RECOMMENDED READS
DANGEROUS PLAY, Elise Hart Kipness
From the author of Lights Out comes sports reporter Kate Green’s next harrowing story, where a famous former teammate is found murdered, and the only way to close the case is to open up old wounds.
After a tumultuous murder case that almost cost more than her job, sports reporter Kate Green is back on assignment covering women’s Olympic soccer. Between her experience with athletic stardom and days playing with Savannah Baker, head coach of the USA team, Kate is sure to get the story that will reestablish her career.
She just didn’t expect that story to involve murder.
When famous jewelry designer Alexa Kane is found dead in the locker room, Kate’s promising future screeches to a halt as her past resurfaces. Alexa played with Kate and Savannah on the U.S. Youth National Team, but there was no reason for her to be at the stadium now.
Kate’s investigation puts her in close contact with her estranged father, an NYPD detective who has his own past to answer for. As their secrets collide, Kate will have to decide which ones to keep—and which ones to reveal to stop the killer.
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NOT YOURS TO KEEP, Zelly Ruskin
Called a “sensational debut” by Rea Frey, this psychological thriller delves into themes of reproductive rights and healthcare, confronting the complexities that define family—or the risks that lose it all.
Billie Campbell, a Massachusetts adoption specialist grappling with fertility issues, dreams of adopting a baby, but not just any baby—her pregnant client’s baby. While her longing threatens to send her down a dark path, her husband, Tyler, is keeping secrets: he’s full of doubts about becoming a father, and he’s also trying to figure out who is sending him upsetting anonymous texts and photos. On the other side of town, Anne, a woman scarred by childhood abuse, obsesses with a second chance at becoming a family with the two people she regrets ever having let go of: the baby she gave up for adoption twenty years ago and the man of her dreams.
Their lives become entangled when the client’s newborn is abducted, and Billie becomes a prime suspect.
Amid the chaos unleashed by the abduction, Tyler uncovers a link between the person tormenting him and the abduction—but now Billie has disappeared too. The race to find both her and the baby is on; but will they find them before it’s too late?
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Elizabeth’s Mountain, Lucille Guarino
“A wonderful, moving story about love and loss, focusing on two generations: grandmother and granddaughter.” -Marie W. Watts, author of the award-winning trilogy, Warriors for Equal Rights
A beloved home. Matters of the heart. Can an elderly woman find the key to saving her precious heritage?
Asheville, North Carolina. Elizabeth has a dilemma. After celebrating a milestone birthday, the feisty ninety-year-old anxiously contemplates a developer’s lucrative offer for her Blue Ridge Mountain farmhouse. Worried her adult children will pressure her to sell, the lively senior recalls how her journey to this forever home began back in the 50s when she met the man who would become her husband…
Present day. Amanda yearns to stop wasting time. After ending a dead-end, three-year relationship and moving in with her spirited grandmother, the thirty-four-year-old nurse sees her dream of marriage and kids vanishing. But when she meets a handsome widower at a hospital summit, she cautiously lets down her walls.
As Elizabeth’s memories take her back to when she was a hopeful young woman, she reveals how a horrific accident led to the ER and a charming doctor. While Amanda fears the worst when she overhears the enigmatic man she’s fallen for talking on the phone with another woman.
Do both women’s stories lead to a grand legacy and a lifetime of love?
In an emotional rollercoaster that interweaves the two women’s chance at a future, their parallel romances illustrate the power of resilience and hope despite heartbreak. And as one story comes to its twilight years while the other is just beginning, readers will fall hard for this poignant inheritance of happiness.
Elizabeth’s Mountain is an enchanting women’s fiction novel. If you like relatable characters, dual timelines, and multi-generational romance, then you’ll adore Lucille Guarino’s touching tale.
Buy Elizabeth’s Mountain to believe in tomorrow!
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SON OF A BASQUE, Deborah Driggs
After the sudden death of his father, young Mark Vergara, the oldest son of immigrant parents, was thrust into the role of principal breadwinner, working hard in the beet fields of Colorado to support his family. After joining the Army Air Corps and flying dozens of combat missions, he bore the physical and emotional scars of his time in the service, yet he was satisfied he had fulfilled his father’s final wish that he do right by his family. From World War II to the Vietnam War, this tale of a military man who was also a devoted family man is based on the author’s own experiences as a proud son of immigrant parents, a distinguished soldier, a loving husband and father, and a loyal friend.
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From a cognitive psychologist, a trusted voice among millennial women, a call to action for readers everywhere to enter their true self-care era that will nourish and sustain them.
