The Civil War has ended, leaving the country with a gaping wound. Lorie Blake, a southern orphan sold into prostitution at fifteen, has carefully guarded her aching soul from the disgrace forced upon her every evening. Two years have passed, leaving her with little hope of anything more. Meanwhile, three men – longtime friends – and a young boy with a heart of gold are traveling northward, planning to rebuild their lives in the north and leave behind the horrors of their time as soldiers in the Confederate Army. Fate, however, has plans of its own, causing their lives to collide in a river town whorehouse. Forced to flee, Lorie escapes and joins them on the journey north. But danger stalks them all in the form of a vindictive whorehouse madam and an ex-Union soldier, insane and bent on exacting revenge. At last, Lorie must come to terms with her past and devastating secrets that she cannot yet bear to reveal. Heart of a Dove is the first book in a gripping, sweeping romantic saga of pain, unbearable choices, loss and true love set against the backdrop of a scarred, post-Civil War America.

Heart of a Dove (The Dove Saga)

Literature & Fiction

Williams, Abbie

United States

Central Avenue

New immortals are being created for the first time in thousands of years thanks to the tree of immortality discovered by Persephone and Hades. But Sophie Darrow is not one of them. Nikolaos, the trickster, has given the last ripe immortality fruit to two others, the reincarnations of the gods Dionysos and Hekate: Tabitha and Zoe, currently Sophie's and Adrian's best friends. While the disappointed Sophie struggles to remember Hekate and Dionysos from ancient Greece, she must still face her daily life as a mortal university freshman. Tabitha and Zoe have their own struggles as they come to terms with being newly immortal and their own haunting dreams of past lives and loves. The evil committed by Thanatos invades all of them in heartbreaking memories, and worse still, Sophie and her friends know their enemies are determined to kill again. And even the gods can't save everyone.

Underworld's Daughter (The Chrysomelia Stories)

Ringle, Molly

Genre Fiction

Casey Schillinge is a vivacious young woman on the verge of making her mark on the world. While backpacking, she is struck down by a tropical disease and suffers cardiac failure. But at the eleventh hour, Casey receives a life-saving heart transplant and a rare second chance to begin again. Three years later, Casey has become a withdrawn shell of her former self: she is estranged from her loved ones, afraid of open spaces and rides the line between legitimate and criminal work. The worst of her troubles come in the form of violent night terrors; so frightening that she resorts to extreme measures to keep herself from sleeping. When she can take no more, she embarks on a desperate search for the source of her dreams. In so doing, she makes a shocking discovery surrounding the tragic fate of the donor whose heart now beats inside her chest. As she delves deeper into the mystery of her donor, she realizes her dreams are not a figment of her imagination, but a real life nightmare.

The Recipient

Mayes, Dean

Sophie Darrow said yes once to a young man offering a realm of Greek gods and immortality. Now her home has been shattered, and her friends and family pulled along with her as they run from an evil cult and take shelter in the gloomy Underworld. To love, trust, and smile again seems almost out of Sophie's reach. But remembering the life of the original Persephone and her fellow immortals long ago may prove the best therapy, as well as their key to victory. In ancient times too, the murderous cult Thanatos attacked and eventually wiped out the Greek immortals who sought to bring good to humankind. But those immortals planted seeds in both their realm and ours to ensure that their season would bloom again someday. And spring is finally coming.

Immortal's Spring (The Chrysomelia Stories)

Winner: Indies Unlimited, Top Indie Picks for December 2016 Finalist: 2016 Foreword INDIES, General Fiction Coulter Zahn sees reality differently than others. Much like light can theoretically be in all places at once, Coulter sees multiple versions of his life. A promising PhD candidate at MIT, he and his young wife are nervously expecting their first child. When his dissertation comes under intense criticism, his estranged mother returns, and Sara tells him she's leaving him, Coulter’s already delicate mental state becomes further fragmented. One evening, with his life and mental health unraveling, Coulter loses control, irreparably changing the course of the lives around him. But the very next morning, he catches a break in his research, discovering the true shape of the universe. Influenced by those around him and his own untrustworthy psyche, Coulter must decide whether to face the consequences of his actions or finish his research, perhaps making the greatest contribution to science since Einstein’s theory of relativity.  An existential psychological thriller, An Elegant Theory explores how the construction of memory and consciousness can shape motive, guilt, and identity through the lens of a modern-day mad-scientist motif.

