A Christy Award finalist, bestselling author Deborah Raney has garnered the RITA Award, the HOLT Medallion, and a Silver Angel for her soulstirring fiction. In Almost Forever, five firefighters perish battling the flames of the homeless shelter in Hanover Falls. Shelter volunteer Bryn Hennesey’s grief at the loss of her husband is compounded by a secret, haunting question: Did she extinguish the candle before falling asleep on that fateful night?

Facing an empty nest for the first time since the death of her husband, Dan, three years ago, Tess Everett immerses herself in volunteer work for the Winterset public parks, home of the famous covered bridges of Madison County, Iowa. But when former resident J.W. McRae shows up at one of the bridges with paintbrushes and easel, sparks fly - because J.W. was once married to Tess’ late friend Char. Worse, J.W. was a deadbeat dad to Char’s son, Wynn - then a college student - who Tess and Dan took under their wings after his mom’s death.

In this charming collection of novellas, join three generations of residents from Mapleview, Michigan, who are longing for love—and finding it—during the most wonderful season of the year. Follow schoolteacher Emma Trowbridge and childhood rival Frederick Oberstein in "Hopes and Fears" by Amanda Wen, reporter Eleanor Sweers and family friend Gideon Braum in "While Mortals Sleep" by Janyre Tromp, and high school football coach Caleb Janssen and music teacher Rachel Hamblin in "The Wondrous Gift" by Deborah Raney.

Now that Audrey and Grant's five kids are grown, they are turning their beloved family home into a cozy bed and breakfast in the heartland. Opening weekend makes Audrey anxious, with family and friends coming from all over to help celebrate the occasion. But when Audrey's daughter, Landyn, arrives, the U-Haul she's pulling makes it clear she's not just here for a visit. Audrey immediately has questions. What happened in New York that sent Landyn running home? And where is her husband, Chase?

Anna Marquette has everything to live for. Her daughters are in college and, with the support of Paul, her loving husband, she is pursuing her dream of a career in counseling. Then one night, while on a trip to Orlando, the unimaginable happens. She takes a shortcut to an evening out with Paul and is brutally assaulted. When Anna suspects the attack has left her pregnant, her faith is put to the test. As Anna and her family confront the heart-wrenching decisions that lie ahead, Anna gradually comes to realize that God has a plan for her and that she must trust Him.

Reserved contractor Wade Sullivan never expected to fall in love with Starr Parnell or to love her three small kids as if they were his own. But that's exactly what happened. As their wedding draws near, however, tragedy strikes - and Wade must put aside his own grief in order to help Starr's children cope. As Wade focuses his efforts on caring for the children, he discovers that their tender, young lives give tremendous meaning to his own broken one. Then Starr's abusive ex-husband shows up to claim the offspring who barely remember him.

In The Face of the Earth, Mitchell Brannon is counting the minutes until his wife Jill gets home from a conference. But when she fails to return, he contacts the police, who conduct a search and come up empty-handed. Jill’s best friend Shelley stays by Mitch’s side, and as their relationship deepens, Mitch struggles to honor the vows he made to a woman who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

As a former smokejumper, arson investigator Bri Tucker knows her way around fires. But after a mysterious blaze takes the life of a former colleague, Bri inherits a curious puzzle from him that raises questions about several fiery deaths. Someone, however, doesn’t want her picking up where he left off in search of answers. When she teams up with ATF Special Agent Marc Davis to solve the puzzle, the case heats up—as does the attraction between them.

New York Times best-selling author Francine Rivers returns to the California frontier in this sweeping, romantic tale of a displaced New England suffragette, a former Union soldier disinherited by his Southern family, and the town they join forces to save.

When MacThomas Pockets finished his last tour as part of the Scottish Special Forces, he was hired to consult for a film director to finesse some scenes that weren't working. In a twist he never saw coming, he ended up moving to L.A. to work as the bodyguard for movie star Maybe Joe Sue.

