Download or read book A Fall of Marigolds written by Susan Meissner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful scarf connects two women touched by tragedy in this compelling, emotional novel from the author of As Bright as Heaven and The Last Year of the War. September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries...and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she’s made. What she learns could devastate her—or free her. September 2011. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone. Then a long-lost photograph appears in a national magazine, and she is forced to relive the terrible day her husband died in the collapse of the World Trade Towers...the same day a stranger reached out and saved her. But a chance reconnection and a century-old scarf may open Taryn’s eyes to the larger forces at work in her life. “[Meissner] creates two sympathetic, relatable characters that readers will applaud. Touching and inspirational.”—Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book The Shape of Mercy written by Susan Meissner and published by WaterBrook Press. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transcribing the journal entries of a victim of the Salem witch trials, Lauren realizes that the secrets of Mercy's story extend beyond the pages of her diary, and forces her to take a startling new look at her own life.

Download or read book A Bridge Across the Ocean written by Susan Meissner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wartime intrigue spans the lives of three women—past and present—in this emotional novel from the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War. February, 1946. World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Résistance spy. Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly-held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom. When the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark... Present day. Facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary at the request of an old friend. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a seventy-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides—and will ultimately lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings. CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED

Download or read book As Bright as Heaven written by Susan Meissner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War comes a novel set during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, telling the story of a family reborn through loss and love. In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town, came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters—Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa—a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish Flu reaches the shores of America. As the pandemic claims more than twelve thousand victims in their adopted city, they find their lives left with a world that looks nothing like the one they knew. But even as they lose loved ones, they take in a baby orphaned by the disease who becomes their single source of hope. Amidst the tragedy and challenges, they learn what they cannot live without—and what they are willing to do about it. As Bright as Heaven is the compelling story of a mother and her daughters who find themselves in a harsh world not of their making, which will either crush their resolve to survive or purify it.

Download or read book Stars Over Sunset Boulevard written by Susan Meissner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this novel from the acclaimed author of A Bridge Across the Ocean and The Last Year of the War, two women working in Hollywood during its Golden Age discover the joy and heartbreak of true friendship. Los Angeles, Present Day. When an iconic hat worn by Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind ends up in Christine McAllister’s vintage clothing boutique by mistake, her efforts to return it to its owner take her on a journey more enchanting than any classic movie.... Los Angeles, 1938. Violet Mayfield sets out to reinvent herself in Hollywood after her dream of becoming a wife and mother falls apart, and lands a job on the film-set of Gone With the Wind. There, she meets enigmatic Audrey Duvall, a once-rising film star who is now a fellow secretary. Audrey’s zest for life and their adventures together among Hollywood’s glitterati enthrall Violet...until each woman’s deepest desires collide. What Audrey and Violet are willing to risk, for themselves and for each other, to ensure their own happy endings will shape their friendship, and their lives, far into the future. CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED

Download or read book The Nature of Fragile Things written by Susan Meissner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed. Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear. From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.

Download or read book Blue Heart Blessed written by Susan Meissner and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After being left at the altar, Daisy Murien opens a secondhand wedding dress boutique, where a retired Episcopal priest blesses the tiny, blue satin heart she sews into each gown, but when the priest falls ill, Daisy begins to understand why she has never sold her own dress.

Download or read book Twice Upon a Marigold written by Jean Ferris and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2009-04-06 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Full of zany humor, this sequel to "Once Upon a Marigold" continues the story of Christian and Marigold, who are living happily ever after now that Queen Olympia has gone--or has she?