An Elegant Theory

Milligan, Noah

Twelve years ago, Jillian Henriksen cut off all her hair and placed it in her young husband's hands as he was buried. After his tragic accident, she clung to the only remaining stability she had - her young son Clint, her family of women, and her job at their lakeside diner, the Shore Leave Café. Now it is summer again, and change is in the hot and humid air. Jillian's sister, Joelle, and her teenaged nieces, Camille, Tish, and Ruthann, have come home to Landon, bringing a welcome distraction. And then there is Justin Miller, longtime family friend, brooding and sexy, but damaged after a terrible accident five years earlier. Will Jilly and Justin risk their broken hearts - and the Davis family curse - to take a chance on lasting love?

A Notion of Love (A Shore Leave Cafe Romance)

A gorgeous stranger in an old photograph. A desperate search from another century. And a mystery Camille Gordon cannot resist. It has been two years since Camille discovered that she was going to be a teenage mother. Abandoned by her child's father, Camille is determined that she and her daughter will make it on their own. When she discovers an old picture hidden in a trunk in her grandmother's attic, Camille is at once drawn to the man in the image, standing near his horse in the light of a long-ago sunset. The haunting photo leads her to the Carters, who run the nearby inn, White Oaks Lodge. Each clue brings her closer to her own destiny—a true love so intense not even time can wither it.

Winter at the White Oaks Lodge (A Shore Leave Cafe Romance)

Three years have passed since Joelle Gordon came home to Landon, Minnesota, following her heart back to her family of women and their little café on Flickertail Lake. Joelle, her sister Jillian, and her daughter Camille have grown closer through the shared heartaches and passionate loves they experienced since that first summer.  Now the Shore Leave Café is again basking under the brilliant June sunshine, and this summer promises to be hotter than ever. Jillian is pregnant with her third child, but her happy life is threatened by Justin's ex-wife, and a frightening stranger who arrived unexpectedly at the lake. Camille, plagued by dreams of a girl with haunted eyes, cannot shake her fear of losing Mathias. A journey into the mountain country of Montana is where she counts on finding answers—or will her actions only fulfill a Davis family curse?

Wild Flower (A Shore Leave Cafe Romance)

Most people have no idea goblins live in the woods around the small town of Bellwater, Washington. But some are about to find out. Skye, a young barista and artist, falls victim to a goblin curse in the forest one winter night, rendering her depressed and silenced, unable to speak of what happened. Her older sister, Livy, is at wit’s end trying to understand what’s wrong with her. Local mechanic Kit would know, but he doesn’t talk of such things: he’s the human liaison for the goblin tribe, a job he keeps secret and never wanted, thrust on him by an ancient family contract. Unaware of what’s happened to Skye, Kit starts dating Livy, trying to keep it casual to protect her from the attention of the goblins. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kit, Skye draws his cousin Grady into the spell through an enchanted kiss in the woods, dooming Grady and Skye both to become goblins and disappear from humankind forever. It’s a midwinter night’s enchantment as Livy, the only one untainted by a spell, sets out to save them on a dangerous magical path of her own.

The Goblins of Bellwater

IN THE SHADOW OF 10,000 HILLS is a sweeping family saga that spans from the turmoil of Atlanta during the Civil Rights Movement, through the struggle for reconciliation and forgiveness in post-genocide Rwanda. At the heart of this literary novel that crosses racial and cultural boundaries is the search for family on a personal and global level. In 1968, a disillusioned and heartbroken Lillian Carlson left Atlanta after the assassination of Martin Luther King. She found meaning in the hearts of orphaned African children and cobbled together her own small orphanage in the Rift Valley alongside the lush forests of Rwanda.Three decades later, in New York City, Rachel Shepherd, lost and heartbroken herself, embarks on a journey to find the father who abandoned her as a young child, determined to solve the enigma of Henry Shepherd, a now-famous photographer. When an online search turns up a clue to his whereabouts, Rachel travels to Rwanda to connect with an unsuspecting and uncooperative Lillian. While Rachel tries to unravel the mystery of her father's disappearance, she finds unexpected allies in an ex-pat doctor running from his past and a young Tutsi woman who lived through a profound experience alongside her father. Set amongst the gaping wounds of a healing country, follow the intertwining stories of three women who discover something unexpected: grace when there can be no forgiveness.

In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills

Haupt, Jennifer

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