Debbie's Books
MENDOCINO MUSIC
Women's Fiction
Contemporary Fiction
Book Club Fiction
Finding her voice the first time was easy. Coming back to the opera as a wife and mother after years of silence? Much, much harder.
September 11th devastated a lot of lives. For Marina Carson Bridgepoint, it meant the death of her beloved voice teacher, and emotional trauma strong enough to abort her nascent opera career. Years later, Marina learns that the organization which once recognized her as a major up-and-coming talent plans to publish a book celebrating its prize winners. Most of the awardees have long and impressive biographies, but hers will show only that she abandoned music, too damaged to utilize her talent. For the sake of her marriage, her son, and herself, she resolves to confront her fears.
Marina and her son leave New York City for a year in her hometown of Mendocino, California, and Marina’s husband heads to Hong Kong on business. On the foggy California coast, Marina works to heal. But as her love for music re-awakens, Marina realizes that the stakes are highly personal.
Pursuing a full-time opera career would mean stressing her marriage and turning her into an absent mother—just as her musically gifted son needs her support the most. But even if she can balance the demands of music with the needs of her family, she might face the most humiliating fact of all: that she’s never lived up to her potential, and never created the opportunity for the world to hear her voice.
MEGAN GAMBLE,
SING OUT
Women's Fiction
Contemporary Fiction
Book Club Fiction
A microphone with her name on it. Thousands of fans screaming for her son and his band. A chance to heal their relationship, reclaim her musical voice, and find the confidence to risk falling in love.
Megan Gamble never thought she’d sing for the largest audience of her life at age forty-one, but her son Kyle’s band urgently needs a new backup vocalist. Their relationship has been broken for too long, so she jumps at the chance to join her son’s tour and rebuild their connection. Becoming an unwed mother at nineteen meant she missed her best chance to blossom as a musician, and in the twenty years since her boyfriend’s death, she hasn’t touched a guitar or found another serious relationship.
But sometimes life gives second chances. As Megan makes her place on a tour bus full of creative and highly libidinous twenty-somethings, the non-stop concert schedule builds her confidence and draws the attention of the band’s gorgeous manager, Brandon Thatch, who falls for the real Megan, flaws and talents alike. But her time with Kyle’s band also draws the attention of the musician who tried to force himself on her twenty-three years ago, a man who tries to use Megan’s connection with Kyle’s band to cash in on their success. If Megan cannot shut down the blackmail attempt, she will alienate Kyle, jeopardize the possibility of her own music career, and remain convinced she is too damaged to be worthy of love.
the PASTOR'S DAUGHTER
Kiley Witherspoon never expected to return to her tiny Northern California hometown, but more than fifteen years later, eager to start her new job as an Alzheimer's researcher, she's living in the guest cottage of one of her dad's old parishioners. The church that kicked her late father out of the pulpit for being too liberal still runs a scholarship in his name, and Dad always let the board give his scholarship to kids going to hard-core Christian colleges. Now Kiley's on the scholarship board, and she has no intention of letting that continue. Dad was all about making the world a better place, and surely funding kids to getting a STEM education is better than teaching them how to sing praise songs. If she can just get the hotshot young attorney who also sits on the board to support her, she’ll be able to fund a deserving student, concentrate on getting a promising new drug developed, and maybe even find a relationship with this man who seems far, far out of her league.