Ted is a successful novelist and Grace, his wife of twenty years, is beautiful, stylish, carefree, and a wonderful homemaker.But what no one sees, what is churning under the surface, is Ted’s rages. His mood swings. And the precarious house of cards that their lifestyle is built upon. When Ted’s longtime assistant and mainstay leaves, the house of cards begins to crumble and Grace, with dark secrets in her past, is most vulnerable. She finds herself in need of help but with no one to turn to…until the perfect new assistant shows up out of the blue. To the rescue comes Beth, a competent young woman who can handle Ted and has the calm efficiency to weather the storms that threaten to engulf the Chapman household. Soon, though, it’s clear to Grace that Beth might be too good to be true. This new interloper might be the biggest threat of all, one that could cost Grace her marriage, her reputation, and even her sanity. With everything at stake and no one to confide in, Grace must find a way to save herself before it is too late.Powerful and riveting, Jane Green's Saving Grace will have you on the edge of your seat as you follow Grace on her harrowing journey to rock bottom and back.

    Myth. Miracles.They say there is truth in legends.Last Christmas, Erin came home to be with her dying mother. It's been a year, and Erin can't move on. It's a good thing a behemoth dog named Klaus and Reason-the-handsome-realtor are about to change all that.When Reason's efforts to help Erin sell her mother's house turn into a series of fiascos, Erin finds herself falling in love with him despite the quirky chaos that follows him. But Reason is more than he seems, and soon Erin is immersed in the clandestine world of the Santa Society, a centuries old secret organization that protects the truth behind Christmas.

    For flight nurse, Natalie Mercer, these images converge one hot afternoon on the doorsteps of an Atlanta trauma center as her husband is gunned down in a drive-by shooting and the lives of Natalie and her unborn child are left hanging in the balance.In the aftermath of the tragedy, Natalie relocates from the city to the Georgia mountains with hopes of finding refuge from the physical and emotional strain of her loss. She accepts a position as a flight nurse for a Rescue Flight Service and begins to build a new life for herself and her unborn child. She also meets retired baseball player and helicopter pilot, Jake Adams, who has demons of his own to conquer. After a rocky start, the couple begins to see that the key to finding a new life...and a new love...might just be right before their eyes."Gifts of Life" is a story of grief, hope, and one woman's reclaiming of life and love following personal tragedy. It is the tale of how the high-stress job of flight nursing can both break you and inspire you. Finally, it is a story of love and family, tempered by the soothing effects of southern charm and life in the Georgia mountains. It is the story of Natalie and Jake...it is the story of LIFE.Show more Show less

    It's not her first time starting over, but her efforts at a new beginning aren't helped by an anonymous local blog that dishes about the scandalous events that caused her marriage to fail.Merilee finds some measure of peace in the cottage she is renting from town matriarch Sugar Prescott. Though stubborn and irascible, Sugar sees something of herself in Merilee--something that allows her to open up about her own colorful past.Sugar's stories give Merilee a different perspective on the town and its wealthy school moms in their tennis whites and shiny SUVs, and even on her new friendship with Heather Blackford. Merilee is charmed by the glamorous young mother's seemingly perfect life and finds herself drawn into Heather's world.In a town like Sweet Apple, where sins and secrets are as likely to be found behind the walls of gated mansions as in the dark woods surrounding Merilee's house, appearance is everything. But just how dangerous that deception can be will shock all three women....

    She thought he was a businessman. Not being a huge fan, all she knew was that he was incredibly attractive, kind, generous, and that she was safe with him. Or was she?His brand of fame proved to be all but deadly, but his fame wasn’t nearly as lethal as his attraction. He kept her safe and protected. All except for her heart.

