For October we are celebrating women’s fiction titles that showcase finding your calling via a new career.
The Blue Iris by Rachel Stone
Sometimes, uprooting the thorn-filled past is the only way we bloom…
Tessa Lewis is set to embark on a Big-Time Career and marry Toronto’s fastest rising lawyer, who loves her to pieces. But life wasn’t always sunshine and roses, and when a visit to a flower market from her childhood sparks fragmented memories of the mother she lost too soon, Tessa puts her entire future on hold to work there, determined to come to terms with her past.
At the Blue Iris Flower Market, everything is blossoming except the rag-tag crew, each hiding deep scars of their own. When Sam, the beloved but troubled man in charge, takes off and leaves the market reeling, Tessa and her unlikely new friends come face to face with their hardest truths, uprooting lives carefully cultivated — and just maybe, unearthing everything they’ve ever wanted.
Told from multiple perspectives, The Blue Iris is an intricately woven story of love tested beyond its limits, chosen family, and the beauty that grows in letting go.
The Bookshop by the Bay by Pamela Kelley
“Anyone who’s ever wanted to turn the page on their old life or felt the whispered promise of a new dream, and a fresh start will fall in love with Pamela Kelley’s charming new novel.” — New York Timesbestselling author Mary Kay Andrews
TWO LIFELONG FRIENDS.
Jess loves her work as a high-profile lawyer in Charleston. But when her marriage implodes, she retreats to her childhood home on Cape Cod with her thirty-year-old daughter, Caitlin, hoping to regroup with her longtime best friend, Alison.
ONE BOOKSHOP BY THE BAY.
Alison’s career has taken a hit after twenty years as an editor for the magazine Cape Cod Living. But when she learns her beloved bookstore on the Cape is looking for new ownership, a new dream starts to form.
AND THE SUMMER THAT COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING.
As the two friends reopen the bookstore, they also open themselves up to the magic of second chances.
Almost Definitely Never by Lucy Day
In one week, two former college rivals will challenge everything they believe to be true about each other—and discover that being wrong might just be their greatest win.
It’s official: Sadie Harper’s life is a dumpster fire. Last week she was living her best life as a beloved park ranger in a cozy woodland cabin. This week? She’s lost both—and is stuck playing hostess at her parents’ inn and feeling like a failure. Things can’t possibly get any worse… until the one person she never wanted to see again checks into the Jasmine Falls Inn.
James Fielding: famous travel writer, charming TV host, internet darling. He was once her biggest rival, and now he’s in town to shoot a travel show. When James asks for Sadie’s help with filming, it gives her a new way to do the work she loves—if she’s brave enough to take a leap. She can ignore his smoldering gaze and sexy smirk, but she can’t help wondering why, of all the towns, did James choose this one? And why does all their pretend chemistry on set feel so much like the real thing?
Life of Cyn by Caitlin Avery
She’s caught in a cycle of trauma and alcohol. With her marriage and life on the line, can she find justice and healing?
Cynthia “Cyn” McKinley is at her wits end. Nudging forty and relocating after bankruptcy and foreclosure, she tries desperately to use meditation and liquid courage to suppress her paralyzing anxiety. Determined to make a good impression with her husband’s new boss, her world spirals out of control when she recognizes him as the high school jock who forcibly took her virginity.
Terrified she’ll destroy her family after she narrowly avoids a drunk driving charge, she goes cold turkey. But as she obsesses over seeking revenge against the man whose arrogant smirk she can’t escape, she plunges into a dangerous relapse.
Can Cyn break free from her destructive path and find her way back to peace?
The Lending Library: A Novel by Aliza Fogelson
For fans of Jane Green and Loretta Nyhan, a heartwarming debut novel about a daydreamer who gives her town, and herself, an amazing gift: a lending library in her sunroom, while confronting an even higher stakes, life-changing, decision.
When the Chatsworth library closes indefinitely, Dodie Fairisle loses her sanctuary. How is a small-town art teacher supposed to cope without the never-ending life advice and enjoyment that books give her? Well, when she’s as resourceful and generous as Dodie, she turns her sunroom into her very own little lending library.
