"Rose Maning longs to wake up every morning in Florence, Italy, to a view of the Duomo and terra cotta rooftops dancing in the sunrise. So she flies across the pond with her best friend Zoey for a fun-filled house hunt. For the first time in her people-pleasing life, schoolteacher Rose uses her savings to do exactly what she wants to do: buy an apartment and pursue painting. Rose is passionate about the life and works of the great sculptor, Michelangelo...

"Valinda Lacy's mission in the steamy heart of New Orleans is to help the newly emancipated community survive and flourish. But soon she discovers that here, freedom can also mean danger. When thugs destroy the school she has set up and then target her, Valinda runs for her life -- and straight into the arms of Captain Drake LeVeq. As an architect from an old New Orleans family, Drake has a deeply personal interest in rebuilding the city. Raised by...

"Shirley Wallace and her four sons return to her childhood home on Pope Mountain in Jubilee, Kentucky, with a lifetime of hardship behind them, hoping to find peace and begin their lives anew. Eldest brother Aaron Pope returns to his life as a police officer, and is settling in just fine. Then Aaron's investigation into an attempted murder leads him right to Dani Owens. She may hold the key to a long-lost part of the Pope family's past, and more importantly,...

Gillian Roberts's Philadelphia-based Amanda Pepper mysteries have won her a faithful readership and wide critical acclaim. The San Francisco Chronicle has called Amanda "engaging and entertaining." And The Philadelphia Inquirer praises the schoolteacher-heroine who delivers her lines "with self-deprecating savagery and humor." There is good reason to cheer again. Amanda Pepper, the resilient, resourceful English teacher at Philly Prep, is back - once...

"After the local French teacher scandalizes the fishing village of Little Cove, Newfoundland, by running off with a priest, the school looks to the mainland to fill the job quickly. They want someone who can uphold their Catholic values and keep a motley group of largely unwilling students in line. The position is filled by mainlander Rachel O'Brien--technically a Catholic (baptized!), technically a teacher (honors degree!)--who's desperate to leave...

One of Christian fiction's premier novelists, Christy Award winner Ann Tatlock has garnered MIPA Book of the Year honors for her compelling novels All the Way Home and I'll Watch the Moon. Returning to her high school alma mater two decades after her graduation fills English teacher Beth Gunner with both nostalgia and trepidation. Soon she must confront a haunting secret from her past.

Elizabeth's story is like that of a garden left untended for too long, with weeds as bounteous as blossoms and stone walkways buried beneath tangled vines and daffodils. Beauty to be found, though amidst much neglect. When betrayal strikes at the heart of her very existence, Elizabeth Landis retraces the path of her life and her marriage, discovering along the way memories both painful to the touch and a joy to embrace. Pruning the garden of her life...

In a small town in Canada, Clara Callan reluctantly takes leave of her sister, Nora, who is bound for New York. It's a time when the growing threat of fascism in Europe is a constant worry, and people escape from reality through radio and the movies. Meanwhile, the two sisters -- vastly different in personality, yet inextricably linked by a shared past -- try to find their places within the complex web of social expectations for young women in the...

Sandra, a rigid academic, is struggling to navigate the world after losing her husband to cancer. Martha, a self-taught textile artist with her own secret store of grief, spends her days knitting elaborate projects charged with personal meaning. After a chance meeting sparks a friendship between these two very different women, they begin to collaborate-leading to surprising events that will help heal them both.

"In North Carolina's tight-knit Oak Knoll neighborhood, professor Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who is headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans, an apparently traditional family, move in next door. Popular local businessman Brad had new money, ambition, a wife who escaped her upbringing in a trailer park, and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter. With little in common except a property...