where the writers are
"Books A La Carte"--romance, suspense, heartfelt human drama--titles for all tastes

A MARVELOUS MELANGE OF ROMANCE, SUSPENSE, AND HEARTFELT HUMAN DRAMA!   

 

 The Taker 

The Taker by Alma Katsu 

True love can last an eternity . . . but immortality comes at a price. . . .

On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her . . . despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort. And as she begins to tell her story, a story of enduring love and consummate betrayal that transcends time and mortality, Luke finds himself utterly captivated. Her impassioned account begins at the turn of the nineteenth century in the same small town of St. Andrew, Maine, back when it was a Puritan settlement. Consumed as a child by her love for the son of the town’s founder, Lanny will do anything to be with him forever. But the price she pays is steep—an immortal bond that chains her to a terrible fate for all eternity. And now, two centuries later, the key to her healing and her salvation lies with Dr. Luke Findley. Part historical novel, part supernatural page-turner, The Taker is an unforgettable tale about the power of unrequited love not only to elevate and sustain, but also to blind and ultimately destroy, and how each of us is responsible for finding our own path to redemption     

 

The Reckoning  

The Reckoning by Alma Katsu 

A love triangle spanning 200 years…Alma Katsu takes readers on a breathtaking journey through the landscape of the heart.

Now Alma Katsu delivers the highly anticipated follow-up to her haunting novel about an immortal woman learning firsthand that the heart wants what the heart wants…no matter how high the stakes. Fans of The Taker can finally indulge in their next juicy fix with the second book of the trilogy, The Reckoning. In this gripping, pulse-pounding supernatural sequel, discover what happens to Lanny, Luke, Adair—and Jonathan. The Reckoning picks up where The Taker leaves off, following Lanny on her path to redemption—and creating a whole new level of suspense. T finds Lanore embarking on a new life, having outrun her past and imprisoned her immortal enemy; now all of London is clamoring to see the Victoria & Albert Museum's "mystery" exhibit—Lanny's collections of lost 19th century treasures, including the last precious gift given to her by Jonathan, the man who owns her heart for all eternity. But the portal to her past is thrown open once more, as Adair crashes into the 21st century to hunt down Lanny and exact revenge for her heartless betrayal—the price she must pay for an endless love. he Reckoning   

 

 The Taming of a Scottish Princess 

The Taming of a Scottish Princess by Karen Hawkins 

The mystery of the Hurst Amulet is revealed!

New York Times bestselling author Karen Hawkins pits a world-renowned explorer against his strong-willed assistant as they pursue a long-lost treasure.

A DETERMINED EXPLORER  

When famed Egyptologist Michael Hurst discovers that the infamous Hurst Amulet is hidden in Scotland, he insists his trusted assistant, Miss Jane Smythe-Haughton, accompany him north. Strangely, the usually unflappable Jane seems perturbed by their destination—the mysterious Isle of Barra. A fascinated Michael watches as his staid assistant transforms, revealing intriguing layers of mystery and vulnerability. Could he be about to uncover not one, but two, precious treasures?

A DAUNTLESS PRINCESS

Once her clan’s princess, Jane fled Barra years ago to avoid a forced marriage. Since then, she has made her living as efficient Miss Smythe-Haughton—the perfect (and highly paid) assistant. Now she must confront her secrets . . . including her feelings for her irascible employer, too-handsome-for-his-own-good Michael Hurst.

A PERILOUS PLEASURE

Others are also searching for the missing amulet, however. Can Jane and Michael learn to trust each other in time to solve two riddles: the location of the Hurst Amulet, and the meaning of the vivid passion flaring between them?

 

The Soldier's Wife 

The Soldier's Wife by Joanna Trollope 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LOVE AND DUTY COLLIDE?

DAN RILEY IS A MAJOR IN THE BRITISH ARMY. After a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, he is coming home to the wife and young daughters he adores. He’s up for promotion and his ex-Army grandfather and father couldn’t be prouder. The Rileys are united in support of Dan’s passion for his career. But are they really? His wife, Alexa, has been offered a good teaching job she can’t take because the Army may move the family at any time. Her daughter Isabel hates her boarding school—the only good educational option for Army families—and starts running away. And Dan spends all his time on the base, unable to break the strong bonds forged with his friends in battle. Soon everyone who knows the Rileys is trying to help them save their marriage, but it’s up to Alexa to decide if she can sacrifice her needs and those of her family to support Dan’s commitment to his work. With her trademark intelligence and grace, Joanna Trollope illuminates the complexities of modern life in this story of a family striving to balance duty and ambition.

