Showing results by author "Brenda Novak" in All Categories

After catching her fiancé cheating - with another man - usually straitlaced, workaholic scientist Ellie Fisher liberates her wild side just long enough to indulge in a passionate one-night stand with a tall, dark stranger she meets at a trendy Miami bar. Embarrassed by her recklessness, she ducks out the following morning without learning the guy's full name, something that shouldn't have been a problem - until a pregnancy test turns positive.

When Katie Rogers returns to Dundee, Idaho, it's not because she wants to. It's because she's disillusioned, broke—and pregnant. She was going to make something of her life in the big city. Instead, she's paying a high price for trusting the wrong man. Booker Robinson is the man she didn't trust, the man she'd left behind in Dundee…and the first person she sees when she comes back. But despite Booker's notorious past, he now has a successful business and a home of his own. Katie's vowed she'll never trust the wrong man again. But sometimes a man isn't everything he seems.

One day, Callie Vanetta receives devastating news… She needs a liver transplant. But her doctors warn that, in her case, the chances of finding a compatible donor aren’t good. Determined to spend whatever time she has left on her own terms, she keeps the diagnosis to herself and moves out to her late grandparents’ farm. She’s always wanted to live there. But the farm hasn’t been worked in years and she begins to fear she can’t manage it, that she’ll have to return to town.

Jane Tanner’s friends are settling down, while she’s been settling for less. She longs for adventure and the big city, but caring for her ailing grandfather means she's shackled to her small town. She’s excited her vintage gift shop is finally up and running, but it’s not enough. Longing to fulfill at least one dream—to become a mother before her biological clock ticks out—Jane drunkenly propositions the worst possible candidate for Dad.

After growing up in cheap motels, moving from town to town with her sister and mother, Cheyenne Christensen is grateful to be on her own. She’s grateful, too, for the friends she found once her family settled in California. But she’s troubled by the mystery of her earliest memories, most of which feature a smiling blonde woman. A woman who isn’t her mother. Although Cheyenne has repeatedly asked for explanations, the people who could help aren’t talking.

By the time Presley Christensen returns to Whiskey Creek with her little boy after two years away, she has completely changed her life. She's made peace with her past and overcome the negative behavior that resulted from her difficult childhood. Now she's back in the small town that was the closest thing to "home" she ever knew - the town where she can be with the sister who is her only family. There's just one catch: Aaron Amos still lives in Whiskey Creek.

The car accident was Hannah Price's fault - a few seconds of inattention that changed Gabe Holbrook's life forever, destroying everything he'd been or ever wanted to be. He was a man who'd had it all. Intelligent, handsome, talented, rich, he'd been one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Now he's come home to Dundee, the small town where he was raised, but he's a stranger to the people who once knew him.

Despite their strained relationship, when Gia Rossi’s sister, Margot, begs her to come home to Wakefield, Iowa, to help with their ailing mother, Gia knows she has no choice. After her rebellious and at-times tumultuous teen years, Gia left town with little reason to look back. But she knows Margot’s borne the brunt of their mother’s care and now it’s Gia’s turn to help, even if it means opening old wounds.

Adelaide Davies, who's been living in Sacramento, returns to Whiskey Creek, the place she once called home. She's there to take care of her aging grandmother and to help with Gran's restaurant, Just Like Mom's. But Adelaide isn't happy to be back. There are too many people here she'd rather avoid - people who were involved in the events of that terrible June night 15 years ago.

Mariners Island is barely ten miles long, but when Ivy, Ariana and Cam were teenagers, it was their whole world. Beyond the pristine beaches and iconic lighthouse lies the beautiful old library that belongs to Ivy’s family. While that bound Ivy to the island as an adult, Ariana could not leave Mariners behind fast enough. The town holds too many…memories. Not only her unrequited feelings for Cam, but the tragedy that left a scar on the community. When a young girl went missing, a teenage Cam was unthinkably the prime suspect.