Download or read book Beneath the Marigolds written by Emily C. Whitson and published by CamCat Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Playing on our universal fascination with reality TV, Emily Whitson’s Beneath the Marigolds is the Bachelor(ette) gone terribly wrong. Reese Marigold saved Ann Stone from a life of addiction by introducing Ann to AA and serving as her sponsor in recovery. Despite their differences—Reese is a hopeless romantic, while Ann is a no-nonsense attorney—the women remain close ten years later. So when Reese goes missing after attending Last Chance, an exclusive singles’ retreat off the coast of Hawaii, Ann infiltrates the retreat. Quickly, Ann realizes there’s more to Last Chance than meets the eye. With its extravagant clothes, never-ending interviews, and bizarre dates, Ann begins to suspect the retreat is a front for a reality dating show. Could Reese be safe and sound, keeping a low profile until the premier, or did something more sinister occur? As Ann traces Reese’s last known movements, partakes in the unusual “journey,” and meets the other attendees who all have something to hide, she jeopardizes her career, her sanity, and her life to find her missing friend. Told from the perspective of both Ann and Reese, Beneath the Marigolds is a fast-paced thriller that explores friendship, women in recovery, and the traditional marriage path idealized by today’s numerous dating and relationship reality shows.

Download or read book A Sound Among the Trees written by Susan Meissner and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A house shrouded in time. A line of women with a heritage of loss. As a young bride, Susannah Page was rumored to be a Civil War spy for the North, a traitor to her Virginian roots. Her great-granddaughter Adelaide, the current matriarch of Holly Oak, doesn’t believe that Susannah’s ghost haunts the antebellum mansion looking for a pardon, but rather the house itself bears a grudge toward its tragic past. When Marielle Bishop marries into the family and is transplanted from the arid west to her husband’s home, it isn’t long before she is led to believe that the house she just settled into brings misfortune to the women who live there. With Adelaide’s richly peppered superstitions and deep family roots at stake, Marielle must sort out the truth about Susannah Page and Holly Oak— and make peace with the sacrifices she has made for love.

Download or read book Marigold written by Troy James Weaver and published by . This book was released on 2016-03-11 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thirty-something floral salesman searches for reasons to keep living. "Marigold is a hundred haikus of loneliness, pages torn from Baudelaire's dream journal, the suicide note as high art. Forget your dime-a-dozen writers on the New York Times bestseller list; here is an authentic voice crying out from the American darkness." --Kevin Maloney, author of Cult of Loretta "Beautiful, foul, and brief, this potent roman A clef more than earns its title. Grim, yet ultimately hopeful in its own twisted way. Weaver is one of my favorite writers working today, and his ear and rhythm are in full effect in Marigold." --J David Osborne, author of Black Gum "Marigold is a no-bullshit portrait of 21st century American loneliness. It's a small epic on the mysteries of alienation and self-doubt. Weaver is the poet-laureate of Midwestern absurdity with a heart a mile wide He is a writer with great powers of empathy and devastating sadness. . . a refreshingly honest revelation for these idiotic times we live in." --Michael Bible, author of Sophia "If the ultimate goal of literature is to connect human beings, Marigold lives up to its highest standards." --Benoit LeliEvre, Dead End Follies

Download or read book Once Upon a Marigold written by Jean Ferris and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2004 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this witty spoof of fairy tales, Christian, a commoner, falls for Princess Marigold, and it's up to him to untwist an odd love triangle and foil a scheming queen who wants to take over the kingdom.

Download or read book Lady in Waiting written by Susan Meissner and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love is a choice you make every day. Content in her comfortable marriage of twenty-two years, Jane Lindsay never expected to watch her husband, Brad, pack his belongings and walk out the door of their Manhattan home. But when it happens, she feels powerless to stop him, or the course of events that follow Brad’s departure. Jane finds an old ring in a box of relics from a British jumble sale and discovers a Latin inscription in the band along with just one recognizable word: Jane. Feeling an instant connection to the mysterious ring bearing her namesake, Jane begins a journey to learn more about the ring—and perhaps about herself. ~ In the sixteenth-century, Lucy Day becomes the dressmaker to Lady Jane Grey, an innocent young woman whose fate seems to be controlled by a dangerous political and religious climate, one threatening to deny her true love and pursuit of her own interests. As the stories of both Janes dovetail through the journey of one ring, it becomes clear that each woman has far more influence over her life than she once imagined. It all comes down to the choices each makes despite the realities they face.

