Showing results for "Blue Skies" in Genre Fiction

Welcome to America. On the East Coast, homes are being swallowed by the ocean; on the West Coast, California is engulfed with wildfire. But for one family, the impending environmental disaster is the least of their worries. Party girl Cat just impulse-purchased a snake; her pious brother Cooper is wrestling with a tic bite; and their mom Ottilie has resorted to cooking with crickets. Everyone is drinking too much – and the bugs seems to be disappearing. It seems as if it's anything but blue skies ahead...

Birdie's keeping it together, of course she is. So she's a little hungover sometimes on her shifts, and has to bring her daughter Emaleen to work while she waits tables but it's a tough town to be a single mother, and she needs to get by. Maybe the shine is starting to wear off life at Wolverine Lodge. Maybe Birdie's ready for a fresh start. And then Birdie meets Arthur, who is quieter than most men, but makes her want to listen; who is gentle with Emaleen, and understands Birdie's fascination with the mountains in whose shadow they live.

When sixteen-year-old Sally is evacuated to the English south coast, she is terrified by what lies ahead of her. All she knows are the sights and sounds of London's East End – but Sally swallows her tears as they leave the familiar landmarks behind, knowing that she has to be a Grown-Up Girl and play mother to her six-year-old brother Ernie. Playing mother is nothing new for Sally – their real mother Florrie, a good-time girl, hasn't even come to the station to wave them off and Ernie, crippled at an early age by polio, is used to depending on his older sister.

Thomas McGuane's high-spirited and fiercely lyrical new novel chronicles the fall and rise of Frank Copenhaver, a man so unhinged by his wife's departure that he finds himself ruining his business, falling in love with the wrong women, and wandering the lawns of his neighborhood, desperate for the merest glimpse of normalcy.

When 40-year-old Rabbit Hayes dies, she leaves behind a family broken by grief: her mother, Molly, her brother, Davey, her daughter, Juliet, her sister, Grace, and her best friend, Marjorie. They all have to learn how to cope with their grief, but despite fighting individual battles, they are drawn together by their love for Rabbit, and their love for each other. Laugh, cry and shout with joy for the colourful, unruly Hayes family as they battle with the loss of their beloved Rabbit, who in her own crazy way taught each of them how to live and goes on showing them how to love.

It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother Mamdouh tends to the village bees. Their younger sister Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.

West of New Orleans among a few small Gulf islands lies the Isle aux Chiens, a tiny, impoverished strip of land burdened by intolerable heat and roaming packs of wild dogs. Here a handful of Creole families eke out a meager existence by fishing the Gulf waters. Such is the fate of Al Landry and his seventeen-year-old daughter, Annie. All Annie has ever known is the wild sea, but she longs for other people and places, including the glamor of life in the Big Easy.

Just when Daisy thought she had canal life understood, Theo, her primary go-to for all of her boating questions has left Wildflower Lock, not to mention the budding romance that has been steadily growing. Not one to sit and wallow, Daisy takes matters into her own hands. Who said long-distance relationships can’t work? With the help of trusted friend Yvonne, Daisy takes the September Rose on a round trip to surprise her new boyfriend. The best thing about a home on the water? You can go anywhere!

Summer, 1991. Dean: sun-stung and sticky with cool ice-pop juice, walks to the middle of The Green to get a good gawk at the new salon. And at the owner's kid. Hands deep in his pockets, his jet-black mop of hair hides the tension in his face and shoulders at the thought of going back home. Shauna: stands well hid behind her ma - her eyes dark and haunted like the rest of her. The salon is theirs, a fresh start. The smell of her ma's Body Shop perfume clings to her jumper - Shauna can't be anywhere else other than here. Instantly inseparable, their friendship blooms.

Jess Bailey broke Cade Walker's heart when she left for the city - but she was just trying to find her own way in the world. When Jess's dad calls her home and tells her he's selling the ranch, she realizes she's about to lose the life she was born to live. And when she sees Cade again, she knows how much she's lost already. As their nearest neighbor, Cade is always trying to help. But he's got his own ranch and his horse training business to think about. Even though his heart fills with hope for a second chance when he sees Jess, she left him once when things got tough.