 

    
Jasmine Nights 

Jasmine Nights by Julia Gregson 

The author of the bestselling East of the Sun returns with a lush novel about a young singer who is recruited by the British Secret Service during the height of World War II.

At twenty-three, Saba Tarcan is a talented but naïve singer who dreams of being more than just another act playing in small clubs and talent contests in Wales. So when the opportunity arises to join a group that will entertain the troops in the Middle East, she jumps at the chance. She must leave behind her overprotective family and cut short a burgeoning love affair with a young fighter pilot, Dom, whom she met when she went to sing in the hospital where he was recovering from burns after his plane had been shot down. When Dom follows Saba to Cairo, the difficulties of combining their two intense lives are compounded. Dom, addicted to flying, refuses to stay grounded, while Saba finds she’s suited for life on the stage and on the road. When it turns out that Saba is also uniquely qualified for a secret mission, she is asked by the Secret Service to spy on a Turkish impresario and his associates. But it’s a mission that will jeopardize not only her own safety, but also the love of her life…Jasmine Nights is a powerful story of danger, beauty, and love set amidst some of the most exquisite and dangerous cities of the Middle East.  

 

 The Light Between Oceans 

The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman 

A captivating, beautiful, and stunningly accomplished debut novel—the story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who make one devastating choice that forever changes two worlds.

In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby. Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the dead man and the infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim the child as their own and name her Lucy, but a rift begins to grow between them. When Lucy is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world…and one of them is desperate to find her lost baby. M.L. Stedman’s extraordinarily compelling characters, still trying to make sense of life in the wake of so much death in the war, are imperfect people seeking to find their north star in a world of incomprehensible complexity.

 

The Seduction of Lady X 

The Seduction of Lady X by Julia London 

The would-be Earl of Ashwood sets his romantic sights on a forbidden prize in the enchanting third novel from Julia London’s addictively sexy new series.

The surprising news that dashing steward Harrison Tolly, illegitimate son of the Earl of Ashwood, is the rightful heir to his father’s estate comes at a most inopportune time. With a wedding on the horizon and a baby on the way, a new life of privilege and prestige would be a blessing but for one problem: his heart belongs to another woman. Harrison keeps his desires for his employer’s wife, Lady Olivia Carey, so hidden that even she does not know of his devotion. Her callous husband, Marquis Carey, went into a rampage after Olivia’s troublesome younger sister returned from her tour of Spain pregnant, and Harrison impulsively stepped in to save the entire family from scandal. Now, like Olivia, he is trapped in a loveless arrangement. When a tragic accident claims the marquis’ life soon thereafter, can Harrison seize his chance and cast aside one sister for another? Or will doing so expose the Carey family’s darkest secret—and ruin his only chance to win Olivia’s heart?

 

Shelter 

Shelter by Frances Greenslade

For sisters Maggie and Jenny growing up in the Pacific mountains in the early 1970s, life felt nearly perfect. Seasons in their tiny rustic home were peppered with wilderness hikes, building shelters from pine boughs and telling stories by the fire with their doting father and beautiful, adventurous mother. But at night, Maggie—a born worrier—would count the freckles on her father’s weathered arms, listening for the peal of her mother’s laughter in the kitchen, and never stop praying to keep them all safe from harm. Then her worst fears come true: Not long after Maggie’s tenth birthday, their father is killed in a logging accident, and a few months later, their mother abruptly drops the girls at a neighbor’s house, promising to return. She never does. With deep compassion and sparkling prose, Frances Greenslade’s mesmerizing debut takes us inside the devastation and extraordinary strength of these two girls as they are propelled from the quiet, natural freedom in which they were raised to a world they can’t begin to fathom. Even as the sisters struggle to understand how their mother could abandon them, they keep alive the hope that she is fighting her way back to the daughters who adore her and who need her so desperately. Heartbreaking and lushly imagined, Shelter celebrates the love between two sisters and the complicated bonds of family. It is an exquisitely written ode to sisters, mothers, daughters, and to a woman’s responsibility to herself and those she loves.