Winner Fiction: Women's Fiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Fans of Caroline Leavitt will relish this rich, complex novel born of the author's own loss and grief, about how one can overcome tragedy through bravery and self-discovery.
Cassidy Morgan's life has always followed a carefully laid track: top education, fulfilling career, and marriage to the love of her life, Owen. The next logical step was starting a family. But when a late-term miscarriage threatens to derail everything she's worked so hard for, she finds herself questioning her identity, particularly what it means to be a mother. Unable to move past her guilt and shame, she realizes there's more to fix than a broken heart. Grief illuminates the weaknesses in her marriage and forces her to deal with her tumultuous relationship with her own mother.
Married college professors Christine and Joss thought they had it all: jobs they love, a beloved daughter, and most of all, each other—that is, until Joss’s research pulls her further and further away, and strange bouts of forgetfulness put a wedge between them. Lonely and seeking the emotional connection she once shared with her wife, Christine forms a friendship with a student that quickly walks the line of right and wrong.
Eighteen-year-old Abbie is an outcast desperate to fit in. When the most popular girl on campus suddenly befriends her, Abbie can’t believe her luck. But the friendship comes with strings attached—stealing exams from her mom’s computer for the in-crowd.
Soon, both mom and daughter are in deep with their deepest desires on the line. When their secret lives collide, their indiscretions culminate in a catastrophe no one saw coming.
Blue by You tells the uniquely romantic story of a man who falls in love with the same woman twice, decades and a thousand miles apart, but is a total stranger to her both times.
Daniel, a former D.C. trial attorney, has fled to Colorado following the cancer death of his young wife, a woman he'd known since their childhood. It's in a rural mountain setting two years later that a chance encounter results in a one-week love affair with Paula, a lifestyle writer from Nashville.
Paula is a person of faith; Daniel was while his wife was alive, but no longer. There is a soft-touch Christian theme throughout the book, especially about the power of prayer and the reality of redemption.
Paula leaves after the seven days, promising to return, but doesn’t. And Daniel never hears from her again. They are reunited over twenty years later in Nashville, but a rare illness has deprived Paula of any memory of Daniel.
A young woman’s timely account of endurance, resilience, and the quest for love in a post-civil war Middle Eastern country.
The story took place in the 1990s after the civil war ended in Lebanon, but the religious and political tensions remained as scars in the hearts of the Lebanese. The demarcation between the divided capital was dismantled and now the Christians from East Beirut could meet the Muslims from West Beirut for the first time since the beginning of the war in 1975.
During that period, we meet Noor, a fresh university graduate from West Beirut who was ready to face the world and navigate her life in a culture where family values and social traditions define the lives and behaviors of everyone around her.
Noor landed her first job in East Beirut, in a district called Elephant’s Tooth, which she would never visit during the civil war. She meets her first boyfriend who was from a different religion and that was not yet accepted by society norms and family traditions. She made new friends outside of her community. She started a career in a company and was up against a gender-biased culture.
When anxiety-prone Rachel Granza learns that her growing sense of emptiness is affecting her relationship with her almost perfect boyfriend and that she’s jeopardizing any possibility of a marriage proposal, she knows she must pull herself out of her funk. But how? A dream apartment in New York City, a thriving psychotherapy practice, and her unique obsessions with topics like the Titanic don’t even make her feel grounded anymore. Red alert!
Trying to find happiness and meaning again—in more than her beloved Italian food—she stumbles into a genealogy mission to discover childhood information about her idol, aka her grandpa, who died years ago. He never spoke about his Italian immigrant past and now she’s determined to find out the reason for his unusual secretiveness.
Fiercely independent Mary Pontrelli is blindsided when the New Orleans building housing her New Age store and upstairs apartment is listed for sale. Worse yet, a developer wants to destroy it and her high school ex-boyfriend—ahem, nemesis—is leading their charge. But this budding sweet spot for that weasel from the past can’t happen since traitors never change.
The best chance Mary has to save her cherished French Quarter building is to join forces with the other business owners whose livelihoods are also at risk. Too bad she avoids teamwork at all costs. Thankfully, a mystical new customer who shares Mary’s lost Italian heritage may be able to help alter her stubborn patterns. And, learning about the city’s history and her own Sicilian roots from the shopper may prove beyond merely engaging.
A disgraced attorney seeking redemption. A single mother desperate to regain custody of her son. Two women willing to risk it all to put a sexual predator behind bars.
