Winner Fiction: Multicultural 2022 Best Book Awards
A childhood tragedy followed her into adult life. Will she ever claim real happiness again?
Kind and generous, twenty-seven-year-old Orchid Paige will never forget that day. Living as best she can after witnessing her parents’ fatal accident, the beauty industry marketer yearns to win a promotion to China to connect to her mom’s ancestry. But with competition fierce, she despairs she’ll never make the grade… until she meets an encouraging man who makes her feel safe despite her usual distrust.
After Orchid convinces the handsome entrepreneur to let her gain experience at his nonprofit project, she’s determined to keep their relationship professional and ignore their powerful attraction. But when working on his military ad campaign for veterans triggers her own unresolved PTSD, she fears her confident mentor may be too good to be true even if she could trust him with her heart.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural 2022 Best Book Awards
Slow-burning, passionate story of star-crossed lovers who could-just maybe-prove that love conquers all. When a high-profile politico discovers love in a hostess bar, he finds the road to romance is paved with some deep and startling secrets. Epic four part adventure condensed into one stand-alone novel.
A rising political star ousted from the mayor's cabinet stumbles into "one of those bars"-the type not mentioned in polite society-and that's when the unthinkable happens.
A beautiful, mysterious bargirl-just as emotionally damaged as he is-turns out to be the one woman who can soothe his ego and mend his heart. She says she's just there to sell fantasies...and anyone with eyes can see that Glenn's buying in-big time. Maya's keeping a lot of secrets, but the biggest one is that she's fallen just as hard.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural 2022 Best Book Awards
For readers of Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson, Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover and The Locked Door by Frieda McFadden.
Assertive Cienna should have been able to fight off an abduction. However, even she is unable to fight two able-bodied men and the drugs that they use to get her in the back of the van. Her journey begins as she awakes, and is sold to a friendly man in a baseball hat named Mike, who promises to take her back to her family but instead ties her to a pole in his barn. Mike becomes her friend, saving her from the man who abducted her and violently took her innocence.
When Jasmine awakes, she is in a brothel, locked up in the "Trouble Room.” She remains convinced for the rest of her journey that she has been very bad and sentenced to this place of horror. She deals with her plight by enjoying the drugs that her owners provide and developing a second personality.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural 2022 Best Book Awards
Inspired by a headline about French bakeries shuttering, Les Beaux Châteaux is the story of a father and son who must learn a new way forward as traditional French life evolves.
Following the death of his wife, Frida, Victor’s relationship with his adult son Jean Paul (“JP”) is fractured. Their alienation is not an isolated family breakdown; French culture is re-forming from the grassroots up.
Knowing JP can’t stay in France with his curmudgeonly father, Victor proposes a joint business venture: a New York storefront managed by JP, selling beautiful, traditional French artifacts selected by himself. JP seizes the opportunity to leave Victor and Paris’s tourist culture, and Les Beaux Châteaux is born.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural 2022 Best Book Awards
In 1846 Alta California, Catalina Delgado daydreams about her future: roping cattle, marrying Angelo Ortega and raising children. But now, invaders from the United States—the Bear Flaggers—have declared war against Mexico, her country. Bear Flaggers have imprisoned one close friend of her family and murdered others. What fate might befall her parents, grandfather and younger brothers? And what about her best friend, a Costanoan servant girl? How can Catalina, only sixteen, help protect all those she loves?
The spirits provide Catalina with answers, but not ones she wants. Plus she fears the strange spirit man who rides a black Andalusian stallion through the sky. For the sake of all she holds dear, Catalina must risk her reputation as a chaste young woman, her future with Angelo, her life and her very soul. When hopes and dreams clash with cold reality, Catalina finds the fortitude to accomplish what only she can do.
Finalist Fiction: Multicultural 2022 Best Book Awards
When Christine, an idealistic young American teacher, meets and marries Hideki Yamada, an aspiring Japanese high school baseball coach, she believes that their love with be enough to sustain them as they deal with cultural differences. However, Hideki's duties, and the team of fit, obedient boys whom he begins to think of as a surrogate family, take up more and more of his time, just as Christine is struggling to manage the needs of their multiply-disabled daughter and their sensitive son. Things come to a head when their son is the victim of bullies. Christine begins to think that she and her children would be safer - and happier - in her native country. On a trip back to the States, she reconnects with a dangerously attractive friend from high school who, after serving and becoming wounded in Iraq, seems to understand her like no one else.
