Now, though, that past has just arrived on her doorstep, in the shape of an old music cassette that Amy hasn’t seen since she was at university.Digging out her long-neglected Walkman, Amy listens to the lyrics that soundtracked her student days. As long-buried memories are wrenched from the places in her mind where she’s kept them safely locked away for over a decade, Amy is suddenly tired of hiding.It’s time to confront everything about her life. Time to find all the friends she left behind in England, when her heart got broken and the life she was building for herself got completely shattered. Time to make sense of all the feelings she’s been bottling up for all this time. And most of all, it’s time to discover why Jack has sent her tape back to her now, after all these years…With her mantra, New life, New job, New home, playing on a continuous loop in her head, Amy gears herself up with yet another a bucked-sized cup of coffee, as she goes forth to lay the ghost of first love to rest...

    2.) The scariest things imaginable are not those that can kill you, but those you can live through. And probably the most prominent: 3.) The most horrible possibility is not what could happen to you, but what you could become – I became a killer.” ~Hope Wellman Brief Description:Hope Wellman has a childhood full of horrific memories, a bone chilling recurring nightmare, and a persistent paranoid sense of being followed that she would rather keep repressed. Is evil reaching from beyond the grave to capture the tattered remnants of her soul once and for all, is it only a machination of her disturbed mind, or is there something happening more sinister than even she can imagine? Attending the funeral of her abuser is the first step in putting her life back together as she is about to turn twenty-one. She struggles with the fact she never told anyone what happened to her, and that the grave they are mourning over is empty. She'd find it a lot easier to move on and believe in the future if he were in the box, ready to be covered with dirt. She fears the last thread of her sanity has snapped when she sees Lucas everywhere she turns, and can't escape a recurring nightmare. Is her tormentor alive, or is she imagining it? Is her dream triggered by past fears or is it a prediction of the future?From the Author: I am a survivor of abuse. It changed me. I closed myself off. It changed the way I saw myself. It changed the way I thought others saw me. It changed my outlook on the whole world. It changed the way I let people treat me, and had a snowball effect on my life. I married an abusive man. I divorced an abusive man. I finally broke the cycle. Most of all, I wanted to express how important it is to encourage the discussion of abuse. In my book, as in my life, silence is the enemy. Three Rules was written as fiction in order to make it an enjoyable read, but, much of the thought processes, feelings and reactions are real. However, there are no gory detailed scenes. It was written with sincere respect and sensitivity for the reader while trying to convey the honest and realistic feelings of an abuse survivor. ~ Marie

    He's confronted the HOA. He's even taken on Santa himself. He doesn't usually win. These are the tales of the Dumb White Husband and they are all available here in this collected edition.This handsome volume includes:Dumb White Husband vs. the Grocery Store - John would rather sit and watch the game, but his wife needs some things at the store. Can he complete the list and get back in time to see the end of the game?Dumb White Husband vs. Halloween - Every Halloween, Chris has the scariest house on the block and gives out the best candy. But, this year, someone is showing him up and he'll stop at nothing to find out who.Dumb White Husband vs. Santa - Erik has planned the perfect Christmas for his family. The plan is foolproof, bulletproof and flame retardant. Nothing can undo the hours of planning and preparation. Nothing except maybe odd-shaped packages, ill-timed fruitcakes or an errant neighborhood Santa Claus.Dumb White Husband vs. the Tooth Fairy - Erik always has a plan and he's sure he would have figured out the whole Tooth Fairy thing eventually. But, when his three-year-old son takes a frisbee to the mouth, he's forced to speed things up. Between neighborhood kids with big mouths and unhelpful dentists he's going to need to improvise. Will he bend to the pressure of inflation? Will he get caught in the act? And, what do you do with those teeth anyway?Dumb White Husband for President (A novella) - There comes a time in every man's life when he must stand for the things he believes in. John doesn't believe in bagging his grass. So, when a new allergy-prone neighbor gets the HOA to require it, there's only one thing he can do - run for President of The Creeks of Sage Valley Phase II.John, Chris and Erik put aside most of their differences to run a campaign that they hope will see John elected as President and end the meddling of the rule-loving new kid on the block. Will they succeed? It's doubtful.

    And when a vicious migraine sends her to a saggy hotel bed and him to the marketing conference in her place, she is first relieved and then thankful.Weeks later, upon discovering she’s pregnant, Claire has no reason for concern. With the help of genetic counselors and fertility specialists, she and her college-sweetheart husband, Tim, have been striving for a sibling for their ten-year-old daughter, Ally. And now they have one: a precious baby boy they name Owen.But all is not well, and soon Claire begins spotting alarming quirks in Owen’s behavior that suggest he may be stricken with Batten Disease, the terminal illness that took her brother, Ricky, back in nineteen seventy-nine. If Claire is right and Owen is sick, other disturbing things may also be true. Things like: Claire has been raped; Owen is not Tim’s son; and Owen is going to die. As events unfold, Claire finds herself confronting unthinkable choices, the consequences of which could jeopardize her career, her marriage, and even her freedom.