Former Assistant District Attorney Miranda Quinn is on the brink of a career comeback when she gets a phone call. It's a witness who disappeared three years earlier, resulting in a violent criminal going free. Miranda got fired as a result, but the witness has re-surfaced with a shocking story to tell; one that implicates Miranda and her ex, defense attorney Adam Baxter. And now, there's a new victim.
Miranda's legal advice blog-turned-podcast Miranda Writes is about to become a daytime TV show, but the negative press could destroy her credibility. Will the network stand behind her?
A riveting coming of age story, that will make you laugh, cry and root for Laura to find happiness.
Laura Shirk is a normal, happy, go-lucky, little girl playing with Cabbage Patch dolls and Legos. Until she isn't. Set in the late 1980s-early 90s, a visit to her aunt and uncle's house changes everything.
What follows is a nerve-racking story shedding light on child sexual abuse. As the tragedy unfolds, Laura mutters through life concealing her secret from everyone. Feeling alone and isolated, she struggles to navigate her younger years wondering if she can or will ever find happiness.
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.
Casey Cohen, a Middle Eastern Jew, is a sixteen-year-old in New Orleans in the 1970s when she starts hanging out with the wrong crowd. Then she gets in trouble—and her parents turn her whole world upside down by deciding to return to their roots, the Orthodox Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn.
In this new and foreign world, men pray daily, thanking God they’re not women; parties are extravagant events at the Museum of Natural History; and the Marriage Box is a real place, a pool deck designated for teenage girls to put themselves on display for potential husbands. Casey is at first appalled by this unfamiliar culture, but after she meets Michael, she’s enticed by it. Looking for love and a place to belong, she marries him at eighteen, believing she can adjust to Syrian ways. But she begins to question her decision when she discovers that Michael doesn’t want her to go to college—he wants her to have a baby instead.
In her second novel, Valerie Taylor—award-winning author of What’s Not Said—gives readers another romantic comedy interwoven with forbidden love, infidelity, and family.
With the court date set for her divorce and the future she’d planned with a younger man presumably kaput, Kassie O’Callaghan shifts attention to reviving her stalled marketing career. But that goal gets complicated when she unexpectedly rendezvous with her former lover in Paris. After a chance meeting with a colleague and a stroll along Pont Neuf, Kassie receives two compelling proposals. Can she possibly accept them both?
Kassie’s decision process screeches to a halt when her soon-to-be ex-husband has a heart attack, forcing her to fly home to Boston. There, she confronts his conniving and deceitful fiancée—a woman who wants not just a ring on her finger but everything that belongs to Kassie. In the ensuing battle to protect what’s legally and rightfully hers, Kassie discovers that sometimes it’s what’s not true that can set you free.
An inspirational second act book for women in the arts, the ARTemis Arts Wisdom Anthology is the first-ever collection of plays and screenplays written by women over 50.
Much has been said about the need for diversity in the arts industry, but its deep-seated ageism is often overlooked. Opportunities are most often afforded to the same set of young, prodigious, and mostly male creators.
While these men default to a seasoned, wizened status as their careers mature, talented female artists often simply become . . . invisible.
The ARTemis Arts Wisdom Anthology is the antidote to women over fifty going unrecognized in the arts industry.
Inside you'll find fifteen works, all new, all unproduced, some ready for the stage, some for workshops, three for the screen, and all written by women of age who have faced severely limited opportunities to test, perform, or publish these works.
Aspiring young Chinese immigrant Gigi O survives by working as a stripper, but she strives for true success in the U.S. real-estate industry. Navigating this highly competitive business is tough, especially when her only support comes from the deeply flawed man she loves and her old cohorts from the strip club. Issues of betrayal and trust, loyalty and commitment complicate her goals even as one lesbian friend adds new dimensions to her understanding of love versus desire. Then the market crashes and financial turmoil threatens to rob Gigi O of all she has achieved. Can she find new ways to chase her dreams-and still manage to keep her clothes on? Or might she find a better reason to take them off? Girl Wears Those Shoes is a tale of love and power, the story of one woman who wants to make the world her own-if only she can figure out how.
The Warrens aren't your average family-they live at a zoo. When their Bengal tiger, Ms. Benni, mauls an "aspiring model," the young man's multi-million-dollar lawsuit threatens to cripple their lifetime passion-caring for their beloved animals. The family's prospects to win at the jury trial look bleak, in spite of the fact that the young man deliberately walked into Ms. Benni's cage. When all appears lost for the family, their lawyer stumbles upon a creative defense.
