Shaza, a Syrian-Canadian housewife, is happily married and living the Canadian dream with a beautiful house in the suburbs, a loving family, and amazing friendships. When shy and sweet Shaza decides to abandon her family and embark on a strange journey of her own, her friends—Najat, Sonia, and Reem— are left entirely baffled.
Did her husband harm her? Did she try and go back to Syria? Is she tied to the conflict?
They follow her journey which takes her to Istanbul, Jordan, Netanya, Mecca, Jeddah, and London.
Her friends come to learn the secrets which Shaza has harboured all of her life and in the process they come to learn a lot about themselves.

Remembering the past can be like buying a return ticket for a train you aren't sure you want to board.

Rocking away on her peaceful front porch, Betty Grafton receives sad news which forces her to relive the darkest moments of her life. Surrounded by her family, a captive audience hanging onto her every word, she weaves the tale of how an unlikely and controversial friendship shaped her into the woman she is today. Exposing her own mistakes, fears, and soul deep heartbreak, Betty shares the hard truth about growing up in the South in the 1960's.

Though the years have blown by with hurricane force, the ache in her heart feels fresh. The threat of harm still chills her to the core. But the joy of friendship continues to sustain her.


The Edenville Series:
Book 1: Flowers in the Snow
Book 2: Kiss in the Wind
Book 3: Stars in a Bottle

A dark, Psychological Suspense drama, with a twist you won't see coming...

As she battles to survive the chilling darkness, with long hours of nothing to do but wait in terror for her captor to return, she grapples through obscure dreams and memories of a painful family past.

After a tumultuous childhood in a broken home, keeping secrets became a way of life for twin sisters: Gabby and Olivia, and their little sister, Emma. They've all got skeletons in their closets; memories locked away never to see the light of day.

But after they take divergent paths in life, disaster strikes, and their pasts collide head-on with a mysterious present in this surreal and gripping family drama. The worst has happened, and if they want to find the key to survival and reconciliation, they must learn to let their skeletons out; shake the dust off of them, and maybe even let them dance across the floor.

At turns heartbreaking, dark and beautiful, The Girl in the Box explores not only the consequences of secrets--even secrets kept out of fear--but also the courage it takes to speak the truth, to let go, and to survive.

Trigger Warning: 

The content of this novel contains graphic scenes: violence to women, victimization, abduction, and abuse

She can’t escape the mistakes of her past…

Callie Stillman has done everything she can to bury the memories of a tiny, baby-sized coffin. She lives life one day at a time, basking in the love of a good man and doting on her grandchildren. Until she crosses paths with a little girl who is obviously in trouble—but tries to hide it.

They can’t trust anyone…

Iris and Samantha Evans are living on borrowed time. Deserted, orphaned, betrayed, and deceived, they need rescuing in the worst way.

He’s praying for a miracle…

Steve Evans had his life changed by God. A reformed drug addict, he’s searching for the family he abandoned ten years ago…

When Callie can no longer ignore the signs that Iris needs help, her interference sends four people on a collision course that will force her to face the past she’d rather forget.

Click "get a free sample" and start reading now!

Callie is Book 1 in the Women of Valley View series. Other books include:
Terri
Pam
Samantha
Kate
Karla

Also available in audiobook.

A wonderful new collection of four captivating short stories by Mary Grand, author of best selling anthology ‘Catching the Light’.
Four stories, four women making changes that will alter their lives for ever.


Give and Take
Days before her wedding, hairdresser Lisa has a huge row with her fiancé. He tells her she is over-reacting, so why does Lisa feel devastated? As Lisa listens to the two sides of a couple’s marital problems in the salon, she begins to find answers.


The Key
Looking at the remains of the fire in her beautiful new kitchen, Ruth is very frightened and confused. Since moving with her new husband to Worthing nothing in her life makes sense. What is happening to her?


The Right Shoes
After a devastating family tragedy, Emma moved with her minister husband and daughter to the run down seaside resort of Ruxton. She refuses to talk to anyone about it: no-one will understand. Can a new friendship and a new puppy help Emma and her family heal and make a fresh start?