    A Blue Ridge camping trip goes sideways for two young brothers and their minder in this sweet, brief novel of calamity and kindness.

    They're wrong.Colom had the perfect childhood, the much-loved only child of a church pastor. Yet he wakes screaming from dreams in which his sister is drowning and he can't save her.Fiona turns to her husband, desperate to help their son. But David will not acknowledge that help is needed--and certainly not help from beyond the church.Then they find the suicide pledge.Fiona, in panic, takes Colom and flees... but when will she acknowledge that the unnamed demons Colom faces might be of her and David's own creation?This beautifully written and searching novel by poet Gerard Kelly explores the toxicity of secrets, the nature of healing, and the ever-present power of rain.

    Soon her noncommittal boyfriend’s true nature is revealed, and to top it all off, she loses her apartment.With nowhere else to go, Annie leaves the city for the family farm in Kentucky, a place she’s avoided for years. She finds a shotgun-wielding grandmother, a farm in disrepair, and a suspicious stranger renting the old stone house.The country quiet haunts Annie with reminders of a past that can’t be changed. She tries persuading her grandmother to sell the farm, but is met with stubborn refusal? Yet in the midst of her crashing life, Annie sees a glimmer of hope for a second chance.Jake Wilder is contemplating jumping off the corporate ladder to follow his passion for sustainable farming. He’s almost ready to propose to Camille, a girl who wants more, not less. Annie believes Jake is about to make a terrible mistake, but does she have the right to tell him?As the summer heats up, so do Annie’s unexpected feelings for Jake and her interest in the land. When a sudden phone call comes from New York, Annie is forced to choose between coming to terms with her past or leaving it all behind.

    That night, Caroline takes the jar down from the shelf. Intending only to look at the buttons, she opens the lid . . . and pours out her family's secrets.THE BUTTON COLLECTOR unfolds with a series of vignettes in which each button reveals a piece of the complicated history of Caroline's family. A tragic accident has forever altered the relationship between Caroline, her mother Emma, and her cousin Gail. Caroline sifts through the joys and anguishes of the past, bringing both herself and the reader to the realization that memories—like buttons—can sometimes be used to fasten together something we have left undone by mistake.

    She thought love had passed her by until she meets Jesse Smucker, a widower with a baby daughter. She quickly falls in love with them both and accepts Jesse’s proposal of marriage, but Jesse breaks off their engagement when he realizes he can’t marry only for convenience.   Resigned to living single, Lenore throws herself into caring for her elders. While working in her grandmother’s garden, she digs up an old jar. Will Lenore find healing for her broken heart and solve long-buried family secrets by reading the note contained inside?

    While Kayla is forced to fight for her life in hospital, Dane is thrown back into a world he fled from years before.Kayla tells her story through a series of quirky, unsent letters to Dane and relives her rollercoaster past in her childhood diaries, a past she must face if she is to survive. At the same time, Dane must confront his own violent past and the person who hates him most – the one he was once closest to – if he is to make it back to the woman he loves.Just Went Out For Milk is a physical and emotional journey, the raw love story of two scarred people, who long to find their place in the world.Will Dane make it back to Kayla? Will she be alive if he does?

    A television? No need. Having friends over? A mistake not to be repeated. Unreasonable expectations and criticism? Painfully expected. And all part of "normal." But her mother's unpredictable spells of arguing with imaginary tormentors, a Norwegian heirloom table subjected to countless layers of paint during such fits, and her father's refusal to seek help for his unstable wife these too are "normal." Saffee meets the wide-open world with these secrets stowed away, and she plans to keep things that way. Jack, a blind date gone right, helps Saffee gain victory over the past, and connect to spiritual moorings.

    Though family and community support helps, her hold on sanity remains tenuous.

