"State of Grace is, sadly, the last beautiful, moving achievement from a woman whose wit, intelligence, and loving humanity can be felt on every page of all her books." —George Hodgman, author of Bettyville
Birdie Holloway is a typical eleven-year-old growing up in a small, corn-fed Kansas town in the early 1980s—that is until her best friend, Grace, is brutally murdered. Suddenly, everything changes for Birdie, and everything she believes she knows about her insulated small-town life is called into question. Obsessed in figuring out who killed her friend, Birdie spends years trying to find the murderer. Eventually, she connects with someone who is every bit as interested in the case as she is.
Someone who knows how close she is to solving the murder.
Someone who will kill again to keep her quiet . . .
Sandra Moran was an author and assistant adjunct professor of anthropology. Her debut novel, Letters Never Sent, was a finalist for the 2013 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Revisions on State of Grace, her final novel, were completed in September 2015. Less than a month later, she was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. She passed away on November 7, 2015.

State of Grace

Literature & Fiction

Moran, Sandra

United States

Bywater Books

Letters Never Sent

Cherry Hill Pub

Three women, united by love and kinship, struggle to conform to the social norms of the times in which they lived. In 1931, Katherine Henderson leaves behind her small town in Kansas and the marriage proposal of a local boy to live on her own and work at the Sears &amp; Roebuck glove counter in Chicago. There she meets Annie—a bold, outspoken feminist who challenges Katherine’s idea of who she thinks she is and what she thinks she wants in life. In 1997, Katherine’s daughter, Joan, travels to Lawrence, Kansas, to clean out her estranged mother’s house. Hidden away in an old suitcase, she finds a wooden box containing trinkets and a packet of sealed letters to a person identified only by a first initial. Joan reads the unsent letters and discovers a woman completely different from the aloof and unyielding mother of her youth–a woman who had loved deeply and lost that love to circumstances beyond her control. Now she just has to find the strength to use the healing power of empathy and forgiveness to live the life she’s always wanted to live.

Literary

Bedazzled Ink Publishing

New York advertising executive and lifelong atheist Sarah Sheppard is highly successful, in line for a partnership, and feeling on top of the world. When she's visited by a mysterious client who offers her a job to write and market a comprehensive addition to the world's religious texts, she thinks it's an elaborate joke and turns him down. But God works in mysterious ways and she quickly finds she has no choice but to take the assignment. Isolated at a remote estate in upstate New York, Sarah joins a group of scholars and theologians to compile The Addendum, but soon discovers that nothing and no one are what they appear to be. As more questions than answers mount up, Sarah has to decide whether to deny her natural skepticism or embrace that illusive idea of faith before she's nudged onto a path of no return.

Nudge

Genre Fiction

Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company

When advertising executive Sarah Sheppard was commissioned by God, also known as Infinity, to write and market a universal addendum to the world's religious texts, she was convinced the entire plan was an elaborate hoax. But as anyone who has read Sandra Moran's novel, Nudge, knows, the real story is much more complicated. Now for the first time, the actual text of The Addendum is available for anyone to read. And what exactly is The Addendum? It's a universal document that ties together history, religion, and the commonality of the human experience through stories of famous figures who, regardless of their belief systems, stand as testament to the ideals of living one's faith and making the world a better place. Its purpose is to help humanity celebrate and accept our differences, even as we embrace that which is common to all.

The Addendum

Sheppard, Sarah

It begins with a bus crash. Maggie is a funeral director from Indiana who lives a double life. Bug is a ten-year-old boy in the Pennsylvania foster care system who is sent to live with an aunt he doesn’t know. Jimmy is a former paramedic and prescription drug addict on his way to meet a woman he met online who thinks he’s a successful doctor. Helen is a Chicago insurance investigator who is leaving her marriage in search of the woman she wants to be. Four strangers, all traveling to Boston in search of better lives, are tied together in ways they don’t even realize. Each are trying to fill the void of what’s missing in their lives. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to overcome all that we lack.

All We Lack

Contemporary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Moran, Sandra. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Moran, Sandra

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Moran, Sandra. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

State of Grace

Letters Never Sent

Letters Never Sent

Nudge

The Addendum

All We Lack