Energetic widow Mattie Bender Schwartz is working day and night to get Promise Lodge going. She's also hoping the change will help her son Noah's heart to heal after his broken engagement. Filled with regret and cast out by her dad for a reason she can't yet reveal, Deborah can only pray Noah will forgive her foolishness. But with her cruel words still ringing in his head, he's reluctant to accept her apology - even if the Old Order ways demand he try.

As a teenage runaway and child of an addict, Christy-Lynn learned the hard way that no address was permanent, and no promise sacred. For a while, she found a safe haven in her marriage to bestselling crime novelist Stephen Ludlow - until his car skidded into Echo Bay. But Stephen’s wasn’t the only body pulled from the icy waters that night. When details about a mysterious violet-eyed blonde become public, a media circus ensues, and Christy-Lynn runs again.

Claire Powell’s life is turned upside down when her beloved husband admits to a “near affair.” But when Stephen accepts a partnership with an Atlanta law firm without consulting her and buys a historic Southern home sight-unseen―it pushes their already-fractured marriage to the breaking point. Claire’s world spirals, and she soon finds herself in a marriage she no longer wants, in a house she never asked for.

Larkspur Nielsen is ready for a change. Her parents have passed on, and her older brother is successfully running the family business. She bristles at the small-mindedness that permeates life in her small Ohio community, and she sees little chance of a satisfying future there. She has a little money saved, and after turning the tables on a crooked gambler who had fleeced several locals, including her younger brother, she can stake a new start for herself and her three sisters.

EMS helicopter pilot Penny Carlton is used to high stress situations, but being forced to land on a mountain in a raging storm with a critical patient - and a serial killer on the loose - tests her skills and her nerve to the limit. She survives with FBI Special Agent Holt Satterfield's help. But she's not out of the woods yet.

A Christy Award finalist, bestselling author Deborah Raney has garnered the RITA Award, the HOLT Medallion, and a Silver Angel for her soulstirring fiction. In Almost Forever, five firefighters perish battling the flames of the homeless shelter in Hanover Falls. Shelter volunteer Bryn Hennesey’s grief at the loss of her husband is compounded by a secret, haunting question: Did she extinguish the candle before falling asleep on that fateful night?

Only God knew why Jillian Slater agreed to return to New Orleans on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death. It's not like they were close. She hadn't seen him - or her grandmother, the ice queen - in almost 20 years. But when Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, called and said her expenses would be paid if she'd fly in for the burial, a free trip to New Orleans was too intriguing to resist.

Anthony and Marty Hirschler are part of an Old Order Mennonite community in Pine Hill, Indiana. The couple has grown apart since a doctor confirmed they would never have children. Marty longs to escape the tight-knit area where large families are valued, and the opportunity to do so arises when her childhood friend, Brooke Spalding, resurfaces with the wild idea of rebuilding a ghost town into a resort community. Brooke hires Anthony to help with the construction, drawing the Hirschlers away from Indiana and into her plan, and then finds herself diagnosed with cancer.

After tirelessly climbing the ranks of her Chicago-based interior design firm, Lane Kelley is about to land her dream promotion when devastating news about her brother draws her back home - a quaint tourist town full of memories she'd just as soon forget. With her cell phone and laptop always within reach, Lane aims to check on her brother while staying focused on work - something her eclectic family doesn't understand.

Caitriona Macleod gave up her career as an investigative reporter for the role of perfect wife. But after her husband is found dead in his mistress's bed, a devastated Cait leaves Chicago for the birthplace she hasn't seen since she was a child. She's hoping to heal and reconnect with her gran. The last thing she expects to find in Gandiegow is the Sexiest Man Alive. Graham Buchanan is a movie star with many secrets. A Gandiegow native, he frequently hides out in his hometown between films.