Toxic self-care culture tells women that bubble baths and Botox are the route to happiness and fulfillment. Though these types of self-care can fill us up in the moment, they cannot provide long-lasting nourishment. They are empty calories—the potato chips of self-care. And from them, we can never get full. In the same way, we will not feel fulfilled by reaching for the empty calorie “self-care” trends that toxic, capitalistic self-care culture sells us. To fill our exhausted bodies and weary minds, to live fully and authentically, we need the kind of self-care that nourishes.
Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips is a call to action for women everywhere to reach instead for nourishing self-care. Though this may sound easy in theory, many women struggle to carry it out. We struggle because we have forgotten how to reach. Our training as little girls taught us that it is polite to be grateful for what we get. To say thank you but I’m full when offered second helpings. To accept the potato chips we are given because there are people on this planet who have none, so how dare we ask for more?
Through the narrative voice of a psychologist who is also an exhausted millennial mom trying to keep it all together, Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips explores courageous self-care in the areas of marriage, motherhood, family dynamics, friendships, career life, and mental health. The author’s personal stories range from the hilariously-yet-painfully relatable to the resonantly heart-rending. Each of these stories—the beautiful, the sparkling, the sad and the chaotic—teach women something about what it means to reach. What it means to stop settling for potato chips and to instead grasp for the things that truly fulfill. Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips is a mindset—a way of embracing and stepping into all of our divine, feminine power.
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THE SHUTDOWN LIST, Sharon Dukett
“Riveting and timely,… full of intriguing mysteries and characters who breathe with life and fire.”
— Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassins
People are disappearing. Anita may be next. But first, they have to find her.
Anita Forester witnesses her husband, Julian, being dragged away by police during a protest. A stranger warns her to flee. Still reeling from the loss of her adult son only two years earlier, Anita embarks on a perilous journey to find her husband, unaware of the crucial secret he has kept from her.
While piecing together the trail to her missing husband, Anita uncovers a conspiracy. She intercepts a hard drive containing priceless data sought by a powerful fossil fuel magnate with secrets of his own—secrets he would kill to protect.
Set against a backdrop of climate activism, The Shutdown List is filled with twists and turns, corruption and betrayal. Anita must fight to stay alive and find Julian before he disappears forever.
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Cold War in a Hot Kitchen: A memoir of mid-century Melbourne, Margaret Ann Spence
The 1950s. Boring?
Hardly.
An influx of European refugees, stirrings of feminism, and the threat of a third world war were remaking Australia. As the Cold War chilled, inside a Melbourne house a young girl was caught in the crossfire of domestic conflict amid the clashing political and social values of her autocratic grandmother, her self-denying mother, and her glamorous aunt; three women who presented very different models of womanhood.
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Write & Sell A Well-Seasoned Romance, Stella Fosse
The complete roadmap to craft and promote late-life love stories. Covers every aspect from writing to marketing and selling.
Launch your author journey in late-life Romance.
Half of Romance readers are over fifty, yet few Romance novels reflect their vivid lives and experience.
*Write & Sell a Well-Seasoned Romance* is your roadmap to craft and share a vibrant late-life love story.
Build an enticing story that meets genre and reader expectations.
Master proven editing techniques to polish your final product. Learn how to choose the best publishing pathway to success for your novel.
Finally, build and execute a marketing and publicity plan tailored to your strengths.
Your adventures as a late-life Romance author begin here.
“Stella Fosse lays out why women at midlife and beyond are ideally positioned to portray the inner and outer lives of others like them in ways that surprise and delight.”
— Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism
“Wow! What a book. I’m more than impressed – I’m blown away by how comprehensive, clear and inviting it is.”
— Joan Price, author of Naked at Our Age
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Paranormal Perspectives: A Jungian Understanding of Transcendent Experiences, Susam Plunket
This book will introduce you to yourself in a new way. It will transform how you thnk about yourself and help you recognize your own self-limitimg beliefs about who you are and can be. It is the author’s story but it is also all of our story.
The book moves through time from right after World War II, when the author was born, through the fifties, sixties and seventies as she grows up, eventually becoming a Jungian psychologist in the eighties. You have a front-row seat as you travel through the decades right up to the present witnessing Susan’s sometimes harrowwing but always wondrous experiences with the invisible world. Astral travel, angel visits, travel to the life between life realm, encounters with ghosts, conversations with the dead, including Jung, out of body experiences, possession by a dark being, dream realities, and visits to other dimensions, are some of the things she will share with you in A Jungain Understanding of Transcendent Experiences.
By 2024 Susan realizes that the nature of reality is One Consciousness supporting all of us, or as Nobel Prize winning quantum phyisicist, Erwin Schrodinger, put it: “The number of minds in the universe is One.” We all have access to this Mind. This realization offers us freedom to move beyond hopelessness and negative thinking, to harness the power of this Mind to think the thoughts which create the experiences we desire. What we think, we create.