If she can fly to London within the judge's shortened time frame and get the tiger expert's testimony on video and prove to the jury that Ms. Benni is a grudge tiger with a reason for her vengeance, they have one shot at winning. If she fails, the Warrens lose everything.
Jacqueline Oliver is an indie perfumer, trying to bury her ravaged childhood by shoveling ground under her own feet. Then she gets a call she dreads—the hippie grandmother she bitterly resents was apprehended when police busted a charlatan shaman's sweat lodge. Others scattered, but Nellie was slowed by her walker, and the fact that she was wearing nothing but a few Mardi-Gras beads. Jacqueline is her only kin, so, like it or not, she's responsible.
Despite being late developing next year's scent, Jacqueline drops everything to travel to Arizona and pick up her free-range grandma. But the Universe conspires to set them on a Route 66 road trip together. What Jacqueline discovers out there could not only heal the scars of her childhood but open her to a brighter future.
From Charming Falls Apart author Angela Terry comes a story about finding the courage to face your past, be true to your heart, and live your best life. Fans of Sophie Kinsella and Emily Giffin will enjoy cheering for Adeline Turner as she navigates the twists and turns of her newly complicated life in this fun, heartwarming novel.
Thirty-three-year-old corporate attorney Adeline Turner has built her adult life around stability. Her professional life is thriving, but her personal life . . . not so much. Deep down she wants more, but finds it’s easier to brush aside her dreams and hide behind her billable hours. That is, until a new client and a chance encounter with her high school crush have her taking leaps she never planned. Suddenly, unadventurous, nose-to-the-grindstone Adeline finds herself moving across the country from her predictable life in Chicago to San Francisco, falling into messy romantic situations, and trying to unravel an office-sabotage plot before it ruins her career.
Thirty-one-year-old Dr. Chastity (Chase) Ann Morgan's continued search to fulfill her romantic fantasy of a perfect marriage takes her to an unexpected place when she begins to have vivid, déjà vu dreams of a mysterious, otherworldly man who calls out to her in the most alluring sing-song voice. While the recurring dreams aren't helping one iota in her struggle with romance, a structural engineering job opportunity along with a man who may be "the one" sends her back to Europe. What unfolds is not quite what she has in mind, and her life becomes more complex than expected, especially when her quirky family's dysfunctionalities pop up at the most inopportune times.
It’s 1972 and Isabelle is four years old. She, her eight-year-old brother, and their mother are grappling with yet another harsh Maine winter under crushing poverty. With their father absent, their mother takes the children South to Georgia to be near her family. Their extreme economic hardship continues as residents of a public housing complex in Albany. Their lives become juxtaposed with the phenomenon of “White Flight” as they, a Caucasian family, become a local minority living among a societal minority. The predominately white world outside the public housing development is largely unknown to Isabelle and her siblings. Meanwhile, those with whom they most identify (the children in “The Projects”) reject them or directly take their frustrations out on them. Subsequently, Isabelle struggles to figure out where she belongs. That is, until she becomes best friends with Evelyn, a Black girl who moves in across the driveway. Their friendship blossoms and flies in the face of typical racial attitudes of the day. They become each other’s lifeline and hope in an environment rife with adversity. Soon, however, they are confronted with an earth-shattering event that completely changes Isabelle’s view of the world.
Sylvie is a tender, poignant women's fiction novel examining a family's love for one another, acceptance, and letting go. Set in the Colorado mountains, it reveals the secrets and lies surrounding what appears to be a perfect family. Exploring the delicate threads binding family together, we learn how an unexpected tragedy can unravel everything and how they find hope, inspiration, and forgiveness to continue.
Sylvie will give readers a peek in to the mind and moods of a young woman struggling with repeated social rejection. It's a must-read for grief groups; providing useful, understandable insight for parents and siblings of family members suffering consequences of coping with unexpressed trauma.
Twenty-four-year-old Violet wants one thing: to hide from life after her husband's death left her reeling. But life has other ideas. Well, life and a certain seven-year-old neighbor.
Violet moves to Magnolia Avenue, a forgotten street in a forgotten neighborhood filled with forgotten mobile homes. It looks like the perfect place to retreat and lick her wounds. But it's not long before her young neighbor, Arabella, enlists her in the rescue of the cantankerous old woman next door who has fallen ill. But if Violet thinks this is a one-off event, she's wrong. Next thing she knows, she is entangled in the lives of several neighbors from grumpy Mr. Pritchard to the handsome GI across the street. Set against the backdrop of the 1969 moon landing when astronauts broke the boundaries of Earth, A Boundless Place shows what happens when people are able to break through their own boundaries and reach out to others.
