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First Line Friday — The Nature of Fragile Things

28 Mar

My book club is reading The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner. Meissner is a favorite of ours, and I am hearing good things about this book from club members. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake figures prominently in this story. Have you read it? I’d love to know what you think.

Here’s the first line of chapter 2. (The first chapter is the beginning of an interview between a US Marshall and main character Sophie.)

The sun is dissolving like an enchantment as I stand at the ferry railing and look out on the San Francisco horizon.

April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed.

Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin’s silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin’s odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn’t right. 

Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. 

The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear.

From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.

Susan Meissner is the USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction with more than three-quarters of a million books in print in eighteen languages. Her novels include The Nature of Fragile Things, starred review Publishers Weekly; The Last Year of the War, a Library Reads and Real Simple top pick; As Bright as Heaven, starred review from Library Journal; Secrets of a Charmed Life, a 2015 Goodreads Choice award finalist; and A Fall of Marigolds, named to Booklist’s Top Ten women’s fiction titles for 2014. She is also RITA finalist and Christy Award and Carol Award winner. A California native, she attended Point Loma Nazarene University and is also a writing workshop volunteer for Words Alive, a San Diego non-profit dedicated to helping at-risk youth foster a love for reading and writing.

Visit Susan at her website: https://susanmeissnerauthor.com/ and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/susanmeissnerauthor/ on Twitter at @SusanMeissner or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/susan.meissner.

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First Line Friday — The Story She Left Behind

21 Mar

I had a fun time with a good friend at a book event at the Atlanta History Center earlier in the week. Fellow authors and friends Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, and Kristi Woodson Harvey helped celebrate Patti Callahan Henry‘s newest book, The Story She Left Behind, with a Friends and Fiction Live! And I snagged a signed copy! If you have never attended any type of book event, you really need to search one out. Great, great fun.

Here’s the first line of Henry’s book:

It is two o’clock in the morning when she leaves everyone she loves.

In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.

By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother’s vanishing, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London’s most deadly natural disasters—the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson’s family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.

Told in Patti Callahan Henry’s lyrical, enchanting prose, The Story She Left Behind is a captivating novel of mystery and family legacy that captures the profound longing for a mother and the evergreen allure of secrets.

Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling novelist of fifteen novels, including the historical fiction (writing as Patti Callahan) BECOMING MRS. LEWIS—The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. In addition, she is the recipient of The Christy Award—A 2019 Winner “Book of the Year.”, The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year for 2020, the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for 2019, and the RNA UK finalist for Romantic Historical Fiction.

She is also the co-founder of the Facebook weekly show Friends and Fiction.

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First Line Friday — Break My Fall

14 Mar

Happy Friday! I had the great pleasure of reading an early copy of Break My Fall by Lynn H. Blackburn. What a wonderful return visit to Gossamer Falls! This romantic suspense is easily my favorite of the series, and I’m looking forward to more to come. It releases next Tuesday, so get your pre-order in to your favorite bookseller.

Here’s the first line:

“No more peppermints, Mrs. Frost, or next time it’s a root canal.”

She’s determined to make an impact in her community. 
He’s determined to make sure she lives long enough to do it.

Dr. Meredith Quinn always planned to return to Gossamer Falls to practice dentistry. Now that she’s back home, she’s made it a point to offer clinics to children and adults in nearby underserved areas. Unfortunately, those same areas are known to harbor drug traffickers, and Police Chief Grayson Ward suspects that local law enforcement is looking the other way.

After too many losses, Grayson has closed off his heart. But with Meredith in his life, he feels his walls crumbling, leaving him exposed and vulnerable. To keep her alive, he must keep her close, but that makes it impossible for him to retreat and rebuild. 

Will she be the one who finally helps him emerge from isolation? Or will this force of nature leave him shattered?

Lynn H. Blackburn loves writing romantic suspense because her childhood fantasy was to become a spy, but her grown-up reality is that she’s a huge chicken and would have been caught on her first mission. She prefers to live vicariously through her characters and loves putting them into all kinds of terrifying situations while she’s sitting at home safe and sound in her pajamas!.

Lynn lives in South Carolina with her family. You can stay up-to-date by signing up for her newsletter at her website and following her on social media @LynnHBlackburn.

