Contemporary Family Life Women Fiction

Artist Dana Underhill has always been a free spirit, traveling the world, filling her canvases with the mysterious colors of the seas she and her sister have sailed since childhood. Then on a calm, moonlit night an inexplicable “accident” occurs and Dana is called home to Hubbard’s Point to become a mother to her two young nieces, a challenge unlike any she’s ever known. As Dana and the girls struggle to begin a new life - and to find the truth about what happened to Dana’s sister and brother-in-law - help comes in the person of an old childhood friend.

When a group of neighborhood women gathers, wine in hand, around a fire pit where their backyards meet one Saturday night, most of them are just ecstatic to have discovered that their baby monitors reach that far. It's a rare kid-free night, and they're giddy with it. They drink too much, and the conversation turns personal. By Monday morning, one of them is gone. Everyone knows something about everyone else in the quirky small Ohio town of Yellow Springs, but no one can make sense of the disappearance.

Jules Whittier is starting to regret the promise she made to her grandmother on her deathbed. The motel is even more dilapidated than it looked like in the pictures, and it turns out that renovating it includes working with her estranged cousins Maddie and Gina - the same cousins who caused her to fail at running the last motel. But there’s no getting around the stipulations in Gram’s will, and Jules needs to make a success of the Beachcomber, not only because of the promise she made, but also to prove to herself that she’s not a failure.

A rainy-day ritual - a tea party between three little girls - becomes the framework of not only their friendship, but their lives. Blonde, curly-haired Zoe Alexander is openhearted, kind, and free-spirited, but struggles with body image. Emily Waters is shy, diminutive, and would prefer to live vicariously through books. And Shannon Morell - tall, athletic, strong - has a deep sense of loyalty, but will always fear abandonment. As years pass, they forge careers, have their hearts broken, marry, and have children, but the one constant that remains is each other and their tea parties.

He had one job to do—but that didn’t include falling in love. When Xander Locke gets on his motorcycle and rides from Texas to Alabama, his plan is simple—go undercover to gather intel on the Bell family so his brother can orchestrate a seamless takeover of the Bell’s small-town newspaper. Xander never expects to meet Juliana Bell face-to-face, and he certainly doesn’t anticipate the sparks that run like a blowtorch through his veins when they touch. Juliana is everything Xander never even realized that he wanted … until now. Too bad she’s going to hate him when she learns the...

Nestled in the lush Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the town of Big Stone Gap has been home for Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney and her beloved family and friends for generations. But with her daughter, Etta, having flown the nest to enchanting Italy, Ave Maria has reached a turning point, and she realizes that it’s time to go in search of brand-new dreams. Yet before she can put her foot on the path, her life is turned upside down.

One day, sitting in traffic, Stella Sweeney attempts a good deed. The resulting car crash changes her life. But in this event is born the seed of something which will take Stella thousands of miles from her old life, turning an ordinary woman into a superstar, wrenching her whole family apart. For the first time real, honest-to-goodness happiness is just within her reach. But is Stella Sweeney, Dublin housewife, ready to grasp it?

Jonathan and Rosie have been together so long they finish each other's sentences - so when he (finally) proposes and asks her to move across the country with him, everyone is happily surprised. But when things suddenly unravel, Rosie sends Jonathan packing and moves back home with Soapie, the irascible, opinionated grandmother who raised her.

Henry Harris was living his dream as a staff sergeant in the Marines. When he's killed in action, his devastated family is in for one more shock: he had a daughter they never knew about. Morgan Riley has been raising Etta on her own, and that's always been fine by her - until Henry's brother Trevor arrives on her doorstep, willing to do anything to help and make up for his brother's mistakes. Their attraction feels wrong, but Morgan can't seem to turn him away. Trevor is suddenly in too deep. He has always wanted a family, but Etta and Morgan come with complications.

When the seafood business Lovie Sweeney established 60 years ago is destroyed by fire, she finds herself at the center of an arson investigation. What really happened that night? Is Lovie responsible for starting the fire, or is her family under attack from a sworn enemy? The loss of their family business leaves the Sweeney clan in flux.