Art history student Darcey Mendes needs a new topic for her thesis in order to graduate, but time is against her. Family debts are pressing. She fears she must give up all hopes of an academic career. Yet, without her degree, would she earn enough to provide for her secret daughter's future? Archie Northwood, rich and from a privileged family, suddenly reappears in her life to offer the chance that could save her--the story of his Brazilian great-grandmother. His ancestor was Modernist painter Ana Eça, who, on the verge of stardom in the 1920s, mysteriously vanished from public view forever. Choosing to unveil Ana's story is a complicated proposition for them both. How will they be able to work together to resolve the decades-old mystery when Darcey cannot allow Archie to guess her secret?
Constellations follows Tess Lee and Jack Miller after three years of marriage as they navigate the meaning of love and family over a series of holidays. Tess is a wildly successful and world-famous novelist. Her inspirational books explore our innermost struggles and the human need to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Jack is a former federal agent. After spending decades immersed in a violent world, a residue remains. Both healing from past trauma, together they have finally built the life they wish to live. What will happen to their blissful union when Jack’s childhood family resurfaces? When Tess and Jack visit the Millers for Christmas, how will insecurity, a sense of missed opportunities, and the need for redemption test their relationship? When a terrible accident threatens everything in an instant, will they learn the true meaning of unconditional love? Their loved ones are along for the ride: Omar, Tess’s sarcastic best friend who calls her Butterfly; the female president of the United States, with whom Tess talks politics and bakes cookies; Joe, Jack’s friend from the Bureau who understands the sacrifices he’s made; Bobby and Gina, their younger friends who never fail to lighten the mood; and the Miller family.
Friendship Matters, is a splashy and spicy novel that demonstrates the staying power of friendship.
Meet Saisha (pronounced “say-sha”) who spends her days selling real estate and her nights with sundry men, some otherwise entangled, some not. But to what end?
Her friend Euniqé (pronounced “unique”), a widowed psychologist with her own private practice, has no interest in a love life. She’s quite satisfied with raising her son, Tyree, until she’s confronted with a gentleman who is committed to gaining her time and attention.
Rounding out the trio is Kandace, a stay-at-home mom who has many talents but sacrificed her dreams for her not-so-perfect husband, is raising two beautiful children and has access to buy anything and everything she desires. However, what she desires most can’t be bought.
By turns moving, funny, and inspirational, Friendship Matters is a timeless, charming story about three women who need each other just as much as they need the very air they breathe.
Francesca Bodin has a near-perfect life as an accomplished music teacher and professional flutist living in the Vermont countryside with her husband Ben, and their four-year old daughter, Addie. This ends suddenly when a snowmobiling accident traps the three of them in a frozen lake. Ben, after escaping onto the ice, leaves her and Addie to die.
Francesca believes she sees their dog pull Addie from the lake and drag her into the nearby woods. Desperate to help her daughter, she crawls from the icy waters and follows them. Once she enters the forest, however, she finds herself trapped in a sinister, dream-like world where night never ends, where Addie’s whereabouts remain hidden from her, and where she encounters a group of women who, like Francesca, have been left to die and now seek to unleash their revenge on those who have harmed them. When they have Ben in their sights, Francesca realizes that if she is ever to escape this nightmare and save her daughter, she must first save the husband who abandoned them.
Meet Rebecca, an adorable gal with an intimate secret…
For Rebecca, sex is a joke missing a punchline. No crashing waves. Only pangs of inadequacy. At twenty-eight, shouldn’t she have had one by now? Her snickering ex thought so. His taunts echo in her ears as he rolls out of her bed. Then out of her life.
After enrolling in an unconventional study for women, Rebecca is stunned by the power she holds inside. But her promise to avoid intimacy hits a snag when a handsome neighbor moves across the hall. Their chemistry is electric, but the timing couldn’t be worse!
If he learns her secret, she’ll lose her best chance at love. But if her intimacy lessons fail, she’ll be left eternally broken. Unlovable.
Can Rebecca find the answers she needs to love someone new—and finally love herself?
