I’m always adding more books to my list. I have a huge To Be Read List. My biggest problem is deciding what to read next. Sometimes what I’m writing determines my next book. And I have to fit my book club pick in close to the end of each month, or otherwise I’ll forget names and details about the story when we meet to discuss it. I have books by my fellow writers that I’m dying to read, southern and women’s fiction books on my list, best sellers that everyone is talking about, historical fiction for my current WIP, and a few romance novels that will make me laugh and…
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Looking for Jane touched me in so many ways. Heather Marshall did a great job with this story of motherhood and everything that it entails. She introduces us to Angela Creighton, Dr. Evelyn Taylor, and Nancy Mitchell. Each of their story lines begin disconnected, but poignant in their own lives. In 2017, Angela and her wife are going through invitro, trying to have a baby. In 1960, Evelyn is an unwed teenager, sent to St. Agnes, to hid her baby from the world and give it up for adoption. In 1979, Nancy is a young adult meeting her cousin who plans to have an illegal abortion. All these women’s stories…
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by Nikki Erlick
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by Kristin Harmel As I reread the ending few chapters, the tears came again. My husband tells me that heknows it’s a good book when I cry. The Winemaker’s Wife by @kristinharmel is an excellent book.It takes place in the vineyards of the Champagne region of France and the U.S. We first meet Ines, inMay, 1940, when she speeds home from Reims to tell her new husband, Michel, that the Germansare coming. Next we meet Liv, Edith’s granddaughter, when she shows up to whisk Liv away to Franceafter Liv’s nasty divorce. There begins the story of Edith, Ines, Michel and Celine, the champagne makers of Chateau Chauveau.The story follows the…
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by Harriet Cannon Lizbeth Gordon’s husband doesn’t come home one day. He dies in a one-car auto accident. That’s not the shocking part. He had a hidden gambling addiction and accumulated a large pile of debt. At least it was hidden from Lizbeth. She’s left with only answers and empty banking accounts, so she put the family home up for sell, helped her two sons return to college, and headed for the family cottage on Folly Island, SC. She needed a quiet place. This started Lizbeth’s search for healing and understanding that leads her along a winding road ending in the discovery of the long-lost branch of the Gordon family.…
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By: Kimberly Sullivan Dark Blue Waves had me at Jane Austen. But after Janet Roberts enters, I became immersed in her life. Her father’s making her choose between no money or a job at his architectural firm. He’s already picked out a husband for her and expects her to fall in line with his way of thinking. Janet loves literature. After her acceptance into a special Jane Austen program, he allows her one last summer to get it out of her system. His only catch is that she will also have to work with one of his architectural clients as an intern at the same time in Bath. As Jane…
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by Diane Chamberlain I’ve been trying to get to this book for a long time. I love to read Diane Chamberlain’s books. I love how she weaves her stories with details that reveal what’s coming, how she gives you the woman’s point of view, and how she solves her mysteries by the end of the book. I want an ending that satisfies the build-up and boy, does she know how to build a story. Anna Dale, a young artist, was chosen to paint a Post Office mural in 1940 for Edenton, NC. Being from New Jersey, was an obstacle right away for her in this insular Southern town. She didn’t…
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by Teri M. Brown Teri M. Brown has written a timely novel that started with a conversation between her and a family friend. That friend was Ukrainian and the rest is history, so to speak. As the story opens, you meet Ivanna and her husband, Lyaksandro. Turmoil is pulling their lives apart. Ukraine was a dangerous place to be in the 1970’s. It was under Soviet rule, but the rumblings of independence were growing. All Ivanna knows is that her husband is dead and now she and their young daughter, Yevtsye, are alone. Ivanna works hard to provide for the two of them. Yevtsye excels in school and is…
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There are some books you are just meant to read at a certain time in your life. The pandemic has left me waiting, I realized today. Waiting to do so many things and this book helped me see that I shouldn’t wait any longer. Not that my head and heart had not been telling me the same thing for quite a while. Sometimes you need beautiful words written by someone else to figure it out. “Faye, Faraway” is more than a time travel book. I was skeptical at first about the whole idea of her falling through a cardboard box and falling back in time to meet herself as a…
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This book opens the story in Bryson City, North Carolina. A town that’s always had it’s challenges. The train comes through on a regular schedule each day and shakes the trailer where we meet Barbara at a turning point in her life. She’s ready to escape her hometown and it’s lack of opportunity for her. One fateful night, in 1960 her life is changed forever. As the story weaves back-and-forth between 1960 and 1976 we meet her daughter, Carole Ann, and her mother, Pearlene. They are three women struggling just to survive. As their choices intersect, all the secrets that Barbara has been swallowing alone, come to the surface. The…