What could possibly drive a pastor's wife to run away from home? After years of frustration from life in a church fishbowl, Annie McGregor walks away from it all and boards a plane for Colorado. She has no way of knowing her college sweetheart is headed to the same cabin in the Rockies, terrified and gravely wounded. Their unexpected reunion couldn't have come at a worse time. Or could it? Bewildered that God would allow Michael Dean to walk back into her life, Annie pleads with Him to keep her heart true.

After a tornado rips through her town, store owner Abigail comes across a piece of fabric from a wedding dress among the devastation. Abigail is moved to start collecting other swatches of fabric she finds - her neighbor’s kitchen curtains, a man’s necktie, a dog’s bed - which she stashes in shopping bags. As she pursues her seemingly absurd quest, horrible realities spark the question, “What kind of a God would allow such tragedy?”

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…and for Heather Andrews, security manager at Timberwoods Mall, undoubtedly the busiest. But this Christmas, Heather has more to contend with than frazzled parents and disgruntled Santas. Angela Steinhart, a young woman who designed the mall’s spectacular holiday displays, has had a premonition that tragedy will strike on Christmas Eve. And Angela’s visions have a habit of coming true. Heather would love to dismiss the warning as holiday stress.

After losing two loved ones in a devastating tornado and suffering a head injury, Tara Abbott flees to St. Simons Island, where her disorientation causes the lines between imagination and reality, past and present to blur. There she encounters island residents Julep Burnside, Luella Ward, Sue Beth Manning, and Dell Calhoun - The Glynn Girls - who have been friends since Bible camp, 40 years earlier. When Julep's son Gavin identifies a troubled soul in need of help, can the Glynn Girls guide Tara back to herself?

Seventeen-year-old Emma suddenly finds her sordid life miraculously transformed by God's redeeming grace. She soon marries a godly young man, who eventually becomes a nationally recognized preacher with a television audience of 50 million. But after 24 years as an exemplary pastor's wife, one call changes everything.

Lucy Valentine is as smart as can be, as single as you can get, and so not qualified to run a matchmaking service. But when her parents temporarily step down from the family business, Valentine, Inc., it's Lucy's turn to step up and help out - in the name of love. Plus, her rent is due. Here's the problem: Lucy doesn't have the knack for matchmaking. According to family legend, every Valentine has been blessed by Cupid with the ability to read "auras" and pair up perfect couples.

When Emily Cavanaugh inherits a fortune from her great-aunt, she expects her life to change. She doesn't expect to embark on a murder investigation, confront the man who broke her heart 35 years before, and nearly lose her own life. Emily travels to the sleepy coastal village of Stony Beach, Oregon, to claim her inheritance, centered on a beautiful Victorian estate called Windy Corner but also including a substantial portion of the real estate of the whole town.

Interior designer Tessa McKenzie has built a good life far from her Washington hometown. She intends to get back to it - as soon as she sells the cluttered Victorian house and antiques shop she inherited from her sister, Emily. But leaving Apple Valley a second time won't be so easy. There's her grieving nephew, Alex, to consider. And there's Sheriff Cade Cunningham, the adolescent crush who could easily break her heart again if she let him.

Sometimes even good girls need to be a little bad.... Marla Jean Bandy might be down, but she's not out. Even though her no-good ex-husband left her for another woman - a Bookmobile -driving librarian 20 years her senior - Marla Jean won't settle for another lonely night. She's not ready for Mr. Right, but why not have a little fun with Mr. Right Now? The only wrench in her plan is her childhood crush, Jake - and the memory of the one toe-curling kiss they shared on a hot summer night years ago....

Madison is booming with dreamers and drifters, visionaries and entrepreneurs. Among them is Sydney Richardson, the daughter of a cop who died on these streets and now the proud, stressed-out owner of Hush Money, one of the city's top new restaurants. Like everyone else in town, Sydney is shocked when Madison's popular mayor - a crusty, charismatic man of the people - is shot to death in his own home. But the news hits especially close to home for Sydney because one of her own stands accused of the brutal crime. Sydney's the one person that Wanda Fields, a quiet, hardworking waitress and single mother, can think to call after her arrest.