Can one college semester abroad change the course of your life? For Bella Rossini it did.
Bella Rossini, a vivacious college junior, lands in jail overnight with acquaintances whom she mistakes for friends. Shipped off to Tuscany by her mother, Bella is suddenly thrust into living with seven strangers during one life-altering summer.
Meet Hope, the sturdy and practical girl, steadfast in her loyalty to her boyfriend; Meghan and Karen, identical twins with an eye for fashion and beauty to match; Stillman, haunted by his hard past, and Phillip, an athlete, both fueled by competition; Lee,
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For competitive surfer Claire “Pepper” Patton, the waves of South Carolina’s Folly Beach once held the promise of a loving future and a bright career—until her fiance, Foster, broke the news that he and Claire’s best friend, Jill, were in love.
Eighteen years later, now forty-two and a struggling single parent to a rebellious teenage daughter, Claire has put miles between that betrayal and that coast. But when ESPN invites her back to Folly Beach for a documentary on women in surfing, Claire decides it might be the chance she needs to regain control of her life and reacquaint herself with the unsinkable young woman she once was.
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Set in a picturesque Maine beach town, bestselling author Holly Chamberlin's heartwarming and insightful novel delves into the choices and changes faced by two families over the course of one eventful summer.
Everyone in Yorktide, Maine, knows sixteen-year-old Sarah Bauer. She's a good student and a dutiful daughter, as well as a beloved best friend to Cordelia Kane. So it's a surprise to all when sensible Sarah reveals that she is pregnant.
Though shocked, Sarah's family is supportive. But while Sarah reconciles herself to a new and different future, the consequences ripple in all directions. Her father–a proud,
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With Driftless, Rhodes returns to the midwestern landscape he knows so well, offering a fascinating and entirely unsentimental portrait of a town apparently left behind by the march of time. Home to a few hundred people yet absent from state maps, Words, Wisconsin, comes richly to life by way of an extraordinary cast of characters. Among them, a middle-aged couple guards the family farm from the mendacious schemes of their milk co-operative; a lifelong paraplegic suddenly regains the use of her legs, only to find herself crippled by fury at her sister and caretaker; a woman of conflicting impulses and pastor of the local Friends church stumbles upon an enlightenment she never expected;
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“It’s a good time of year for a party”.
Chicago winters are notoriously long, but for almost twenty years come January Lydia’s friends have gathered for a cherished ritual and blow-out evening. Their host’s annual party offers them good food, wine, and a much-needed dose of conviviality on what often “turned out to be the coldest night of the year” (p. 4). Only tonight, Lydia is preoccupied with something other than her famed spicy chicken stew.
Now fifty-four, Lydia was once an aspiring painter who taught art classes to pay the bills. After her position at a suburban community college became permanent,
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A true story of a unique friendship between two people who had nothing—and ultimately everything—in common.
Carol Wall, living in a lily-white neighborhood in Middle America, is at a crossroads in her life. Her children are grown; she has successfully overcome illness; her beloved parents are getting older. One day she notices a dark-skinned African man tending her neighbor’s yard. His name is Giles Owita. He bags groceries at the supermarket. He comes from Kenya. And he’s very good at gardening.
Before long Giles is transforming not only Carol’s yard, but her life. Though they are seemingly quite different,
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