Always With a Book

First line: Suzanne Dietz didn’t set out to start the Cackleberry Club, the whole thing just sort of happened. From the back cover: Suzanne, Toni, and Petra lost their husbands but found independence – and, in each other, a life raft of support, inspiration, fresh baked goods, and their own business. But when the Cackleberry Club cafe opened its doors in the town of Kindred, who’d have guessed that the…

First line: It had taken four months, calling in every favor ever owed, a case of expensive Scotch and a date with a slimy private investigator who had made the mistake of thinking “date” meant “sex”. From the back cover:  Dana Birch vowed never to put herself at the mercy of a powerful man. She became a deputy so that she could take care of herself, and protect those she…

First line: “It’s only two million.” From the back cover: Lexi Titan can just see the headlines. All of Titanville will be buzzing. Not that she has any other choice. Faced with exactly thirty days to come up with two million dollars, she is out of options. Marry Cruz Rodriquez or lose everything – the successful day spa she built herself, her tyrant father’s respect. And the long-standing competition with…

First line: “I’d like you to marry my daughter.” From the back cover: Skye Titan’s wealthy father thinks he can still dictate his daughter’s choice in men. Now widowed and a single mother, Skye isn’t the yes-girl she once was. Especially since the love of her life is back in Texas after eight long years. He won’t like the answers to the questions he’s asking. About why she left him…

First line: In the movies there was always a warning before something bad happened. From the back cover: Izzy has always been the fearless Titan sister.  But when an oil rig blows up, leaving her barely able to see, her sisters find themselves as concerned by her emotional withdrawal as by the possibility that the explosion was no accident.  Are the mind games their long-lost brother Garth has been playing…

First line: A back-alley crawl had certainly sounded like a tantalizing idea to Theodosia when she’d first conceived it. From the inside cover: It was the Dickensian evening Theodosia Browning had hoped for. Flickering candles lined the narrow cobblestone alleys of Charleston as shop owners, dressed in cloaks of yore, threw open their back doors to shoppers. Visitors took advantage of bargains on antiques, heaping bowls of crab chowder –…

First line:  “I need flowers, dead ones.” From the back cover:  Hope Walker survived early breast cancer at just thirty-years-old, but a mastectomy left her with a lot of scarring—and some serious fears about dating.  Hope owns Changing Seasons, Heart Lake’s most popular flower shop.  When it comes to love and relationships, she’s able to work magic through her expert flower arranging…for everyone but herself.  Then one day a handsome…

First line: Was it a bad omen when you couldn’t zip up your wedding dress? From the back cover: Erin Merritt has returned to her scenic hometown of Heart Lake to plan her wedding, but when she repeatedly runs into her childhood crush, she wonders if she’s engaged to the wrong man.  To make matters worse, all the stress is making her eat, and now she can’t fit into her…

First line: Jim Dawson was handsome from the day he was born. From the inside cover: In this heartfelt and incisive new novel, Danielle Steel celebrates the virtues of unconventional beauty while exploring deeply resonant issues of weight, self-image, sisterhood, and family. A chubby little girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and ordinary looks, Victoria Dawson has always felt out of place in her family, especially in body-conscious L.A. Her…

First line: I spy on them. From the back cover: What happens after “happily ever after”? Alice Hirsh is about to find out.      Alice, a former New Yorker who thought she’d never feel at home in the bizarre world of the San Fernando Valley, was adapting, raising her five-year-old daughter while trying to keep her job and make her new house a home. When her attorney husband lands a…

First line: Paris, 1765. Five-year-old Claudette Laurent raced down the street from her father’s doll shop to knock on the door of Charles and Michelle Renaud. From the back cover: On the brink of revolution, with a tide of hate turned against the decadent royal court, France is in turmoil – as is the life of one young woman forced to leave her beloved Paris. After a fire destroys her…