Domestic Life

Book Excerpt from Forty-Two Minutes: I constantly wonder what it's like to be normal. I've never known. To look at me you'd think I am. On the outside, my life looks almost boring. My name is Lexy Monroe and I live in the suburbs of Los Angeles. I just turned eighteen two weeks ago. My dad's name is Richard. He is a lawyer at a firm downtown. My mom is Victoria and she used to laugh and she used to sing me to sleep at night and she used to be involved in the PTA when I was in elementary school. My mom used to do a lot of things. But now, she's just an alcoholic. Book Description: Lexy ...

While taking a bath one evening, sixty-two-year-old Anna Bryant suffers a fatal stroke. But soon realizes that isn't the end of her life after finding herself in a stranger's bathroom moments later. Inhabiting a stranger's body. Through divine intervention, Anna has been given a second chance at life after a woman nearly half her age succumbs to a self-inflicted death. Anna is now expected to live the life Celeste Jeffers, a recent widow, has since abandoned. Although her new existence doesn't come with anything other than some vague muscle-memory and a few personal preferences, as Celeste,...

I was so happy when my son, Knox, began dating my best friend’s daughter. Our kids grew up together and we used to joke, as we sipped wine and watched them play, that they’d get married one day. But when Knox came home late after a party, zipping his hoodie up to hide the scratches I caught a glimpse of on his collarbone, a chill went down my spine. That night, our whole world shattered. Now, I hardly recognize my husband as he sweeps into action, calling in a hot-shot lawyer to defend our boy.

Jasmine awakes in a brothel, locked up in the "Trouble Room.” She must have done something really, really bad. Her plight is helped by the drugs her owners provide and by becoming “Bay”, a second personality. Can Jasmine ever become herself again?

While she laid on what she thought was her deathbed, my hilarious, Colombian-American Grandma finally shared the tragedy of her life. I learned that her dad abandoned her at birth, her mom sold her to be an indentured servant at 8 years old, her sisters outcasted her, and much to my surprise, I learned that my Grandpa beat the sh$t out of her, cheated on her, and verbally abused her for their entire marriage.

What if the one thing you wanted most was the one thing you could never have? What If you’d done something so terrible that you could never go back? Delia Reynolds has it all—money, social status, a husband who loves her. Then why is she so miserable? Why is she haunted by her past? Delia tries to mold her daughter, Sybil, into her debutante life, but it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Needing a new life, Sybil flees the fast-paced life of Atlanta and takes her daughter to, of all places, Delia’s hometown, nearly sending Delia over the edge. Faced with the ...

Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.

In the pristine facade of her perfect marriage, Nina’s life is beginning to crack. When she discovers a series of disturbing videos on her husband David’s computer—videos of her being watched as she sleeps—Nina is thrust into a nightmare she can’t explain. The footage is invasive, but it’s the shadowy figure in the doorway that sends chills down her spine. As she digs deeper, Nina begins to uncover a tangled web of lies, control, and surveillance, but the more she learns, the more she questions everything she thought she knew about her husband—and herself. At the same time, ...

He’s fire. She’s Ice. Sparks will fly, and her greatest source of irritation might just become her saving grace … Ian Douglas is tired of being set up on blind dates. It seems that everyone wants to go out with a firefighter-paramedic, but no one wants to settle down and get serious. He's looking for something lasting, a woman who will be by his side for the rest of his life. Children, grandchildren, dogs running around in the yard—he wants the whole package, and he's not willing to settle for anything less. Alicia Teague gave up on romance a long time ago. She's much more ...

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.

His sister's disappearance haunts Ex-Navy SEAL Beckett Callahan. For years, all roads have led to nothing but dead ends. To cope, he and his brother Birch—another ex-Navy SEAL—run Terra Search & Recovery to help other families bring closure to their pain. He even hopes to train his golden retriever Brodie to become a search dog with the Coastal Canine Unit. After multiple tours overseas, Beckett has finally managed to rebuild his life. But failing to find out what happened to his sister overshadows everything. That changes when Beckett meets Dr. Kelly Ecklund, a quirky marine biologist,...

