From the New York Times bestselling author of Woman in Red comes an intimate story of friendship lost and regained, old loves rekindled, and a baptism by fire that ultimately leads to the redemption of three very special women.
It begins with a betrayal that tears apart childhood friends, Abigail and Lila, when Abigail’s mother, the housekeeper for Lila’s wealthy family, is summarily banished, casting Abigail from the only home she has ever known. Now, twenty-five years later, Abigail is a self-made successful cookbook author and TV personality. When Lila,
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On a stifling Christmas Eve in 1967 the lives of the McDonald children-Deborah, Robert, James, and Meredith-changed forever. Their mother, Rosemarie, told them she was running out to buy some lights for the tree. She never came back. The children were left with their father, and a gnawing question: why had their mother abandoned them?
Over the years, the four siblings have become practiced in concealing their pain, remaining close into adulthood, and forming their own families. But long-closed wounds are reopened when a chance encounter brings James face-to-face with Rosemarie after nearly forty years.
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Anne Marie Roche wants to find happiness again. At thirty-eight, her life’s not what she’d expected—she’s childless, a recent widow, alone. She owns a successful bookstore on Seattle’s Blossom Street, but despite her accomplishments, there’s a feeling of emptiness.
On Valentine’s Day, Anne Marie and several other widows get together to celebrate…what? Hope, possibility, the future. They each begin a list of twenty wishes, things they always wanted to do but never did.
Anne Marie’s list starts with: Find one good thing about life. It includes learning to knit,
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At 34, Scarlet Kavanagh has the kind of homecoming no child wishes, a visit back to family and dear friends for the gentle passing of her mother, Addie, a famous bird artist and an even more infamous environmental activist. Though Addie and her husband, ornithologist Tom Kavanagh, have made their life in southeastern Pennsylvania, Addie has chosen to die at the New Jersey home of her dearest friend, Cora. This is because the Kavanagh’s ramshackle cottage is filled with too much history and because, in the last ten years or so, and for reasons that are not entirely clear, even bird song has seemed to make Addie angry,
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Small wonder that, at nine years old, Monica Holloway develops a fascination with the local funeral home. With a father who drives his Ford pickup with a Kodak movie camera sitting shotgun just in case he sees an accident, and whose home movies feature more footage of disasters than of his children, Monica is primed to become a morbid child.
Yet in spite of her father’s bouts of violence and abuse, her mother’s selfishness and prim denial, and her siblings’ personal battles and betrayals, Monica never succumbs to despair. Instead, she forges her own way,
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In the small town of Stone Creek, a random encounter offers two lonely people a chance at happiness.
Danny, a young widower, still grieves for his late wife, but for the sake of his five-year-old son, Caleb, he knows he must move on. Alone in her summer house, Lily has left her workaholic husband, Paul, to his long hours and late nights back in the city. In Stone Creek, she can yearn in solitude for the treasure she’s been denied: a child.
What occurs when Lily and Danny meet is immediate and undeniable—despite Lily being ten years older and married.
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