Books

With the charm of the Mitford Series, the humor of I Love Lucy, and the heart of Andy Griffith's Mayberry, Ane Mulligan's Chapel Springs series is sure to be a hit with fans of Debbie Macomber and Jan Karon. Reading Chapel Springs is like coming home to the place you wish you were from, to the friends you know and love. ~ Gina Holmes, award-winning author of Crossing Oceans & Dry as Rain  

Chapel Springs Revival

With a friend like Claire, you'll need a gurney, a mop, and a guardian angel

Everybody in the small town of Chapel Springs, Georgia, knows best friends Claire Bennett and Patsy Kowalski. It's impossible not to, what with Claire's zany antics and Patsy's self-appointed mission to keep her friend out of trouble. And trouble abounds. 

During an early morning discussion at Dees 'n' Doughs bakery with their ladies group, all Chapel Springs entrepreneurs, attention is drawn to the slackened tourist trade. With their livelihoods threatened, they join forces to address the town's revitalization in hopes of drawing back the tourists. No one could have guessed the real issue needing restoration is their marriages. 

Claire, a pottery artist, stumbles through life, usually with her foot in her mouth. When she became a Christian, she thought life and her marriage would be included in the new creation part. But her thighs are just as big and her husband, Joel, is as ornery as ever. She's become nothing more than a sheet-changer, a towel-folder, a pancake-flipper. Her life is just humdrum and she's tired of being taken for granted. 

Patsy has plans for her empty nest, plans that include a cruise ship. However, her husband, Nathan, continues to work long hours, and he's not talking about slowing down. In fact, he's not talking much at all. She's asleep long before he comes home each night. At first she thought it was just because of tax season, but now she's not so sure. Something other than work seems to keep him late at the office every night. With the lines of communication closed, she'll have to find another way to reach him. 

With their marriages as much in need of restoration as the town, Claire and Patsy embark on a mission of mishaps and miscommunication, determined to restore warmth to Chapel Springs —and their lives. That is if they can convince their husbands and the town council, led by two curmudgeons who would prefer to see Chapel Springs left in the fifties and closed to traffic.

Chapel Springs Survival

An invasion of tourists, a scalawag mayor, and her son's mail order bride

propel Claire onto a merry-go-round of trouble

With the success of her Operation Marriage Revival, life is good for CLAIRE BENNETT. That is until the mayor's brother blabs a secret: Claire's nineteen-year-old son has married a Brazilian mail order bride—one who is eight years older than him. When Claire tries to welcome her new daughter-in-law, she's ridiculed, rebuffed, and rejected. Loving this girl is like hugging a prickly cactus. Will Claire and her family survive her son's marriage?

LYDIA SMITH is happily living alone and running her spa—until the widow on the hill becomes a blushing bride. Along with her new marriage, she has a dream to expand her business by adding guest rooms. Things are going according to plan. That is, until her groom's adult son moves in—on everything. Will her dream survive her stepson?

From the first sighting of a country music star in Claire's gallery, The Painted Loon, to the visit of a Hollywood diva, Chapel Springs is inundated with stargazers, compelling lifelong residents to flee the area. When her best friends put their house on the market, Claire is forced to act or lose the closest thing to a sister she’s got. With her son's future at stake and the town looking to her to solve their problems, Claire's not sure she can survive this merry-go-round of trouble.

Chapel Springs Recycle

Startling discoveries are unearthed when Chapel Springs goes green 

CLAIRE BENNETT'S bumfuzzled when her old nemesis enlists her help in his reelection as mayor. It seems like his opponent has a grudge to settle against Chapel Springs, so Claire jumps in with both feet ... in her mouth. While it's no secret she and the mayor don't see eye-to-eye on most things, at least she knows how he operates. She takes control of his campaign, but shortly after, a rumor hits the streets that Claire is trying to buy her daughter a husband. Her daughter is still in love with an old high school sweetheart. There's only one problem, well two, really. His father is that crusty old curmudgeon, the mayor. And the second problem Claire knows all too well. After the trouble she went through waiting for her husband to finally become a Christian, she can't believe her daughter would even consider marrying a man who isn't a believer. 

HOWIE NEWLANDER has big ideas for Chapel Springs, which include becoming mayor with a "Go Green" campaign. Once in office, he plans to implement the new environmental laws and collect the windfall tax benefits. But when it comes time to refurbish the springs, will the funds really be available, or will they end up in Howie's own coffers? More than plastic bottles get recycled when Chapel Springs goes green.

LACEY DAWSON is happiest working in the background at the bank and at Chapel Springs Curtain Call Theatre. Why she doesn't know, but the smell of the greasepaint draws and the roar of the audience draw her. A talented playwright, Lacey writes original plays for the troupe and works on the stage crew. When a freak accident requires facial reconstruction, plain Lacey emerges pretty. While still coping with this change, she's thrust into the spotlight when one of the actors turns up ill on opening night—and is subsequently discovered by a Broadway producer. Will Lacey embrace the offered new life onstage or will she retreat inside her shell?

When the Bough Breaks

Her dream job has a Catch 22 ... and time is running out

Rookie lobbyist SIENNA O'SHEA is determined to make a name for herself in New York's capitol and use that influence to gain easier access to her birth records. For years she's searched for her birth mother, but when she's handed her first assignment—to lobby support for the permanent sealing of all adoption records—her worlds collide. 

Candidate for Lt. Governor REESE VAN DAAL has his eye on the presidency and Sienna epitomizes his image of a first lady. He determines to win her and the constituency she'll attract. He has only two hurdles to overcome: keeping his long-time girlfriend quiet and Sienna from finding her birth mother. 

Too busy chasing stories, Atlanta investigative reporter MATT DRESSLER never proposed to Sienna. Now she's moved away and fallen in love with someone else. When he investigates foreign money infiltrating political campaigns, the trail leads him to Sienna's fiancé. When she discovers his mission, keeping her out of the crossfire could cost Matt everything.

                         

When the Wind Blows

Two successful women ... two secrets that can destroy their lives

JENNA ANDREWS is an award-wining interior designer who's on the fast track to success. But her happy world is flipped upside down when she learns that the abortion she had years earlier has left her unable to have children. Jenna is convinced her marriage to NEIL ANDREWS will be destroyed if he learns the truth, and so she decides to keep her past a secret as she continues to grow her design practice.

One of Jenna's new clients is DR. EVE BORRELLI, a trauma surgeon who recently moved to Atlanta and hires Jenna to decorate her leased townhouse. Eve seems a woman on top of the world to Jenna, who doesn’t realize that Eve, too, is guarding a secret that has the power to end her relationship with the man in her life.

Eve is pregnant, but can't announce the news because SENATOR PORTER GIBBS, her fiancé and the father of the child, is fighting a tough reelection battle. The scandal of an out-of-wedlock child might be the final blow to his campaign. Moreover, Eve wants rethink her rocky relationship with Porter. And so with a job promise at Grady Memorial, she moves to Atlanta, where she'll have her baby, then place it for adoption.

But even the best kept secrets have a way of escaping. Jenna doesn’t realize that a stalker is plotting to make her past public. When she and Neil decide to adopt a child, the adoption agency's background check threatens to expose her past.