Read the entire series FREE on Kindle Unlimited. How far would you go for a friend? When photojournalist Kenzie Reese is in a car accident, she begs best friend Makenna Reagan to pose as her and cover her assignment for Now Magazine. Makenna is normally a by-the-list planner, but there’s no time to weigh her options. Kenzie is going in for surgery and the plane leaves in two hours. In a rare spontaneous decision, Makenna agrees. Borrowing her flamboyant friend’s life, if only for a few days, might even be fun. Doubts aside, Makenna is quickly enchanted by the beautiful White Mountains ...

Lisa Carlson once embraced a life of passion and adventure. Her days were filled with helping others, exploring far-off places, and savoring the freedom she held dear. Yet, deep down, she longed for a love that would make her feel complete. When she met Dameon, she was certain she had found that missing piece. But her dream of a perfect life unraveled into a chilling nightmare. Soon after their wedding, Dameon revealed a darker side—one that trapped Lisa in a rigid religious cult and an abusive, suffocating marriage. When she became pregnant with their second child, his threats to harm ...

In relationships, the presence of healthy boundaries keeps relationships healthy and functional. The rights and responsibilities remain justified, and encroachment of personal space doesn't take place. Boundaries can help in preventing relationships from becoming toxic. You'll feel less stressed and compromised if you have set healthy boundaries. Setting healthy boundaries will make you feel liberated. You will have your personal space and won't feel suffocated. Not having healthy boundaries will have consequences.

When journalist Holland Tate is granted an interview with Catriona Bouchard, her former best friend turned mega-popular tradwife, she jumps at the chance to also possibly rewrite their bitter ending. But at the Bouchards’ gated compound, what she finds is not the independent woman she once knew. Cat may have six beautiful children and be married to the man she calls the love of her life, but she’s a ghost of her former self.

A cat and mouse game of surveillance and psychological torment develops between a middle-aged artist and her aging mother, as Vigdis Hjorth returns to the themes of her controversial modern classic, Will and Testament.

Amazon Best-Selling Author Bronze Medal-winning writer--Global Book Awards Terrifying Dreams Malicious Letters False Friends Former Blues Singer turned businesswoman, Ruth Arbuthnot isn’t sleeping well. Her dreams are haunted by murder, her own. Following her granddaughter’s instructions, she writes each dream before she completely wakes up. She discovers there’s a sequence to the dreams, a sequence, and a familiarity. Terrified, she enlists her granddaughter and her granddaughter’s ex-fiancé to help her find the source of her dreams. The dreams seem to mirror books she remembers, ...

In this grown-ups' version of Little Women, the March family falls on hard times, after Mr. March goes away under murky circumstances. The four daughters are left to reach adulthood under very different conditions from the cushy life they were used to. Wise-cracking but fiercely protective Jo takes over as the man of the house, at the beginning of the story. Older sister Meg starts out struggling with a fixation on status and overdependence on her mother. Beth is sweet but troubled. She has crippling fears and still plays with dolls at fourteen. And sassy Amy is far too savvy for a twelve-...

Once again Dorothea Benton Frank takes us deep into the heart of her magical South Carolina Lowcountry on a tumultuous journey filled with longings, disappointments, and, finally, a road toward happiness that is hard earned. There we meet three generations of women buried in secrets. The Lowcountry has endured its share of war and bloodshed like the rest of the South, but this storm season we watch Maisie, Liz, and Ashley deal with challenges that demand they face the truth about themselves.

Prep school sweethearts Ian and Andi Copeland are envied by everyone they know. They have successful businesses, a beautiful house in St. Louis, and their eldest daughter, Cassidy, is following in their footsteps by attending prestigious Glenlake Academy. Then, a submerged car is dredged from the bottom of a swimming hole near the campus. So are the remains of a former writer-in-residence who vanished 20 years ago - during Ian and Andi’s senior year.