Could a lifetime of memories…be a lifetime of lies?
All her life Ryan Gracey watched her perfect older sister from afar. Knowing she could never top Wendy’s achievements, she didn’t even try. Instead Ryan forged her own path while her family barely seemed to notice.
Now Wendy shares two little girls with her perfect husband while Ryan mourns the man she lost after a nearly fatal mistake in judgment. The sisters’ choices have taken them in different directions, which is why Ryan is stunned when Wendy calls, begging for her help. There’s been a murder—and Wendy believes she’ll be wrongfully accused.
While Wendy lies low, Ryan moves back to their hometown to care for the nieces she hardly knows. The sleuthing skills she’s refined as a true-crime podcaster quickly rise to the surface as she digs for answers with the help of an unexpected ally. Yet the trail of clues Wendy’s left behind lead to nothing but questions. Blood may be thicker than water, but what does Ryan owe a sister who, with every revelation, becomes more and more a stranger?
Is Wendy, who always seemed so perfect, just a perfect liar—or worse?
When Lilia Swallow's husband, Graham, goes into remission after a challenging year of treatment for lymphoma, the home and lifestyle blogger throws a party. Their best friends and colleagues attend to celebrate his recovery, but just as the party is in full swing, a new guest arrives. She presents Lilia with a beautiful baby boy, and vanishes.Toby is Graham's darkest secret-his son, conceived in a moment of despair. Lilia is utterly unprepared for the betrayal the baby represents, and perhaps more so for the love she begins to feel once her shock subsides. Now this unasked-for precious gift becomes a life changer for three women: Lilia, who takes him into her home and heart; Marina, who bore and abandoned him until circumstance and grief changed her mind; and Ellen, who sees in him a chance to correct the mistakes she made with her own son, Toby's father. A custody battle begins, and each would-be mother must examine her heart, confront her choices, and weigh her dreams against the fate of one vulnerable little boy. Each woman will redefine family, belonging, and love-and the results will alter the course of not only their lives, but also the lives of everyone they care for.
From USA Today bestselling author Emilie Richards comes an emotional story about love, loyalty, and the deep bonds of sisterhood.
While love and loyalty made them sisters, secrets could still destroy them.
As children in foster care, Cecilia and Robin vowed they would be the sisters each had never had. Cecelia, now a superstar singer-songwriter, is living life on the edge.
Robin set aside her career as a successful photojournalist to create the loving family she always yearned for. But gazing through a wide-angle lens at both past and future, she sees that her marriage is disintegrating. Her attorney husband is rarely home. She and the children need Kris' love and attention, but does Kris need them?
For Cecilia, a lifetime of lies has finally caught up with her, and she wants a chance to tell the real story of their childhood and free herself from the nightmares that still haunt her. When she asks Robin to be the still photographer for a documentary on foster care, Robin agrees, even though Kris will be forced to take charge for the months she's away. She gambles that he'll prove to them both that their children-and their marriage-are a priority in his life.
As the documentary unfolds, memories will be tested and the meaning of family redefined, but the love two young girls forged into bonds of sisterhood will help them move forward as the women they were always meant to be.
"Richards exceptionally delves into a delicate social issue in this poignant, insightful morality tale. With an incredibly intuitive storytelling voice, she delivers an engaging, empathic, chilling page-turner highlighting the good and evil of foster care-and especially the fragility of the children placed there. Her two extraordinary protagonists and the explosive revelations are unforgettable."-RT Book Reviews (4½ stars, Top Pick!)
The deeper the darkness, the brighter the light
For more than a decade, minister Analiese Wagner has felt privileged to lead her parishioners along a well-lit path. Her commitment has never been seriously tested until the frigid night she encounters a homeless family huddling in the churchyard. Offering them shelter in a vacant parish house apartment and taking teenage Shiloh Fowler-a girl desperate to rescue her parents-under her wing, she tests the loyalty and faith of her congregation.
