The events of a single night can change a life forever, as musician Daniel Whitman discovers when he loses his family and home.

Overwhelmed by grief, unable to find solace in his music or accept comfort from his friends, he flees up the California coast. Daniel thinks he’s leaving everything behind, but his journey will take him to the places and people that will help him find his way back.

The Day After Yesterday is a story of hope, friendship, and the redemptive power of music.

The twelve stories in Kate Blackwell’s debut collection illuminate the lives of men and women who appear as unremarkable as your next-door-neighbor until their lives explode quietly on the page. Her wry, often darkly funny voice describes the repressed underside of a range of middle-class characters living in the South. Blackwell’s focus is elemental—on marriage, birth, death, and the entanglements of love at all ages—but her gift is to shine a light on these universal situations with such lucidity, it is as if one has never seen them before.

In “My First Wedding,” a twelve-year-old girl attends her cousin’s Deep South wedding, where she discovers both mystery and disillusionment and, in the end, finds she’s not immune to her family’s myth of romantic love. In “Heartbeatland,” when a young woman’s husband dies suddenly, she refuses to sell his Jeep to an importuning gay neighbor. The more she clings to the Jeep—and to the memory of her beloved David—the more he becomes someone she doesn’t recognize. In “Queen of the May,” a former belle looks for ways to assuage her loneliness in her large new house in the empty Carolina sandhills.

After 30 rough years of adventure on the seas, Jake Thomas makes landfall in a new and quiet life in Oregon – only to discover that the past dies hard. The secrets he’s kept, even from himself, won’t stay buried.

Forty years earlier, a beautiful, young woman was murdered during Jake’s first voyage as a deck cadet on an American freighter. Her children, now grown, want answers only Jake can give. What really happened that terrible night? Did the wrong man go to jail?

In this riveting story-within-a-story, Jake’s peaceful routine in Portland, Oregon, stands in stark contrast to his days as a merchant seaman in Subic Bay, when he set off on a journey to discover his dark side. A journey that hasn’t yet ended.

Written in a style that compares to Joseph Conrad, Joseph Jablonski drew upon his own years of sea experience to craft a book that is as much a careful observation of human nature and a powerful condemnation of war as it is a suspenseful sea story.

Zobie Marsh hides the fearsome talent of prophecy. Young, poor and grieving the loss of her beloved Black Gram, she leaves home suddenly to avoid the advances of her mother’s latest boyfriend. Her decision to travel to South Carolina sets in motion Heavenscribe, a spiritual transformation devised by angels to aid a dying world.

Bel Petersen seems to have it all: ample means, a loving marriage and a rewarding family life. But she’s suffered through a year of unexpected deaths, and near-constant nightmares that portend the downfall of civilization. Now she’s visiting Health Presbyterian daily as Milly battles a relentless bone cancer sure to end their decades-long friendship in a matter of weeks.

One evening as Bel unlocks her car in the hospital’s parking lot, four ambulances stream toward the Emergency entrance. There’s been a horrific traffic accident. She’s shocked to discover one of the victims didn’t make it into an ambulance—and he’s bleeding out in the passenger seat of a high school student’s car. Bel sends the student running to the hospital for help, and tends to the grievously injured man.

His dying words will lead her to Zobie, and reveal the spiritual awakening they must undertake together. If they fail, The Dimming will consume every human soul on the planet.

Everything you never knew you wanted in a post-apocalyptic novel:

Wal-Mart residents enjoying a parking lot bonfire and sing-along.

Religious fanatics waiting for Jesus in Okeefenokee Swamp Park.

Sexed-up displaced youths enjoying each other in government-sponsored free-love communes.

References to an ungodly number of Broadway musicals.

And more. Much more. Except no ravenous zombies (sorry). Still...
It's no day at the beach when Hurricane Walter just about swallows Florida. And Walter is just the beginning, ushering in a world-wide disaster-filled era. But former reporter Mia Fine knows she doesn't have it so bad as she, her adorable doctor husband, and a quirky band of fellow travelers head for New York State. Because there's no place like home.

