Bright lights flicker in the dark evenings of summer. Pinpoints of hope float against the black descent of night. The sweetest of small and innocent creatures finds its way through the shadows. Fireflies seem to dance on sheer air, illuminating the space between heartbeats.Children give off a similar brave glow, despite the challenges of their young lives. The lessons of childhood are often painful, the shedding of fragile wings in the gloam of an uncertain future. These rich novellas are small jewels reflecting the essence of what it means to grow up dancing among the shadows of life, carrying a brave, small beacon because you know that even the brightest days always, always, end in darkness.Childhood can be so sweetly sad and sadly sweet, profound and deceptively easy to categorize, yet poignant to remember.New York Times bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen (GARDEN SPELLS, SUGAR QUEEN, THE PEACH KEEPER) anchors THE FIREFLY DANCE with her wistful and funny novella about Louise, a North Carolina girl whose keen observations of the lives around her weaves an unforgettable spell with just a hint of everyday magic.Phyllis Schieber's Sonya, a child of Holocaust survivors, is confronted with the responsibilities of her legacy when she has a poignant encounter with a classmate, another child of survivors, and her mother, in a local shop in their 1970's New York neighborhood.Kathryn Magendie's Petey deals wryly with her family's move from the cool blue mountains of North Carolina to the hot flatlands of Texas.Augusta Trobaugh's stoic Georgia boy leads us through his surreal encounter with a mysterious backwoods toddler who turns out to be anything but ordinary.

Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the highway. His wife, pregnant with their first child, has asked him to find the antique cradle taken years before by her mother Caroline when she abandoned Marissa, never to contact her daughter again. Soon to be a mother herself, Marissa now dreams of nothing else but bringing her baby home to the cradle she herself slept in. His wife does not know -- does not want to know -- where her mother lives, but Matt has an address for Caroline's sister near by and with any luck, he will be home in time for dinner. Only as Matt tries to track down his wife's mother, he discovers that Caroline, upon leaving Marissa, has led a life increasingly plagued by impulse and irrationality, a mysterious life that grows more inexplicable with each new lead Matt gains, and door he enters. As hours turn into days and Caroline's trail takes Matt from Wisconsin to Minnesota, Illinois, and beyond in search of the cradle, Matt makes a discovery that will forever change Marissa's life, and faces a decision that will challenge everything he has ever known. Elegant and astonishing, Patrick Somerville tells the story of one man's journey into the heart of marriage, parenthood, and what it means to be a family. Confirming the arrival of an exuberantly talented writer,

The Cradle

is an uniquely imaginative debut novel that radiates with wisdom and wonder.

Thirty-something midwesterner Mark Fife believes he has successfully moved past the accidental death of his young son Brendan, as well as his subsequent divorce from his college sweetheart Chloe. He's successful, he's in love again, and he believes he's mastered his own memories. But then he is contacted by a strange woman who tells him not only that she owns his old house, but that she believes it to be haunted by Brendan's ghost. Will Mark--who does not believe in ghosts--come to accept the mounting evidence that Brendan's is real? Will his engagement to his new love Allison be threatened by the reappearance in Mark's life of Chloe--who does believe? If the ghost is real, what can these two wounded parents do to help their son?

You Came Back

examines the beauty and danger of belief in all its forms--not only belief in the supernatural, but in the love that binds parents and children, husbands and wives.

Life-long friendships, class differences, terrible mistakes, and the beauty of unspoiled nature are all the ingredients that make

Whispering Winds of Appalachia

so special.

Nestled between the smoky, rolling peaks of Southern Appalachia lies the town of Brevard, North Carolina. When Chris Avery’s family moves to Brevard in the early 1970s, Chris quickly becomes immersed in a world untouched by the mire of life outside the mountains.As a young boy, Chris meets the son of the struggling dairy farmer next door, Walker Davis, and Walker’s best friend, Brook Palmer. The three of them become inseparable, bonded to each other as they are to the vibrant world in which their lives unfold. They spend the formative years of their childhood wandering in the woods chasing waterfalls and brook trout. However, they soon find out that life isn’t always so simple.What once seemed like Heaven is hopelessly ripped apart at the seams when one of the characters commits an irrevocable mistake that challenges friendship, love, and Chris’s understanding of even himself. Grasping at straws of a fractured past, Chris is forced to pit his conscience against the people he loves, all while listening to the subtle, haunting voices laced in the wind.Author John Ellington presents a heartfelt work of literary fiction, where readers will experience the sheer agony of irreversible choices and the consequences we must all face, set against Appalachian peaks towering over small, forgotten mountain towns.

Whispering Winds of Appalachia

is the winner of the

2024 Gold Medal Southern Fiction IPPY Book Award

and is a finalist for the

2024 Next Generation Indie Book Award

.This book is one of the most emotional and heartfelt fiction novels you will come across.

A married woman’s affair makes her reconsider the nature of love in this “beautiful, wise novel” (Edmund White).

Maria Jameson is having an affair—a passionate, life-changing affair. Yet she wonders whether this has to mean an end to the love she shares with her husband.   For answers to the question of whether it is possible to love two men at once, she reaches across the centuries to George Sand, the maverick French novelist. Immersing herself in the life of this revolutionary woman who took numerous lovers, Maria struggles with the choices women make, and wonders if women in the nineteenth century might have been more free, in some ways, than their twenty-first-century counterparts.   As these two narratives intertwine—following George through her affair with Frédéric Chopin, following Maria through her affair with an Irish professor—this novel explores the personal and the historical, the demands of self and the mysteries of the heart.   “This is not so much a story about having a love affair as it is a study of the nature of love itself. I was absolutely knocked out by it.” —Elizabeth Berg

Lucy Hickey-Rios is a strong woman. As Executive Director of Mercy Animal Shelter, she devotes her time and energy towards improving the lives of the animals in her central New York community. And things had been going well. A successful fund raiser brought in desperately needed funds. Out of the blue, an opportunity arose to replace their outdated shelter. Then, just as quickly, things turned sour. Vandalism, the murder of a beloved family member and the confiscation of twelve horses on their way to auction, and the kill buyers, were nearly more than Lucy could handle. Nearly.