Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That's what Addie believes after Valerie moves across the street when they're both nine years old. But in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years, Val is swept into the popular crowd, while mousy, sullen Addie becomes her school's scapegoat. Flash-forward fifteen years. Valerie Adler has found a measure of fame and fortune working as the weathergirl at the local TV station. Addie...

They thought they had a handle on forgiveness, but it seems God has them on a crash-course to an even deeper level.

Charles Dickinson's novels and short stories have won widespread acclaim for their deft characterization, humanity, and humor. Now Dickinson slips beyond the bounds of mundane realism to create a poignant fantasy that bears comparison to the work of Jack Finney and Jonathan Carroll. Euclid, Illinois, is a town of many shortcuts, between houses, through orchards, and across fields. Josh Winkler, a local artist and longtime resident, knows these irregular...

"After fleeing her hometown three years earlier, Alyssa Harrison never planned to return. Then the Silicon Valley start-up she worked for collapsed and turned her world upside down. She is broke, under FBI investigation, and without a place to go. Having exhausted every option, she comes home to Winsome, Illinois, to regroup then move on as quickly as possible. Yet, as friends and family welcome her back, Alyssa begins to see a place for herself in...

Tim Underhill comes back to his hometown to investigate the murder of a childhood friend's wife.

Marianne Neumann takes a job as a placing agent with the Children's Aid Society in hopes of finding her younger sister. In 1858 New York she finds it's not always easy to offer children a better life. Former schoolteacher Andrew Brady suffers from a grief that won't go away-- and keeps hidden a secret from his past. As the two team up to place orphans across Illinois, a shocking tragedy threatens their work-- and changes one of their lives forever....

Years after a party that resulted in a teen's death, Jon Soliday, legal counsel to a politician and close childhood friend who is running for governor, realizes with horror that his fellow partygoers are being killed off

Harry has faced terrible odds before. He has a long history of fighting enemies above his weight class. The Red Court of Vampires. The fallen angels of the Order of Blackened Denarius. The Outsiders. But this time, it's different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennia is coming. And she's bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago, and has come to subjugate...

The Lemon Jelly Cake carries readers back to kinder, gentler times in small-town Central Illinois at the turn of the century. Evoking a forgotten America of lush lawns, bountiful summer picnics, shaded front porches, and gentle humor, the tale is set in an era when the day's toughest decision might have been what to serve for dinner or which suit or dress to wear. The Lemon Jelly Cake was a selection of the Literary Guild and was serialized in Woman's...