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Who Loves You Best, Marilyn Simon Rothstein
A woman drops everything to spend more time with her grandchild, only to discover new truths about herself. A humorous, heartfelt, feel-good novel from the author of Crazy to Leave You.
For Jodi Wexler, a Florida doctor with a flourishing practice, only one thing’s missing: the chance to spend more time getting to know her eight-year-old granddaughter, Macallan.
When Jodi’s restauranteur daughter asks her to watch Macallan in the Berkshires while she takes care of some business out of town, Jodi can’t say yes fast enough. Neither Jodi’s podiatric patients nor her just-fired, suddenly retired husband can keep her away. But when Jodi arrives, she discovers she’s not the only grandma at Lisa’s house. Lisa’s mother-in-law, Di—a hard-nosed real estate agent—has moved into the house. What’s more, there’s Grannie Annie, the twenty-seven-year-old girlfriend of Lisa’s oddball father-in-law. They’re not the only surprises. Lisa’s marriage is faltering even as her new restaurant is taking off.
As the competition for Macallan’s attention among the three “grandmas” increases, Lisa drops a bomb about her life that changes everything. Under pressure, and determined to help her daughter, Jodi must choose her next step. Her decision surprises everyone—Jodi, most of all.
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Night Of The Hawk: Poems, Lauren Martin
When I have wandered long enough what am I still beholden to?
Ifá. Nature. Illness. Love. Loss. Misogyny. Aging. Africa. Our wounded planet. In this sweeping yet intensely personal collection, Lauren Martin tells the untold stories of the marginalized, the abused, the ill, the disabled—the different. Inspired by her life’s experiences, including the isolation she has suffered as a result both of living with chronic illness and having devoted herself to a religion outside the mainstream, these poems explore with raw vulnerability and unflinching honesty what it is to live apart—even as one yearns for connection.
But Night of the Hawk is no lament; it is powerful, reverential, sometimes humorous, often defiant—“Oh heat me and fill me / I rise above lines”—and full of wisdom. Visceral and stirring, the poems in this collection touch on vastly disparate subjects but are ultimately unified in a singular quest: to inspire those who read them toward kindness, compassion, and questioning.
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MADE FOR MISTLETOE, Nan Reinhardt
This Christmas he has big plans until he meets a beautiful distraction….
Army reservist Cameron Walker loves everything about the holidays in River’s Edge—celebrating with his big family and carving out more time to work on his custom design furniture in his studio. But when he meets a visiting artist and niece of a family friend, he’s eager to break his work plans for play. He knows first-hand life’s short.
Teacher and artist Harper Gaines is bowled over by the handsome and friendly finish carpenter she meets during her vacation. His admiration for her art and his enthusiasm for life light her up, and remind her of how much she’s been missing since her soldier husband’s death. But when she discovers Cam’s also a soldier, she retreats, unable to risk another loss.
Cam has never felt such a strong connection, and he won’t give up without a fight. But will Cam’s persistence and the magic of Christmas be enough to convince Harper to take a chance on them?
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DEAR BOBBY: MY GRIEF JOURNEY, Diane Papalia Zappa
In Dear Bobby, Diane Papalia Zappa describes the loss of her beloved husband after three short years of marriage. She talks about her own grieving process and outlines ways that can help others cope. The centerpiece of this book is a collection of several “Dear Bobby” letters that helped Diane process her grief and reestablish her relationship with her husband. She offers several writing prompts to encourage readers to begin their own writing journey. Diane also includes a helpful selection of resources—books about death, grief, and the afterlife; films with afterlife themes; and support groups for those who are grieving.
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A Room of Their Own: Home Museums of Extraordinary Women Around the World, Marlene Wagman-Geller
Explore historic homes of famous women from around the world and learn about their impactful lives in this informative guide.
Add to your travel bucket list with A Room of Their Own, the history guide to famous ladies and their estates. Experience the impact of these international residents on history through the artifacts that they left behind.
Experience the daily lives of feminist icons. Ever wonder what the most famous women in history did in their spare time? From bestselling author Marlene Wagman-Geller comes a women history book and travel memoir about the home museums of women who helped shape history. From fe-male authors, artists, and public figures, A Room of Their Own has something for everyone want-ing to know more about who these legendary ladies were.
