Susan Meissner Livres

A heartrending tale of a young mother's struggle to keep her daughter amid the forces that tear them apart unfolds in California, 1938. After losing her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by Celine and Truman Calvert, owners of the vineyard where she has grown up as the vinedresser's daughter. Rosanne harbors a secret: she experiences synesthesia, seeing colors when she hears sounds, a gift she promised her mother to keep hidden. However, overwhelmed by grief and isolation, she breaks this vow and, in a moment of desperation, becomes pregnant. Banished by the Calverts, Rosanne believes she is headed to a home for unwed mothers, cherishing her pregnancy as a chance for a new beginning. Instead, she finds herself in a far darker place than she imagined. Fast forward to Austria, 1947—Helen Calvert, having witnessed the horrors of Adolf Hitler's regime, returns to America. Upon arriving at her brother's vineyard, she learns the shocking fate of Rosanne, the vinedresser's daughter she once befriended. Determined to uncover the truth, Helen embarks on a quest to find Rosanne, revealing that while the war in Europe has ended, new battles still rage at home.

From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War comes a novel set during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, telling the story of a family reborn through loss and love. In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town, came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters—Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa—a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish Flu reaches the shores of America. As the pandemic claims more than twelve thousand victims in their adopted city, they find their lives left with a world that looks nothing like the one they knew. But even as they lose loved ones, they take in a baby orphaned by the disease who becomes their single source of hope. Amidst the tragedy and challenges, they learn what they cannot live without—and what they are willing to do about it. As Bright as Heaven is the compelling story of a mother and her daughters who find themselves in a harsh world not of their making, which will either crush their resolve to survive or purify it.

When farmers and pumpkin patch owners donate their extra pumpkins to the zoo, the animals chomp, chew, play, and give hearty hoorays for their favorite squishy squash! Grab a pumpkin and follow along as this read-aloud zoo book for preschoolers and elementary-age kids celebrates the fall season in the most entertaining way.

April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed. Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear. From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943--aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences. But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her. The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we've always been is called into question.-- Publisher's description

Transcribing the journal entries of a victim of the Salem witch trials, Lauren realizes that the secrets of Mercy's story extend beyond the pages of her diary, and forces her to take a startling new look at her own life.

Wartime intrigue spans the lives of three women—past and present—in this emotional novel from the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War. February, 1946. World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Résistance spy. Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly-held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom. When the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark... Present day. Facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary at the request of an old friend. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a seventy-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides—and will ultimately lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings. CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED

Susannah was rumored to be a Civil War spy for the North, a traitor to her Virginian roots. Her great-granddaughter Adelaide, the current matriarch of Holly Oak, doesn't believe that Susannah's ghost haunts the antebellum mansion looking for a pardon, but rather the house itself bears a grudge toward its tragic past. When Marielle marries into the family, she must sort out the truth about Susannah and Holly Oak-- and make peace with the sacrifices she has made for love

Set in 1956 Malibu, the story unfolds around Melanie Cole, a blacklisted actress, and her agoraphobic neighbor, Elwood. Their limited interactions take a turn when Melanie and her Eastern European maid, Eva, notice Elwood's sister-in-law, June, acting suspiciously in his garden. As Elwood mysteriously disappears, the women are drawn into a quest to uncover the truth, leading them to unexpected secrets and a surprising bond. The narrative explores themes of isolation, friendship, and the pursuit of hidden truths amidst Hollywood's glitz and shadows.

Claire Hollands Leben gerät aus den Fugen, als sie Opfer eines sexuellen Übergriffs wird und schwanger wird. Die Entscheidung, das Kind zur Adoption freizugeben, belastet sie und ihre Familie. Jahre später bleibt die Erinnerung an ihre ungewollte Tochter. Susan Meissner zeigt erneut ihr Können im christlichen Roman-Genre.