Barbara O’Neal’s novel of food, friendship, and the freedom to grow your dreams brings together four very different women longing to savor the true taste of happiness.Popular blogger and foodie queen Lavender Wills reigns over Lavender Honey Farms, a serene slice of organic heaven nestled in Oregon wine country. Lavender is determined to keep her legacy from falling into the profit-driven hands of uncaring relatives, and she wants an heir to sustain her life’s work after she’s gone. So she invites her three closest online friends—fellow food bloggers, women of varied ages and backgrounds—out to her farm. She hopes to choose one of them to inherit it—but who?There’s Ginny, the freckle-faced Kansas cake baker whose online writing is about to lead her out of a broken marriage and into a world of sensual delights. And Ruby, young, pregnant, devoted to the organic movement, who’s looking for roots—and the perfect recipe to heal a shattered heart. Finally, Val, smart and sophisticated, a wine enthusiast who needs a fresh start for her teenage daughter after tragedy has rocked their lives. Coming together will change the Foodie Four in ways they could never have imagined, uniting them in love and a common purpose. As they realize that life doesn’t always offer a perfect recipe for happiness, they also discover that the moments worth savoring are flavored with some tears, a few surprises, and generous helpings of joy.Praise for the novels of Barbara O’Neal“[A] warm…romance about the healing powers of nature, love and community.” —Kirkus Reviews, on The Garden of Happy Endings“Absorbing…[with] lovingly sketched characters and real emotion.” —Publishers Weekly, on How to Bake a Perfect Lif

Barbara O’Neal’s novel of food, friendship, and the freedom to grow your dreams brings together four very different women longing to savor the true taste of happiness.Popular blogger and foodie queen Lavender Wills reigns over Lavender Honey Farms, a serene slice of organic heaven nestled in Oregon wine country. Lavender is determined to keep her legacy from falling into the profit-driven hands of uncaring relatives, and she wants an heir to sustain her life’s work after she’s gone. So she invites her three closest online friends―fellow food bloggers, women of varied ages and backgrounds―out to her farm. She hopes to choose one of them to inherit it―but who?There’s Ginny, the freckle-faced Kansas cake baker whose online writing is about to lead her out of a broken marriage and into a world of sensual delights. And Ruby, young, pregnant, devoted to the organic movement, who’s looking for roots―and the perfect recipe to heal a shattered heart. Finally, Val, smart and sophisticated, a wine enthusiast who needs a fresh start for her teenage daughter after tragedy has rocked their lives. Coming together will change the Foodie Four in ways they could never have imagined, uniting them in love and a common purpose. As they realize that life doesn’t always offer a perfect recipe for happiness, they also discover that the moments worth savoring are flavored with some tears, a few surprises, and generous helpings of joy.Praise for the novels of Barbara O’Neal“[A] warm…romance about the healing powers of nature, love and community.” ―Kirkus Reviews, on The Garden of Happy Endings“Absorbing…[with] lovingly sketched characters and real emotion.” ―Publishers Weekly, on How to Bake a Perfect Lif

Product Description: When an elderly boarder at a Bakerhaven bed-and-breakfast drops dead during afternoon tea, there?s nothing particularly suspicious about it ? except for the Sudoku in his jacket pocket. But when a second body turns up in the window seat and an autopsy shows both men were poisoned with elderberry wine, the Puzzle Lady suspects she?s dealing with a cold-blooded killer who for some reason is copying the Cary Grant movie Arsenic and Old Lace...read more

A wonderful fiction debut, Being Esther gives voice to Esther Lustig, an extraordinary woman who has lived a conventional life, in this touching exploration of aging and its accompanied search for meaning.In spare, refreshingly unsentimental prose, Miriam Karmel has given us one of literature’s finest portraits of the last months of a woman’s life. At once sad and amusing, unpretentious and ambitious, Karmel’s fiction debut brings understanding and tremendous empathy to the character of Esther Lustig, a woman readers will recognize and embrace.Born to parents who fled the shtetl, Esther Lustig has led a seemingly conventional life—marriage, two children, a life in suburban Chicago. Now, at the age of eighty-five, her husband is deceased, her children have families of their own, and most of her friends are gone. Even in this diminished condition, life has its moments of richness, as well as its memorable characters. Being Esther is an exploration of aging, a search for meaning, and about the need, as Esther puts it, for better roadmaps for growing old.

Retiree sleuths Lilian and Ada find that though their town might look postcard pretty, there’s something rank festering below the surface . . . Lilian Campbell and her best friend and lover, Ada Strauss, are woken early by the sound of sirens: the local nursing home, Nillewaug Village, is ablaze. The police and fire chiefs find evidence to suggest the fire was accidental, but Detective Mattie Perez can’t help but wonder why the smoke alarms didn’t work. Soon, it’s looking less like accident and more like arson . . . and Lil and Ada are swept up into an investigation that grows increasingly more complex, and frightening, by the hour.

