Young history Professor Jack Turner is settling into his new position at Culpepper University, when he gets a surprise visit from his friend, police Sgt. Joe Boyd. Joe has started a new hobby, a fun pastime that's also helping him lose some weight-metal detecting. Joe asks if he can do this on Jack's lakefront property, which includes over a dozen acres of woods. Intrigued by a hobby that combines physical exercise and Jack's love of history, Jack asks to tag along. Neither man has any idea that this seemingly harmless hobby will cause their paths to cross with a seventy-year-old mystery involving tragedy, smuggling, multiple murders, and stolen Nazi loot. It's just an innocent hobby, Jack tells his wife, Rachel. Really, what could go wrong?
For John and Laura Foster, what began as a fairytale honeymoon in 1857 aboard the steamship SS Vandervere, quickly turns into a nightmare. A terrible hurricane strikes and the grand ship begins to sink. Just before it goes under, a rescue ship appears on the horizon. But it only has room enough to save the women and children. Laura soon finds herself sailing away toward New York city on a ship filled with orphans and widows, to meet John's family whom she's never met. Desperate for a miracle, Laura braces herself to face life alone.
After years of abuse and neglect, Parker is found chained in a junk-filled backyard after a drug bust. The little guy's terrified of people. Officer Ned Barringer brings him to a nearby shelter for medical care. When Ned learns how hard it is for dogs like Parker to get adopted, he must do more. He's also instantly taken with Kim Harper, one of the shelter managers.
When Kim offers to train Parker for free, Ned instantly accepts. That same day, he meets his next-door neighbor, a ten-year-old boy named Russell. Russell is hiding a black-eye, compliments of two bullies at school. This angers Ned. He suffered the same fate as a child. It's the main reason he became a cop. But what can he do? When a near-death tragedy occurs, what role might Parker play in bringing these three lives together?
Jack and Rachel leave Culpepper for their long-awaited honeymoon trip, a driving tour through New England. On day three, they stop at a little bayside town in Cape Cod to visit Jack's grandmother. After he gets called away to handle an emergency, Rachel stays and listens as Jack's grandmother shares a remarkable story about how she and Jack's grandfather met in the early days of World War II. It's a story filled with danger, decades-old family secrets, daring rescues, and romance. Jack is named after his grandfather, and this story set the course and direction for Jack's life to the present day. After hearing it, Rachel is amazed that anyone survived.
Young history professor Jack Turner takes a retreat at a lakeside cabin just outside of Culpepper, Georgia, to work on his doctoral dissertation. The cabin is owned by an ambitious state senator, an inheritance from his father. Inside, everything is exactly the way it was when the old man died ten years ago. While taking a break from his research, Jack snoops through the father's books and finds an old photo album filled with black-and-white pictures of orphaned children. Intrigued, he continues searching and finds what appears to be evidence of murder and an old leather journal, handwritten entirely in German. Rachel Cook, Jack's girlfriend, translates the journal for him. What it reveals instantly puts both of their lives in mortal danger.
An unexpected surprise brings the Mitchell family of Savannah a chance to experience the Christmas trip of their dreams. An unexpected disappointment threatens to turn it into the worst Christmas of their lives. John Finch and his friend Alfred live in the woods. Been doing it for decades. He likes wintering in Florida, but this year's been particularly harsh. Between the cold, freezing rain and terrifying lightning storms, John's starting to wonder how much more of this lifestyle he can take. A new friend enters the picture and changes everything. Kim Harper, the dog trainer introduced in Rescuing Finley, is contacted by a billionaire philanthropist seeking her help with a new dog training project that will help the homeless. Is he for real? And is her coworker right? Does this rich, handsome man's interest in Kim go much deeper than her dog-training skills?
Jack Turner comes back to Culpepper to give a series of lectures for his old history professor. Within days, he starts having bizarre experiences at night. Like he's traveling back in time, experiencing the epic events in his lectures firsthand. He has no control over these experiences and can't make them stop. Joe Boyd thought he'd left big-city crime back in Pittsburgh when he took a detective job in Culpepper, Georgia, a sleepy southern college town. His peaceful life ends when two students turn up dead in two weeks. The coroner is saying natural causes, but something doesn't add up. Rachel Cook, a teaching assistant at Culpepper, can't believe Jack is back in her life again. She's had a crush on him since she was fourteen, but Jack never knew. He instantly seems attracted to her, but she can tell that something is deeply troubling him. Watching all this from a distance is Nigel Avery. He's certain this experiment's about to unravel. It'll be his job to tie up all the loose ends when it does.
Amy Wallace has made plenty of mistakes in her young life, but she didn't see this one coming. Chris Seger is a marine serving in Afghanistan. His life is forever altered by a single, fateful step. A mother of another Afghan war vet suffers a devastating loss, which changes the course of Finley's life for good. Finley is a mostly golden retriever, who suddenly finds himself alone and confused in a dog shelter. Later, he's brought to a local prison to be trained in a special program for female inmates. Could this prison actually become the place where Finley finally finds his freedom? Rescuing Finley tells the story of how one rescue dog powerfully impacts three tragic lives and puts all of them on a road toward redemption and healing.
There are people in this world we pass right by without giving a second thought. They are almost invisible. Yet some of them have amazing stories to tell, if we'd only take the time to listen . . . Aaron Miller was an old, worn-out Vietnam vet, a handyman in a trailer park. Forty years prior, he saved the lives of three young men in the field only to come home from the war and lose everything. But God is a master at finding and redeeming the lost things of life. Aaron is about to be found. Expert storyteller Dan Walsh pens a new tale filled with the things his fans have come to love-forgiveness, redemption, love, and that certain bittersweet quality that few authors ever truly master. Fans old and new will find themselves drawn into this latest story about how God cares for everyone.
A reluctant war hero returns home and encounters a new chance at love. No sooner has Shawn Collins returned home from the fighting in Europe than he is called upon to serve his country in another way—as a speaker on the war bond tour. While other men might jump at the chance to travel around the country with attractive Hollywood starlets, Shawn just wants to stay home with his son Patrick and his aging father, and grieve the loss of his wife in private. When Shawn asks Katherine Townsend to be Patrick’s nanny while he’s on the road, he has no idea how this decision will impact his life. Could it be the key to his future happiness and the mending of his heart? Or will the war once again threaten his chances for a new start? Dan Walsh does not disappoint in this tender story of family ties and the healing of a broken heart.
Ian Collins is an old man without his son. Patrick Collins is a young boy without his father. On his Christmas list are only three items. He wants the army to find his father. He wants to leave his grandfather’s house. And he wants the dusty wooden soldier in Grandfather’s attic—the one he is forbidden to touch. Set at Christmastime in 1943, The Unfinished Gift is the engaging story of a family in need of forgiveness. With simple grace, it reminds us of the small things that affect powerful change in our hearts—a young boy’s prayers, a shoe box of love letters, and even a half-carved soldier, long forgotten. This nostalgic story of reconciliation will touch your heart.
