Katie’s life fell apart almost a decade earlier, during an idyllic summer at her family’s cabin on Eagle Lake when her best friend accused her father of sexual assault. Throughout his trial and imprisonment, Katie insisted on his innocence, dodging reporters and clinging to memories of the man she adores.Now he’s getting out. Yet when Katie returns to the shuttered lakeside cabin, details of that fateful night resurface: the chill of the lake, the heat of first love, the terrible sting of jealousy. And as old memories collide with new realities, they call into question everything she thinks she knows about family, friends, and, ultimately, herself. Now, Katie’s choices will be put to the test with life-altering consequences.

    He’s had a bad year. Sarah, his wife of nearly twenty five years, has walked out on him to move in with Colin. Perhaps they simply grew apart, perhaps the magic was no longer there, or perhaps, as his friend Jerry suggests, Rick has become boring. This nagging thought, together with too much beer on New Year’s Eve and shock at the sudden death of his college friend Alex, leads Rick to a New Year’s resolution… To make the most of the time he has left, and show himself and his old friend Jerry that he is not boring, he will undertake a peculiar challenge: for a whole year he will accept every invitation that comes his way. Any invitation. No excuses. No regrets.

    Now she’s all grown up and appears to live the perfect life; she’s pretty, she’s smart, and she’s the best kindergarten teacher in the southwest. The students, with all their hilarious classroom antics, keep her smiling—most of the time.But this school year is different. A sudden emotional shock ignites an odd internal journey as Lindsey attempts to reclaim an inkling of happiness, confidence, and dignity. Fate leads her to a life and death situation at the Grand Canyon, a career-changing event in a barn in North Dakota, and, finally, an emotional rebirth in the Zuni Mountain wilderness.Lindsey cherishes the companionship of her delightful dog, Wendell. The students’ heart wrenching traumas and their comical comments, combined with her desire to be a shining light in their lives, provide an escape from her problems … sometimes.Though lies from many, infidelity from one, and secret intimidation from a mysterious stranger add new challenges to her life, she still dreams of and hopes for romance, love, family, and the happily ever after. Will any of her dreams come true?Readers who love fairy tales, dogs—the four-legged and the two-legged variety—young children, school, and suspense … readers who love love … will want to read this book.

    But when her fiancé, James Donato, vanishes in a boating accident, her well-baked future is swept out to sea. Instead of walking down the aisle on their wedding day, Aimee is at James’s funeral—a funeral that leaves her more unsettled than at peace.As Aimee struggles to reconstruct her life, she delves deeper into James’s disappearance. What she uncovers is an ocean of secrets that make her question everything about the life they built together. And just below the surface is a truth that may set Aimee free…or shatter her forever.

    To say the least. She calls Sweet Meadow, Georgia, home, where she works for her father doing auto repairs. She also drives the tow-truck, although Sweet Meadow's rather colorful denizens tend to treat Bertie more like the local, free taxi service. You know, someone has to get to a doctor's appointment or pick something up at the dry cleaners. Bertie's favorite day of the week is Friday, when she leaves the wrecker with her father for the whole weekend and joins her friends at the Dew Drop Inn for a night of dancing. Her best friend, Mary Lou, sometimes fixes her up with dubious dates, although Bertie has to remind her friend not to tease her hair too high for those occasions. Like the time when they went to Carrie Sue's open house, and a ceramic cow with angel wings hanging from a ceiling fan locked its hooves into Bertie's big hair and refused to let go. She had to wear it all night, dangling chain and all. Bertie's nearly perfect life is about to take a downhill turn, however. It starts when her landlord, Pete, currently a resident in a nearby nursing home, starts showing up at her house. In his birthday suit. A very badly wrinkled birthday suit. And then she goes to her mailbox, a rubber large mouth bass, and finds a notice from the zoning commission saying she can no longer park the wrecker in her driveway. The notice is signed by George Bigham. But when she goes to the courthouse to take care of her little problem, it is only to discover George Bigham is deceased. And Mary Lou's pregnancy test just came up positive. Can it get any worse? In a word... yes.