At first just a hobby, this lit lovers’ haven opens up her world in incredible ways. She knows books are powerful, and soon enough they help her forge friendships between her zany neighbors—and attract an exciting new romance.
But when the chance to adopt an orphaned child brings Dodie’s secret dream of motherhood within reach, everything else suddenly seems less important. Finding herself at a crossroads, Dodie must figure out what it means to live a full, happy life. If only there were a book that could tell her what to do…
Falling Apart, Falling for You by Chris Posti
With their lives in a free fall, three women gather for their 40th high school reunion. At 57, is it too late to make a fresh start?
Suzanne has spent most of her adult life working as a traveling trainer for an airline, feeling untethered and only mildly content. Then she feels a stirring in her heart for a seemingly perfect guy. But when she abruptly loses her job, she lands in surprising new territory.
Rachel seeks distraction in the wake of her husband’s sudden passing. When she helps organize her high school reunion, she struggles to learn forgiveness as she tiptoes into her new-found freedom.
Marla sells thriving business and yearns to reconnect with family and find new purpose in life. As she offers her marketing expertise to revitalize the blue-collar town that brought the three women together again she learns past mistakes still have consequences.
Always Orchid by Carol Van Den Hende
He almost let her go. Her trauma could tear them apart. But a love like theirs is worth fighting for…
Phoenix Walker will never be the same. Nine months after a heroic act left him forever changed, he refuses to hurt Orchid Paige ever again.
Orchid is ready to forgive. Convincing her guy she still loves him, no matter his injuries, she works to rebuild their intimacy. But their move to her family’s ancestral country unveils China’s superstitions against people with disabilities. Worse, their friend’s life has been upended by those prejudices.
Will Phoenix and Orchid find a way to beat the odds and turn discrimination into acceptance?
Days Made of Glass by Laura Drake
Shared blood defines a family, but spilled blood can too.
Harlie Cooper raised her sister, Angel, even before their mother died. When their guardian is killed in a fire, rather than be separated by Social Services, they run. Life off the grid in L.A. isn’t easy, but worse, there’s something wrong with Angel.
Harlie walks in to find their apartment scattered with shattered and glass and Angel, a bloody rag doll in a corner. The doctor orders institutionalization in a state facility. Harlie’s not leaving her sister in that human warehouse. But something better takes money. Lots of it.
When a rep from the Pro Bull Riding Circuit suggests she train as a bullfighter, rescuing downed cowboys from their rampaging charges, she can’t let the fact that she’d be the first woman to attempt this stop her. Angel is depending on her.
It’s not just the danger and taking on a man’s career that challenges Harlie. She must learn to trust—her partner and herself, and learn to let go of what’s not hers to save.
A story of family and friendship, trust and truth.
What We Never Say by Paulette Stout
No means no, except to the most powerful woman in fashion publishing. Kyle’s been trying to forget her for eleven years. When the famous magazine editor reemerges for round two, Kyle’s forced to confront his painful past—the one he’s kept hidden from his girlfriend, Rebecca.
Complications arise when Rebecca’s blog for women becomes a global sensation in the one magazine Kyle hoped to avoid. With their future at serious risk, the choice is clear.
It’s time to go public with the truth about what happened. But will anyone believe them?
In The Shadow of The Apennines by Kimberly Sullivan
An American divorcée. An Italian shepherdess.
Separated by a century, united by common dreams.
The sleepy little Abruzzo mountain town of Marsicano seems about as far as Samantha can flee from her failed marriage and disastrous university career. Eager for a fresh start, Samantha begins to set down roots in her Italian mountain hideaway.
At first, the mountain retreat appears idyllic, but an outsider’s clumsy attempts at breaking into the closed mountain community are quickly thwarted when the residents discover Samantha’s snarky blog ridiculing the town and its inhabitants.
Increasingly isolated in her mountain cottage, Samantha discovers the letters and diaries of Elena, a past tenant and a survivor of the 1915 Pescina earthquake. Despite the century that separates the two women, Samantha feels increasingly drawn into Elena’s life, and discovers startling parallels with her own.
