Showing results by author "Lisa Wingate" in All Categories

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge - until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents - but they quickly realize the dark truth.

Successful New York editor Jen Gibbs is at the top of her game with her new position at Vida House Publishing - until a mysterious manuscript from an old slush pile appears on her desk. Turning the pages, Jen finds herself drawn into the life of Sarra, a mixed-race Melungeon girl trapped y dangerous men in turn-of-the-century Appalachia.

Adopted at 13, Dell Jordan was loved, mentored, and encouraged to pursue her passion for music. Now, at 20, after a year abroad with a traveling symphony, a scholarship to Julliard is within reach. But underneath Dell's smoothly polished surface lurk mysteries from the past. Why did her mother abandon her? Who was her father? Are there faces somewhere that look like hers - blood relatives she's never met? Determined to find answers, Dell sets off on a secret journey into Oklahoma's Kiamichi Mountains, drawn by the only remaining link to her origins.

From the best-selling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives.

When Iola Anne Poole, an old-timer on Hatteras Island, passes away in her bed at ninety-one, the struggling young mother in her rental cottage, Tandi Jo Reese, finds herself charged with the task of cleaning out the rambling Victorian house. Running from a messy, dangerous past, Tandi never expects to find more than a temporary hiding place within Iola's walls, but everything changes with the discovery of eighty-one carefully decorated prayer boxes, one for each year, dating from Iola's youth to her last days.

When Kate Bowman temporarily moves to her grandmother’s Missouri farm with her husband and baby son, she learns that the lessons that most enrich our lives often come unexpectedly. The family has given Kate the job of convincing Grandma Rose, who's become increasingly stubborn and forgetful, to move off her beloved land and into a nursing home. But Kate knows such a change would break her grandmother’s heart.  

Restaurant owner Whitney Monroe is desperate to save her business from a hostile takeover. The inheritance of a decaying Gilded Age hotel on North Carolina's Outer Banks may provide just the ray of hope she needs. But things at the Excelsior are more complicated than they seem. Whitney's estranged stepfather is entrenched on the third floor, and the downstairs tenants are determined to save the historic building. Searching through years of stored family heirlooms may be Whitney's only hope of quick cash.

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.

Twenty-one-year-old Jenilee Lane's dreams are as narrow as the sky is wide. She doesn't imagine any good could come out of the tornado that has ripped across the Missouri farmland where she's made her home. But some inner spark compels her to take action. To rescue her elderly neighbor, Eudora Gibson, from the cellar in which she's been trapped. To make her way to the nearby town of Poetry, where the townspeople have begun to gather in the only building left standing. To collect from the devastated landscape fragments of life that lie strewn about in the tornado's wake.

Lisa Wingate has been favorably compared to authors Nicholas Sparks and Richard Paul Evans. In A Month of Summer, Hanna Beth has been caring for her aging husband - who suffers from Alzheimer's - and her developmentally challenged adult son for years on her own. But when she suffers a stroke, estranged stepdaughter Rebecca must take the reins. As she cares for her father and the step-brother she's barely met, Rebecca slowly begins to heal both herself and her family.

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of 15 adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots.

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.

When Andrea moves to Moses Lake, Texas, with her son, she hopes her job will provide purpose and solace from an ordeal that shattered her life and shook her faith. Mart, the new game warden, hopes to escape the constant reminders of a tragedy he can’t forgive himself for. Soon a girl’s plight offers them both a chance for redemption and draws them closer than they ever anticipated.

In this compelling tale by Lisa Wingate - award winning author of the national best-seller Lone Star Café - the associate producer of TV's hottest show fears Amber Amberson's tiny Texas hometown already knows its Amber who is an American Megastar finalist. But after several hilarious culture clashes, the Hollywood pro enlists the help of the quirky townsfolk when the sweet and naïve Amber goes missing.

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.

Karen Sommerfield has been hiding from the big questions of her life - the emotional distance in her marriage, her inability to have children, and her bout with cancer. Getting lost in her high-powered career provides the sense of purpose she yearns for. Until the day she's downsized out of her job and the doctor tells her the cancer may be back. It's a double blow that would send anyone reeling.

Allie Kirkland has never been one to take wild risks. But when she's offered a costuming assistant's job on a docudrama in the hills near Moses Lake, she jumps at the chance. She's always dreamed of following in her director-father's footsteps, and the reenactment of the legendary frontier settlement of Wildwood is a first step. The family expectations will have to wait. But in 1861, the real Wildwood held dangerous realities. Town founder Harland Delevan held helpless residents, including young Irish schoolteacher Bonnie Rose, in an iron grip.

Experience three novellas about the joys and trials of sisterhood.

New York editor Jen Gibbs knew when she bought Evan Hall's next blockbuster book, it would change her career. She didn't know it would change her life. But after being sent along on the European book tour, at Evan's request, she has made a promise she's not sure she can keep - she's crossed professional lines and accepted Evan's surprising engagement proposal. Now she's scared to death. In Jen's family, marriage represents the death of every dream a woman holds for herself.

Award-winning, best-selling crossover author Lisa Wingate pens inspirational Southern fiction that tugs at the heartstrings. Blue Moon Bay takes Seattle architect Heather Hampton to quiet Moses Lake, Texas, where a promotion at her firm hinges on the sale of family farmland for a proposed industrial plant. Her plans hit a few snags thanks to her quirky family and a handsome banker opposing the land deal. It soon becomes clear that providence has other ideas for her future, and maybe this small town is the place where all her dreams could come true.