FF - Caren J. Werlinger

Contains the following;

Looking Through Windows
Everything can change in a second and nothing is ever the same.
Emily had to rebuild her life… her sense of self. How far would she go to hold onto a dream?

Emily Warner moves to Vermont hoping for a fresh start. Anything to forget the past four years. She didn’t plan on the past finding her. And she didn’t plan on Ann Hight. Ann helps Emily through a crisis, and re-awakens emotions Emily thought she would never experience again. For Ann, what she begins to feel for Emily promises everything she never knew she needed. Just when it seems they’ve found the love they’ve yearned for, fate conspires to tear them apart. Even if they can somehow hang on despite all the obstacles thrown at them, Emily still has to face the biggest obstacle of all – herself.

She Sings of Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things
Margaret Braithwaite was a rising Regency scholar and an acclaimed author. Thirty years later, she’s a one-book wonder, a fifty-something college professor with the dubious distinction of being an expert on Jane Austen, hidden in the shadow of her famous husband and his Civil War novels. “Too young to retire, and too old to start over,” Margaret feels as dried up and dead as the neglected gardens her husband took such pride in before he became ill.

Wyck Fitzsimmons is the Asheville landscape architect Gavin Braithwaite hires to restore his precious gardens to their former glory. She learned a long time ago that plants and trees are safer and more reliable companions than other people.

Under Wyck’s care, the gardens begin to come back to life, but the flowers aren’t the only thing blossoming. For the first time in decades, Margaret feels the stirrings of love, but those long-buried feelings frighten her more than the prospect of withering away alone in her ivory tower of academia.

Gavin, more observant than most people give him credit for, sees the attraction developing between his wife and his gardener. Using every means at his disposal, he arranges things so that Margaret has no choice but to remain faithful to him, even after death.

Margaret, confused and faced with losing everything that offers her any kind of security, flees to England – to Austen and Wordsworth country – where she tries to forget Wyck and all the feelings she has awakened.

Back in North Carolina, Wyck must come to terms with her own past and somehow find a way to forgive before it’s too late to make amends.

Love, it seems, can take root in even the most barren hearts, if only Margaret and Wyck can find the courage to let it grow.

Turning for Home
Like her mother before her, Jules Calhoon couldn’t wait to escape her small Ohio town. Unlike her mother, though, Jules couldn’t disappear forever. When she’s called back for her grandfather’s funeral, the visit unleashes a flood of memories and starts her on a lonely—and familiar—path.

Her partner, Kelli, feels Jules slipping away but can’t figure out how to pull her back. In desperation, she turns to Jules’s oldest friend—and her ex—Donna. The problem is, Donna never could figure out why her relationship with Jules ended so long ago, and she never stopped loving Jules.

When a lonely, confused teenager reaches out to Jules for help, the past and present are set on a collision course, igniting a chain of events that will leave none of them unscathed.

Year of the Monsoon
Leisa Yeats has always defined herself by the things that are important to her – a good family, a loving relationship and a meaningful job working with kids. Life is good. But within a span of a few weeks, all of that changes. She’s always known she was adopted, but newly revealed lies and secrets kept by her parents make her question everything she thought she knew about her beginnings. Her ten-year relationship with her partner, Nan, is unexpectedly on shaky ground when she discovers that Nan, too, has kept a secret from her all these years.

Suddenly, everything Leisa believed – about her life, about the people around her, about herself – everything is turned upside down, and nothing is as she thought it was. Pulling away to try and sort things out, Leisa reaches out to the wrong people and, in the process, nearly loses herself. Buffeted at every turn by storms that shake the very foundation of her world, Leisa must figure out whom and what she can hold fast to as the winds of change blow.

In This Small Spot
“Here, the true you is most often magnified, for better or for worse.”
Abbess Theodora

In a world increasingly connected to computers and machines but disconnected to self and others, Dr. Michele Stewart finds herself drowning in a life that no longer holds meaning. Searching for a deeper connection after losing her partner, Alice, she enters a contemplative monastery, living a life dedicated to prayer, to faith in things unseen. Though most of her family and friends are convinced that she has become a nun to run away from her life, she finds herself more attuned to life than she has been in years. Stripped of the things that define most people in the outside world – career, clothing, possessions – she rediscovers a long forgotten part of herself. But sooner than she expects, the outside world intrudes, forcing her to confront doubts and demons she thought she had left behind. The ultimate test of her vocation comes from the unlikeliest source when she finds herself falling in love again. As she struggles to discern where she belongs, she discovers the terrifying truth of Abbess Theodora’s warning. For better or for worse.

Miserere
Rainbow Award Winner - Best LGBT Historical

1968 – a year of upheaval for the nation and for the Mitchell family. When her father goes MIA in Vietnam, ten-year-old Connemara and her family move to West Virginia and into her mother’s ancestral home – a neglected house whose walls hold old secrets of forbidden love and knowledge of things best forgotten.
For reasons she does not yet understand, Conn is chosen as the one who must unravel the mystery surrounding her ancestor, Caitríona Ní Faolain, who disappeared soon after the Civil War – a mystery that has condemned her family to a curse for over a hundred years.
Set during two of the most turbulent periods of American history, this story takes the reader on an epic journey through time as Conn delves deeper and deeper into her family's past in order to end the curse before it is passed on to a new generation. Along the way, she teaches the adults around her something of the enduring power of love and hatred – and the terrible price of redemption.

Neither Present Time
Can a house save the lives of the people who live in it? Can an inscription written in a book over sixty years ago change the fates of people not even born when it was written?

Beryl Gray is solid and dependable – her partner, Claire, thinks so, her family thinks so, her colleagues think so. She has a long-term relationship and a job she likes as a university librarian. Her life seems settled, content – except nothing is as it seems.

Aggie Bishop's last girlfriend left her three years ago and she hasn't had a date since. Her life now revolves around work and taking care of her great-aunt Cory who doesn't want to be taken care of. Aunt Cory still lives in the run-down mansion that the rest of the family wants to sell if they can only get the old lady into a nursing home. Aggie is all that stands between them and her great-aunt.

When Beryl finds a book with a romantic inscription dated 1945, the events that follow will change the lives of all three women forever.

Spanning decades, this enchanting tale reminds us that some loves never fade and that sometimes, home truly is where the heart lies.

Twist of the Magi
Christmas is not looking very merry for Penny Havers – she won’t be seeing her family for the holidays; she hasn’t had a girlfriend in forever; she can’t get her stories published. When two young women are hired at the shop where she works, Penny begins to think her luck may have changed. Penny is about to learn that, when Christmas works its magic, what you hope for isn’t always what you get.