Ellie de Florent-Stinson is celebrating her fortieth birthday with a grand celebration in her fabulous house in Palm Springs. At forty, it appears Ellie has everything she ever wanted: a handsome husband; an accomplished, college-age stepdaughter; a beautiful ten-year-old girl; two adorable and rambunctious six-year-old twin boys; lush, well-appointed homes in Los Angeles, Park City, and Palm Springs; a thriving career as a well-known fashion designer...

"Mick Hardin is an Army CID officer home on leave, recovering from an IED attack and flirting with prescription painkillers, when a body is found in the center of town. It's Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see it as an occupational hazard. But when Barney's mother, Shifty, asks Mick to take a look, it seems there's more to the killing than it seems. Mick should be rehabbing his leg, signing his divorce papers, and getting...

"Rebecca and Brian Unsworth appear to have it all. A nice house in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Two well-behaved, healthy teenage children. Important government jobs - Rebecca working in counterterrorism for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Brian serving as a coder for the National Security Agency. Their lives stand to improve even more as Brian, in his off-hours, has just developed and sold a highly profitable app.However, the Unsworths' marriage...

The day Anna McDonald's quiet, respectable life explodes starts off like all the days before: packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true-crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone. Reeling, desperate for distraction, Anna returns to the podcast. Other people's problems are much better than one's own—a sunken yacht, a murdered family, a hint of...

"In a small country town during one long, hot summer, the Bloom family is beginning to unravel. Martha is straining against the confines of her life, lost in regret for what might have been, when an old flame shows up. In turn, her husband Mike becomes frustrated with his increasingly distant wife. Marital secrets, new and long-hidden, start to surface-with devastating effect. And while teenagers Tilly and Ben are about to step out into the world,...

"As the summer of 1993 begins, Sam and Swami Brecht roll into town with a twenty-six-foot Winnebago camper van, their three young kids, and the deed to Woodchuck Rafting Company. Sam and Swami met as young, adventurous river guides but, a decade later, find themselves weighed down by money worries and the demands of adulthood. The town of Thunderwater, in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, could be the fresh start their marriage needs. But Woodchuck, once...

How can marriage offer a container for real growth? What can couples do when conflict occur? What does it take to make a marriage successful? Traci Morrow's Real-Life Marriage explains that a truly successful union comes with years of intentional choices, extended forgiveness, good communication, and a resolve to stay and work together and grow through differences. Real-life marriages don't just happen, they are built. Offering tools and advice that...

Two sisters sit in the backseat of a car, bound at the wrists by a strip of white cloth. Their mother, Amaranth, drives for days without pause, desperate to get away from her husband, Zachariah, who she fears will follow them to the ends of the earth. Her daughters, Amity and Sorrow, cannot comprehend why they're fleeing or fathom what exists outside their father's polygamous compound, where their mother was one of fifty wives held captive by Zachariah's...

Set in one of James' thematic stalking grounds: the Victorian world of 1880s New York high society. Ms. Lucy Carlton, from a pedigreed family of long standing, is married to a crass nouveau riche husband. She feels hemmed in by the stifling codes of female propriety and subservience, and yearns to break free into a more bohemian world. Her father and husband want her to conform to traditional mores, and hand her over to a neurologist to cure her of...

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