Empty-nester, Cherie Johnson, a fifty-something menopausal high school English teacher with a grown-up family and a hankering to retire from the North Carolina public school system, thinks she has it made, until a triple whammy hits her on Valentines Day.

Hope, Cheries older and just-jilted daughter, moves home, Dave, her traveling salesman husband, loses his job, and younger daughter, Wesley, becomes engaged, all on the same fateful day, leaving Cherie fresh out of plans, looming expenses, and a nest full of overgrown chicks.

Throw in an overly narcissistic mother-in-law, a rebellious...

Dr. Susannah Brody, Magnolia Village's only dermatologist, has treated every third person in the quaint little community. Still dealing with the loss of her second husband, with whom she converses on a daily basis, she dreads the upcoming separation she will face when her only child, eighteen-year-old Myers, will follow his dreams by attending a prestigious music school in Nashville, Tennessee in the fall. Her loneliness is not helped by her sister dating her ex-husband and Myers's father, Kent. After their marriage ended because Kent cheated on her, Susannah was lucky to find the love of her...

New Adult Romance (second edition) asks, Is following your heart worth having it broken? Seventeen year-old Chelsea Davenport is winding up the summer before her senior year at her sister Charley's engagement party. Life is good and uncomplicated in the mountains. She is looking forward to starting school, applying to colleges, dancing again, and all the other things that go with high school...except the boys. Chelsea is sick of boys. And then Kyle Davis appears at the party and turns her world upside down. There is one person out there who can save your life and change it forever. When Kyle...

He had awakened, jarred by the dream, shuddering in a sweat and unsure whether it were real. Seconds ago, they were making love on a beach, the tide washing warm over their legs. He had been lost in her. Of course, she was so different, awakening new, explosive sensations within him. It would have been the perfect dream, except for one harsh reality; the woman in the dream was not his wife. There are friends and there are lovers; sometimes the line between is thinly drawn. As they approach their tenth wedding anniversary, Kyle and Chelsea Davis have it all; the perfect marriage, charming...

Forgiveness is easy. Trust is harder.
Stacie Edmonds, fiercely independent and too much fun for her own good, is about to turn forty, although she looks twenty-five. The Sound Side, her marina-turned restaurant, a diamond in the rough on the backside of the island known as Kill Devil Hills, has been her place for three years. Ever since Rick, Stacies ex-husband, had driven them apart by his errant lifestyle, culminating in an affair, Stacie has been making it the kind of place where everyone wants to be in the summer on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. While Stacie has been focusing on...

"There is a Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller." Newlyweds Kyle and Chelsea Davis return from their honeymoon-their marriage consummated and their lives rejuvenated-ready to take the world by the tail. They have both made career sacrifices to be together and to live in Kyle's father's cabin in the North Carolina mountains. Stuart Davis' ominous presence makes itself known immediately, haunting Kyle, making him question his own life choices. How much of his father is truly in him, and how much can he fight the...

What would you do if you were thirty-seven, good-looking, and single with no family ties and a bad girl rep that you can't live down? That's exactly the situation Elle McLarin finds herself in as my new novel, A Girl Like That (112,000 words) opens. Mean girl Elle McLarin desperately needs to reinvent herself. Growing up with her grandparents in their small North Carolina mountain community after her teenage mother, who named her for a fashion magazine, ditched the idea of motherhood and disappeared, Elle found her upbringing to be tougher than most. Add to that a near-tragic mistake-drugging...