Not Just a House, is a story about home with musings and perspectives from childhood to adulthood with a view of family, love, meaningful experiences, and loss wrapped in full-circle hope for the future.

No place left to run... After the shocking events of last Christmas, Jess Croft is determined this festive season will be the one to remember, for all the right reasons. But when a stranger turns up on her doorstep claiming to be her estranged father, Jess is shocked. Moreso, when the man claims that the little girl with him is none other than Jess’s sister - a child she knew nothing about. Jess isn’t sure she wants these strangers to stay, but she can’t turn them away, especially when she learns that their lives are in danger. Now Wrea Head hall isn’t just Jess’s home, it’s the only safe place for her new family to hide. Perfect for fans of Teresa Driscoll, Sue Watson, Jackie Kabler and Kendra Elliot. Please note: This book was originally published as The House of Christmas Secrets

One of the Best Books of the Year: Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Vulture • This uncompromising look at the immigrant experience, and the depravity of one man, is an electrifying page-turner rooted in a magical reality • “Impossible to stop reading” —Vulture When Lucien flees Haiti with his wife, Marie-Ange, and their three children to New York City’s South Ozone Park, he does so hoping for reinvention, wealth, and comfort. He buys a run-down house in a quickly changing community, and begins life anew. Lucien and Marie-Ange call their home La Kay—“my mother’s house”—and it becomes a place where their fellow immigrants can find peace, a good meal, and necessary legal help. But as a severely emotionally damaged man emigrating from a country whose evils he knows to one whose evils he doesn’t, Lucien soon falls into his worst habits and impulses, with La Kay as the backdrop for his lasciviousness. What he can’t begin to fathom is that the house is watching, passing judgment, and deciding to put an end to all the sins it has been made to hold. But only after it has set itself aflame will frightened whispers reveal Lucien’s ultimate evil.

This story begins when I was much older, worlds away from those early years, and I had a daughter of my own. Im Miranda, and Im living a life Ive prepared myself. But that life never came. My parents worried about me. So did my teachers. Though the safe path was always right in front of me, I kept veering off it into something which did not seem unknown or perilous until it was too late to prevent the damage. My aunts and uncles referred to me as a free spirit and exchanged glances, which suggested in an adult way that they were a little worried about how I was going to turn out. Despite my mothers many attempts at reeducation, I never quite got over that impulse toward wandering and adventure that got me into so much troublenot until the events which form the basis of this story, anyway.

Susan Cutsforth and her husband, Stuart, are 'ordinary' people living an extraordinary life. They both work full-time: one is a teacher librarian of thirty years, and the other, a middle-level clerk in the public service. But, as Susan recounts in Our House is Not in Paris, they own a holiday house in France - the other side of the world. And not only that, this petite maison required significant renovating, which they accomplished almost singlehandedly during their working holidays. Our House is Not in Paris is a story of pushing boundaries, aiming high and, most of all, taking risks. With humour, poetry and insight, Susan's story shows that you can do more than simply dream: if you work hard, anything is possible.