Holly’s Perfect Christmas?
Holly plans her dream Christmas at an idyllic cottage in Snowdonia. However her partner’s difficult teenage daughter, ex-wife and new husband join them and then the spiteful anonymous texts start to arrive. Can Holly still have her perfect Christmas?


Praise for Mary Grand’s short story writing
Catching the Light : ‘Delightful collection of short stories, beautifully-written and with interesting plots’


Hidden Chapters
Also included in Making Changes is an excerpt from the author’s latest full length novel, Hidden Chapters.

Haunted by the death of Aled at Worm’s Head, his sister Catrin returns to prepare the family home for sale, accompanied by her adopted Deaf daughter, Bethan. A web of lies and secrets spun by Catrin’s father slowly starts to unravel. Catrin, facing a crisis in her marriage, discovers that she must face this past if she is to heal and take control of her future.


Praise for Hidden Chapters
‘Mary’s ability to spin tales that incorporate unusual characters and circumstances is uncanny.’– Grady Harp, Hall of Fame, Top 100 reviewer, Vine Voice
‘Absolutely brilliant read’

‘Mary Grand has a wonderful facility with character and setting and from these two she weaves and conjures a lively, stirring and page turning as well as beautiful tale. I can’t recommend it highly enough’


‘The beautiful narrative descriptions of Gower really brings the book alive’

Her Dark Past Eclipsed her Future…Until New Love Brought Endless Possibilities

When her estranged daughter visits Madrona Island for the summer, Jude Simon, owner of the popular Island Thyme Café, is forced to face the dark secrets from her past. Years ago, she found out about her husband’s infidelity from an article in the local paper. Left a single mother of an infant daughter, Jude went on to make a success of her café, but still hides a broken heart behind her radiant smile.

Now, Jude finds herself falling hard for her new chef, Ryan Folger. Her feelings are returned, and Jude is finally able to envision her own happily ever after. However, when the cast and crew of an upcoming movie come to town to film Murder Most Magic, Ryan’s own dark secrets return in the form of a seductive ex-lover determined to have him back.

With the help of her friends, Kyla and Lily, Jude decides to fight for her chance at love with Ryan, work to repair the broken relationship with her daughter, and find the happiness she always longed for.


 

Journey on the path of self-discovery.

How far would you go to change your life?

'Forgive me.' They were the last words her mother had spoken.
Was that the dementia talking or a secret she has taken with her to the grave? Sylvie has no way of knowing until her mother's last request is revealed in the reading of the will. Sylvie must return to Cornwall and the cottage she hasn't set foot in for nearly fifty years. Uneasy at what secrets she may find, Sylvie almost wishes something would happen to put the trip on hold.

'Be careful what you wish for,' Sylvie's best friend warns her. Now the comfortable life Sylvie and her husband, John, have built together over the course of forty years of marriage is about to fall apart after some unexpected news. As they try to pick up the pieces in the aftermath, John has a plan for the future and makes a decision that will change the course of their lives. The problem is John didn't foresee the consequences. Now he wants his old life back. Sylvie doesn't. She's ready to find out the truth about her past and move on with her life. She's ready to reinvent herself. But is she prepared to leave John behind in the pursuit of her own happiness?

Payton Montgomery wishes she could remember her early childhood; Joel McIntyre wishes he could forget. Payton is excited about restarting life in New Orleans, but she is plagued by sketchy nightmares and two child abductions that pervade the community and her inner psyche. As she tries to cobble her life together after a string of bad choices, she falls hard for Joel, a veterinarian struggling with his own memories. Could their shared early past reveal secrets that will set them free?

Reviews have compared Through the Riptide to novels by Nicholas Sparks.

An attractive thirty year old professional woman leaves NYC after being attacked there and finds a new job by the seashore. She has to decide whether she will date her ex-boyfriend or a mysterious new man she meets on a bus ride. Filled with passion, emotion, romance and the excitement of a summer by the sea...