When Lucky Caldwell was 10, her mother, Red - the best-known hooker in Dundee, Idaho - married Morris Caldwell, a wealthy and much older man. It didn't last, of course, but Morris' kindness was the highlight of Lucky's life. Mike Hill, Morris' grandson, doesn't feel too well disposed toward Red or her kids. He believes they alienated Morris from his family. Even Morris' Victorian mansion, on the property next to the Hill ranch, wasn't inherited by one of his grandchildren. Instead the house went to Lucky, who left it sitting empty for years.

Almost all her friends are married now, and that's what Eve wants, too. Love. A husband and kids of her own. But the B and B she manages-and even Whiskey Creek, the small Gold Country town where she was born and raised-suddenly seem - confining. Eve is worried that her future will simply be a reflection of her past. There's no one in the area she could even imagine as a husband - until a handsome stranger comes to town.

With Jasper Moore, the privileged boy who attacked her when she was only 16, finally caught and in prison, Dr. Evelyn Talbot believes she can finally quit looking over her shoulder. She’s safe, happier than she’s ever been, and expecting her first child. She’s also planning to marry Amarok, her Alaska State Trooper love interest and the town’s only police presence. But before the wedding can take place, a psychopath from the much more recent past comes out of nowhere and kidnaps her in broad daylight.

Jada Brooks couldn’t have known how her life would change when she fell for Maddox Richardson back in high school. She couldn’t have known his troubled brother would leave hers forever crippled. Or that she’d be forced to shun Maddox completely - only to discover she was carrying his child. Although Maddox was devastated by the events that transpired that fateful night, losing Jada was the worst of it. He’s back in Silver Springs, ready to make amends and provide the kind of youth outreach that once saved him. If he’d known Jada was in town, too, he wouldn't have come.

Tortured and left for dead at 16, Evelyn Talbot turned her personal nightmare into her life’s work - studying the disturbing psychopathy of some of the world’s most vicious serial killers. Now a leading psychiatrist at Hanover House in a small Alaskan town, she tries to believe the past will never come back to haunt her - until a woman goes missing from a cabin nearby, and every clue points to the man who once brutalized her....

Up-and-coming TV anchor Emery Bliss can’t imagine anything more humiliating than the sex tape her ex revenge-posted online. That is, until it causes her to lose her job on top of her self-esteem. Seeking solace - and anonymity - in Silver Springs, Emery isn’t looking to get involved with another man any time soon. But when she’s thrown back into contact with Dallas Turner, she sees something that his many detractors have missed.

Struggling to make ends meet after a messy divorce, Sadie Harris is at the end of her tether. Her waitressing gig isn't enough to pay the bills, let alone secure primary custody of her son, Jayden, a battle she refuses to lose. Desperate, she accepts a position assisting Dawson Reed - the same Dawson Reed who recently stood trial for the murder of his adoptive parents. Joining him at his isolated farm seems risky, but Sadie is out of options.

Evelyn Talbot, a psychiatrist at a maximum-security prison in Alaska, studies some of the world's worst serial killers. But she's about to meet her most elusive patient at Hanover House yet: Dr. Lyman Bishop, aka the Zombie Maker, given his fondness for performing icepick lobotomies on his victims. A brilliant cancer researcher, Bishop is either the most cunning psychopath Evelyn has ever encountered - or he is wrongly convicted.

The search for her birth mother brought Cora Kelly to the New Horizons Boys Ranch. Getting a job there was easy enough, but confiding in Aiyana, the ranch's owner, that she's really her daughter? Cora's not sure she can do that, not unless she's confident the news will be welcomed. And once she gets to know Elijah Turner - Aiyana's adopted son and ranch manager - that decision becomes even more difficult.

So much for forever. When Harper Devlin’s rock-star husband ditches her on his way to the top, she takes her two daughters to her sister’s place in Silver Springs for the holidays, hoping family can heal her broken heart. But comfort comes in unexpected places when she crosses paths with local Tobias Richardson.