Connect with relics of the past. Full of historical facts and stories from thirty-seven different locations around the world, this travel memoir also shares something that can only be found in these historic homes: the preservation of their personal legacy. Each chapter visualizes the emotional journey these residents lived through the personal items left behind. Featuring unknown stories about Frida Kahlo; Lizzie Borden; Diana, Princess of Wales; and more, history lovers will reconnect with these famous women in history as real people with everyday lives.
Explore these home museums of famous women in history. The Betsy Ross Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, The United Kingdom; Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City, Mexico; Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Anne of Green Gables House, Prince Edward Island, Canada; Carry A. Nation, Medicine Lodge, Kansas; and more.
Inside, you’ll also find:
- How these home museums came to be
- Unique furniture, photographs, letters, and other artifacts
- History trivia about the daily lives of these famous women
If you liked books such as All the Beauty in the World, Women in White Coats, or Unabashed Women, you’ll love A Room of Their Own.
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THE EMPRESS OF COOKE COUNTY, Elizabeth Bass Parman
“Get ready to laugh! Elizabeth Bass Parman is a true Southern storyteller. I couldn’t have loved it more.” —Fannie Flagg, New York Times bestselling author
Posey Jarvis knows she’s the rightful empress of Cooke County . . . She just needs to make everyone else realize it too.
Thirty-eight-year-old Posey Jarvis is the self-appointed “empress” of rural Spark in Cooke County, Tennessee. She spends her days following every word about her idol and look-alike Jackie Kennedy, avoiding her stalwart husband Vern, and struggling to control her newly defiant daughter Callie Jane—all while sneaking nips of gin. When Posey unexpectedly inherits a derelict mansion from her quirky old aunt Milbrey, she finagles her way into hosting her high school’s twentieth reunion there. She cares nothing about seeing her classmates, but she cares deeply about seeing the love of her life, a man who dumped her nineteen years ago. Possums are nesting in the parlor and the stench of cat urine permeates the sunroom, but she must be ready for the big day, even if she has to do the work herself.
Eighteen-year-old Callie Jane finds herself accidentally engaged and is panicking about her fast-approaching wedding. She’s also had enough of her domineering mother. Even though she loves her father, the idea of working at his emporium for the rest of her life just makes her . . . so sad. She longs to escape from her mother, her job, her upcoming wedding, and the creepy Peeping Tom terrorizing the town. She dreams of leaving everything she’s ever known in her rearview mirror and starting over in California. But when her life has been mapped out for her from birth, how can she break free?
Set in a gossipy small town during the turbulent 1960s and full of Southern charm and unforgettable characters, The Empress of Cooke County is a novel about found family, what it means to be loved, and how being true to yourself can have life-altering consequences.
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DEAD EGYPTIANS, Del Blackwater
“Dead Egyptians takes the reader on a vast, rollicking ride through history, reincarnation, romance and more… ” –Susan Martell Huebner, author She Thought the Door Was Locked
In Egypt, all things are possible. So discovers Albion Stanley, a recent Cambridge graduate and brilliant linguist, newly arrived in Cairo in 1902. Albion sees the unseen, including ghosts. It is a less than comfortable reality, which he tends to with copious amounts of whiskey and numerous other vices.
Also in Cairo is Aleister Crowley, the famed occultist. Aleister is a dangerous man, but not an unsympathetic one and never a dull one. Together, they discover the world of dead Egyptians, some of whom are older than the pyramids.
Dead Egyptians have a lot to say. They are deeply unsatisfied with the state of modern Egypt, yet, for all their wisdom and power, they have limitations. As a Seer, Albion proves indispensable to both Crowley and the dead Egyptians.
Dead Egyptians transports the reader into a glittering turn of the century Cairo, while also addressing the atrocities of colonialism. It is hedonistic, while also exploring the complex world of Ancient Egyptian religious thought. It is historically accurate down to the fabrics, while remaining fantastical at its core.
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THE LIFESTYLE, Deanna Lynn Sletten
Her life was picture perfect…until it wasn’t.
What happens when a twist of fate makes all your dreams come true, and then you watch your life unravel before you?
Eight years ago, Kylie Madison was a new mother with a baby who rarely slept, even at eight months old. Exhausted and feeling isolated as a stay-home mom while her husband, Jordon, worked twelve-hour shifts, she opened up to her few friends on Instagram late one night, asking if there were any other tired moms out there struggling. To her surprise, many women answered her. After that night, she began to share her struggles, successes, and parenting dilemmas, and her following grew as other women feel a connection with her. Before Kylie knew it, she’s become an influencer and companies are willing to pay her to promote their products. Slowly, her life becomes her job and the earnings are amazing. But every silver lining has a dark cloud on the horizon.