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First Line Friday — Dysfunction Junction

28 Feb

Robin Pearson is a delight and her books are wonderful! I had the pleasure of meeting her last November at the Reading Rendezvous in Chicago and again at the 2025 Turning A New Page Book Festival in Perry, Georgia. I snagged a copy of Dysfunction Junction at the festival, but neglected to have her sign it. Just another reason to make sure our paths cross again. 😉

Here’s the first line:

“What time is it?” Annabelles’ voice quavered as she studied the shadows huddling under the sliding board in Lincoln Park.

When three women receive an unexpected phone call that leaves them reeling, they have no other choice but to reckon with a lifetime of memories they’ve long tried to bury. Only in facing the past will they find their path forward.

Frances Mae Livingston’s firm grip of her family’s destructive history makes her hold her husband and four children even closer. But she’s losing bits of herself while proving to everybody and her mama that she’s enough. There’s no way she’ll repeat her mama’s mistakes, even if it kills her.

Annabelle McMillan didn’t have trouble kicking the Eastern North Carolina dust off her feet. The tough part was replanting herself in familiar soil. Now she’s blending her old life with her new husband, stepson, and unborn child. And battling old memories of abandonment and new fears of rejection.

Dr. Charlotte Winters has built a career around helping others sort through their emotional baggage. She’s also spent a lifetime refusing to unpack her own. So what if Charlotte doesn’t recall all that her mama did to her and what her daddy didn’t do for her? Her only mission is to help others help themselves…until the women from her past and the man in her future undo her well-sewn life.

At the junction of healed and hurting, broken and whole, and past and present, three women wrestle with their inability to forgive and forget in this riveting Southern family drama about sisterhood from award-winning author Robin W. Pearson.

Robin W. Pearson’s writing sprouts from her Southern upbringing, her belief in Jesus Christ, and her love of her husband, seven children, and their dog, Oscar. Her novels are “rooted in the soul of the story” and include her Christy Award–winning debut, A Long Time Comin’, as well as ’Til I Want No More, Walking in Tall Weeds, and her latest, Dysfunction Junction. Robin has corrected grammar up and down the East Coast in her career as an author and editor and in her calling as a homeschooling mama of many. She loves to share about her faith and her family through her fiction; her blog, Mommy Concentrated; and at conferences such as Breathe, Fiction Readers Summit, and Vision Christian Writers; and with her friends and followers. These people and experiences are the source of all the characters living and breathing in the stories waiting to be told about her belief in Jesus Christ and the experiences at her own kitchen sink.

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First Line Friday — Water Grave

21 Feb

Happy Friday! Today I am featuring a new-to-me author, Mitchell S. Karnes and his mystery/suspense novel Water Grave. Set in the South, this book looks to be a pageturner!

Here’s the first line:

Mark Ripley rushed into the baptistry changing room, slammed the door, and locked the handle.

Six years ago, Hannah Leah Abelard needed a fresh start. She changed her name to Abbey Rhodes and enlisted in the United States Army as a part of the “Ever Vigilant,” 18th Military Police Brigade. They taught her how to be a great cop. Abbey moved to Tennessee three years later and joined Metro Nashville’s Police Department.

Now, in her third month with Homicide, Abbey is thrust into a case that may bring the walls she built crashing down around her, exposing a dark past she thought she’d left behind. A young pastor is found dead in the bottom of his baptistery and Abbey is forced to investigate the one place she swore never to return-the church. The case takes Abbey deeper into a tangled web of lies and secrets where the most dangerous ones may be her own.

Mitchell S. Karnes is a Christian husband, father, and grandfather. He served in the church in multiple capacities, including pastor, youth minister, and education minister. Mitchell also taught English in middle and high school, also serving as a coach in wrestling and softball. He spends his time writing fiction in Middle Tennessee.

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First Line Friday — A Gardin Wedding

14 Feb

Happy Friday! With Valentine’s Day tomorrow, I thought I would share an upcoming romance by Rosey Lee. A Gardin Wedding, releasing in May 2025, features the exasperating Martha first seen in The Gardins of Edin. She’s getting married, or as Rosey Lee said to me at the book festival last month, is she? I can’t wait to see what Lee has in store for Martha!

Here’s the first line:

Martha swept the sandalwood fan in her hand back and forth, not to cool her brow but to tame the nervous energy brewing inside her.