    Medallion.Story summary: Something is odd about Grace. She has mismatched eyes, one dark and one light. She thinks she's seen God. When her mother dies, she begins to get letters from her, as if from the grave. The letters tell of her mother's life before she married Grace's father, in time, confessing fiercely guarded family secrets. "I wasn't always a Preacher's Wife... I made mistakes along the way."Looking back, as a middle-aged woman, Grace relives those transformative years, coming of age in the 1960s as the daughter of The Reverend Thad Carsten and his much-younger wife, Sharon. When they move to a new neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, Sharon is healthy and Grace takes turmoil in stride: a new school, her backward neighbors, the simmering Vietnam War and political unrest. On the whole, life is sublime-until Sharon gets sick and dies. Then Grace's world turns upside down.Days after Sharon is gone, the letters to her daughter start coming, delivered mysteriously in the dark of night. Grace finds them-addressed to her-and devours every word, desperate to figure out who's delivering them. As she struggles with questions of loss and faith, she begins to butt heads with the preacher, increasingly focused on the mysterious messenger and her mother's letters. The handwritten pages arrive periodically as Grace matures, fostering a strange mother daughter relationship.Early on, the letters offer motherly advice, but increasingly they shift their focus to Sharon's early teens, eventually confessing a forbidden young adult romance. By then, Grace is desperate for the rest of the story, searching everywhere for her mother's writings, until finally there's a breakthrough. When she reads the last of the letters-and an astonishing truth-she embarks on a journey that changes her life and perspective forever.What did Sharon confess in the last letter to her daughter? How does it affect their unusual mother daughter relationship? As Grace runs away to trace her mother's past and teenage romance, what will she find?With its elements of romance and mystery, The God of Sno Cone Blue, sometimes searched as "Snow" Cone Blue is best described as contemporary women's fiction, though its strong central male character also appeals to men. The novel's storyline and mother daughter relationship are fitting Inspirational Fiction, and its passion and coming of age tale are appropriate for teenagers and young adults.* USA Today Bestselling Author Linda Needham on this inspirational fiction story: "The God of Sno Cone Blue is a joyous celebration of a young girl's journey to womanhood. Grace is a modern match for Tom Sawyer, with a grand spirit and enough spunk to weather the heartache of losing her mother at a tender age. Along the way, she gains the wisdom to recognize the breadth of her mother's love through a series of posthumous, sometimes shocking letters delivered in the years that follow. With a driving style and a colorful cast of eccentric characters, author Marcia Coffey Turnquist fiercely delivers equal parts laughter, sorrow and the kind of joy that will stay with you long after you've finished the book."*Author Rod Gramer on this novel fraught with family secrets: "Marcia has created a compelling character in Grace, one whose great personal loss is redeemed by a great personal discovery."*Portland Society Page editor Elisa Klein on the story's mystery and romance: "Surprises abound and the twists and turns kept me flipping pages late into the night as I curled up in my favorite chair to drink it all in."*Award-winning artist D.K. Lubarsky on this coming of age novel: "A masterful storyteller, Turnquist takes you on a magical journey of discovery in this poignant tale of innocence and growing up. The God of Sno Cone Blue is a delightful read."

    3 passionate women who fall under their spell. 3 hot and tender love stories.BOOK 1: PLAYING WITH FIREEmbroiderer Uma is all kinds of wrong for single dad Zach.She’s his son’s nanny, still chaste at 23... and falling for him, hard and fast. In short, she’s completely off-limits. And just as completely irresistible. BOOK 2: PLAYING FOR KEEPSEx-player Isabelle takes a job as a publicist for a Paris water-polo team.That means she must face amnesiac coach Lucas, the jerk who broke her heart six years ago. But Lucas is a brand-new man after his head trauma. He has no idea why Isabelle is avoiding him — or why he is so drawn to her. BOOK 3: PLAYING DIRTYIn his pimply teens, Julien was led on, played and publicly humiliated by Noemi.Now a heartthrob and a sports star, he craves revenge. Even as he still craves Noemi.If you like single dad romances, revenge plots filled with angst and passion, and heartwarming second chance novels, you’ll love the PLAYING TO WIN series!

    While she and her sister Cassie are cleaning out their childhood home on the coast of Maine, they stir up painful memories and resentments over family possessions. A legendary collection of historically significant letters is missing from the artifacts they unearth, supporting a decades-old suspicion that their aunt or estranged cousin has stolen them.Threatened by the loss of the old house and its extraordinary seaside landscape, Gina finds her heart swinging wildly between Maine and California, creating conflict with her husband, Paul. To learn what the Maine house means to her, she approaches it objectively, as an architect, bringing it to life on paper. Her family’s story unfolds room by room: the darkroom from which her gentle but passive father, Ron, ran his photography business, the kitchen where her volatile mother, Eleanor, toiled under the weight of dashed dreams. As children, Gina and Cassie warily navigated rooms permeated with toxic secrets hobbling Eleanor and Ron’s marriage.As Gina deconstructs the house, startling truths are revealed, changing family history and allowing Gina and Cassie to begin healing family wounds. Gina has the chance to search the recesses of her heart, too, discovering within her a vitalizing compassion and an awakened understanding of what makes a house a home.Catherine Armsden's fascination with architecture was ignited during her childhood growing up among the weather-beaten houses of coastal Maine. Educated in New England, she moved to San Francisco in 1983 with her husband, Lewis Butler, where they co-founded Butler Armsden Architects.Dream House is her debut novel.