Finalist - 2011 Carol Award and 2010 RT Book Reviews Reviewers' Choice Award When Libby’s husband Greg fails to return from a two-week canoe trip to the Canadian wilderness, the authorities soon write off his disappearance as an unhappy husband’s escape from an empty marriage and unrewarding career. Their marriage might have survived if their daughter Lacey hadn’t died . . . and if Greg hadn’t been responsible. Libby enlists the aid of her wilderness savvy father-in-law and her faith-walking best friend to help her search for clues to her husband’s disappearance…if for no other reason than to free her to move on. What the trio discovers in the search upends Libby’s presumptions about her husband and rearranges her faith.

An "ethnographic" novel that portrays life in California's Napa Valley as it might be a very long time from now, imagined not as a high tech future but as a time of people once again living close to the land.

She helps others manage their desperate lives--but who will help her? Clinical psychologist Camille Brooks isn't put off by the lifestyle of her hoarding clients. After all, she lost her mother to the crippling anxiety disorder. She'll go a long way to help others avoid the same pain and loss. Despite Camille's expertise, her growing audience for her Let in the Light podcast, and the national recognition she's gaining for her creative coaching methods, there are some things she isn't prepared for. A client who looks far too much like her mom catches her off guard. And the revelation that she's also hoarding something sends her spinning. Can she stand to let the light into her own life with the help of a friend who wants to stand by her for life and the God who created and loves her? Or will she find that defeating her demons proves too much to bear?

Becky rocks a baby that rocked her world. Sixty years earlier, with her fiancé Drew in the middle of the Korean Conflict, Ivy throws herself into her work at a nursing home to keep her sanity and provide for the child Drew doesn't know is coming. Ivy cares for Anna, an elderly patient who taxes Ivy's listening ear until the day she suspects Anna's tall tales are not the ramblings of dementia. They're fragments of Anna's disjointed memories of a remarkable life. Finding a faint thread of hope she can't resist tugging, Ivy records Anna's memoir, scribbling furiously after hours to keep up with the woman's emotion-packed, grace-hemmed stories. Is Ivy's answer buried in Anna's past? Becky, Ivy, Anna--three women fight a tangled vine of deception in search of the blossoming simplicity of truth.

Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That's when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he's just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away.

"Ruchti has a gift for taking characters through their grief and lifting them to a place higher than themselves . . . The message of hope in a situation that seems hopeless is especially needed now."--Library Journal starred review "An emotional roller coaster of loss, faith, hope, and redemption. I couldn't stop reading."--Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author *** While her humanitarian husband Liam has been digging wells in Africa, Mara Jacobs has been struggling. She knows she's supposed to feel a warm glow that her husband is nine time zones away, caring for widows and orphans. But the reality is that she is exhausted, working a demanding yet unrewarding job, trying to manage their three detention-prone kids, failing at her to-repair list, and fading like a garment left too long in the sun. Then Liam's three-year absence turns into something more, changing everything and plunging her into a sunless grief. As Mara struggles to find her footing, she discovers that even when hope is tenuous, faith is fragile, and the future is unknown, we can be sure we are not forgotten . . . or unloved. With emotionally evocative prose that tackles tough topics with tenderness and hope, award-winning author Cynthia Ruchti invites you on a journey of the heart you won't soon forget. "Ruchti delivers well-rounded, believable characters and has a sure hand at charting the ways they process complex emotions. This packs an emotional punch."--Publishers Weekly "Ruchti delves deeply into the ebb and flow of Mara's struggles and weaves in themes of guilt, betrayal, hope, and redemption."--Booklist

The author and poet’s graceful elegy about life, love, work, and growing older: “The most moving and the most thoughtful [of her] journal-memoirs” (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland). When May Sarton uprooted her life after fifteen years in the refurbished New Hampshire house with the garden she tended so lovingly, she relied solely on instinct. And something told her it was time to move on. Accompanied by her wild cat, Bramble, and Tamas, a Shetland shepherd puppy—the first dog she ever owned—Sarton embarked on the next chapter of her life. The house she chose by the sea in the Maine village of York is completely isolated except during the summer months. Surrounded by nothing but endless ocean, woods, and vast skies, Sarton experiences a rare sense of peace. She creates a new garden and fears that in this tranquil state, she may never write again. But in her solitude—with its occasional interruptions for trips away and visits from friends—she realizes that creativity is constantly renewing itself. This journal offers fascinating insight into a remarkable woman and the work and friendships that form the twin pillars of her life. This ebook features an extended biography of May Sarton.