One of the Gardin women must navigate a season rich with unexpected challenges in the follow-up to The Gardins of Edin, a heartwarming story about love, forgiveness, new beginnings, and what it takes to get there.

Martha Gardin is a mess, and no one knows this better than the women in her family. Good-hearted but often misguided by distrust and insecurity, Martha is known for stirring up drama. That’s why Ruth, Naomi, and Mary are pleasantly surprised when Martha mellows out after she begins dating one of the most eligible bachelors in town. 

Handsome, well-connected Oji Greenwald is everything Martha hoped to find in a man, and it’s only a matter of time before he pops the question. Rarely caught off guard, Martha is accustomed to getting her way. But when it appears she’s finally about to have the life she’s always wanted, a crisis in Oji’s family brings out Martha’s tendency to try to save the day her way, and the divide deepens between her and Oji’s already indifferent mother, Eve. 

Confronted with these unforeseen challenges to her plans, Martha finds herself on a journey that forces her to fully acknowledge her previous mistakes and reconcile her past. But will it be enough to deliver her the future—and the love—her heart desires?

Rosey Lee writes hopeful stories about complicated families and complex friendships. As a native of the Westbank of New Orleans, Louisiana who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, Rosey’s writing is inspired by the people, traditions, and food that anchor her to the South. She enjoys cooking, listening to live music, and occasional bursts of fanatical bargain shopping.

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First Line Friday — Frankly, My Dear Clara

7 Feb

Kristi Ann Hunter is one of the funniest people I know. So it’s a real treat that she has written one of her trademark Regency historical novels with a fun rom-com twist. I picked up a copy of Frankly, My Dear Clara at the Turning A New Page Book Festival in Perry, Georgia two weeks ago. I can’t wait to dig in!

Here’s the first line:

London, 1816

Miss Clara Woodbury was in possession of the customary solitary head which could only reasonably wear one hat at a time.

Every little boy grows up imagining he will one day be called upon to save the damsel in distress, but Mr. Hugh Lockhart is certain the enemy in his imagination has never been a kite. He knows that support from a wealthy aristocrat is all he needs to get his own clock-making shop, but rescuing Viscount Eversly’s cousin from a child’s toy isn’t how he thought he would gain that attention.

Miss Clara Woodbury knows she should be thankful her aunt is willing to sponsor her for a London season, but she doesn’t want to have any part of the decadence and dissolution of London. Knowing she must marry and wanting to please her family, she sets her sights on a younger son bound for the church.

As life continues to throw Clara and Hugh into each other’s paths, their conversations begin to challenge everything they thought they knew about what they wanted in life. When they finally discover that what they need is each other, will it be too late to change decisions already put into motion?

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First Line Friday — The Bark of The Bog Owl

31 Jan

Happy Friday! Today I am featuring an author who came to our book festival last weekend. Jonathan Rogers is a hometown boy, a distinguished professor at Vanderbilt University, and the author of amazing middle grade books. His book The Bark of The Bog Owl recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. It, and the rest of the books in the series, would be a wonderful addition to your family’s library.

Here’s the first line:

My Dearest King —

You will be glad to learn that I am still available for any quest, adventure, or dangerous mission for which you might need a champion or knight-errant.

Courage and a heart for adventure drive twelve-year-old shepherd boy Aidan Errolson. When the bark of the bog owl echoes from the forest across his father’s well-tended pastures, Aidan dreams of wild places still untamed and quests not yet pursued. Aidan’s life changes forever on the day Bayard the Truthspeaker arrives at Longleaf with an astonishing pronouncement: it is Aidan’s destiny to be the Wilderking, who will ascend to the throne from Corenwald’s wildest places. Only the Wilderking can balance his people’s civilizing impulses with the wildness that gives Corenwald its vitality. But not just yet. Many trials and adventures will shape the shaggy-headed shepherd boy into the man who can bring the kingdom back to its former glory.

No matter what he is writing, Jonathan Rogers is motivated by the astonishing reality of God’s transforming grace in the lives of human beings. He is passionate about seeing the truths of Scripture bear fruit in the lives of students – lives of integrity, purpose, and joy. That passion is reflected in his books, including Words to Live By for Teens, What Really Counts for Students, and his Wilderking Trilogy of adventure novels – The Bark of the Bog Owl, The Secret of the Swamp King, and The Way of the Wilderking. Jonathan holds a PhD in English literature from Vanderbilt University. He lives with his family in Nashville Tennessee.

