Carly's Gift (43 page)
Authors: Georgia Bockoven
To face the future, a woman must let go of the past. . . .
A return to her childhood home in the golden hills of Northern California means regret and pain for Karla Esterbrook. Yet she can't refuse when her ailing grandmother, Anna, asks her to help settle her affairs. Anna, after all, raised Karla and her younger sisters after their parents' death twenty years before. But from the beginning a powerful clash of wills separates Karla and her grandmother, leaving them both bitter and angry.
Little does Karla know that a very determined Anna will do everything in her power to bridge the chasm between them. But can the wounds of the past truly be healed? For Karla, opening her heart could lead to more hurtâor perhaps to reconciliation . . . and a love the likes of which she has never known.
THE YEAR EVERYTHING CHANGED
As Jessie Patrick Reed's attorney, I'm writing to you on behalf of your father, Jessie Patrick Reed. I regret to inform you that Mr. Reed is dying. He has expressed a desire to see you. . . .
Even though sustained by a loving family, Elizabeth has suffered the most from her father's seeming abandonment and for years has protected herself with a deep-seated anger she hides from everyone.
Ginger, in love with a married man, will be forced to reevaluate every relationship she's ever had and will reach stunning conclusions that change her life forever.
Rachel learns of her father's existence the same day she finds out her husband of ten years has had an affair. She will receive the understanding and support she needs to survive from an unlikely and surprising source.
Christine is a young filmmaker, barely out of college, who must now decide if her few precious memories of a man she believed to be long dead are enough to give him a second chance.
Four sisters who never knew the others existed will find strength, love, and answers in the most unexpected places in . . .Â
The Year Everything Changed.
ANOTHER SUMMER
Weaving together love and laughter, heartache and hope, promise and passion,
Another Summer
returns to the world of
The Beach House
with new stories entwined in a powerful emotional journey.
A twentieth high school reunion reunites lovers who must learn to trust again. Teenagers from opposite worlds discover that having chips on their shoulders only makes it harder to get through doors. An ambitious corporate attorney finds herself falling for the man she has vowed to destroy in the courtroom. A young family reeling from a devastating loss meets a mysterious older couple and a half-starved stray cat that will guide them back to each other.
None of these people will leave the beach house the same as they were before. . . .
DISGUISED BLESSING
Silver Linings
After years of being alone, Catherine Miller thinks she's finally found happiness. Engaged to an adoring, successful executive, she lives in a luxurious house and her beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, Linda, is on the brink of college and adulthood. Then Catherine's rose-colored world is shattered. Her daughter is terribly burned in a freak accident. Her fiancé abandons her just when Catherine needs him most. Now Catherine must call on every ounce of courage and strength she possesses to help her beloved daughter recover. Fortunately, she's got help in fire captain and expert burn counselor Rick Sawyer. Ruggedly handsome and appealingly down-to-earth, Rick is like no man Catherine has ever met. But Catherine made the wrong choice before. How can she trust her emotionsâespecially when it's not just her heart at stake but her daughter's very life?
In the tradition of Barbara Delinsky comes this poignant, moving story of the bonds of family, the strength of love, and the courage to dare.
THE BEACH HOUSE
The beach house is a peaceful haven and a place to escape everyday problems. Here three families find their feelings intensified and their lives transformed each summer.
Thirty-year-old Julia, mourning the death of her husband, decides to sell the Santa Cruz beach house they owned together. She sets in motion a final summer that will change the lives of all the families who rent it year after year. Teenage Chris discovers the bittersweet joy of first love; Maggie and Joe, married sixty-five years, courageously face a separation that even their devotion cannot prevent; the married woman for whom Peter yearns suddenly comes within his reach; and Julia ultimately finds the strength to rebuild her lifeâsomething she once thought impossible.
With equal measures of heartbreak and happiness, bestselling author Georgia Bockoven's unforgettable novel tells of the beauty of life and the power of love, and speaks to every woman who has ever clung to a child or loved a man.
Cover design by Emin Mancheril
Cover photograph © by Wavebreakmedia Ltd/Getty Images
Author photograph by John Bockoven
An Unspoken Promise
Far From Home
Alone in a Crowd
Moments
The Way It Should Have Been
A Marriage of Convenience
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.⢠is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
CARLY
'
S
GIFT
. Copyright © 2013, 1993 by Georgia Bockoven. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Previously published under the title
The Way It Should Have Been
in 1993 by HarperTorch, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST
WILLIAM
MORROW
PAPERBACK
EDITION
PUBLISHED
2013.
ISBN 978-0-06-227985-9
EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN 9780062279866
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