In the summer of 1942, twenty-one-year-old Anne Calloway, newly engaged, sets off to serve in the Army Nurse Corps on the Pacific island of Bora-Bora. More exhilarated by the adventure of a lifetime than she ever was by her predictable fiancé, she is drawn to a mysterious soldier named Westry, and their friendship soon blossoms into hues as deep as the hibiscus flowers native to the island. Under the thatched roof of an abandoned beach bungalow, the two share a private world-until they witness a gruesome crime, Westry is suddenly redeployed, and the idyll vanishes into the winds of war. A timeless story of enduring passion, The Bungalow chronicles Anne's determination to discover the truth about the twin losses-of life, and of love-that have haunted her for seventy years.

Provides a portrait of an early Victorian country village and its genteel inhabitants, mostly women, whose social attitudes remain firmly unchanging against the modernising world, and whose domestic details dominate conversation. This novel describes the uneventful lives of Cranford's inhabitants.

The Elusive Relation presents a new experience for Emma, taking her on a wild journey to another continent. It will keep the reader turning pages and asking for more.Emma Winberry returns in the third cozy mystery of the series. She and her significant other, Nate Sandler, go to the U.K. to investigate a threat to Emmas newly found niece, Lindsey Bellingham, and her cousin Isabel. A wealthy American wants to buy Bellingham House, but Lindsey refuses to sell.They are summoned back to the States when Emma's granddaughter is injured in an accident. The child recovers and Emma tries to resume her normal lifestyle. But she receives a frantic call from Lindsey saying that Isabel has been kidnapped.Emma returns to the U.K. with her young friend, Tracie Adams. While investigating the surroundings with the housekeeper's son, Tracie is also taken by the kidnappers. They demand a large sum of money or threaten dire consequences.Are the girls rescued in time?Why does the American want to buy the house?Follow Emma to the surprising and dangerous climax to the mystery of Bellingham House.

From the author of Last Night at the Lobster, a moving vision of love and family. A sequel to the bestselling, much-beloved Wish You Were Here, Stewart O'Nan's intimate new novel follows Emily Maxwell, a widow whose grown children have long moved away. She dreams of vists by her grandchildren while mourning the turnover of her quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood, but when her sole companion and sister-in-law Arlene faints at their favorite breakfast buffet, Emily's days change. As she grapples with her new independence, she discovers a hidden strength and realizes that life always offers new possibilities. Like most older women, Emily is a familiar yet invisible figure, one rarely portrayed so honestly. Her mingled feelings-of pride and regret, joy and sorrow- are gracefully rendered in wholly unexpected ways. Once again making the ordinary and overlooked not merely visible but vital to understanding our own lives, Emily, Alone confirms O'Nan as an American master.

Etta is starting to forget. But Otto loves her and if he remembers, then surely they can balance things out? Their neighbour Russell remembers too, but differently - and he still loves Etta as much as he did more than 50 years ago, before she married Otto. Etta's greatest unfulfilled wish, living in the rolling farmland of Saskatchewan, is to see the sea. And so, at the age of 82, she gets up very early one morning, takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 2,000 miles to the water.

When Toots Loudenberry relocated to Los Angeles from South Carolina to be near her daughter, Abby, she expected to bump into the occasional celebrity. She just never expected them to be dead. Meanwhile, Toots, Sophie, and Mavis are concerned that the prestigious Dr. Sameer’s budding romance with Ida may have something to do with his ailing bank balance. And Abby’s attempted makeover of the celebrity magazine The Informer into the most talked-about tabloid in town could end more than just her career.But the Godmothers wouldn’t be the Godmothers if they weren’t pulling a few behind-the-scenes strings, and Abby’s hopes of changing the fortunes of The Informer are still alive. Yet it’ll take an assist from a source no one could have predicted, let alone see, to secure a story that will shake Tinseltown to its very core.…“The Godmothers series [is] pure recession-proof fun.” —Publishers Weekly

When Toots Loudenberry relocated to Los Angeles from South Carolina to be near her daughter, Abby, she expected to bump into the occasional celebrity. She just never expected them to be dead. Meanwhile, Toots, Sophie, and Mavis are concerned that the prestigious Dr. Sameer’s budding romance with Ida may have something to do with his ailing bank balance. And Abby’s attempted makeover of the celebrity magazine The Informer into the most talked-about tabloid in town could end more than just her career. But the Godmothers wouldn’t be the Godmothers if they weren’t pulling a few behind-the-scenes strings, and Abby’s hopes of changing the fortunes of The Informer are still alive. Yet it’ll take an assist from a source no one could have predicted, let alone see, to secure a story that will shake Tinseltown to its very core… “The Godmothers series [is] pure recession-proof fun.” ― Publishers Weekly