Isaiah Colburn, the Catholic priest who was her first mentor and the man for whom she secretly longed, understands her struggles only too well. At a crossroads, he has suddenly reappeared in her life, torn between his priesthood and his growing desire for a future with Analiese.
Divided between love and the vows they've taken, both must face the possibilities of living very different lives or continuing to serve their communities. With a defeated family's trust and her own happiness on the line, Analiese must define for herself where darkness ends and light begins.
Where luck meets trust, miracles can happen.
Cristy Haviland served eight months in prison, where she gave birth to the child of the man who put her there and might yet destroy her. Now she’s free again, but what does that mean? As smart as she is, a learning disability has kept her from learning to read—and that’s the least of her hurdles.
Georgia Ferguson, a talented educator, receives a mysterious charm bracelet that may help her find the mother who abandoned her at birth. Does she want to follow the clues? And if she does, can reticent Georgia reach out for help along the way?
Both women are at a crossroads where unlikely unions can be formed, where two very different women might bridge the gap between generations and education and together make tough choices.
Somewhere between the townships called Luck and Trust, at a mountain cabin known as the Goddess House, two very different women may even, if they dare, find common ground and friendship.
“A rich, deeply moving Southern-fried novel that speaks to you heart and soul, mixing mystery, romance, and Lowcountry fiction in one empowering read. Her perfectly cast narrative enlightens, entertains, and educates as it flows smoothly throughout the tale. Her unforgettable, enigmatic, fully developed characters will bring joy and fear.”—RT Book Reviews
With nothing but brains, ambition, and sheer nerve, Charlotte Hale built a career as a tough, do-anything-to-succeed real estate developer. She’s at the top of that mountain—but her life is empty. Her friends are as grasping and insincere as she has become. Far worse, she’s alienated her family so completely that she’s totally lost touch with her only daughter.
One terrifying day, facing her own mortality, she realizes that her ambition has almost destroyed her chance at happiness. So Charlotte vows to make amends, not simply with her considerable wealth but by offering a hand instead of a handout, putting in hours and energy instead of putting in an appearance, opening her home and heart instead of her wallet.
With each wrenching, exhilarating decision, Charlotte finds that climbing a new mountain—one built on friendship, love, and forgiveness—will teach her what it truly means to build a legacy.
“Emilie Richards’ compassion and deep understanding of family relationships, especially those among women, are the soul of One Mountain Away. This rich, multilayered story of love and bitterness, humor, loss, and redemption haunts me as few other books have.”—Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author
Some betrayals are like rivers, so deep, so wide, they can’t be crossed. But—for those with enough courage—forgiveness, redemption, and love may be found on the other side.
On the night her home is consumed by fire, Janine Stoddard finally resolves to leave her abusive husband. While she is reluctant to involve her estranged daughter, she can’t resist a chance to see Harmony and baby Lottie before she disappears forever.
Harmony’s friend Taylor Martin realizes how much the reunited mother and daughter yearn to stay together, and she sees in Jan a chance to continue her own mother’s legacy of helping women in need of a fresh start. She opens her home, even as she’s opening her heart to another newcomer, Adam Pryor. But enigmatic Adam has a secret that could destroy Taylor’s trust—and cost Jan her hard-won freedom.
“Richards builds a complex, yearning saga of broken families and damaged trust in the latest in her Goddesses Anonymous series…Richards deftly juggles an intriguing thriller with an exploration of domestic violence and reinvention. Still, it’s the quirky, gritty characters in and out of Goddesses Anonymous—all determined to help women in need—who power this tale of forgiveness every step of the way.”—Publishers Weekly
Gayle Fortman has built a good life for herself and her three sons as an innkeeper in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. She has even maintained a cordial relationship with her ex, charismatic broadcast journalist Eric Fortman, covering with the boys for his absences and broken promises. Luckily Travis Allen, her closest neighbor, has been a loving surrogate father to the boys and her own best friend. Then, on the eve of oldest son Jared's graduation, Eric returns, having nearly lost his life in Afghanistan. Worse, he has lost his way and his courage, and needs a place to recover. Gayle realizes this might be the last chance for her sons to establish a real bond with their father, and offers him a summer at the inn and a chance to put things right.
