When Cassie Wright, heir to the foremost company in a thriving New England town adopts a child she names Gwendolyn, she also keeps a very big secret of the child's origins. Years later, once Cassie has established her abilities running the company and her daughter is in her teens, a jealous young...
Once again a great book by Belva. I love that she mixes history in with the story. It makes the reader understand what it was like to live through some of history.As most of Belva's books, this one is a family tree of the Francois family, later known as Francis. It begins with Tee as a young g...
A really sad story about Hyacinth a young woman shy and artistic who meets Gerald whos in training to become a plastic surgeon and marries him, has 2 kids, and then he starts cheating with a secretary where he is partner of a firm with Arnie. Hyacinth in her jealous outrage goes to his office one...
Lore is an orphaned girl who is adopted by a rich family in Berlin. The family has a younger, biologial daughter, Caroline. Story takes place starting at the beginning of WWII. Caroline is beautiful and has fallen in love with boy from her neighborhood. The boy's father is big in the Nazi par...
Robb McDaniel was living the very definition of an idyllic life: the type of privileged and charmed existence of which so many were truly envious. He was an idealistic young teacher, full of vibrant hopes and dreams and determined to shape the young minds of the future in the best way possible. H...
The back cover of this book sounded interesting enough to make me want to read it: the story of two boys switched at birth, but I think the author took on a little too much in her plot line. The premise: two boys switched at birth, one Jewish and one born to a bigot. The one born to the bigot d...
Geez Louise, I feel like I deserve an award for getting through this whole novel. At first, I thought this book would be like a doughnut, light and fluffy with no real substance, but still sweet and delicious. But it wasn't like that at all. It was like one of those dense and heavy power bagel...
This is second of Belva's books. I wanted to read them in order to not only start at the beginning of the story, but to watch her writing progress.This is the life story of Martin. He becomes a neurosurgeon probably sometime in the early 1930's. he dreams of becoming a Dr at a very early age. ...
A brilliant, accomplished family that had been New England town's chief benefactors, was ripped apart by a brutal crime that nearly destroyed them with shame. Charlotte Dawes was only fourteen when it happened. The terrifying ordeal would rob her of her childhood innocence and haunt her for the r...
Lara, Connie and Eddy have just buried their mother in the small Ohio town where they lived. As they sat around talking the evening of the funeral, Connie announced that she was planning to move to Texas, knowing no one but wanting to expand her horizons. Eddy took the same opportunity to annou...
This book.. was quite something.I liked it in the beginning and towards the end but the middle. The middle made me want to rip my hair off. So the story goes that Adam is an unfaithful peice of crap and runs off with Randi, the Other Woman. Now the sick twist is that Randi is a bitch (she made it...
This book was not at all what I expected. My mother recommended it to me, and even gave me her copy to read. It sat on my to-read bookshelf for years. I guess I have learned my lesson...never judge a book--or your mother--by its cover. Wow! I know my mom tends to enjoy sentimentally sweet, somewh...
“Get out of the carriage. We’ll walk the rest of the way,” Eugene said. “I want you to see the view.” The light was green; moved by a wish to see its shimmer on her hand, Miriam turned her palm up into it. The light was tender, a veil on the waving corn, and beyond to a line of sweet gum trees, a...
Phil said on the phone. It was three days before the cocktail party Laura was catering for the arts foundation and he had called her to find out how she was doing. “There’s a big difference between putting together a few breakfast baskets and making cheese puffs for three hundred people. And it h...
It was her custom, no matter what might have occurred during the day, to look ahead each night before falling asleep to something happy in the next day. More often than not the something was simple, such as a trip to browse in the local bookstore, or an afternoon with an old friend. It might even...
From above the mantel Lucille Grey in her white gown and pearl choker cast her melancholy, lovely eyes upon the luncheon table. Conversation, courteous as always, was desultory in spite of Oliver’s brisk efforts to create a warm “family” atmosphere. Every one of us here, Sally was thinking, would...