    But in the face of divorce, eviction, and the recent death of her father, she doesn’t have a choice.Watching as her mother thrives in a new job and meets younger men at the local gym, Alice struggles, reflecting on her parents’ marriage, her relationship with each of them, as she adjusts to being single again for the first time in twenty years. Then she finds her father’s old journal…and uncovers a shocking family secret that forces her to question everything she thought she knew about love, regret, family, and her own path forward.As Alice comes to terms with the man her father really was, she must finally decide who she wants to be and what it will take to get there.

    What’s worse is that every time she leaves the house, she winds up in some kind of altercation. She can’t help but wonder if she’s an idiot magnet, or if she’s the smart-mouth stirring things up. Hoping for a little peace of mind, Ace gives in to the advice of her best friend and goes to see a therapist. But she quickly discovers that the road to nirvana isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. And as Ace goes from one therapeutic misadventure to another, the plus-sized spitfire becomes more determined than ever to find enlightenment—even if it means bending herself into a pretzel to do it.

    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?

    Back then Betty Stern was an eighteen-year-old knockout working at her grandparents’ lakeside resort. The “Catskills of the Midwest” was the perfect place for Betty to prepare for bigger things. She’d head to college in New York City. Her career as a fashion editor would flourish. But first, she’d enjoy a wondrous last summer at the beach falling deeply in love with an irresistible college boy and competing in the annual Miss South Haven pageant. On the precipice of a well-planned life, Betty’s future was limitless.Decades later, the choices of that long-ago season still reverberate for Betty, now known as Boop. Especially when her granddaughter comes to her with a dilemma that echoes Boop’s memories of first love, broken hearts, and faraway dreams. It’s time to finally face the past—for the sake of her family and her own happiness. Maybe in reconciling the life she once imagined with the life she’s lived, Boop will discover it’s never too late for a second chance.

    Sarah Caysum, a middle aged woman suffering from Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy (and perhaps something else far more sinister), leaves her four year old daughter Casey trapped in a car to die one summer afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona on a day when temperatures are expected to reach a record breaking 125 degrees.

    He is excited and afraid; he wants to recapture the love he knew with his parents before they died and become a doctor like his father. But in his new home of celebrities, crooks, untrustworthiness, and excessively wealthy deviants, lust and want thwart his search for selfless caring love, and in his quest to become a doctor, he discovers the altruism of health care and scientific discovery riddled with profit motivation and deficient moral standards. A finalist in the 2012 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.

    But before the day is out that peace is shattered due to a war being fought in a country not their own.Summer 1940: London is at war, and for the first time in the history of combat a civilian population is under attack from the air. As a consequence - also for the first time - a generation of young men is called upon to face the enemy not from within an organised force on land or on sea but in individual and lethal combat in the skies above the green, fertile and until now peaceful fields of southern England… The war was not of their making but the Jordan family will do whatever it takes to save all that they hold dear. The perfect family saga of love, war and hope for fans of Josephine Cox, Lily Graham and Natasha Lester.

    Nor was seeing her in the headlines, fifteen years later, accused of burning her adoptive mother to death. For Dr Rebecca Carey, no longer a troubled teenager, but now a dedicated pediatrician, there was only one choice: Find out the truth about her child.

    This quirky group of women would much rather celebrate one another’s rejected manuscripts over cups of tea and slices of lemon cake than actually publish a book. But good friends are exactly what Janet needs after moving to the small town of Southlea Bay, Washington. Just as the ladies are about to raise a teacup to their five hundredth rejection letter, they receive bad news that could destroy one member’s reputation—and disband the group forever. To save the club, Janet joins her fellow writers on a wild road trip to San Francisco in search of the local publisher who holds the key to a long-buried secret. As they race to the finish line, they’ll face their fears—landslides, haunted houses, handsome strangers, ungrateful children—and have the time of their lives.

    When she finally wakes, her well-meaning, but bossy, brothers and sisters dismiss her claims, thinking her accident has knocked her off her rocker, but Joy has never felt better, and is determined to set the past right.Now Joy must face her darkest secret and risk reopening wounds caused by an old flame who rejected her more than twenty years ago. But taking risks brings change, as well as a new, younger man into Joy’s life, making her feel like a teenager again. Suddenly Joy’s once humdrum life is anything but boring and routine and the future beckons, exhilarating and bright.