University of Pittsburgh law student, Maggie Hovis, battles an enemy she cannot escape—her own brain. Her family calls her a drama queen. Her fiancé, Sam, moves out after she throws a shoe at his head. Maggie knows there is only one way to get him back—control her moods. So she takes the step most of her family is against: therapy.

After a diagnosis of Bipolar II Disorder, Maggie begins to investigate her family tree—which is plagued by mental illness and hidden relatives—and develops empathy for her deceased Great Aunt Ella, who lived her life in a mental institution. But Maggie’s journey leads her into fear and insecurity, afraid she’ll end up like Ella and never get Sam back. But what about Nick, her super-sexy old flame, who wants to reignite their passion? And does it even matter, anyway? Won’t mental illness stop any man from loving her?

Reporter Roberta Bovi's marriage ends the day it begins.The man she has loved for years turns out so faithless that she has lived a fictional life, happy only because she was blind.
Roberta walks away from the debris of the relationship in nothing but the white sheath dress she wore to the ceremony, retro sunglasses that look ridiculous at a tragedy, and her passport.
A journalistic assignment in Uganda saves her from facing the man she now needs to divorce: she is to cover a story about AIDS increasing in a country that had previously served as the model for Africa.
Roberta has no more illusions about love and fidelity, and the writings of Christopher Burton, a doctor and evolutionary biologist she is going to interview, only convinces her further that humans are just apes that shed some hair.
Burton may have even fewer illusions than Roberta, but there is a heart beating beneath the white coat of a brave and very attractive doctor.
As Roberta stays to help at the hospital where he works, they find it hard to stay away from each other, even as both understand that love always requires a leap of faith.
From those who are capable of it...

Some swearing, non-explicit sex scenes
 

From the critically acclaimed author of Etched On Me comes a poignant, moving story of resilience and second chances.

After nine short but blissful years of marriage, American expat Gloria Burgess's world shatters when her British artist husband dies of leukemia. Estranged from her mother, utterly alone in her adopted home of London, she must now struggle to raise her young son on her own -- and fight the temptation to sink into the self-absorption of grief that once drove her father to suicide.

As she puts on a retrospective of her late husband's work, Gloria finds solace in the form of an empathetic friendship with a charming widower, and agrees to let her mother cross the Atlantic to stay with her for their first visit in a decade. The reunion could drive the wedge between them deeper ... or offer Gloria a priceless opportunity for regaining equilibrium and wholeness. Will she seize the opportunity, or turn her back on a new beginning?

“Brilliant…an astonishing first novel”
Bernard Cornwell

“A classic of its genre. Every page adds yet another layer of intrigue to its plot. Gripping stuff.”
Sunday Independent


Twenty-seven years after she adopted her baby in Ireland, Lena Molloy receives a call from the nun who set up the adoption. Sister Monica claims that she wants merely to tie up loose ends in her old age, but Lena becomes frightened that something more threatening lies behind the call, and she sets off on a journey to Ireland, with her best friend, to find her daughter's birth parents.

Happiness is Brayton, Nebraska, in your rearview mirror.

Author's Note:"The Long Road to Heaven" contains strong language that some might consider offensive.

The comical, fantastical, romantical, (not) entirely true story of Lady Jane Grey. In My Lady Jane, coauthors Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows have created a one-of-a-kind fantasy in the tradition of The Princess Bride, featuring a reluctant king, an even more reluctant queen, a noble steed, and only a passing resemblance to actual history—because sometimes history needs a little help.

At sixteen, Lady Jane Grey is about to be married off to a stranger and caught up in a conspiracy to rob her cousin, King Edward, of his throne. But those trifling problems aren’t for Jane to worry about. Jane gets to be Queen of England.

Like that could go wrong.

At fifteen years old, Valerie Darsin, was loved and cherished by her brothers and boyfriend. Her small town world was happy and secure until a sudden betrayal forced her to flee. Returning home, Valerie found support in Flynn Docherty-a guy who left her with unfamiliar feelings when he disappeared from her life. Valerie learned to move on, until a life-changing event brought Flynn back, but was she ready? Has she ever been Ready For Flynn?

