Emilie Richards

When Aurore Gerritsen watched her lover kill her father, it was just one act of violence in a long chain of dramatic events. Years later, behind the iron lace gates of wealthy New Orleans, beneath the veneer of her society name, linger secrets that Aurore Gerritsen has hidden for a lifetime, and truths that threaten to change forever the lives of her unsuspecting family. Now, as Aurore faces her own mortality, she needs to reveal those secrets...

"On the night her home is consumed by fire, Janine Stoddard finally resolves to leave her abusive husband. While she is reluctant to involve her estranged daughter, she can't resist a chance to see Harmony and baby Lottie in Asheville, North Carolina, before she disappears forever. Harmony's friend Taylor Martin realizes how much the reunited mother and daughter yearn to stay together, and she sees in Jan a chance to continue her own mother's legacy...

After her husband's sudden death, Cassie Costas's relationship with her teenage stepdaughter unravels. They move to historic Tarpon Springs, Florida, where Savannah hates the town, her school and most of all her stepmom, whom she blames for her father's death. As Cassie searches for answers about the man she shared a life with, including why all their savings have disappeared, Savannah's act of rebellion leaves single mother Amber Blair and her sixteen-year-old...

"Richards pieces together each woman's story as artfully as a quilter creates a quilt... Transcendent, endowed with warmth and compassion."-Booklist Three generations of women discover the healing gift of family, memories and love Needing time to contemplate her troubled marriage, Tessa MacRae agrees to spend the summer helping her mother and grandmother clean out the family home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. But the three women have never...

"This special book is one of the best women's contemporary novels you might read this year, and one that you will recommend to all your friends."-Fresh Fiction Told with remarkable depth and warmth, this heartfelt story of sisters in transition reminds us that the choices we make are the real legacy we leave behind. Kendra and Jamie were never storybook sisters. But after a long estrangement, Jamie has offered Kendra and her husband their ultimate...

When local minister Sam Kinkade's plans to welcome the area's growing Hispanic community to the church are met with resistance, he asks Elisa Martinez for guidance, and together they make things work with the help of a special group of women.

As children in foster care, Cecilia and Robin vowed they would be the sisters each had never had. Now superstar singer-songwriter Cecilia lives life on the edge, but when Robin is nearly killed in an accident, Cecilia drops everything to be with her. Robin set aside her career as a successful photojournalist to create the loving family she always yearned for. But gazing through a wide-angle lens at both past and future, she sees that her marriage...

"When her husband was sent to prison, pampered Tracy Deloche was left with twenty-five acres of Florida Gulf Coast sand, five tumbledown beach houses and no idea how to start over. An exile in a strange country, Janya Kapur left her wealthy, close-knit Indian family for an arranged marriage to a man she barely knows. Plainspoken Wanda Gray is tired of watching her marriage fail, so she takes a job guaranteed to destroy it--if her husband cares enough...

Reverend Analiese Wagner's judgment is called into question when she steps in to help a homeless family. Then Isaiah Colburn, the Catholic priest who was her mentor, reappears in her life, torn between the priesthood and his desire for a future with her. Analiese now must answer the question of how to define her own happiness.

Five very different women--Tracy, a former socialite who has discovered that she's pregnant; Wanda, a waitress turned pie shop owner; Janya, a young Indian wife dealing with an arranged marriage; Alice, a widow raising her tween granddaughter; and Maggie, a former Miami cop--find love and friendship on the barrier island of Happiness Key.