Eight years later, Kylie is successful and on the verge of becoming a lifestyle guru with her own television show, but her past sneaks up to threaten to take it all away. Her children hate being a part of their mother’s brand, and her husband is pulling away from her. Then, the girl who once worked for her as a nanny has written a tell-all book about Kylie and her family, exposing secrets about their lifestyle that will ruin her. And there’s nothing Kylie can do to stop her. Or is there?
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CHARMED, Lorraine Zago Rosenthal
Charmed “addresses a range of difficult issues” and is “engaging…full of drama…a compelling love story with flawed characters and complex family dynamics.”
~Kirkus Reviews
Prisca Weld expected to become Mrs. Nick Fontaine before any of her friends walked down the aisle. Nick worked for her father’s lucrative construction business, and he and Prisca planned to start a family in her upscale Brooklyn neighborhood. But she’s heading into her late twenties, and she hasn’t achieved her most cherished goals.
Years ago, Nick abruptly abandoned Prisca and ran home to Las Vegas, leaving her with nothing but questions about what went wrong between them. Since then, she has struggled to forget him, and she hasn’t found anyone she can love as much as she loved Nick. All the best men seem to be out of reach—including Tim Aldrich, a family friend who has recently returned to New York after launching his career in California. Prisca has been drawn to Tim since they were kids, although she believes her attraction to him is as futile now as it was then.
But she still hopes to fulfill her dreams, and she also wishes she could resolve the endless conflict between her traditional father and her unconventional brother, whose childhood scars from his and Prisca’s parents’ contentious divorce are still fresh. Prisca has wounds of her own, and she tries to heal them while attempting to unravel old secrets that have been hidden for too long.
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THE FORGOTTEN ITALIAN RESTAURANT, Barbara Josselsohn
Italy, 1943. The girl rushes down the winding streets, tucking the handwritten menu into the wicker basket and thinking only of the code hidden on the delicate paper. Will anyone forgive her for what she’s about to do to save the man she loves?
Present day. Arriving in sun-drenched Caccipulia, Callie grips the faded restaurant menu in trembling hands. Found hidden in her family home, she is certain it will lead her to the truth about her grandmother’s life in Italy during World War Two. Why did her Nonna run away from this beautiful small town, never to return? Lost and alone in the world, could it help Callie understand who she is?
Local café owner Oliver’s dark brown eyes light up when he sees the menu. During the war, one brave family secretly fed desperate Jewish families hidden in safe houses through the village. Callie’s heart soars at the thought that her own dear grandmother was involved.
Diving into the town’s history during long walks down cobbled streets, Callie begins to feel at home under Oliver’s soft gaze. She wonders if she could build a life here with him. Until they push aside magenta flowers on a monument at the heart of the village, and uncover a secret that changes everything…
A grave mistake was made one dark night as the Nazis stalked the village, putting the whole town in terrible danger. When Callie finds out what her grandmother did, will it change the way Oliver feels about her? Will she stay and right the wrongs of the past, or be forced to leave Italy too, just like her Nonna?
A heartbreaking love story that will sweep you away to sun-drenched Italian vineyards to watch hope and bravery prevail in the darkest days of war. For fans of Kristin Hannah, Victoria Hislop and Fiona Valpy.
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“A straightforward and compassionate guide to engaging in more effective conversation.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Winner of 11 awards in its first year including: the 2023 PenCraft Best Book Award for Nonfiction, 2023 Nonprofit Authors Association Silver Award, 2023 Readers’ Favorite Bronze Medal Award for Business, the 2023 Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Awards Gold Award for Communications, and the 2023 PenCraft Award for Literary Excellence.
Clear communication requires the courage to confront the psychological blocks that hold you back. Learn how to become a more fearless and peerless communicator.
Raising your game as a communicator is one of the best ways to make a difference in the world, but it takes courage to open up to others and invite others to open up to you. As a lifelong communication coach, Michelle Gladieux has discovered four sneaky obstacles that can keep you from becoming the best communicator you can be:
- Hiding—Fear of exposing your supposed weaknesses
- Defining—Putting too much stock into assumptions and being quick to judge
- Rationalizing—Using “being realistic” to shield yourself from taking chances, engaging in conflict, or doing other scary but potentially rewarding actions
- Settling—Stopping at “good enough” instead of aiming for something better in your interactions
These challenges all have something in common. They require taking risks—to reveal yourself, question your beliefs, take a leap of faith, or move out of your comfort zone. Each chapter includes a real-world practice called a Pro Move and an exercise, both carefully crafted to help you overcome hang-ups and take more joy in communicating.
Courageous communication requires self-knowledge, practice, and a desire to grow. It is a full-body, full-mind, and full-heart effort. This book is like having a caring, expert coach along with you for the journey.
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