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First Line Friday — The Choice

24 Jan

Tomorrow is the day of the Turning A New Page Book Festival in Perry, Georgia. 42 authors of a variety of genres, both fiction and nonfiction, will be there! This is the second year of our festival — one that has been marked by grief. One of our board members and dear friends, Angie Heath, passed away from breast cancer last September. Not a month later, one of our board members lost her husband. It’s been a difficult year for sure, filled with tears and laughter too. We are prayerfully optimistic that this event will be a success.

Today I am featuring D. L. Wood, a member of our Thrills and Chills discussion panel. I am so looking forward to meeting her. Here’s the first line of The Choice:

The thing about a vital signs monitor is it only warns you after things start to go really wrong.

What if a single letter could change everything you thought you knew about yourself?

Sadie Miles has built a life she can be proud of in Nashville, raising her best friend’s young son and pushing through every struggle that comes her way. But when an unsigned letter arrives at her door, she’s faced with a decision: ignore the letter and continue as is or take a risk to uncover the truth about her past—a truth she’s been chasing her entire life.

Following the letter’s cryptic instructions, Sadie finds herself aboard a luxury yacht, sailing down the eastern seaboard with strangers who share only one common goal: claim the fortune that awaits at the journey’s end. As the waves churn, so does the tension and when tragedy strikes, it becomes clear that someone will do anything to ensure they’re the last one standing.

Amidst the growing threat, Sadie’s only possible ally is the enigmatic lawyer, Liam Forrester—a man whose loyalties are as uncertain as the stormy seas around them, and who is as much of an unknown as the rest.

With Sadie on course to be the next victim, she must navigate treacherous waters both literally and figuratively. Can she survive until the end of the journey, or will she become another casualty of the deadly undertow of deceit and danger?

Buckle up for a suspenseful, slow-burn thriller that escalates to a heart-pounding conclusion—where every choice could be your last.

D.L. Wood is a USA TODAY and Amazon bestselling author who writes thrilling suspense laced with romance and faith. Her books have won multiple awards and her novel Unintended Target was selected as the May 2019 American Christian Fiction Writers Book Club book.

D.L. writes CleanCaptivatingFiction™- fiction that entertains and uplifts. In her novels she tries to give readers the same thing that she wants: a “can’t-put-it-down-stay-up-till-3am” character-driven story, full of heart, believability and adrenaline. She lives in North Alabama, where, if she’s not writing, you’ll probably catch her curled up with a cup of Earl Grey (light milk, one sugar) and her Westies, bingeing on the latest BBC mystery series. You can stay apprised of D.L.’s releases and promotions (including free and discounted books) and receive a free gift by subscribing to her newsletter on her website at dlwoodonline.com.

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First Line Friday — Hidden

17 Jan

Happy Friday! Are you still caught in the midst of the winter’s cold? It’s a bit warmer here in the Sunny South, but I have a book with a snowstorm setting that you can snuggle in with. Hidden by Hope Welborn is a romantic suspense novella that you need to check out!

Here’s the first line:

Large, fluffy snowflakes swirled in the wind, adding to the mass of white blanketing the ground.

All she wants is a peaceful Christmas…

Young widow Alison Bailey-Curtis seeks the comfort and familiarity of her family’s North Georgia mountain cabin to escape for the holidays.

But someone is following her and a snowstorm has her trapped.

With an unknown threat tracking her every move, she must rely on the one man she swore never to trust again – Special Agent Noah Chandler.

Noah’s sole mission is to protect Alison without blowing his cover. But as danger closes in, protecting her means resurrecting a web of lies and facing their painful past.

With nowhere to run, Alison and Noah must confront their deepest fears and insecurities, relying on each other for survival.

Can they unravel the truth before the enemy strikes, or will the shattered trust between them be their downfall?

Hope Welborn writes spine-tingling suspense, sprinkled with romance, and saturated with faith. Her manuscripts have won the ACFW Genesis Contest and the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference Foundations Awards in romantic suspense.

As a #writerwithadayjob, she spends her lunch hours creating small town characters who face big suspense with faith in a big God. By day, she masquerades as a digital content marketing technology specialist, and by night, she stays up too late putting words on the page.

Hope also serves as editor and web manager for Spark Flash Fiction and is a member of the Suspense Squad. She is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency.

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