In 2005, three years after our five-year-old daughter, Grace, died suddenly from a virulent form of strep, my husband, Lorne, our eleven-year-old son, Sam, and I found ourselves on a plane heading to China to adopt a baby girl. Our journey into adoption came from a belief that, even in such heartbreak and despair, we could love again. As soon as they placed eleven-month-old Annabelle in my arms, I knew that our hope of rebuilding our family again was indeed possible.
During the adoption process—the orientation, the miles of paperwork, the home visits, the long waits at the INS,
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Bess Southerns, an impoverished widow living in Pendle Forest, is haunted by visions and gains a reputation as a cunning woman. Drawing on the Catholic folk magic of her youth, Bess heals the sick and foretells the future. As she ages, she instructs her granddaughter, Alizon, in her craft, as well as her best friend, who ultimately turns to dark magic. When a peddler suffers a stroke after exchanging harsh words with Alizon, a local magistrate eager to make his name as a witch finder plays neighbors and family members against one another until suspicion and paranoia reach frenzied heights.
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When small town Louisiana girl Calla Lily Ponder encounters sweet, sexy, succulent love on the banks of the La Luna River, she thinks her future with Tuck LeBlanc is a given. But when he disappears into the Ivy League world which she will never be a part of, she must make her own way. Using the gifts of healing, which her mother gave her, Calla leaves the familiarity of her hometown and heads to the untamed city of New Orleans, where love and adventure and beauty school help her magical destiny unfold.
The shining new stand-alone novel from #1 New York Times bestselling Ya-Ya,
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Author Cassandra Fallows believes she may have found the story that could become her next bestseller. When she was a girl growing up in a racially diverse middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore, a shy, quiet, unobtrusive child named Calliope Jenkins orbited Cassandra’s circle of friends. Later Calliope would be accused of an unspeakable crime and would spend seven years in prison for refusing to speak about it. But by delving too deeply into Calliope’s dark secrets, Cassandra may inadvertently unearth a few of her own—forcing her to reexamine the memories she holds most precious, as the stark light of truth illuminates a mother’s pain,
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“I need you to understand how ordinary it all was. . . .”
In the turbulent southern summer of 1963, Millwood’s white population steers clear of “Shake Rag,” the black section of town. Young Florence Forrest is one of the few who crosses the line. The daughter of a burial insurance salesman with dark secrets and the town’s “cake lady,” whose backcountry bootleg runs lead further and further away from a brutal marriage, Florence attaches herself to her grandparents’ longtime maid, Zenie Johnson. Named for Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, Zenie treats the unwanted girl as just another chore,
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When Henry, Tess, Winnie, and Suz form the Compassionate Dismantlers in college, the first rule of their manifesto is, “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart.” But their penchant for acts of meaningful vandalism and elaborate, often dangerous pranks results in Suz’s death in the woods of Vermont—a tragedy the surviving Dismantlers decide to cover up.
Nearly a decade later, Henry and Tess are desperate to forget, but their guilt isn’t ready to let them go. When a mysterious Dismantler-style postcard drives a past prank victim to suicide, it sets off a chain of terrifying events that threatens to tear apart their world and engulf their inquisitive nine-year-old daughter,
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