman in Moscow


Amor Towles - 2016
    Readers and critics were enchanted; as NPR commented, “Towles writes with grace and verve about the mores and manners of a society on the cusp of radical change.”A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.Brimming with humour, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavour to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

Edenbrooke


Julianne Donaldson - 2012
    So when an invitation arrives from her twin sister, Cecily, to join her at a sprawling country estate, she jumps at the chance. Thinking she'll be able to relax and enjoy her beloved English countryside while her sister snags the handsome heir of Edenbrooke, Marianne finds that even the best laid plans can go awry. From a terrifying run-in with a highwayman to a seemingly harmless flirtation, Marianne finds herself embroiled in an unexpected adventure filled with enough romance and intrigue to keep her mind racing. Will Marianne be able to rein in her traitorous heart, or will a mysterious stranger sweep her off her feet? Fate had something other than a relaxing summer in mind when it sent Marianne to Edenbrooke.

The Love Hypothesis


Ali Hazelwood - 2021
    candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.

The Perfect Blend


Trish Perry - 2010
    She left everything behind to elope with Middleburg attorney Rick Manfred, never imagining he would stand her up at the altar. Now, hoping just to get by until she can decide what to do next, Steph thinks she's found the perfect position at the local tea shop.

Some Kind of Wonderful


Giovanna Fletcher - 2017
    Now, after celebrating a decade together, everyone thinks they're about to get engaged. A romantic escape to Dubai is the perfect moment, but instead of the proposal Lizzy hopes for, Ian reveals he's not sure he even wants her anymore.Lizzy is heartbroken. But through the tears, she realises this is her chance to seize the opportunities she missed as Ian's other half. But what does she want? How much of her is really Lizzy, and how much was Ian's influence? Determined to discover who she is at heart, Lizzy sets out to rediscover the girl she was before - and in the meantime, have a little fun . . .

The Song of Achilles


Madeline Miller - 2011
    Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.

Never Greener


Ruth Jones - 2018
    Always thinking the grass is greener on the other side. But it never is. It’s still grass. Just a different patch of it, that’s all.’*****The past has a habit of tracking us down. And tripping us up.When Kate was twenty-two, she had an intense and passionate affair with a married man, Callum, which ended in heartbreak. Kate thought she’d never get over it.Seventeen years later, life has moved on – Kate, now a successful actress, is living in London, married to Matt and mother to little Tallulah. Meanwhile Callum and his wife Belinda are happy together, living in Edinburgh and watching their kids grow up. The past, it would seem, is well and truly behind them all.But then Kate meets Callum again.And they are faced with a choice: to walk away from each other . . . or to risk finding out what might have been.Second chances are a rare gift in life. But that doesn’t mean they should always be taken . . .

Shoot the Moon


Billie Letts - 2004
    In 1972, windswept DeClare, Oklahoma, was consumed by the murder of a young mother, Gaylene Harjo, and the disappearance of her baby, Nicky Jack. When the child's pajama bottoms were discovered on the banks of Willow Creek, everyone feared that he, too, had been killed, although his body was never found.Nearly thirty years later, Nicky Jack mysteriously returns to DeClare, shocking the town and stirring up long-buried memories. But what he discovers about the night he vanished is more astonishing than he or anyone could have imagine. Piece by piece, what emerges is a story of dashed hopes, desperate love, and a secret that still cries out for justice...and redemption.

The Rose Trilogy Boxed Set


Beverly Lewis - 2011
    A stirring saga of two Amish sisters on the fringe of the church, and their journeys toward reconciliation with the modern men they love.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven


Mitch Albom - 2003
    Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"

In Time For An Amish Christmas


Samantha Price - 2017
     Heidi King was one woman who needed a miracle. She left the Amish community years ago and built a life for herself as a successful New York City realtor. Loneliness and regret cause her to cry out to God. Heidi wakes the next morning to the life she would've had if she'd stayed in the Amish community and married Derek, her old Amish love. At first, she was delighted to be Derek's wife and mother to their three children, but soon motherhood and the realities of life in the Amish community overwhelm her. Heidi finds her way back to her city life and her single status. Now with no children and no Derek, will she realize she's made the biggest mistake of her life? Will Heidi be able to find her way back in time for an Amish Christmas?

The Nightingale


Kristin Hannah - 2015
    She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.