    But the shock goes even deeper when she learns that the woman who has been like a mother to her has left her entire estate to Julie’s twin sister. The only thing Julie receives is a key—one carried by her mother on the day she herself died—to a safety-deposit box in Siena, Italy. This key sends Julie on a journey that will change her life forever—a journey into the troubled past of her ancestor Giulietta Tolomei. In 1340, still reeling from the slaughter of her parents, Giulietta was smuggled into Siena, where she met a young man named Romeo. Their ill-fated love turned medieval Siena upside-down and went on to inspire generations of poets and artists, the story reaching its pinnacle in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. But six centuries have a way of catching up to the present, and Julie gradually begins to discover that here, in this ancient city, the past and present are hard to tell apart. The deeper she delves into the history of Romeo and Giulietta, and the closer she gets to the treasure they allegedly left behind, the greater the danger surrounding her—superstitions, ancient hostilities, and personal vendettas. As Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families involved in the unforgettable blood feud, she begins to fear that the notorious curse—“A plague on both your houses!”—is still at work, and that she is destined to be its next target. Only someone like Romeo, it seems, could save her from this dreaded fate, but his story ended long ago. Or did it? From Anne Fortier comes a sweeping, beautifully written novel of intrigue and identity, of love and legacy, as a young woman discovers that her own fate is irrevocably tied—for better or worse—to literature’s greatest star-crossed lovers.

    Expected to marry an up-and-coming banker from a respected family, Lucy fears she will be forced to abandon her charity work--and the classes she is secretly taking at the newly opened University of Chicago. When she meets an unconventional young architect who is working on plans for the upcoming 1893 World's Fair, Lucy imagines a life lived on her own terms. Can she break away from her family's expectations? And will she ever be loved for who she truly is? Readers will love being swept away into a world of mansions, secrets, and romance as they follow Lucy through the streets of the Windy City during one of the most exciting times in the city's history. From opulent upper-class homes to the well-worn rooms of an orphanage, Olivia Newport breathes life and romance into the pages of history--and everyone is invited.

    She is single in New York City, stuck in a job she doesn’t want and a life that seems to have, somehow, just happened.  She inherited a flair for Italian cooking from her grandmother, but she never seems to have the time for it—these days, her oven holds only sweaters. Tacked to her office bulletin board is a photo from a magazine of a tidy cottage on the coast of Maine—a charming reminder of a life that could be hers, if she could only muster the courage to go after it.On a hope and a chance, Angela decides to pack it all up and move to Maine, finding the nudge she needs in the dating profile of a handsome sailor who loves dogs and Italian food.  But her new home isn’t quite matching up with the fantasy. Far from everything familiar, Angela begins to rebuild her life from the ground up. Working at a local coffeehouse, she begins to discover the pleasures and secrets of her new small-town community and, in the process, realizes there’s really no such thing as the way life should be.

    She’s been jilted at the altar by Stephen-the-indecisive, is paying off a mountain of wedding debt by holding down two jobs, and her flat is mostly made of cardboard and spackle. Then at work she meets a man in need of a date to his ex-fiancée’s wedding. Annie goes, and one wedding and four bottles of wine later, she finds herself getting married in Vegas to Dorian, an erotic illustrator.Of course, it’s all great and romantic, until someone loses an eye, which here means, ‘until Annie gets home, and realizes that her best friend (and boss) Will, has kind of been working up to popping the question himself. Will is not happy to see Annie married, in fact he’s willing to trade his Mohawk and every Ke$ha CD he owns to get Dorian out of the way.As if that wasn’t enough to make things tense at work, Annie’s best-work-friend Yvonne (who knows something really fun you can do with a rugby player, some roller skates and chocolate spread) can’t resist getting involved in Annie’s love life. Neither can Dorian’s kleptomaniac sister Fifi, Dorian’s ex-bride and Annie’s mother.In between breaking into cafés, having her door kicked down by the police and trying not to kill each and every one of her friends and relatives, Annie tries to work out how the hell her life got so complicated.

    A divorced mother of two, Kim resents her ex-husband for moving on with his life and living it up while she struggles to understand what went wrong. When her sons end up spending five weeks of summer vacation with their father, Kim's own father suggests a respite in the family vacation home on tiny Cedar Key Island. As Kim revisits her childhood memories and loves, she soon discovers that treasures in life are often buried, and mistakes--both past and present--become redeemable in God's hand.Readers will be swept away to an island retreat where they walk alongside Kim as she discovers that God's answers may not come easily, but they do come.