At 22, Adam Wheeler learns that he has come into property, a mill house and vineyard in southern France. Leaving old friends behind, Adam moves across the Channel. His new life is a lonely one, until new neighbour Stéphane turns out to be offering more than just a helping hand with his vines. But when the love of Adam’s teen years, Sylvain, appears on the scene, Adam must decide exactly what, and who, he really wants.

What options does a Christian woman have after she's brutally assaulted by a stranger...and becomes pregnant? That's the heartrending situation Claire Holland faces. Happily married and the mother of two when she is attacked, Claire begins an incredible journey on the painful pathway to trusting God in all things. When Claire's husband, Dan, confesses he can't be a father to the expected child, Claire's decision to put the baby up for adoption creates a sense of tremendous loss for Claire.

Very few people can say they were born inside a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Disease, starvation, and much worse, prevented most prisoners from surviving. I shouldn’t be alive. As a child, I didn’t know my life was different from that of others. I had nothing to compare it to, and I had no insight about the day I was born...until the moment I overheard the truth. In a split second, I became a stranger to my reflection, my name, and my reason for being. I felt utterly alone in a foreign world, but that changed when I met another person who was lost, like me.

With her adopted son missing and the rest of her family increasingly estranged, Sandra Kaye Darden is drawn to the little pink house where her Uncle Poppy once provided security. What begins for Sandra as a simple painting project, meant to prepare the house for sale, becomes a secret venture that eventually changes everything. Cass Blue is having trouble keeping food on the table since she ditched foster care. When Sandra Kaye shows up with lunch one day, Cass has no way of knowing that the meeting will lead to the creation of a place of refuge that could reunite a divided community.

Is there such a thing as a perfect marriage? David thought so. But when his wife, Mary Rose, dies suddenly he has to think again. In reliving their 20 years together David sees that the ground beneath them had shifted and he simply hadn't noticed. Or had chosen not to. Figuring out who Mary Rose really was and the secrets that she kept - some of these hidden in plain sight - makes David wonder if he really knew her. Did he even know himself? Nothing but Blue Sky is a precise and tender story of love in marriage.

Armed with an honours degree in Agribusiness, Amanda Greenfield dreams of employing all the skills she's learnt at college to help her father turn the family farm from a debt-ridden, run-down basket case into a thriving enterprise. Then tragedy strikes with the death of Amanda's mother in a car accident. Wracked by grief and guilt, and wearied by the long struggle to keep Kyleena a going concern, Amanda's father argues that they should sell up and get on with their lives away from the vagaries of drought and fluctuating stock and crop yields.

Lt. Raymond Novak prefers the pulpit to the cockpit, but at least his stateside job training B-17 pilots allows him the luxury of a personal life. As he courts Helen Carlisle, a young war widow and mother who conceals her pain under a frenzy of volunteer work, the sparks of their romance set a fire that flings them both into peril. After Ray leaves to fly a combat mission at the peak of the air war over Europe, Helen takes a job in a dangerous munitions yard and confronts an even graver menace in her own home.

When 18-year-old Tam Lambert learns that her family’s upscale home is in foreclosure, the life she's known is forever changed. Tam and her family must move into a tiny house in a changing Dallas neighborhood called Blue Sky Hill.... New resident Shasta Reid-Williams knows nothing of real estate schemes when she and her husband purchase a home in Blue Sky Hill. To her, it’s the perfect place to raise her children. Better yet is getting to know Tam, who lives right across the street.

All her life, Epiphany Salerno has been tossed like a dandelion seed on the wind. Now, at 16, she must move to the low-rent side of Blue Sky Hill and work where she's not wanted: in an upscale home on The Hill. J. Norman Alvord's daughter has hired a teenager to stay with him in the afternoons. Widowed and suffering from heart trouble, Norman wants to be left alone. But in Epie's presence, Norman discovers a mystery. Deep in his mind lie memories of another house, another life, and a woman who saved him.

On the weekend of her wedding, Clare Hobbes meets an elderly woman named Edith Herron. During the course of a single conversation, Edith gives Clare the courage to do what she should have done months earlier: break off her engagement to her charming - yet overly possessive - fiancé. Three weeks later Clare learns that Edith has died - and has given her another gift. Nestled in crepe myrtle and hydrangea and perched at the marshy edge of a bay in a small seaside town in Delaware, Blue Sky House now belongs to Clare.