Download or read book The Last Year of the War written by Susan Meissner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and As Bright as Heaven comes a novel about a German American teenager whose life changes forever when her immigrant family is sent to an internment camp during World War II. In 1943, Elise Sontag is a typical American teenager from Iowa—aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences. But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her. The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we’ve always been is called into question.

Download or read book The Folded Earth written by Anuradha Roy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the widely acclaimed author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a powerful and triumphantly beautiful novel set in contemporary India, about a young woman forging a new life in the foothills of the Himalayas. LONGLISTED FOR THE 2011 MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE HINDU LITERARY PRIZE FOR BEST FICTION 2011 With her debut novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, Anuradha Roy’s exquisite storytelling instantly won readers’ hearts around the world, and the novel was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. Now, Roy has returned with another masterpiece that is already earning international prize attention, an evocative and deeply moving tale of a young woman making a new life for herself amid the foothills of the Himalaya. Desperate to leave a private tragedy behind, Maya abandons herself to the rhythms of the little village, where people coexist peacefully with nature. But all is not as it seems, and she soon learns that no refuge is remote enough to keep out the modern world. When power-hungry politicians threaten her beloved mountain community, Maya finds herself caught between the life she left behind and the new home she is determined to protect. Elegiac, witty, and profound by turns, and with a tender love story at its core, The Folded Earth brims with the same genius and love of language that made An Atlas of Impossible Longing an international success and confirms Anuradha Roy as a major literary talent.

Download or read book Ladies of the House written by Lauren Edmondson and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in high-society Georgetown, an irresistible family drama about two sisters and the public scandal that just may lead them to rewrite the rules... Named a Best Book of the Month by Good Morning America, Bustle, Popsugar, BookBub, and Frolic “A stellar novel that celebrates sisterhood and the way women can step out of flawed men’s shadows. I delighted in every page.” —Amy Meyerson, bestselling author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays and The Imperfects No surprise is a good surprise. At least according to thirty-four-year-old Daisy Richardson. So when it’s revealed in dramatic fashion that her esteemed father had been involved in a public scandal before his untimely death, Daisy’s life becomes complicated—and fast. For one, the Richardsons must now sell the family home in Georgetown they can no longer afford, and Daisy’s mother is holding on with an iron grip. Her younger sister, Wallis, is ready to move on to bigger and better things but falls fast and hard for the most inconvenient person possible. And then there’s Atlas, Daisy’s best friend. She’s always wished they could be more, but now he’s writing an exposé on the one subject she’s been desperate to avoid: her father. Daisy’s plan is to maintain a low profile as she works to keep her family intact amid social exile, public shaming, and quickly dwindling savings. But the spotlight always seems to find the Richardsons, and when another twist in the scandal comes to light, Daisy must confront the consequences of her continued silence and summon the courage to stand up and accept the power of her own voice. “I was absolutely charmed by Ladies of the House. A wonderful debut.” —Allison Winn Scotch, bestselling author of Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing *Don't miss Wedding of the Season, Lauren Edmondson's next family drama set in Newport, RI. On sale in February 2023 and available now to preorder!

Download or read book Secrets of a Charmed Life written by Susan Meissner and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of A Bridge Across the Ocean and The Last Year of the War journeys from the present day to World War II England, as two sisters are separated by the chaos of wartime... Current day, Oxford, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant, eager to pursue her vision of a perfect life, interviews Isabel McFarland just when the elderly woman is ready to give up secrets about the war that she has kept for decades...beginning with who she really is. What Kendra receives from Isabel is both a gift and a burden—one that will test her convictions and her heart. 1940s, England. As Hitler wages an unprecedented war against London’s civilian population, hundreds of thousands of children are evacuated to foster homes in the rural countryside. But even as fifteen-year-old Emmy Downtree and her much younger sister Julia find refuge in a charming Cotswold cottage, Emmy’s burning ambition to return to the city and apprentice with a fashion designer pits her against Julia’s profound need for her sister’s presence. Acting at cross purposes just as the Luftwaffe rains down its terrible destruction, the sisters are cruelly separated, and their lives are transformed...