(A contemporary rock star romance.)

In memories that rise like wisps of ghosts, LuLing Young searches for the name of her mother, the daughter of the Famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain. Trying to hold on to the evaporating past, she begins to write all that she can remember of her life as a girl in China. Meanwhile, her daughter Ruth, a ghostwriter for authors of self-help books, is losing the ability to speak up for herself in front of the man she lives with and his two teenage daughters. None of her professional sound bites and pat homilies works for her personal life; she knows only how to translate what others want to say.

Ruth starts suspecting that something is terribly wrong with her mother. As a child, Ruth had been constantly subjected to her mother's disturbing notions about curses and ghosts, and to her repeated threats to kill herself, and was even forced by her mother to try to communicate with ghosts. But now LuLing seems less argumentative, even happy, far from her usual disagreeable and dissatisfied self.

While tending to her ailing mother, Ruth discovers the pages LuLing wrote in Chinese, the story of her tumultuous and star-crossed life, and is transported to a backwoods village known as Immortal Heart. There she learns of secrets passed along by a mute nursemaid, Precious Auntie; of a cave where dragon bones are mined, some of which may prove to be the teeth of Peking Man; of the crumbling ravine known as the End of the World, where Precious Auntie's scattered bones lie, and of the curse that LuLing believes she released through betrayal.

Like layers of sediment being removed, each page reveals secrets of a larger mystery: What became of Peking Man? What was the name of the Bonesetter's Daughter? And who was Precious Auntie, whose suicide changed the path of LuLing's life? Within LuLing's calligraphed pages awaits the truth about a mother's heart, what she cannot tell her daughter yet hopes she will never forget.

Set in contemporary San Francisco and in a Chinese village where Peking Man is being unearthed, The Bonesetter's Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit: the past, its deepest wounds, its most profound hopes. The story conjures the pain of broken dreams, the power of myths, and the strength of love that enables us to recover in memory what we have lost in grief. Over the course of one fog-shrouded year, between one season of falling stars and the next, mother and daughter find what they share in their bones through heredity, history, and inexpressible qualities of love.

Wicked Summer follows the Bloom family as they spend a once in a lifetime vacation at Cape Harriet, a charming seaside town on Virginia's scenic Eastern Shore.

All Mary Bloom ever wanted was to celebrate her 60th birthday at the beach. The extended Bloom family converges at the Rising Tides Inn, where their slightest whim is catered to.

Forty something Iris is the perfect suburban mom, holding her four kids and husband on a tight leash. 36 year old Hyacinth is single, successful and the self-proclaimed brains of the family. At 26, Poppy is a top travel blogger, wandering across countries most people only dream of visiting.


The rivalry among the sisters is as strong as ever, and each sister is dealing with it in her own way. So while Iris taunts and needles, Hyacinth takes the high road and shows disdain. Poppy suffers silently, lost in her own inner turmoil. None of them has an inkling of the storm that is about to break loose in their lives.


Soft shell crabs and salt marshes will be forgotten as shocking secrets are revealed. Everyone seems to be guilty of hiding something.


Set in idyllic Cape Harriet, Wicked Summer takes the reader on a thrilling roller coaster ride with plenty of laughs, tears and intrigue with heart warming moments, scrumptious food and never a dull moment.

Four women, linked by blood ties, friendship, betrayal, loss and hope, struggle with the choices they’ve made and the hand that life’s dealt them.

All Pippa’s ever wanted is marriage and kids, but at thirty-four and about to embark on IVF, her dream of having a family is far from certain. Her younger sister Georgie has the opposite problem, juggling her career, her lover, a young daughter and a husband who wants baby number two.

Pippa’s best friend Sienna has a successful career in the film world, and despite her boyfriend pressurising her to settle down, a baby is the last thing she wants. Happily married Connie shares the trauma of fertility treatment with Pippa, but underestimates the impact being unable to conceive will have on her and her marriage.

As their lives collide in a way they could never have predicted, will any of them get to see their hopes realised?