The Valkyrie Mandate tells a gripping, unforgettable story of peace and war, love and hate...and one man's struggle to defend what he knows in his heart to be right.

Justin Barclay holds an exalted position of respect and honor among the Asian community. He alone understands the complexities--and subtleties--of their culture. Now he is a man caught in the middle of a deadly conspiracy that will force him to choose--and to act. For in this fabled, exotic land where no one can be trusted, and where a people will die to preserve their way of life, a diabolical game of cat and mouse is about to be played out on a world stage. 

In May 2000, Joel Smith is a cocky, adventurous young man who sees the world as his playground. But when the college senior, days from graduation, enters an abandoned Montana mine, he discovers the price of reckless curiosity. He emerges in May 1941 with a cell phone he can't use, money he can't spend, and little but his wits to guide his way. Stuck in the age of swing dancing and a peacetime draft, Joel begins a new life as the nation drifts toward war. With the help of his 21-year-old trailblazing grandmother and her friends, he finds his place in a world he knew only from movies and books. But when an opportunity comes to return to the present, Joel must decide whether to leave his new love in the past or choose a course that will alter their lives forever. THE MINE is a love story that follows a humbled man through a critical time in history as he adjusts to new surroundings and wrestles with the knowledge of things to come.

(Book 2 of the Shades of Blue series) When Nora Banks hides in a hayloft to find a moment of peace, she doesn't expect the man she's loved from afar for years to climb up and join her, or that both their fathers find them in such a compromising situation.

The last thing Grayson Cole wants is to be attached to the only woman that's affected him since his late wife. Now that everyone expects him to marry her, can he risk that kind of pain again?

Neither Nora nor Grayson plan to go through with the marriage, not when their pasts are obstacles too great to overcome. But when the tides turn and those that demanded the wedding now try pull them apart, they decide to fight it.

Teddy Alexander is about to have a bad day that changes his life forever. He’s found his teacher’s bad side, and she wants him expelled. Although learning is his favorite thing to do, and Teddy is good at it, what he really wants is a friend. Friendship can be hard to find and sometimes fades, but Teddy keeps trying.

Even at a young age, Teddy is kind, with a strong sense of right and wrong. When Mrs. Braunshausen gives away his turn to feed Mr. Chompers, the class tortoise, Teddy is not happy about it. He loves Mr. Chompers.

This is the story of a young genius who grows into a hopeless romantic. We follow his life from age six, through high school at age twelve, and on to his decision to go back to college (for a PhD in Literature) after finishing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics at eighteen.

“I’m watching a girl across the room who seems to be trying to catch the eye of the guy sitting next to her as he eats his dinner.
I don’t know.
I’m bored I guess.”

Actually sort of a story that may have happened.

Steve tells people he's a writer. He tells them that he is part of a new movement called the Punklits. In truth he is just a bored student who lives life as many other students do. He smokes too much. Fucks too much. Takes too much powder. The boredom of life lurks around every corner and he is doing everything he can to fight it off.

But when an old friend of his is suspected of murder, Steve thinks he might just have found a way to write his way out of where he lives. He may also have just stumbled on to the key to knowing why he feels like a monster.

In the vein of Bret Easton Ellis by way of William S. Burroughs, Don’t Look the Batards in the Eye asks what is a monster and would you know one if you were it. Sex, drugs, rock, death, and a man who can’t eat turkey properly await in the pages of this book.

With acres of land and a house that have been in his family for generations, rancher Chance Qualtrough has deep roots in Primrose Creek. Now, at the local diner, he is about to encounter his futureŠ.Perhaps it was fate that brought Hallie O'Rourke and her two young daughters to the Last Chance Café. More likely, it was the blinding Nevada snowstorm and a broken-down truck that forced the desperate single mother inside. Hallie couldn't know that she would find not just a hot meal and a few hours' rest, but the start of a new life. And Chance doesn't know that Hallie is fleeing a danger so threatening she dares not ask anyone for help. Even his kind offer of his aunt's house as lodging seems like too great a risk for Hallie.

