Set in 1856 Missouri, seventeen-year-old Mariah Rainey has lived with little hope that life will be any different for her than it has been for her motherliving in poverty with an abusive husband and five children. Upon the death of her mother at her fathers hand, Mariah is suddenly thrown into survival mode: charged with her mothers dying wish that she take the children to safety, far away to someplace green. She quickly must learn the skills of a man in order to protect her siblings from her father and to somehow make an escape to her mothers family in Kentucky via the old abandoned Wilderness Road out of Independence. With her father sure to follow, Mariah and her younger sister, Lolly, disguise themselves as young men and take off with their baby brother, Trill, to face the treacherous journey to freedom. Able to handle any crisis along the trail, Mariah thrives as a man, but she can never escape the wrath of her father or the horrible retribution he will exact upon her and everyone she loves.
Bobbie Sanders and her family live what some might call an idyllic life in Newport Beach, California. Happily married with two fairly normal teenagers, Bobbie confronts life's challenges with faith, humor, and humility. But life as Bobbie has come to know it is in flux. Her "kill them with kindness" attitude hits a wall when the irascible Mr. Ragoni moves in next door and rebuffs all her efforts to win him over. It's just the first sign of the seismic changes that threaten Bobbie's sense of security. Her husband, Bud, is going through a midlife crisis; her daughter, Pamela, is leaving convention and a fiancé behind for new horizons in Japan; and her sixteen-year-old son, Cole, shocks them all by befriending Mr. Ragoni ... to potentially disastrous effect. In All Things Possible, Bobbie's goodness--and her faith--are challenged to the core when real tragedy occurs, and she is forced to question the divine promise that God will not give her more than she can handle.
German-born Essie Kroecker is a precocious and talented child, raised in bucolic Salamanca, New York. She is the apple of her fathers eye, the bane to her overly religious grandparents, and sidekick to her rebellious older brother. But the world is changing in confusing ways for a child. The rumblings of the First World War are beginning to infiltrate her peaceful and secure life, and she has more questions than there are answers. Why have her family, her German neighbors, and even her pastor-grandfather, suddenly become people of suspicion? Why are they on the outside looking in? Gentle SpiritsFragile Hearts is a story of historys impact on a child, then a young woman, born with an uncanny wisdom and perceptive insights. The question is, will she be gentle of spirit and frail of heart like her mother, or will she garner an inner strength and overcome these times into which she was born?
Bobbie Sanders and her family live what some might call an idyllic life in Newport Beach, California. Happily married with two fairly normal teenagers, Bobbie confronts life's challenges with faith, humor, and humility. But life as Bobbie has come to know it is in flux. Her "kill them with kindness" attitude hits a wall when the irascible Mr. Ragoni moves in next door and rebuffs all her efforts to win him over. It's just the first sign of the seismic changes that threaten Bobbie's sense of security. Her husband, Bud, is going through a midlife crisis; her daughter, Pamela, is leaving convention and a fiancé behind for new horizons in Japan; and her sixteen-year-old son, Cole, shocks them all by befriending Mr. Ragoni ... to potentially disastrous effect. In All Things Possible, Bobbie's goodness--and her faith--are challenged to the core when real tragedy occurs, and she is forced to question the divine promise that God will not give her more than she can handle.
German-born Essie Kroecker is a precocious and talented child, raised in bucolic Salamanca, New York. She is the apple of her fathers eye, the bane to her overly religious grandparents, and sidekick to her rebellious older brother. But the world is changing in confusing ways for a child. The rumblings of the First World War are beginning to infiltrate her peaceful and secure life, and she has more questions than there are answers. Why have her family, her German neighbors, and even her pastor-grandfather, suddenly become people of suspicion? Why are they on the outside looking in? Gentle SpiritsFragile Hearts is a story of historys impact on a child, then a young woman, born with an uncanny wisdom and perceptive insights. The question is, will she be gentle of spirit and frail of heart like her mother, or will she garner an inner strength and overcome these times into which she was born?