Finalist Fiction: Women's Fiction 2021 Best Book Awards
1965. Sandy runs away from home to escape her mother’s abusive boyfriend. Becca falls in love with the wrong man. And Faith suffers a devastating attack. With no support and no other options, these three young, unwed women meet at a maternity home hospital in New Orleans where they are expected to relinquish their babies and return home as if nothing transpired.
But such a life-altering event can never be forgotten, and no secret remains buried forever. Twenty-five years later, the women are reunited by a blackmailer, who threatens to expose their secrets and destroy the lives they’ve built. That shattering revelation would shake their very foundations—and reverberate all the way to the White House.
Finalist Fiction: Women's Fiction 2021 Best Book Awards
A mother’s love vs. a doctor’s oath.
Oncologist Emma Blake has dedicated her life to finding a cure for a rare brain cancer. Twenty-five years ago, Emma’s childhood friend Kate died of glioblastoma, and Emma vowed to annihilate the deadly disease. Now, Kate’s father, Ned, is pushing her to work harder to fulfill that promise.
When Emma discovers she’s pregnant, she’s torn between the needs of her family and the demands of her work. While Ned pressures her to do the unthinkable, her husband, Tim, decorates the nursery. Unwilling to abandon her research, Emma attempts to keep both sides of her life in balance.
Emma knows she needs to reconcile her past with her present and walk the fine line between mother and physician. But Ned has a secret, and when Emma discovers what he’s been hiding, the foundation of her world cracks.
Nowhere Near Goodbye is a story of family, failure, and second chances.
Finalist Fiction: Women's Fiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Mom-of-three Sadie Rollins-Lancaster struggles with a crumbling marriage she had hoped to salvage. Though her husband, Theo, initiated the divorce, he's now having a change of heart that's difficult to reconcile as he fights against PTSD demons within. When a chance encounter with a stranger resurrects emotions in Sadie she never expected to feel again, her world is turned upside down. Will Sadie find the courage to shape her own future? Will Theo resolve his internal struggles and win Sadie back?
Rewrite the Stars is an honest, moving portrayal of life and love that reminds us how much of our happiness lies within our own grasp. If you like heartwarming stories about love, loss, and redemption, then you'll love Christina Consolino's debut novel.
Finalist Fiction: Women's Fiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Julie and Dan Holliday's lives are the definition of perfect. They have it all: a million-dollar business, properties (including a gorgeous home), and a dog. Julie Holliday is the perfect wife; she is loving, sensuous, and loyal, with adoration for her husband, yet she is in constant fear that her husband and perfect life is all but a facade on the brink of collapse. She finds a note on her husband's desk and is terrified, as it may confirm her suspicions that Dan may be cheating again! Every time she confronts him, he denies it and calls her crazy. Having had enough and determined to live a life afresh without a cheating husband and paranoia, she sells her business, all of her properties, packs her bags and disappears without a trace. Unbeknownst to her, her chapter with Dan is far from over because love may just have other plans for these two.
Finalist Fiction: Women's Fiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Betrayed by Stella, the sister she adored, Grace Burnette struggles to put her previously well-ordered life back together.
News of Stella’s death in Ecuador propels Grace into a dangerous world of intrigue. Accompanied by the man her mother hired to protect her, Grace confronts her ex-fiance and Stella’s widower. She joins forces with Stella’s lover, Adelmo Balsuto, a man with a dangerous past, to bring her sister’s killers to justice.
Adelmo is more interested in revenge than justice, and Grace must choose how far she will go to settle the score for her sister. An explosive encounter with her sister’s killers brings back a long-buried memory that could destroy her family. The choices Grace makes could cause forgiveness and redemption or despair and destruction.
Finalist Fiction: Women's Fiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Kassie O’Callaghan’s meticulous plans to divorce her emotionally abusive husband, Mike, and move in with Chris, a younger man she met five years ago on a solo vacation in Venice, are disrupted when she finds out Mike has chronic kidney disease—something he’s concealed from her for years. Once again, she postpones her path to freedom—at least, until she pokes around his pajama drawer and discovers his illness is the least of his deceits.
But Kassie is no angel, either. As she struggles to justify her own indiscretions, the secret lives she and Mike have led collide head-on, revealing a tangled web of sex, lies, and DNA. Still, mindful of her vows, Kassie commits to helping her husband find an organ donor. In the process, she uncovers a life-changing secret. Problem is, if she reveals it, her own immorality will be exposed, which means she has an impossible decision to make: Whose life will she save—her husband’s or her own?
