Showing results by author "Karen Lenfestey" in All Categories

Kate Hopper can list a million reasons why she doesn’t have kids. No, more like reasons why she shouldn’t have kids: genetics, a dysfunctional family, and ultimately, the fear that she wasn’t cut out to be June Cleaver or Carol Brady or Claire Huxtable. TV moms always made it look so easy, but Kate knows better. When Kate’s little sister, Joely, refuses a medical treatment because it will leave her infertile, Kate is willing to say anything to save her sister’s life—even promising to have a baby. Kate decides to keep her rash words a secret from her husband until she can figure ...

Someone is watching Hope Miller. She’s sure of it, but neither the police nor her boyfriend believe her. Despite growing up in foster care, Hope has always seen the best in people—until now. When she gets mugged during her third trimester, her life gets turned upside down. With her due date just weeks away, she’s worried she can’t keep her baby safe in this dangerous world. Hope’s sister, Claire, feels like all of the good stuff is behind her: love, career, and motherhood. She’s had them and lost them. Will meeting a grad student and the baby he’s caring for offer her a second...

Bethany Morris always puts everyone else’s needs first. That’s why when she got pregnant in college, she had the baby in secret and placed it for adoption. Sixteen years later, she patiently waits for her live-in boyfriend to propose and wonders if she missed her one chance at motherhood. Life gets complicated when she runs into the baby’s father, Parker, and he reveals that he has the same disease that took his father’s life. Does Bethany owe it to Parker to tell him that he has a child? Should she track down the daughter she’s never known just to give her bad news? Risking the ...

At age thirty, Hope Miller has mixed feelings about her unexpected pregnancy. Sure, she loves fostering shelter dogs, but she never imagined herself as a mother. Anxious to be an aunt, her sister starts pressuring her to be someone she’s not. Her new friend wants her to stay fun and unencumbered. When Hope’s ex says he wants back in her life, she feels like it might be what’s best for her baby. Pulling away from her sister, Hope spends more time with her new friend and risks letting her ex break her heart all over again.

When social studies teacher, Claire Tillman, finds one of her seniors sleeping in his car, her maternal instinct kicks in. Despite her crumbling marriage, she welcomes Jaxon into her home. She even offers to help him find the father he's never met so he can come to Jaxon's high school graduation. As she follows Jaxon’s journey, she realizes the story of her own father’s death doesn’t add up. He died accidentally when she was young and yet her mother is still bitter about it. Digging into her own family history, she discovers that her father had a secret that turns her life upside down...

Single mom Bethany Morris loves her 6-year-old foster daughter, Willow, as if she were her own. When Willow’s real mother is released early from prison, Bethany isn’t ready to let the little girl go. Trying to justify her reluctance to say good-bye, she digs into the mother’s shady past and struggles to deal with what she finds out. Across the state line, Willow’s half-sister lives with her dad, Conner Walker, a man who never stays in one place for too long. When he returns to the town where he grew up, he realizes he’s been cheating his daughter out of a place to call home. For ...

A compelling, contemporary women’s fiction novel about the complicated relationship between a mother and daughter, a man and a woman, in the spirit of Kristin Hannah, Debbie Macomber and Elizabeth Berg. Kimber Foley hates change. She hates when the IT department forces her to change her password every three months, she hates it when the grocery store stops stocking her favorite chai latte, and she really hates that fifteen years ago her husband left to take a drive and never came home. Ever since then, she’s held on tightly to everything and everyone, to keep her world in check. Now ...

When Bethany meets Kaylee, the little girl who lives next door, it stirs up a longing she’s been trying to quell. At 35, Beth has a job she enjoys and a sweet boyfriend who cannot promise her tomorrow. She tells herself no one gets to “have it all,” but little Kaylee seems to need Beth just as much as Beth needs her. Beth’s boyfriend, Parker, loves her so much he’s decided to leave her. Bit by bit, he pulls back, figuring it’s better to break her heart now rather than later. If he were gone, he’s sure Beth would see that the family next door has room for one more. But Parker ...