Gayle and Eric are all too aware that their onetime love and attraction are still there. But can the pieces of their broken lives be mended, or are they better laid to rest?
In a cave in the Shenandoah National Park, two bodies are discovered, wrapped in the tattered remains of a lover’s knot quilt. In Washington, DC, Isaac Taylor inherits a nearly identical quilt from a grandmother whose name he never even knew. After narrowly escaping death, newspaper journalist Kendra Taylor retreats to a cabin nestled in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to heal and sort out her feelings about her troubled marriage. As she is welcomed into the rural community of Toms Brook, Kendra becomes curious about an heirloom lover’s knot quilt, which is another piece of Isaac’s unexplored past. The unusual quilt clearly has a story to tell, and Kendra is convinced that helping her husband connect with his roots might help him reconnect with her, as well.
“Richards has a pure and clear narrative voice, and this is a dazzling display of her skill with plotting. It’s rather like a prose representation of a quilt: colors and textures are pieced together with precision, with hidden layers of meaning beneath.”--RT Book Reviews
Sam Kinkade is finally feeling at home as a minister in rural Toms Brook, Virginia, content with his life and Shenandoah Valley congregation. But his plans to welcome the area’s growing Hispanic community are being met with resistance. Fortunately, when the church-run community center is threatened, a stranger named Elisa Martinez walks through his door and Sam realizes he has found a woman capable of building bridges. Elisa isn’t looking to make connections. She has come to Tom’s Brook to hide. But despite her fears of discovery, she is enchanted by the beautiful work of—and the friendship offered by—the women who invite her to join their quilting circle. And even though she fears the consequences for both of them, she finds herself powerfully drawn to Sam, and to the generations-old love story rooted in the town’s past. Will she and Sam repeat the past, or can they find the love and the freedom they seek at last?
“Richards seamlessly joins contrasting and complementing elements—an intriguing political mystery, a long-forgotten local tragedy, and a contemporary love story—in an emotionally charged and transcendent tale of the ways love and faith can triumph in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.”--Booklist
Needing time to contemplate her troubled marriage, Tessa MacRae agrees to spend the summer helping her mother and grandmother clean out the family home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. But the three women have never been close. Helen, the family matriarch, is domineering and sharp-tongued. Nancy, Tessa’s mother, appears to be little more than a social climber. And Tessa herself is in turmoil following a family tragedy that has affected them all. Now, with the gift of time, Tessa’s eyes are opened, and she begins to see her mother and grandmother for the flawed but courageous women they are. As she restores a vintage wedding-ring quilt pieced by her grandmother and quilted by her mother, the secrets that have shadowed their lives unfold at last. And each woman discovers that sometimes you have to clean house to find the things you thought were lost forever.
“Richards pieces together each woman’s story as artfully as a quilter creates a quilt, with equally satisfying results, and her characterizations are transcendent, endowed with warmth and compassion.”--Booklist
With nine years and a turbulent childhood between them, Kendra and Jamie have never been storybook sisters. Now Jamie is offering a gift Kendra has long since given up hoping for, the fondest wish of her heart—a baby. Already raising two young girls on her own, Jamie wants to become a gestational surrogate for Kendra and her husband, Isaac. In addition to this amazing gift of life, Jamie has designed a new house for Kendra and Isaac and is overseeing its construction on Isaac’s ancestral property along the Shenandoah River, with the help of Cash Rosslyn. By giving her sister both a home and a family, Jamie hopes to prove to Kendra that she deserves absolution for her past mistakes. But when a medical crisis threatens her health and her promising new relationship with Cash, Jamie learns that the most difficult choice in her life is yet to come.
“Richards should’ve included a special pull-out hanky insert, but readers looking for positive resolutions won’t be disappointed.”--Publishers Weekly
