Augusta Trobaugh

Sarah Addison Allen

Kathryn Magendie

Bright lights flicker in the dark evenings of summer. Pinpoints of hope float against the black descent of night. The sweetest of small and innocent creatures finds its way through the shadows. Fireflies seem to dance on sheer air, illuminating the space between heartbeats. Children give off a similar brave glow, despite the challenges of their young lives. The lessons of childhood are often painful, the shedding of fragile wings in the gloam of an uncertain future. These rich novellas are small jewels reflecting the essence of what it means to grow up dancing among the shadows of life, carrying a brave, small beacon because you know that even the brightest days always, always, end in darkness. Childhood can be so sweetly sad and sadly sweet, profound and deceptively easy to categorize, yet poignant to remember. New York Times bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen (GARDEN SPELLS, SUGAR QUEEN, THE PEACH KEEPER) anchors THE FIREFLY DANCE with her wistful and funny novella about Louise, a North Carolina girl whose keen observations of the lives around her weaves an unforgettable spell with just a hint of everyday magic. Phyllis Schieber's Sonya, a child of Holocaust survivors, is confronted with the responsibilities of her legacy when she has a poignant encounter with a classmate, another child of survivors, and her mother, in a local shop in their 1970's New York neighborhood. Kathryn Magendie's Petey deals wryly with her family's move from the cool blue mountains of North Carolina to the hot flatlands of Texas. Augusta Trobaugh's stoic Georgia boy leads us through his surreal encounter with a mysterious backwoods toddler who turns out to be anything but ordinary.

The Firefly Dance

Courage. Hope. For shy, stuttering Melissa, the wild mountain girl named Sweetie is a symbol of pride and strength. But to many in their Appalachian town Sweetie is an outcast, a sinister influence, or worse. This poignant and haunting story takes readers deep inside the bittersweet heart of childhood loyalties. A West Virginia native, Kat Magendie came home to Maggie Valley via South Louisiana, where she reclusively writes and co-edits/publishes The Rose & Thorn online journal. Visit her at www.kathrynmagendie.com

Sweetie

Book one in The Graces saga, following the emotional journey of a woman attempting to resolve the damage of her childhood with a loving but alcoholic father and a beautiful, selfish, often heartbreakingly self-deluding mother. Gorgeous lyrical storytelling and poignant human insights. By acclaimed poet and short story author Kathryn Magendie.

Tender Graces

Friendship. Courage. Hope. For shy, stuttering Melissa, the wild mountain girl named Sweetie is a symbol of pride and strength. But to many in their Appalachian town Sweetie is an outcast, a sinister influence, or worse. This poignant and haunting story takes readers deep inside the bittersweet heart of childhood loyalties.

In this second book of Kathryn Magendie's much-praised series about the journey of a woman dealing with the ghosts of a dysfunctional family, Virginia Kate Carey seeks the loving commitment that eluded her in TENDER GRACES. "Vee" is idealistic and naïve despite the witness she has served to the fractured heritage of her parents' and grandmother's dreams. Vee continues her journey toward wisdom, building small bridges over the chasms of hurt and longing. The inspiration of hope lingers in her. TENDER GRACES and now, SECRET GRACES, explores three women's lives: Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, and passes through the fulcrum of Virginia Kate's emerging life as a lover and mother and storyteller, chronicling the heart ache and hope of her family and herself.

Secret Graces

Phyllis Schieber

This collection of novellas reveal that childhood is sweetly sad and sadly sweet; profound and deceptively easy to categorize, yet poignant to remember.

Virginia Kate's journey of understanding and forgiveness brings her back to the moment that changed her family's fate forever . . . "Grandma Faith calls to me to her ending that she says is her beginning. I must start with her, for she is the beginning of Momma who is the beginning of me who tells the stories--the stories are made real by the telling. The others will follow. 'Round we go. The mommas, the daughters, the children. They all wait for the releasing. The women of the ages. The little girls who lost their way and then were found. The mommas who wanted and those who did not. Where one lost, another recovered. The fulled circle goes 'round and 'round." The final novel of Kathryn Magendie's Graces trilogy completes the saga begun in her acclaimed ebook bestseller TENDER GRACES and its sequel, SECRET GRACES. Kathryn Magendie, a West Virginia/Appalachian native and adoptive daughter of South Louisiana, lives in a little log house with two dogs, a husband she calls "GMR," (Good Man Roger), and a ghost dog, tucked in a cove in Maggie Valley, among western North Carolina Smoky Mountains. She spends her days writing, photographing nature, and as Publishing Editor of The Rose & Thorn, a literary e-zine. Her next novel for Bell Bridge Books will be The Lightning Charmer. Look for all of Kathryn Magendie's novels coming soon in audiobook at Audible.com, Amazon.com and iTunes. Visit her at www.kathrynmagendie.com.

Kathryn Magendie

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