But her fierce protection of her children wins out, and she knows she has no choice but to accept Chance's invitation. Slowly, as Chance and Hallie break down barriers of fear and doubt, trust takes hold. Hope replaces despair. And a fragile attraction grows into an undeniable passion. From the moment she took a chance with a handsome stranger in a country diner, everything Hallie has ever believed about home and family is seen through new eyes. But Hallie can never forget that just one careless word could bring back the past with full force, and could destroy all that she has made her own.
With a richly emotional storytelling style that has enchanted readers worldwide, Linda Lael Miller explores the secrets and wishes that push a woman's heart to new tomorrows and -- forever and always -- to lasting love.

While duck hunting one morning, childless, middle-aged Nathan McCann finds a newborn abandoned in the woods. To his shock, the child—wrapped in a sweater and wearing a tiny knitted hat—is still alive. To his wife’s shock, Nathan wants to adopt the boy…but the child’s grandmother steps in. Nathan makes her promise, however, that one day she’ll bring the boy to meet him so he can reveal that he was the one who rescued him.

Fifteen years later, the widowered Nathan discovers the child abandoned once again—this time at his doorstep. Named Nat, the teenager has grown into a sullen delinquent whose grandmother can no longer tolerate him. Nathan agrees to care for Nat, and the two engage in a battle of wills that spans years. Still, the older man repeatedly assures the youngster that, unlike the rest of the world, he will never abandon him—not even when Nat suffers a trauma that changes both of their lives forever.

From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes When I Found You, an exquisite, emotional tale of the unexpected bonds that nothing in life can break.

In the hills of Tennessee, Shane Carson, a gifted, nationally-recognized horseman, is living the good life. When a mysterious mustang shows up on his farm, Shane doesn't know how--or why--the horse appeared, but the horse's distinctive brand identifies her. She is one of the Spirit Horses, a rare, wild herd that runs free on the Shoshone reservation in Wyoming. Watched over for centuries in the tribe's ancestral valleys, these exquisite horses, according to belief, provide a link to the afterlife. When tragedy strikes in his life, Shane nearly loses his will to live--but for one promise he made to his young son: to return the mustang to her rightful home. On this bittersweet journey, Shane finds a world where tradition reigns, and ancient beliefs transcend modern logic. In this magnificent expanse of blue sky and wide open spaces, love is alive, but hate, intolerance, and greed threaten to close in. To make good on his vow, Shane must face the danger that threatens these horses, the tribe's legacy, and his destiny.

“Write a story a month,” Larah said. We were brunching on a picnic table outside Wheatsville, on South Lamar.

My mouth full of a Coolhaus Double Chocolate Chip Cookie + Dirty Mint Chip Ice Cream sandwich, I said, “Hmmm?”

“One story a month, January through October,” Larah said. “Then publish it by December.”

“You don’t know how hard that would be,” I said, swallowing. “Besides, there’s football to watch, and beer to drink, and parties and shows and stuff. This is Austin! No one’s gonna sit there and write a story a month while living in Austin.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were a writer.”

And so the gauntlet was thrown.
 

God's Glass is the life story of Joanie Callahan, a woman born with algophilia -- the scientific term for masochism. But Joanie's masochism isn't just sexual -- it's all of her happiness that's tied to pain. She can only feel the highest emotional joys -- from art to music to curiosity to love -- through some measure of pain.

Joanie's family ostracizes her for this, going so far as to get her an exorcism and have her committed to a psych ward for electro-shock therapy.

Joanie's all alone in the world, until she meets a boxer named Michael who might possibly be just like her...