Chris has always been a dreamer...happy to spend him time drawing with pen and pencil, pastels...even crayons. Adam has always been the pragmatic one...intent on his studies and long term goals. Yet no two brothers could be closer despite their many differences... Expectations is the eleventh novella in the ongoing story of the Andersen family. Livia Andersen was a woman who held her family together with a quiet smile and an iron will. It’s only been months since her death and the four children she leaves behind continue to grapple with the shifting changes in their lives now that she’s...

From an Award-Winning Author After eleven years of marriage, Maya embarks on a journey and falls madly in love with a mysterious man. Through alleys fragrant with the pungent smell of fried rice, amid child beggars and vendors of psychedelic fabrics, she makes startling discoveries about the stranger, and about herself. How far will she be willing to go? "From the recipient of the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award of Israel's Association of Authors and Composers (ACUM) 2015, comes a brilliant novel, full of humor and sensuality." Lily Pery, #1 literary editor "This book will drive you ...

For Rosemary Reynolds, life in tiny Morning Glory, Mississippi, is just like the fabric store she runs: it seems she's always waiting around for someone else to make the first stitch. Then a dear childhood friend passes away, leaving behind a gift that sends Rosemary on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Despite her mother's protests, Rosemary heads to New York City for a stay in her cousin's trendy SoHo loft. On her first day in town, a wrong turn leads her to Little Italy...and into the arms of handsome, outgoing Sal Genovese.

Twenty-seven-year-old Kara Larson is bogged down in the stress of planning her elaborate wedding to a professional golfer. Still, to fulfill the requirements of the Palmetto Pointe Junior Society, she makes time in her busy schedule to visit an elderly woman at a nursing home facility. Soon she finds herself mesmerized by the singsong Irish lilt of 96-year-old Maeve Mahoney as Maeve recounts the rambling story of her first love back in Ireland.

After tragically losing her husband, Nicola Jacques and her teenage son, Oliver, relocate to his father’s family's Olive Farm in the hills above the French Riviera. Due to a family feud, Oliver has never known his fathers’ side of the family, and Grandpapa Henri is intent that Oliver will take over the reins of the ancestral farm and his rightful inheritance. Determined to keep her independence from a rather controlling grandpapa, Nicola buys a run-down cottage on the edge of the family's Olive Farm and sets to work renovating their new home and providing an income.

Jenny Lucas swore she’d never go home again. But being told you’re dying has a way of changing things. Years after she left, she and her five-year-old daughter, Isabella, must return to her sleepy North Carolina town to face the ghosts she left behind. They welcome her in the form of her oxygen tank - toting grandmother, her stoic and distant father, and David, Isabella’s dad...who doesn’t yet know he has a daughter. As Jenny navigates the rough and unknown waters of her new reality, the unforgettable story that unfolds is a testament to the power of love.

Emma Laurent has always preferred helping others to asking for help. But now, she’s the one in need. Her stepmother is selling her late father’s candy shop, her grandmother’s assisted-living facility has become a financial burden, and the anniversary of her fiancé’s death is quickly approaching. Rather than face her problems, Emma does what she does best - finds someone else to help by offering a mother and son with nowhere to go somewhere to stay.

Patience was never one of her virtues. After her SUV runs off the road in the middle of a Texas blizzard and her cell stops working, Claire Mason is about to snap. Getting back home to Oklahoma with her four-year-old niece is top priority. And lucky for her, help comes in the form of a true Texas cowboy....

What if you made a New Year's resolution, then were forced to keep it? Professor Sam Pierson should be more careful about what he wishes for. He's already as unhappy as he is obnoxious. What he doesn't realize is that his life is about to reach a new low. His boss is ready to fire him and his wife to leave him. When a disturbing stranger asks for his New Year's resolutions at a party, Sam throws everyone into hysterical laughter when he blurts out, "I want the body of an athlete and I want everyone to respect me." At midnight the stranger slaps him on the back, Sam has a sharp pain in his ...

As she cleans up the cottage her mother left behind, Clara Hannigan discovers a locked hope chest. Inside is a book that might have the answers to her questions...if she can connect the dots between her mom and a prominent local. Complicating matters is one of Clara's students: a mean girl who has a bone to pick with the Hannigans.