Told by a tart-tongued young woman with a love of Bruce Springsteen, Lies in Bone is at once a mystery and coming-of-age tale fueled by dark secrets involving love, murder, and the truths worth lying for.
On Halloween 1963, eleven-year-old Chuck Coolidge and his brother Danny are lost in a toxic smog covering the steel town of Slippery Elm, Pennsylvania. When the smog lifts, half the town is sick and twenty people are dead. And Danny is missing.
Now, over twenty years later, Chuck's teenage daughter Frank plots escape from this "busted and disgusted" town. When a murdered child is found in the river, investigators link the crime to the disappearance of Danny in '63, and Frank's life is turned upside down. In the face of her worst fears, she must uncover her family's dark past if she wants to keep her sister Boots from the hands of The State. Led to discover the unimaginable truth about Danny's disappearance, Lies in Bone culminates in a shocking eleventh-hour reveal and an emotionally charged finale.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Even the most painful paths can be guided to divine destinations...
A single father and former Army Ranger, Ken Holbrook struggles to reconcile his resolute faith with immense grief. When Stacey James, a skittish but alluring newcomer, crosses Ken’s path and immediately bonds with Ginny, his young daughter, his world tilts further off balance. Slowly, Ken softens to Stacey as he realizes her poise in the face of hidden atrocity and the ease he feels in her presence. Stacey’s trust doesn’t come easily though, even if she is drawn to Ken’s peaceful, observant nature.
As their lives overlap and they come to need one another in unsettling ways, Ken and Stacey must face the demons of their past. With unwavering support from the Holbrook family, the two discover their roads, though jarring, have been directed to the same destination: each other. While many tout the phrase “everything happens for a reason,” Ken and Stacey make deeper meaning within their choices and circumstances.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Inspired by True Current Events.
Dolores, Ernesto, and Emilio Sanchez are on a quest to America to find work and to save their family, who has been devastated by their father's accident and the drought in their home country of Honduras. But making their way to America would be too expensive for a family stricken by poverty. With only their faith in God to see them through, the teenaged siblings set off for their new home, despite the threat from the cartel, corrupt police officers, starvation, and death.
Meanwhile, Eva Jordan is determined to start a new life on the American side of the Mexican border, hoping to shake off the scars from a horrible marriage. Despite her mother's concern for her daughter living so close to the border, Eva decides to take a vacation to the other side to sharpen up her Spanish and relax before her new job begins. She is struck by the beautiful towns of Mexico, but slowly, her eyes are opened to the dangers that are knocking at her front door.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Inspired by a shocking incident in eighteenth century America, Chateau Laux is the story of Lawrence Kraymer, a young entrepreneur from a youthful Philadelphia, who chances upon a French aristocrat and his family living on the edge of the frontier.
Born to an unwed mother and raised by a disapproving and judgmental grandfather, Lawrence is drawn to the close-knit family. As part of his courtship of one of the patriarch's daughters, he builds a château, igniting memories of a past that should have been left alone and setting in motion a course of devastating events he could not have anticipated.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
A man dreams through the eyes of a woman he's never met, setting out to find love that might be a figment of his imagination.
Joe Riley has a successful, by-design life in the world of finance. He loves order, discipline, the tangible, the measurable. In pursuit of success he's spurned attachment, keeping romantic entanglements "on an island" while leaving his life and heart invulnerable. When he begins to dream of a woman half a world away he's never encountered, his notions of practicality and planning are called into question.
In a search that variously brings him to the psychologist's office, a medium's table, and from the Rocky Mountains to the streets of London, England, Joe begins to fall for the woman of his dreams. In the process, he's beset by innumerable questions: Is he going mad? Might she actually exist? If so, why does he see through her eyes? Why is he party to visions that are either the greatest privacy invasion of all time, or a possible cosmic match in the making?
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Parsons, Kansas Winter - 1968
A brutal murder has taken place. The God-fearing citizens of the sleepy midwestern town are convinced evil has taken root.
A young married couple, Charlie and Delia Mull are left to pick up the pieces of shattered lives after the unspeakable tragedy.
Townsfolk whisper from church pews that pretty Delia Mull has brought the misfortune upon herself - a cursed family legacy. Others believe the horrific crime is merely another sign of a violent and godless age.
A mysterious woman has rented the house six doors down. Betty Malcomb is the new teacher hired at the high school. Locals are suspicious of the reclusive outsider. Why has she traveled to their peeling little town? What reasons would make her stay?
Located in the remote Kansas prairie sits the state penitentiary. Imprisoned in a concrete cell, a lone madman silently awaits his opportunity to complete his unholy calling.
Finalist Fiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Northwest Washington State, 1985
For years, Harris Hayes has taught his daughter, Aggie, the ways of the northern woods. So when her mother's depression worsens, Harris shows the girl how to find and sketch the nests of wild birds as an antidote to sadness. Aggie is in a tree far overhead when her unpredictable mother spots her and forbids her to climb. Angry, the ten-year-old accidentally lights a tragic fire, then flees downriver. She lands her boat near untamed forest, where she hides among the trees and creatures she considers her only friends—determined to remain undiscovered.
A search party gathers by Aggie’s empty boat hours after Celia, fresh off the plane from Houston, arrives at her grandmother’s nearby farm. Hurting from her parents’ breakup, she also plans to run. But when she joins the hunt for Aggie, she meets two irresistible young men who compel her to stay. One is autistic; the other, dangerous.