Adair Cousins just watched her two sons debark for college. She is left with a lackluster marriage, an interfering mother, and the impending death of the woman who defined her all her life---her grandmother. Rushing to be with her grandmother during her last hours, but as much running away from her own life, Adair finds herself ensconced in another world, a world created by Gran Adie in the lush, protected hills of Santa Barbara, California. A famous artist and woman on the cutting edge of history, Gran Adie is not ready to die, however, not until she imparts her knowledge and uninhibited spirit to her beloved granddaughter; a futile task up until now. A bargain is struck. Adair will agree to stay in Gran Adie's home and be mentored in the fine art of living and loving fully, if Gran Adie agrees to let Adair document her fascinating life as her Legacy. But Adair's mother was right when she said, "Things are not what they seem." Adair opens up Gran Adie's lifetime of wounds, sorrows, and shocking revelations that have her questioning if she ever really knew her grandmother---or if she wants to know her now. And Gran Adie's handsome, free-spirited Doctor Hart has her asking the same questions about herself.
It was all in the letter her mother left her when she died...the beginning of the end for Elaine, a successful therapist, who had trusted that her mother was a saint. Until now, the hard part had been trying to live up to such goodness.Faced with the shame of her mother's secret past with a dark, shadowy man in a California vineyard, there is nothing for Elaine to do but confront this demon that is threatening her now fragile sense of identity.But she is unprepared for the lure of the land, RJ Carter, the rough-hewn, uncouth, land manager, his beat-up dog, Grit, and the arrival of her troubled granddaughter who needs her more now than ever. Everything changes with three little words: "Hi, Gramma. Surprise."Her Sense of Place is about the barrier that judgment creates between people and how we turn that judgment on ourselves even more cruelly.
It is the end of an era for Julia Brandenburg, or the beginning of one. She's not quite sure as she reviews her twenty-five year marriage to her husband, Skip.Until this day, Julia has understood her role as an executive's wife, understood Skip's need for her to be his one and only, understood the sacrifice of not having children that would interfere with his career, and understood that a good wife "goes where thou goest." But moving from California to Atlanta, Georgia, is not something she is equipped to do, nor is she prepared for the heady and pretentious world into which she has been thrust. It is a world that quickly consumes Skip and leaves her alone to fill her days and weeks without him---and without him, who is she? It is Skip's black sheep sister, Virginia, that arrives with the answer; a one month baby boy and an inability to care for him. A deal is struck but is it a deal as transient as the sandcastles Julia made as a child; sandcastles that washed away with the high tide, beautiful yet fleeting? Or is it her destiny long awaited, the child she was meant to have?
Quinn McDonald, Ph.D., has the family that we'd all love to have: a solid, loving husband, two teen-agers who still like to hang out with their parents, eccentric and adorable in-laws who come for Friday night poker each week, and a sister whose family is an extension of her own. She knows she's lucky, and yet, as she comes up to her forty-fourth birthday, she's drawn to daydreaming about a Quinn she left behind, somewhere between graduate school and middle age." For her present is not a reflection of her past- a past she has managed to keep hidden from others and avoided looking at herself. But it is a past that will not go away, and she realizes this full well when Evan Michaels sweeps into her office, covers her with kisses, and says, "Quinn, I never dreamed I'd see you again." In that instant, Evan brings back all the pain of their illicit affair, twenty years earlier, and the secret she has kept from, not only him, but her family-a secret that threatens to obliterate everything and everyone she holds dear. Forgivable Sins is a demonstration of family, faith, support, a secret well kept, and the lengths one will go to protect all of it.
Set in 1856 Missouri, seventeen-year-old Mariah Rainey has lived with little hope that life will be any different for her than it has been for her motherliving in poverty with an abusive husband and five children. Upon the death of her mother at her fathers hand, Mariah is suddenly thrown into survival mode: charged with her mothers dying wish that she take the children to safety, far away to someplace green. She quickly must learn the skills of a man in order to protect her siblings from her father and to somehow make an escape to her mothers family in Kentucky via the old abandoned Wilderness Road out of Independence. With her father sure to follow, Mariah and her younger sister, Lolly, disguise themselves as young men and take off with their baby brother, Trill, to face the treacherous journey to freedom. Able to handle any crisis along the trail, Mariah thrives as a man, but she can never escape the wrath of her father or the horrible retribution he will exact upon her and everyone she loves.
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