    Katie’s world is shattered by the news that her headstrong and bohemian younger sister, Mia, has been found dead at the bottom of a cliff in Bali. The authorities say that Mia jumped—that her death was a suicide. Although they’d hardly spoken to each other since Mia suddenly left on an around-the-world trip six months earlier, Katie refuses to accept that her sister would have taken her own life. Distraught that they never made peace, Katie leaves her orderly, sheltered life in London behind and embarks on a journey to find out the truth. With only the entries in Mia’s travel journal as her guide, Katie retraces the last few months of her sister’s life and—page by page, country by country—begins to uncover the mystery surrounding her death. . . . Weaving together the exotic settings and suspenseful twists of Alex Garland’s The Beach with a powerful tale of familial love in the spirit of Rosamund Lupton’s Sister, Swimming at Night is a fast-paced, accomplished, and gripping debut novel of secrets, loss, and forgiveness.

    She is due to get married to a man she doesn't love, her job is dragging her down, and her interfering mother is getting on her nerves. So she escapes to the one place she know her mother won't follow her—to her aunt's house in rural Ireland. Once there, she uncovers a dark family secret—and a future she never knew she might have. Meanwhile, Caitlin Macausland is mourning the future she can never have. She died tragically in what the village thinks is suspicious circumstances, and now she is stuck in a limbo, unable to move on.And between the two of them is an old lighthouse—the scene of so much tragedy. Can each woman find the peace she so desperately longs for? And can they find the way to live again?

    Five lives irrevocably change when their greatest longings become their new reality–and for one, vice versa.The Journey of Dreams series is Contemporary Christian Fantasy, exploring the delights of our hearts and how the Lord meets them.-------------------------------In my dreams, I had always imagined wandering through meadows of golden, calf-high grasses that swayed in a gentle breeze. The dream recurred often—one I’d loved since my childhood. Sitting on the fire escape of our fourth-floor apartment in Pittsburgh, I’d escape into the woods of Wisconsin, the prairies of Kansas, and eventually the little town of De Smet, South Dakota, as I lived and breathed the adventures of Laura Ingalls. However, of all those places, the Kansas prairie somehow infused itself into my soul. I dreamt of the swoosh of the grasses, the musical sound of the cottonwoods when their leaves rustled in summer winds, and clear skies with only small tufts of clouds to mar their azure perfection...Some things we read in books, whether prose or poetry, and think we understand. However, until you’ve stood in a sea of grasses undulating like the waves of the ocean in the morning breeze, you cannot possibly begin to understand what the phrase, “sea of grass” means. As I stood, watching the rise and fall of the blades dancing in unison to a tune inaudible to me, a rush of contentment washed over me. In this vast sea of nothingness, I knew I had come home.---------------------------------------Jessa Davidson enjoyed a lifelong fascination and desire for life on the prairie. However, she never expected that fascination to become reality. A far cry from her apartment in Pittsburgh, the world of Prairie is more than just a change in geography--it's a change of life. In Prairie, Jessa examines the innermost parts of her soul and discovers desires she never knew she had. From the moment she awoke, transported from the cold Pennsylvania winter, on the sunbathed summer prairie, she knew her life would never be the same.The people of Prairie welcomed her and accepted her--almost without question, but so much of her life changed in that moment--her hopes, dreams, values, and the absolutes of things like time--that she feared accepting her new life as reality.Is Prairie the dreams of her life come true--or her worst nightmare> Is it real? Is it permanent? Or will she awake to discover that she's lost her mind--or worse, her life?And the biggest question on Jessa's heart? Does she care?

    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.

    But after years in seclusion, his sister’s wedding draws him to St. Dennis, a peaceful town on the Chesapeake Bay. Though he swears he isn’t interested in finding love again, Grady can’t ignore the mutual sparks that fly when he meets Vanessa Keaton.Although her past was marked by bad choices, Vanessa has found that coming to St. Dennis is the best decision she’s ever made. Bling, her trendy boutique, is a success with tourists as well as with the townspeople. She’s made friends, has a home she loves, and has established a life for herself far from the nightmare she left behind. The last thing she’s looking for is romance, but the hot new man in town is hard to resist. And when Vanessa’s past catches up with her, Grady finds that he’s unwilling to let her become a victim again. As together they fight her demons, Grady and Vanessa discover that life still holds some surprises and that love doesn’t always have to hurt.BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Mariah Stewart's Long Way Home.