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Terah Shelton Harris is an author and former librarian who now writes upmarket fiction with bittersweet endings. She is the LibraryReads Hall of Fame author of Where the Wildflowers Grow, Long After We Are Gone, and One Summer in Savannah. Her books have been named one of the most anticipated books by Goodreads, Essence, BookBub, and have been chosen as an Indie Next pick, Kobo Best Book, Together We Read pick, Publisher’s Marketplace Buzz Book, and a Goodreads Choice Awards nominee for Best Debut. Terah was also named Target’s first Author of the Year, and her books have been optioned for TV/film.
Leigh is the last of the Wildes. She knows this because she watched them all die.
Grief never truly fades and even as the tragedy haunts her, Leigh carries on, because survival is in her blood. So, when the transport bus taking her to prison careens off the road, killing everyone onboard except her, she does what’s in her nature. She survives.
While searching for a place to hide, Leigh stumbles upon an unexpected sanctuary: a flower farm in rural Alabama tucked away from the world. What Leigh doesn’t expect is the found family there who have built something from the wreckage of their own lives. Especially Jackson, the farm’s owner, who sees through Leigh’s defenses, offers her small moments of tenderness, encourages her to face her own tragedies. Slowly, Leigh finds peace with the hard pace and soft nature of the farm, taking comfort in the life blooming around her. Maybe she’s not beyond redemption, not too broken for something good. And maybe, just maybe, Leigh starts to heal.
But the past isn’t so easily buried.
No matter how far she runs, the truth of who she is and the ghosts of the Wildes follow. And when those secrets catch up to her, threatening everything she’s come to love, Leigh will have to truly face what she can survive.
Gillian McAllister is the New York Times bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club Pick Caller Unknown, Wrong Place Wrong Time, Famous Last Words, Just Another Missing Person, Everything but the Truth, The Choice, The Good Sister, The Evidence Against You, How to Disappear, and the Richard & Judy Book Club pick That Night. She graduated with an English degree before working as a lawyer. She lives in Birmingham, England, where she now writes full-time. She is also the creator and co-host of the popular Honest Authors podcast.
There is nothing that Simone won’t do for her daughter, Lucy. The two have always been close, and with Lucy about to leave home for university, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don’t tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal…
Though Simone’s husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can’t take any chances. The kidnappers might kill Lucy if she tells anyone. No mother would take that risk. Instead, that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up.
What she finds there changes everything. The mysterious kidnapper doesn’t want money. They want Simone to do something. The unthinkable.
A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, with chilling consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family. What follows is a heart-pounding journey through the small towns and punishing deserts of remote Texas, in which Simone’s courage—and morality—is pushed to the brink as she discovers what it truly means to be a mother.
Author Brenda Novak is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with more than thirteen million books in print, translated into twenty different languages. An eight-time Rita nominee, she has won many awards, including the National Reader’s Choice, the Bookseller’s Best and the Silver Bullet. She also runs Brenda Novak for the Cure, a charity to raise money for diabetes research (her youngest son has this disease). To date, she’s raised $2.6 million.
In the wake of her debut novel’s breakout success–and a very painful public divorce–Charlotte Williams-Jackson has something to prove. With her second novel overdue, she’s scrambling to hold it together. But her focus is rocked when she discovers that her childhood wasn’t as it seemed–and she has a tween half-sister who’s been orphaned in Italy.
Alongside her best friend, Sloane, and Sloane’s charming brother, Julian, Charlotte ventures to the Amalfi Coast to meet her sister. She would never turn her back on family, especially since this girl doesn’t have anyone else, but between her looming deadline and her entire identity being flipped upside down, it’s a lot. Determined to rebuild her life, Charlotte must confront the relationships she’s held dear–and the loss of those she thought she had but didn’t–forcing her to question everything she understood about herself and the bonds that shape a family.
Tracy Sierra was born and raised in the Colorado mountains. She is an attorney who currently lives in New England in a colonial-era home. When not writing, she spends time with her husband and two children. Nightwatching, her debut novel, was selected as a Fallon Book Club pick. Warning Signs is her second novel.
Twelve-year-old Zach is cautiously optimistic. His father Bram, whose business is in dire need of cash, has put together a father-son backcountry ski weekend to wine and dine his biggest investors. Schooled in outdoor survival by his mother, Zach is eager to prove himself to the hypercritical Bram. Maybe if Zach shows how useful he is, he can earn his father’s love.
But Zach knows to be on high alert around Bram, and he sees the way the group ignores the increasingly threatening conditions. For the first time in his beloved mountains, he is faced with the unknown, convinced that something watches their cabin from the treeline. Something that leaves behind strange tracks and picks its prey clean.
As the adults recklessly test the limits of the outdoors, Zach worries he might be in even more danger than he realized. Could the men around him prove more violent than the unforgiving weather, and the strange creature lurking in the dark? Zach will have to rely on his wits if he hopes to make it home safely. But he knows all too well that the wilderness can be unpredictable even at the best of times. And at the worst? Deadly.
The Back Room is the brainchild of bestselling authors Hank Phillippi Ryan and Karen Dionne.
Learn more about how they conceived of The Back Room, how it works, and about their books too!

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