Looking for real life. The scrawled graffiti on the bathroom wall was innocent enough, clichéd even. But for Claire Wilder, it was a wake-up call: start searching for your roots and find the happiness you lost long ago. Divorced from her high school sweetheart, Claire has wasted too much time waiting for Andrew to come back, and in the process has lost the flavor of her own life.
Leaving behind her fast-paced life, Claire ends up in her father's hometown of Valentine, Oklahoma, for a brief stay at the Goodnight Motel. But her arrival is like a pebble tossed into a pond, its ripples affecting the town's eccentric residents who like to think things just fine the way they are, thank you. Gradually the days turn into weeks, and before Claire knows it, she's discovered something she had almost forgotten existed: a place to call home.
Just when it looks as if things might finally be falling into place for Claire, life throws her another curve: Andrew shows up unexpectedly in Valentine--to woo her back! Now Claire must decide: return to the home and security she once knew, or stay in Valentine with the promise of a new life and the possibility of a new love. . .
Curtiss Ann Matlock's funny, touching stories set in the not-so-sleepy town of Valentine have captured the hearts of readers everywhere.
]]>Meet Rainey Valentine: thirty-five, twice divorced, a woman with broken dreams but irrepressible hope. When her mother dies, she inherits a truck, an old barrel-racing mare named Lulu and a lifetime supply of Mary Kay cosmetics. So taking a page from her mother's life, Rainey packs it all up and heads off, leaving Valentine, Oklahoma, in her rearview mirror.
Then, somewhere outside Abilene, she finds him. Dazed and wandering after a car accident, Harry Furneaux is a man as lost as she is. With nowhere else to go, he joins Rainey on her travels. But when their journey leads them back to Valentine, Harry and Rainey find an unexpected new direction . . .
Straight out of the heartland of the South, Lost Highways is a novel to gently rock the heart and soul . . . the story of a woman traveling too long on an endless stretch of lonesome road who finds her way home at last.
]]>Christmas has come to Valentine, Oklahoma and everybody's got a special wish . . . For thirteen-year-old Corrine, it's really about keeping what she has: a happy life with her aunt Marilee and Papa Tate; her beloved horses; and an almost boyfriend, Ricky Dale. Now is not the time for the mother who abandoned her to come back into her life.
Anita, though, is determine. She is coming home for Christmas to fix the mistakes she's made. Despite some bad times and the bridges she's burned, Anita loves her daughter, and she is desperately hoping a bit of Christmas magic will help Corrine decide to love and trust her again.
As for Marilee, she loves Corrine like her own, and fears losing the girl to a beautiful, irresponsible mother who might just break her daughters heart all over again. As always, Anita's arrival fans old flames of anger and stubbornness between the two sisters. Then again, it is a season of miracles. And if one tiny miracle could find its way to Valentine this year, then everybody might just get the most perfect gift of all.
]]>In this funny and poignant sequel to Cold Tea on a Hot Day, Valentine's own Marilee James is engaged to Tate Holloway, the new editor of the Valentine Voice, a man whose sweet Southern sensibilities and melting kisses have convinced her to take a leap of faith. But marriage is a nerve-racking proposition -- especially when she's got a special-needs son and an abandoned niece to care for.
As she stands at life's crossroads, Marilee needs a push in the right direction.
That push, ironically, comes from Stuart James, Marilee's ex-husband and her son's father. Gone these two years, he's come back at the most inopportune time, pushing Marilee to think long and hard about the road she's taking. But Stuart, with his charm, his talent and his own secrets, is exactly what Marilee's heart needs to move into the arms of the right man . . . and into the happiness that's waiting right around the Corner.
]]>Lacey Bryant is the ever-hopeful waitress at Gerald's Truckstop Restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a spot that is clear across the country from her home and family in North Carolina. It has been eleven years since Lacey, pregnant and unmarried, ran away from her angry father. Now she wants to go home again. A single mother struggling to raise her own children, she longs for her father's forgiveness, her mother's sweet embrace and to share with her aging parents the grandchildren they have never seen.
Cooper is every inch a Scrooge who wants no part of traveling across country with two children, but he has promised to help out a friend, and so he loads Lacey and her brood into his eighteen-wheeler and carries them along with him on his trip down Interstate 40. As the miles roll under the big truck's wheels, it turns out to be Lacey and her children who are bringing Cooper along with them, on a journey that takes them home to the heart.
In this revised edition of a Curtiss Ann Matlock classic, readers are treated once again to a cast of lovable characters in a magical romance as sweet and tender as a Christmas cookie.
]]>As Emma sorts through the mess of her own marriage, she puts her heart into planning Valentine's wedding of the century. But there's one big problem: the bride's ambitious mother wants more for her daughter than marriage to a small-town boy.
As the wedding approaches, the many meanings of love, commitment and happiness capture the hearts of folks in town. And surrounded by the warmth and spirit of her neighbors, Emma starts to see new beginnings instead of endings.
]]>As Emma sorts through the mess of her own marriage, she puts her heart into planning Valentine's wedding of the century. But there's one big problem: the bride's ambitious mother wants more for her daughter than marriage to a small-town boy.
As the wedding approaches, the many meanings of love, commitment and happiness capture the hearts of folks in town. And surrounded by the warmth and spirit of her neighbors, Emma starts to see new beginnings instead of endings.
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